Weeknote 19

What, an actual weeknote in a week? Yes. Short and to the point hopefully

What I've done

Left the house twice in a week! Jeez I'm tired, not used to this 😄
On Tuesday I visited the lovely and inspiring Road to Recovery Trust who do great work and run an excellent coffee shop called The George Street Social, if you're ever in Newcastle you should go, 10 mins walk from the station, good vibe, good coffee and it supports their work.
On the way back to the station (via a very obvious detour) i went to Pink Lane bakery and got one of the greatest pastries known to man

On Thursday I traveled over to Kendal to visit CADAS to help them think about digital and systems stuff. Quick obligatory visit to the Howgills also.

Wednesday did a 1hr Q&A on neighbourhood mapping with Tom F and Simon from Citizen Network. We had over 50 people sign up, over 30 turn up (which is about spot on for my 'about 60% will turn up to free stuff' rule of thumb). We tried to answer some pre questions, and some live questions. With only an hour and lots to try and unpick, we obviously couldn't cover even a small part of what people probably want to know. But it was good, at least I hope it was? I think Tom F is going to write something, and maybe we'll do another one.

As part of this we did a quick show of a mapping tool called Map my Patch (working title) we have been developing, which allows the creation of map based surveys in a simple free tool. Share the survey via a code, and people can respond to your questions and draw on a map. You then get the survey responses linked to geo data for your use. If you'd like to test it, please let us know!

Did some more work on The List. Now have a list of 9k Trusts & Foundations and all their charity commission numbers so we can pull in from the api. Built the weekly snapshot functionality so Jo can run weekly snapshots of all the changes and write some commentary. Hopefully this helps with admin and creates way to look back at changes over time, and can be used for people who subscribe to updates.

More work on Open Recommendations. It's not finished. But I'm not going to rush it. However I am going to share it here, because why not. I'm quite happy with the IN part of the site, getting reports and recommendations from PDF's. I'm still playing with the search functionality (i've got 3 approaches to search going on - AI style chat, Semantic and Keyword and I'm not sure which is most useful and whether to combine etc). Lot's still to do, but have a play, let me know what you think.

Open Recommendations

A shared, searchable repository where reports and recommendations live on, helping the sector build on past work instead of starting from scratch. Open knowledge and infrastructure for all.

Open RecommendationsData For Action

What I'm up to next week

There will definitely be no weeknote next week as I'm off to Germany and the bavarian alps for a week. Some beers, some hut to hut hiking, some running, hopefully some lakes to swim in. Off on the train which i'm excited about having never been in the tunnel. London > Brussels > Koln > Munchen.

Side note. I'm at a 75 day streak of German on Duolingo and I'm very much looking forward to putting phrases like "the bear likes to cook" and "the owl plays the piano sometimes"

Interesting things

100 Factories

100 Factories is transforming UK homebuilding by creating a distributed network of local manufacturers to produce modular timber building kits.

100 Factories

Seeing like a place

Place-based work can be smarter and less bureaucratic, but can it rise to the political moment?

MediumJames Plunkett

Self-Organization Needs Activators: The 9% Who Turn Networks into Movements

Effective collaboration across networks of groups requires the network catalysts.

SocialrootsSocialroots

A decentralised, self-hosted trails database

Three years ago I created a Fediverse instance called exercise.cafe for discussion related to fitness and exercise. I handed that over a year later, realising that discussion without data wasn’t really much use in that context. Thanks to the latest update which I discovered thanks to Laurens Hof, there’s a new option: wanderer. It’s a “self-hosted trails database” which the developer says now has the functionality to “follow users, comment, like, share trails, and more across instances.

Thought Shrapnel

Talk at Camp Digital 2025

This is the the unabridged version of the script for my Camp Digital talk in Manchester on 03/07/2025 – including all the stuff I had to cut to keep to time! The slides are here. The Power, P…

Digital by DefaultDoug Belshaw

To all who think capitalism can drive progressive change, it won’t – and here’s the shocking proof

Asset manager Aberdeen’s surprise cut to funding research into inequality has left those that used its grants for good work reeling, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

inkl

The Neighborhood Is the Unit of Change: Rethinking Scale in Philanthropy

Introduction It was a standing-room-only affair at the foundation’s annual gathering. The evening’s keynote speaker—a nationally recognized philanthropic leader—was unveiling their organization’s bold new initiative: a $25 million citywide program targeting educational outcomes across the entire met

LinkedInKirk Wester-Rivera

Ask not what Agentic AI can do for you, ask what it requires OF you. | Tom Watson

Ask not what Agentic AI can do for you, ask what it requires OF you. Control, access, elimination of privacy.

LinkedInJohn Fitzgerald