By Tom Watson in weeknote — 28 Feb 2025

Weeknote 28-2-2025

Picture of the sea, some stuff on governance, a couple of blogs and some interesting things!

What I did

I was off this week as it was half term, so mainly it was family and relaxing time. I set myself a challenge of doing a wild/cold water dip once a month somewhere different for this year. It's basically an excuse to go in the water and explore new places hopefully. I did my wild/cold water dip in Druridge Bay in Northumberland, which was quiet and lovely. If anyone has places to suggest for any point this year let me know. Bonus points if there is some sort of jump into the water 😄

A picture of the beach and sea at Druridge Bay. The sun just peaking out from behind a cloud.

Even though I was off I managed to get a couple of blogs out.

The first one was about our mapping work at Data For Action and how we see maps as living breathing conversations about place and neighbourhoods.
The other one was a post that brings together some things I've been thinking about and using with groups who are working in collaborative structures or system change. It includes some definitions I use about Observations, Signals and some proposed structures of how learning which are intended to create freedom to take action.

What i thought about

I thought a lot about Governance (and the Sea!) this week. Honestly I probably think about governance a fair bit generally, as I think it's something that is so important, but often overlooked. My thinking this week was sparked by this post from Tris last week. There were some interesting examples in there which I suggest you checking out. I picked up on this blog from Scotty which I thought was excellent. It has some similarities to some of my own thinking in a post called People as Code from a couple of years ago. The idea of borrowing from software development for governance ideas is interesting to me, and something we can learn a lot from. I realise this feels a bit of an interesting(terrifying) take at the minute as we watch the world be dismantled by tech bros running roughshot all over governance structures, liberties, sanity etc.

In my own work I beginning to think specifically about governance from a couple of aspects. Firstly as I begin revisiting some work on Organisational Resilience, there is more I want to bring into the governance part, especially as it relates to collective governance as part of resilience. Secondly, I'm thinking about governance as it relates to our mapping work.

How do we create/support governance of data, insight, maps so that they are owned and maintained long term so that they truly are living and breathing conversations?

I also thought about this a lot

What I did

What i thought about

Interesting things