Weeknote 5-4-2025
Some obligatory mountain pictures, thinking about maps and citizenship, more building on an app and some interesting things about health, reports, infrastructure and more
How did it get to April already? Wait, how is it 2025, isn't that the future? It's always interesting to think about what we actually thought the future would look like.
Graham FraserTechnology reporter
What I did
Spent some time looking through some maps made by Citizen mappers as part of the Data For Action neighbourhoods work. It's really cool to see the different ways people approach it, what things they think are interesting, what they think is important. Alongside the maps there was also an awesome write up about how one citizen mapper approached it and the process.
What struck me was the real knowledge and history of the neighbourhood that was captured from Sam's (the citizen mapper) perspective. The fence that stood as a physical barrier preventing access to a green space which was previously accessible. Or the field used as a community space, lost to a car park. There was also lots of positives. I loved the seedling for the small community garden. There is so much in this one map of one neighbourhood.
Of course, this is only one perspective, but it's a perspective we don't see on other maps or datasets really. And this gets to the heart of what we are trying to do with this work. If you ask me about access to green spaces, I can show you datasets from ONS or analysis. I can show you that the average distance to a public green space in sheffield is 316m, but what I couldn't tell you was what Sam could...where there was space & access previously. And this is important because it's this data that allows us to really have conversations about what we want our neighbourhoods, our places, to be.
Spent another day building out the Signals app. Sort of come to describing it as a tool which helps 'structure data for learning' rather than what we traditionally have, which are tools structured for monitoring. Managed to build most of the functionality this week, allowing for showing changes in signals, storing, linking and retrieving documents for RAG, representing observations linked to projects or places. Need to do a bit of work on front end stuff next week.
Spent some time working with a couple of small charities on helping them look at CRM's. It can be hard for charities to know which one to use, which one will suit their purpose. This is made harder I think because many of the charity specific CRM's will only demo over video call, rather than letting the charity or someone like me, who has no financial incentive to whatever a charity chooses, explore on our own terms. Don't get me wrong, I know why companies do this, and I get it - they know their systems, can answer questions etc, but there is something in not knowing everything - because how initiative a tool is, is really important with how things change in organisations. So shout out to Tom from Plinth who when I messaged and said 'give me a demo account please Tom' quickly sorted one out for me. Was nice to play around with Plinth again after not seeing it for a while.
What I thought about
I thought 'How much time can I spend outside this week?' - honestly the weather is so nice I'm still trying to make the most of it. Spent one day running around the lakes including doing one of the best ridges on the best mountain in the lakes (although don't tell anyone as I like it quiet).
I also took a trip up to Black Moss Pot with the family, jumping into the clear, cold water off the rocks, which is definitely one of my favourite pastimes. It also counts as my April tick for 'dip in cold water somewhere new every month'. All in all I've been for cold dips 4 times this week!
Interesting things
- I thought this https://medium.com/@lpiachaud/building-from-the-inside-out-organisational-care-power-and-possibility-f51dd15afc7f was really good. The parts about infrastructure and open sourcing definitely resonate.
- This was quite interesting - https://www.pcnacademy.org.uk/blogs/int-insights-1 - though I did ponder at the quote "“Integration is different to collaboration. We know and do a lot of collaboration, but do we really know about integration? Do we know what it means?” - I mean yeah, but much of the things that are in the report and from lots of other observations lead me to very much doubt that health services do know and do a lot of actual collaboration.
- This was bloody excellent - https://www.projectchange.scot/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Report-Final-final-5.pdf - a satirical take on a report which has more truth than many actual reports I've read. The lines that stand out are partly why I'm building the signals app to stop this type of thing.
reports are where good ideas go to nap. Insight is gathered, typed up, PDF’d, launched, and gently filed away into oblivion. Often the launch is better attended than any implementation meeting. You don’t need more consultation. You need a memory. Check your own report archive.
- Great stuff from Open Data Manchester - https://www.opendatamanchester.org.uk/data-for-communities-empowering-citizens-through-participatory-approaches-part-2/
- Super interesting map from the USA - https://theimpactproject.org/the-impact-map/
- Interesting opportunity here to join advisory committee for Solid which has so much potential (although I was sure it had died before ODI took it on) - https://theodi.org/news-and-events/news/solid-advisory-committee/