A mixed month of side project productivity, rearranged weekend away in Whitstable, podcast and people progress at work and minimised wellbeing driving Mrs J to school for 3 weeks.
(I've also used Markdown to write this post - a simpler workflow using an ongoing Ticktick action to capture thoughts and Wordpress block to publish)
Make #
- World Cup 2022 MVP on Football Cal
- New WORK Personal Dashboard including completed Trello cards & office visit count based on IFTTT geo-triggers
- New Portfolio Metrics tracker for project KPI's (e.g. podcast downloads with website analytics)
- My Platinum Party mix for House Finesse
- This month's product on a page is PETALS - a possible framework for measuring team health
- Added an index page to my blog for discovery of unlisted content
- Bob Sinclair, Charles & Eddie, Kym Sims, Billy Ocean and Glitterbox Ibiza Where Love Lives Vol II added to The Archive Collection
- Renewed this domain sijobling.com for the 16th year but let onephatdj.go.uk go based on virtually zero redirects tracked
Life #
- Friday night drinks with old friends in a eerily quiet Birmingham city centre
- The Boy came third in his first taekwondo tournament then enrolled as air cadet - all in the same week #ProudDad
- Romantic weekend away to Munich cancelled from EasyJet chaos, instead settling on delightful holiday home in Whitstable with Princess, visiting Canterbury cathedral on a bus and enjoying local seafood restaurants
- Not much exercise due to working at school for most of it; only 3 runs and 1 PT sesh recorded
Work #
- Worked from school for 3 weeks due to Mrs J's broken elbow invalidating insurance, bouncing between two sites thanks to ongoing wifi issues
- Spotlight slot on tech-wide Engineering update about EM initiatives with numerous comments how "natural" my presentation was
- Decided which teams to line manage going forward with some difficult negotiations and conversations aiding the outcome
- Visited our Customer Care office in Leavesden (opposite Universal Studios!) to see how they operate and the impressive environment they're in
- Welcomed Steph to our Order Management teams officially
- Hired our first senior engineer after months of interviews, highlighting how hard it is to find top-end tech talent in the UK
- Started recruitment hunt for QA engineers, forming our local TAG community to help out
- Talked to Lucila Sanjurjo from Farewill about different ways to measure team health
- Internally released first podcast episode for early feedback after crowdsourcing the go-live plan remotely on a Miro board, followed by two more recordings about accessibility and recruitment
- Trained EM Ed how to use Descript and hacked together an Outlook calendar-to-Trello automation on Tech Develops after watching Nat and Tzveta's amazing dyslexia talk
- Two office visits along with the first (remote) engineer interview from a meeting room since the pandemic
Read #
- Life… With No Breaks by Nick Spalding
- Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer