2024 Weeknote 11

March 11-17

Heavy calendar, light sharing

It’s been a light week for Substack notes and LinkedIn shares, not to mention staying on top of email. The calendar was very full:

The all-day training on Thursday was with Business of People (again) and focused on how to provide feedback as a manager — the first of two sessions, although I will miss the next session. And sadly, that training was interrupted by…

NACo presentation on Unclaimed Funds

We prepped and delivered a presentation to a NACo audience about how we used Quickbase to solve our Unclaimed Funds legacy code problems. That presentation went pretty well, aside from a minor video/audio mismatch during a recorded features demo. Here are the slides, for anyone interested…

Storytelling and awards

I started the IDEO U course on Storytelling. Also worked on the draft of our first Story Card and hosted our first monthly Impact Report meeting with the leaders expected to produce a monthly scorecard and narrative. This is turning into a lot of work, and it’s taking away from leadership of my own team. It’s making me concerned. That said, I recognize improving our org-wide storytelling should yield more resources over time, helping everyone. After all, people will typically fund things that get results. You just have to show your work. Then ask for more.

Meanwhile, I’m pushing the new recognition (awards) program in the organization. It’s meeting some resistance, though I think that’s because of the extra work, not because people don’t want to acknowledge or celebrate our good work.

Truth be told, it’s always a lot of extra work to show off what’s being done, rather than just doing it and moving on. But I’ve come to understand, over the years, leadership of organizations requires this meta-work.

Cataract, week 2

The results of the cataract surgery have been perfectly fine. The big production around the surgery was overkill, but it was ultimately worth it. I now heartily recommend cataract surgery for anyone that needs it. I knew it was good, I just didn’t know it was this good. Better than lasik, I suspect.

Conference calendar

I’m very much looking forward to a couple conferences coming up. First is a 2-day in Washington, DC on April 10-11 hosted by the Digital Service Network (DSN) with other digital government leaders from across the country.

Then there’s the Code for America Summit in late May in Oakland, CA. I’m hoping to go and take 2-3 others from our team.

Eclipse trip

Before heading to any conferences, there’s the total solar eclipse coming up on April 8. I will be heading to Texas to increase the odds of clear skies. If it’s clear in Ohio, I will be pretty mad because the hotels along the path of totality are super expensive!

The last eclipse in 2017 was a great experience. We went to a small town outside St. Louis to see it and while it was hot, it was clear and I got photos and videos that were awesome. I hope to do even better this time.

GX+ Season 2 begins

Our second 8-week season of work started this week. We’re still learning how to make commitments and focus on time-bound work. I’ll be getting a view of the Season 2 plans this coming week.

Play ball

I’m working on getting tickets for multiple Columbus Clippers minor league baseball games over the course of the spring and summer. It’s a great way to take colleagues out for some fun and socialization—vitally important in the remote work era. Plus, Huntington Park is a great venue that also happens to be owned by my employer. 😀

County website content revamp shaping up

With 14 launch agencies and another 30 agencies beyond that, combined with switching from an agency-centric model to a services-centric model, our massive overhaul of county web properties is starting to come together now. It’s complex. The GX Concourse team is really sweating the details and working to set us up for as much success as we can muster.

But man, is it tough. Sooooo much content to refactor or just plain write from scratch, so much to figure out in information architecture, lots to control when it comes to language levels and style for public consumption, and then there’s all the staff across the county we have to lead through this process, despite web communications being a secondary or tertiary priority for most of them.

We’re working on a pitch to expand the team now.

A few funnies

Finally, I do enjoy funny bits of old-school-Twitter-style humor. Including here for fun.