Weekly Braindump is a curated list of things I’ve worked on, thought about, listened to or read during the last 7 days.

Hello! This is a little experiment I’m conducting in reflecting on the last 7 days. I carry a lot of this stuff around in my head with no particular immediate purpose, so I thought I’d have a go at trying to dump it every week to make much needed room!

I’ve been working on..

• Having a stab at making board papers more accessible to board members using a combination of Document Management and Mobile Apps and iPads.
• Putting the final touches to the migration of all of our tenant files into Document Management. Next up — finishing up the migration of property files. As usual, the last 10% of the project feels like the longest!
• Gearing up for some potentially exciting and transformative stuff involving neural networks, chat bots and conversational interfaces.
• Scouting for support on Open Data in Housing. Sound interesting? Come and join the Wales Open Data Institute Slack Channel here : https://open-data-slack-in.herokuapp.com/
• Bashing my head against Dell firewall NAT policies and access rules (annoying how quickly this stuff gets fuzzy when you don’t do it day to day.)

I’ve been thinking about..

• Better ways to convey technical ideas and concepts to non-technical people. Something along the lines of visual thinking. Basically anything that can help bridge the void between what I know and what you know.. thus enabling us to know what we know and know what we don’t know.. (you know?)
• If we were starting a new Housing Association tomorrow, what would it look like? What would services look like? How would people work? Would the departments look anything like what we’ve got now? Would you bother with an office at all? Would you go remote first?
• Do job titles contribute to organisational inertia?
• Pretotyping to gauge whether you should even bother prototyping — see related podcast in listening section below. Sometimes it’s not about whether you can build it, it’s about whether you should build it at all in the first place.
• The invisible interface! My kids (5 and 4) use voice interfaces (ala Siri, Hey Google, Amazon Echo) as naturally as I use a keyboard and mouse. Totally removes the need to understand the interface or the technology or even written language to use it.

Reading highlights..

• To transform your business model, you need to selectively forget the past and embrace your misfits. By @PaulBromford.
  https://medium.com/@PaulBromford/why-you-need-to-selectively-forget-your-own-past-38ba64871469#.9u5fyc5zs
• Sweden proves what I’ve always suspected. 6 hour work days make you healthier AND more productive. http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/what-happened-after-sweden-introduced-a-six-hour-work-day–W1bR6djCD_b
• Amazon are piloting a 30 hour work week with full benefits (at 75% pay) to encourage better work life balance.
  https://www.fastcompany.com/3063482/the-future-of-work/is-amazons-30-hour-workweek-program-good-for-workers?utm_content=buffer14508&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
• Institutions will seek to preserve the problem for which they are the solution. (Via @Kevmoss) https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100404/2112388868.shtml
• Interesting post on working in the open. Hint: if you’re not talking about what you’re currently working on.. you’re not doing it. (Via @Dosticen)
  http://www.elsua.net/2016/09/05/why-dont-you-show-your-work/
• Our organisations are chock full of paradoxes. We want to attract people but also restrain them. Behold the attractive prison! https://medium.com/the-xplane-collection/the-paradoxes-of-organization-7e468956ddf8#.airqov1sq
• @PaulBromford again, this time calling for radical transparency in Housing to drive value for tenants. See Buffer’s transparency dashboard for a hint of what he’s referencing here.
  http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/debate/ih-50/we-must-be-different/7016718.article?utm_source=Housing60&utm_medium=email&utm_content=article_link&utm_campaign=H60

Listening highlights..

• Alberto Savoia talks about failing FERRARI FAST using Pretotyping. (Via @EionMcFadden)
  http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/4592/How-to-Succeed-by-Failing-Ferrari-Fast
• I’d totally missed that Douglas Rushkoff had started his own podcast called Team Human. First episode is all about debt and why it’s wrong to push people into the red for life’s basic necessities.
  http://pca.st/pK2k
• Uses of virtual reality outside of Gaming.
  https://anchor.fm/w/a3893e