With the GovCamp Cymru event over and done with, it’s now time to do the wrapping up. That means prepping for a retro next Friday and tying up the loose ends, finance-wise. Just waiting on the last receipts and invoices before I can close the books on 2025 and start thinking about 2026. I still need to write a post about the experience from my point of view, too.

Other than that, a bit of tidying up of my brands’ websites & LI profiles.

The rest of the week was spent being creative, and reflective:

• I published another piece in my ‘fractional leadership’ series - “Retain Equity, Gain Expertise: The Case for Fractional Leadership”
• I wrote on the Ode Map about reading retreats as an opportunity to refresh one’s creativity - “The Reading Retreat: Rewilding the Writer’s Mind”
• I wrote a bunch of clerihews because, well... I don’t know why. But I did. They don’t fit in any of my current projects, so I’m at a loss as to what to do about them. See “Outliers, Strays and Sudden Clerihews” if you want to read a few of them.
• More personally, I wrote about decision fatigue - “The Tyranny of Choice”

The week was marked by a very special day on Thursday when I accompanied my son to his first vote - a local council election.

And I stumbled across this really interesting article on the ‘CEO Dinner Insights’ blog about ‘tech bubble’ vs ‘tech wildfire’ and how to prepare / who survives. Really interesting. “The AI Wildfire Is Coming. It's Going to Be Very Painful and Incredibly Healthy”

I mainly watched latest episodes of programmes in progress - The Witcher, Return to Paradise, Down Cemetery Road, Loot.

I also watched the final episode of ‘Murder before Evensong’. All I can say about this is that I was genuinely interested in finding out who the culprit was. And now I know.

I also stumbled across the best episode of Midsomer Murders (Series 15, Episode 6 - “Schooled in Murder”) in which Martine McCutcheon gets killed with a cheese wheel. Special. There then follow a series of cheese-related murders. Of course the killer’s intent is to steer Barnaby away from the actual reason for the murders (which anyone who had read the title of the episode would realise).

On the listening front, some listening was done, but not a great deal:

• Airsine - “Sync / Slackers Delight” single.
• Engram - “Das Kapital” album.
• Mark Steel’s in Town - “Lerwick” & “Unst” episodes
• Shedunnit (podcast) - playing catch-up on all the episodes I’ve missed in the last 3 years.

"It's beginnning to look a lot like Christmas"