Category: working in the open
- Tips for writing good weeknotes ()
Weeknotes are a format for regular communication. They’re well suited to teams who want to communicate about their work to colleagues or management. They work in other circumstances, too, such as individuals communicating to the teams they’re part of, or leaders communicating to the people they lead. Weeknotes work well as blog posts, but they […]
- Bookings open for the “Working in the open” training course ()
As promised a few weeks ago, tickets for my new training course are now on sale. ☞ Book a ticket I’m running the course in partnership with Content Design London, who have several years experience of running excellent training courses both face-to-face and remote. This one will be remote, of course. On the day, we’ll […]
- Training course: “Working in the open” ()
Following on from this week’s webinar (which went great, thanks to everyone who came along), later this summer I’ll be running a training course, “How to work in the open”. Once again, this will be happening in partnership with the team at Content Design London. ☞ This blog post on the CDL site tells you […]
- A webinar for content designers ()
Next Monday 18 May – a week from today – I’m going to be hosting a webinar called Working in the open for lone voice content designers, in partnership with the wonderful people at Content Design London. It’s free to attend but places are limited: sign up at Eventbrite to book yours. The session is […]
- Many things are ok ()
Back in 2016, the team I was part of at the Government Digital Service created a poster. This poster, written by the team and designed by Sonia Turcotte: This blog post gives you the background. Since then, a few companies and organisations have either printed their own copies of that poster, or have remixed it […]
- Blogging for teams (without using Medium) ()
Recently I was working with a team who wanted to blog about their work. Their first instinct was to start posting stuff on Medium, but I pulled a face and they immediately asked why. “Medium’s not great,” I said. “It’s so aggressive in nagging people to sign up or sign in that it becomes quite […]
- Slide inertia ()
There’s a thing that happens in organisations, I thing I call slide inertia. It’s the tendency for presentation slides to be reused, repurposed, copied and pasted time and time and time again. The image above is a sign of how strong slide inertia can be. Anyone who worked at GDS and wrote slides at the […]
- The “How to make a video” video ()
This is a script I wrote years ago at GDS, when we were thinking about making a video to help people in other government departments when they were making their own videos. The idea was to “show the thing” – in this case, all the things people should try to avoid when making a video. […]
- Turn question slides into statement slides ()
This is a tip I often suggest when I’m giving people feedback on draft presentations. I thought it might be useful for other people, so here you go. In an effort to add structure to their presentations, I’ve seen quite a lot of people insert slides that ask a question. They usually say something like: “How […]
- Planning comms ()
Not too much; mostly blogging This is how I advise people about planning their communication: “Plan comms. Not too much. Mostly blogging.” (A reference to Michael Pollan’s advice for a healthy diet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) Some teams, particularly government teams, love to plan their future communication out on what’s usually called a […]