I’m sat in a hotel room on one of my monthly visits to the capital and York, the football’s on in the background and now seems like as good a time as any to write this.

Thoughts

We’ve made good progress on our enterprise data models and creating reusable data patterns to help development teams both internal and external spend less time trying to model the basics correctly and more time working on the hard stuff.

We hope that providing some SQL snippets folk can copy and paste to quickly get a table to include the right fields for addresses, or a certain type of reference number format we use all the time without having to give it any thought is the kind of simple improvement to delivery that makes life easier for everyone and sneaks in data standards to boot.

We’re working in the open on it, so there’ll be a blog post covering it soon, but you’re welcome to have a nose in the meantime. It’s a work in progress though, so please be gentle!

Data club are on! and data club were great. Data club was a sort of odd jokey way of saying “anyone fancy the pub?” which kinda got way more interest than I was expecting, but it was encouraging.

I’ve been thinking about it a bit since then though, and why not actual data club?

All the best things I’ve been to about the subject have essentially been a data support group, so why not do that? Attendees bring a data problem or a moan, stick them on a post-it, chuck them in a hat, and we help each other with our data problems until the time runs out, or the hat is empty.

I have been acutely aware recently how exclusionary just going to the pub can be, however much I enjoy it.

People clearly want to talk about data so if anyone thinks of anywhere nice to go in London that serves good tea and cake and could save us some space I would love to hear about it. Those that want to, can always go to the pub after, and I would very much like to get a more diverse bunch of folk talking data because the pub only version of data club is a bit of a sausage-fest let’s be quite honest.

I think I need to make this real because I ordered some stickers.

data club are on

Feelings

I am consistently amazed by how generous people are with their time and their expertise. I met Michael at Open Data Camp this year.

I admired the work he and colleagues had done over at Parliament on semantic models of Parliamentary process when I first laid eyes on it after visiting Dan the first time, when he still worked there. So, a while ago.

Michael not only let me come and observe a session that he and Silver did about a process in the House of Lords, but both of them spent some time with myself and a couple of experts from our Approvals Team modelling the process there and giving me some help to develop my less than great semantic modelling technique.

Watching genuine expertise in action is really satisfying, and that went for Michael, Silver and those subject matter experts who offered their time to help me find ways to better understand our business, how it can be modelled, and how we can use that to improve services.

Thanks folks, you’re great.

Words

I did a slightly better job of recording what I read this month, mainly by liking all the tweets where I found stuff.

I read another book too, although I am already behind my target rate for getting to 20 books this year. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez was eye-opening, terrifying and saddening in equal measure.

Others have written far better reviews of it than I can manage, but I will say I think it should be required reading for anyone working in data and digital. If you would like my copy I’d be willing to pay it forward to someone in need.

Understanding our data entities by Neil Tamplin was a heartening read. It’s encouraging to know someone else is doing very similar exercises to you and you’re not barking up the wrong tree. Their approach to listing entities and then working out all the services they exist in was sort of the opposite way we did it but got the same result.

I loved this piece from ONS on the data standards they use. There is a certain confidence in these I like - no messing, this is how we handle money. IN THIS HOUSE WE USE ISO 8601!

Trust and the competition delusion suitably stimulated my noodle.

How can government overcome it’s problem with data?

Death by Database is exactly the kind of horror story I think data club is needed for.

This Reddit post by the 75 year old mother of one of the actors who was in Red Dead Redemption 2 is possibly the classiest thing to ever appear on Reddit.

What if sleeper train, but high speed? from Keelan is a cracking bit of curiosity analysis and is about trains, which are definitely cool.

Team Objectives - Overview gives a good illustration of why OKRs might not be right for everyone.

In Loving Memory of Strictly-Typed Schemas. Amen.

Sounds

Nicolas Jaar’s side project, Against All Logic snuck out an album when I was least expecting it. It’s not like the last one at all, which was a bit of a house tribute, but it’s still definitely good.

The new Squarepusher album delights me and confuses me in equal measure. I think I’m destined to forever be Squarepusher curious rather than a fan.

Finally got over that one song 6 Music always played annoying me and sat down and listened to Schlagenheim by Black Midi and god I am glad I did. Much energy. Some of it dark.

I enjoyed a live set from Psychadelic Porn Crumpets another band in the wave of Australian psych rock.

I also learned to never recommend Australian Psych Rock bands to Dan, he cannot stand them and I think it is the closest I’ve ever gotten to finding out what an angry Dan is like. It’s basically a mildly ticked off regular human.

Tastes

Nothing out of the ordinary this month, but the Leek and Lentil Gratin from the Green Roasting tin has immediately made it into the list of favourites. One of the best things about working from home is eating the leftovers from the previous day’s tea for your lunch and that one is even better then next day.

Fun

I like gardening now! I bought some overalls and I now understand why you’re all so keen on dungarees. I spent a whole Saturday afternoon shredding the mountains of bamboo I cut down that had made it across to our garden from our neighbours - it was nice to switch off for a bit and have something to show for it at the end.

We’ve had some pictures hanging around waiting to be framed and put up since we moved, including this family heirloom.

Old Uncle Nicolai

Games

I did complete Subnautica! The first game I’ve completed in a long time, and while the end was a little shaky I still enjoyed my time with it.

The Reddit post about Red Dead Redemption 2 piqued my interest in it again. I picked it up the day is came out in 2018 and was pretty stoked about it at the time, only to be bored rigid by it after about 5 hours and never picked it up again - until now. This time around I am enjoying the slow pace of it - I spent a good 45 minutes fishing in it the other day - no idea what that’s about.

Cheers ‘n’ gone.