Disruptive and agile

We don’t like to be stuck in a rut so we moved the board meeting from the usual venue of our office in Baker Street to a lively, noisy space near Euston. That was the disruptive start to week 2 of the team’s November.

Mind Of My Own uses Agile method for developing our apps which involves intense periods of coding called development sprints that happen several times a year. The second week in November marked the start of the last sprint for this year, coding in bug fixes and some new features, all co-produced with children and young people.

Public sector technology

Two events we attended this week looked at the same subject from different perspectives. The iESE conference at Church Hall Westminster, was focused on the issues facing UK local authorities in digital transformation, while GovTech19, held at at the Palais Brongniart in Paris addressed what is new and cutting edge in public sector technology. The image at the top of this blog was our view of Westminster Abbey as we left the iESE event.

iESE was created by UK local authorities as a shared resource to transform public services and retain experience within the sector, while Public , which is behind GovTech19, was created to offer tech startups insight, networks and capital to help them in transforming public services.

In Paris and London we made new friends, offered help and gained fresh insights. Taking part in 5 minute pitching, speed dating and matchmaking, we reflected that conferencing has changed a lot and, we think, for the better. Find out what people were saying about the events here  and here.

A media debut…

In a fabulous end to a truly exciting week, the team gathered around the recording of Scarlett’s radio appearance on Calon FM’s Community Focus Show with Dave Williams. With a focus on charities and organisations that benefit the Wrexham community, Scarlett was well placed to discussed our community in Wales following the full translation into Welsh at the beginning of this year. You can listen to the interview here (scroll down to 12 November). If you want to really chill and listen to all the music, here is the playlist:

Kids in America – Kim Wilde
Baker Street (cover) – Foo Fighters
Millenial – Sam Fender
Kids – MGMT
Young Blood – The Naked and Famous
Changes – David Bowie
Opposite of Adults – Chiddy Bang
Seasons (Waiting on You) – Future Islands
Coastin’ – Zion I

Week 3 was set to be even more eventful, even by our standards, so look out for the next post coming soon!