Artifical intelligence, intuition or expertise…

Weekly blog – as I confirmed to an old colleague last week ‘I just sit down for 20 minutes and write it in one draft’…. lazy, creative or cathartic? Possibly a mix of all – but at least it sounds like me. I have experimented a couple of times with AI tools like Chat GPT just as research / practice. I know I am not proficient enough to make the best of the functionality – but my immediate response was ‘well it’s actually a better positioning document than I wrote – but it doesn’t sound like me’. My working assumption is that all I really have to offer these days is ‘me’ (& some great colleaguess etc etc) so why would I write something that sounds like a ‘better’ version of me.

So forgive the informality – and the spelling mistakes and grammatical meanderings. But this is me as I am right now.

Been a funny period – having completed a couple of engagements earlier than planned (in good ways) I have found myself with a bit more time on my hands over the last couple of weeks. Little jobs have started getting done around the house, more vinyl than is healthy has been purchased and trawling through previously purchased but unplayed albums has been fun.

Found a great album by a band called called Sister John which I’d recommend – not least because it’s released in Last Night From Glasgow – which just seems like a really decent label.

Catching up with Nic was great – she was someone who I used to speak to probably daily for many years and then since leaving work almost 4 years have passed. Anyway she’s plucking up the courage to start writing stuff on social media so by tagging her in I’m hoping to offer some encouragement.

Also had the time to attend the Sussex Changing Futures Summit at the Amex Stadium in Brighton – reflecting on the progress made in terms of systems changes for the people with mutliple and compound needs. The programme is entering its last year of delivery and it was amazing to see so many people in attendance. More poignant perhaps as this was the first project myself and Kevin completed together when we wrote the second stage submission, built a Theory of Change and a delivery model. As you’d expect with these kinds of projects where it ended up wasn’t necessarily where we saw it at the time. But the energy and determination of so many practitioners to make a difference was enlivening.

I also went to an event in which the presenter said “People can usually hear me so I don’t use a microphone – just let me know if you can’t”. My feedback was: if a hearing loop or microphone is provided it’s actually polite to use it – I could only hear when I turned my hearing aids up full and didn’t really want a room full of 100 delegates to know I was hearing impaired.” I know I’ve been guilty of exactly the same thing many many times – so it was a useful reminder to me as much as anyone that it shouldn’t have been about me claiming ‘access’ that had actually already been catered for.

In a seamless segue related to accessibility I cannot help but be bewildered by just how tolerant of virulent racism we seem to have become as a society. Phrases like ‘taking our country back’ are packed with historical baggage and presumptions, the comments made by one very rich white man about Diane Abbott are still referred to as ‘alleged’ even when followed with ‘he’s tried to ring her to apologise’. We can be better than this.

For the coming weekend – I like everyone else I’m sure will spend Friday evening watching BBC 4’s documentary on the making of ‘When the Clock Comes Down the Stairs’ by Microdisney. If you don’t know it – that’s the best album by the best band to come out of Ireland. Ever. And that is an irrefutable truth.

Anyway if this nonsense has turned you right off – I am actually available for some work. Check out the website if you want to see examples of work we’ve undertaken and there’s a range of people testifying to my ‘direct’ and ‘blunt’ style – although fortunately at least a couple of mentioned ‘humour’ too.