This week has been a bit of a split week, with about half of it in the Netherlands, and half in Germany. It’s felt good though, and towards the end of the day on Sunday, I’m feeling like I’ve at had a chance to recharge batteries after running them down through the week.
Morning workshop with the green data project
At least a year after my initial contact with them, I finally met both of the project founders in person in Leidern in the Netherlands. I’m really pleased with how the meeting came out – I learned the things I wanted to understand from them in person, and the key thing I was after, which some alignment on where we want to head in 2019, was they key thing that came out.
There was also something that felt significant, that I want to make a note of for when I come back to it later.
A strategic breakthrough
There’s an idea I’ve been working on that I wanted to float by the two founders of the project, that when I did, it pretty much had the reception I was after, and I ‘m really glad we had a chance to talk about it, as it looks like it’ll shape my activities quite significantly over the next 5 months.
I didn’t get round to writing it up on the weekend (Saturday was travelling, and hacking on Wagtail on a train, while PRs were still in my head), but it’s still whizzing around in my head enough to write up tomorrow.
I’m properly excited about writing this up more this week.
Wagtail Space
One thing that worked out well this week, was the fact that Wagtail Space, a kind of mini conf to hack and learn about the Wagtail CMS took place in the Netherlands, which mean I could meet the green data project lot, and deliver a talk about it to an audience of the kind of people I’d like to reach, as well, as brush up my knowledge of a tool I’m using commercially.
I got a huge amount from it, and the convos about the business side of trying to capture some of the value from an open source project were really interesting. The co-located spaces/sprints model I see with Wagtail is one I haven’t seen so often, and there’s something in it.
There’s obviously a clear cost in billable time if you run an agency or product business, and your team is allocated to work on it instead of direct revenue-generating work.
At the same time, it’s really impressive to see how different companies are using the same project in different contexts, with enough shared for code to really feel reusable across different organisations, but also when to use it, and what problems it’s good for solving.
Choo Choo … WTF ?
I spent a little over two days on trains this week, with patchy connectivity for much of it.
And as good as infrastructure is in Western Europe compared to other parts of the world, it’s still a total pain when so many cloud based tools conk out if connectivity gets flaky.
For example, after spending an entire afternoon writing a piece with Notion, when reconnecting, I’m pretty sure the blood visibly drained from my face when it looked like I had lost all my work, when the page mysteriously reloaded when reconnecting to the network.
It turned out to be okay, but I’ve learned my lesson now.
If I’m catching trains, and I’m using online tools that also claim to work off-line, I should assume that, unless they’re made somewhere with awful connectivity and not an office in San Francisco, they probably shouldn’t be trusted to give a stress-free working experience, and I should work with something more reassuringly boring.
💗 Berlin 💗
The time away from my home in Berlin feels like it’s been well spent this week, but I am so glad to be home again. I’m really looking forward to spending the next three weeks here before I jump on another train to Copenhagen for Djangocon.