Last week’s weeknote taught me one of two things. Either I’m getting boring now; or AI fatigue has reached a level where people just read past anything with ChatGPT in the title. Or maybe it was just that the Clippy meme put people off…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst engagement is always nice, I write these weeknotes for mindful reflection. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m writing them. There’s also a part of me that says “you’ve done six weeks now… don’t stop and undo all that work”. Hmm, Sunk Cost Fallacy<\/a> anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, let’s get stuck into what’s been happening in week 6 of 2024… there seems to be quite a lot here (or at least it took me a few hours to write!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even with the input from ChatGPT that I mentioned last week<\/a>, I’m still struggling to write data sheets. Maybe this is me holding myself back with my own expectations around the output. It’s also become a task that I simply must complete – even in draft – and then hand over to others to critique. Perfection is the enemy of good, and all that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m also preparing to engage with a new client to assist with their strategy and innovation. One challenge is balancing the expectations of key client stakeholders, the Account Director, and the Service Delivery Manager with my own capabilities. In part, this is because expectations have been based on the Technical Architect who is aligned to the account. He’s been great on the technical side but I’m less hands-on and the value I will add is more high-level. And this is a problem of our own making – everyone has a different definition of what an (IT) Architect is. I wrote about this previously:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s needed are two things – a really solid Technical Architect with domain expertise, and someone who can act as a client side “CTO”. Those are generally different skillsets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My work week ended with a day at Amazon Web Services (AWS). I spend a lot of time talking about Microsoft Azure, but my AWS knowledge is more patchy. With a multi-cloud mindset (and not just hybrid with Node4), I wanted to explore what’s happening in the world of AWS. More on that in a bit…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s break this up into sections as we look at a few different subjects…<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks ago, I wrote about the NFC tags I’d been experimenting with<\/a>. This week I took it a bit further with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A breakthrough with the biggest challenge any home owner has to navigate: which bins to put out ???? Yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice how many QR codes featured in my day. Unlike most of my recent journeys, my train ticket didn’t have a code. This is because Thameslink (the train operating company for my train from Bedford to London) appears to be stuck on an old technology stack. Their app is pretty useless and sends me to their website to buy tickets, which I then have to collect from a machine at the station. If I need to collect a ticket I might as well buy it on the day from the same machine (there are no Advance discounts available on my journey). So, paper train tickets with magnetic stripes it was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, I was networking with some of the other delegates at the AWS re:Invent re:Cap event and found that people share QR codes from the LinkedIn app now. How did I not know this was a thing? (And to think I am playing with programming NFC tags to do cool things.) To be fair, I haven’t got out much recently – far too much of my post-pandemic work for risual was online. I even have paper business cards in my work bag. I don’t think I’ve given one to anyone in a long time though…<\/p>\n\n\n\n But QR codes were everywhere at AWS. They were In every presentation for links to product information, feedback links, even for the Wi-Fi in the room. And that’s the problem – QR codes are wonderful on a mobile device. But all too often someone creates a code and says “let’s share this – it will be cool”, without thinking of the use case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was bound to happen pic.twitter.com\/MYDxOSOv9O<\/a><\/p>— Sharat Chander | ?? (@Sharat_Chander) February 4, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Street View in stations. Is that new? pic.twitter.com\/g2aChbr7Lv<\/a><\/p>— Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) February 8, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n On my way to an AWS event today\u2026 seems like the right occasion to wear cloudy socks (even if they do say Microsoft Azure around the top!) pic.twitter.com\/m7jUkIMowa<\/a><\/p>— Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) February 8, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I started writing this on the train home, thinking there’s a lot of information to share. So it’s a brief summary rather than trying to include all the details:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all, it was a really worthwhile investment of a day. I will follow up on some of the concepts in more detail – and I plan to write about them here. But I think the summary above is enough, for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I enjoy Jono Hey’s Sketchplanations<\/a>. Unfortunately. when I was looking for one to illustrate the Sunk Cost Fallacy at the top of this post, I couldn’t find one. I did see there’s I see he has a book coming out in a few months’ time though. You can pre-order it at the place that does everything from A-Z<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I did find though, is a sketch that could help me use less passive voice in these blog posts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n OMG. For every blog post I write, the software tells me I use too much passive voice. This trick could really help. Thank you @sketchplanator<\/a>!https:\/\/t.co\/4jH7FM98zo<\/a><\/p>— Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) February 7, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Inspired by something I saw on the TV, and after I found my previous notes, some of my thoughts here grew into a post of their own: Anti-social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My wife and I finished watching Lessons In Chemistry<\/a> on Apple TV this week. I commented previously<\/a> that one of my observations was we still have a long way to go on diversity, inclusion and equality but we\u2019ve come a long way since the 1950s. And then I read this, from the LA Times Archive, reporting on how a woman was jailed for contempt of court after the Judge took offence to her wearing “slacks”<\/a>, in 1938.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis week at work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This week in tech<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
More fun with NFC tags<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cSolved\u201d using an NFC tag in the kitchen and some iOS Reminders\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/eUSnuOW400<\/a><\/p>— Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) February 5, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nQR codes are not the answer to sharing every link…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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More of my tech life<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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That visit to the AWS offices that I mentioned earlier…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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This week’s reading, writing, watching and listening<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This week in photos<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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