Week 13 of 2020 brings a mixture of emotions through the COVID-19 lockdown including embarrassing praise at work, keeping positive through hard times, Dan Davies wrapping up MLW, more Disney+ challenges, Fatboy Slim, Defected’s second virtual festival and EURO ’96.

I’m going to continue the format of digesting previous week’s tweets but restoring the sections I started off with to give it a bit more structure.

(Side note: I’m also tinkering with IFTTT to try automate this a little before curation – it’s a work in progress I’ll blog once I’m happy with the setup.)

Work

With a whirlwind of emtions through the week, it was wonderful to get TWO recognitions from my peers and leaders in a matter of days. I must be doing something right, especially as they both mention my ability to bring people together and keep spirits up.
But then a colleague suggested on another (large) meeting I shall be contributing TikTok videos to future meetings for fun. This could be a thing but it’ll take some kahunas.
As teams adapt to remote working, morning greetings took an international turn this week with one of the teams I work with adopting their native tongue. A little bit of joy and education in the mix certainly helps.

Life

Monday evening saw the government introduce a national lockdown to reduce the impact of COVID-19. I did what I tend to do best; write about it online.
It was great to see Joe Wicks try to get all our kids (and parents) doing fitness every day whilst locked in our houses – and it seemed to go down really well. In our house though…
Out of respect for our wonderful NHS through these tough times, many people took to their doorways to cheer the heroes on. It turned out some people were unaware of it though.

Sides

The final episode of Make Life Work S2 went out to great feedback. I’ll be taking a break for a few months then return in the summer.

Tech

http://twitter.com/Si/status/1242175904748572672
Slightly silly take on the current situation but it was interesting to see the reactions too.
My dreams of having Disney+ on our NowTV 4K box didn’t come true but, after an impulse moment, succombed to the pressure from two bored kids whilst waiting for a new device to arrive from Amazon.
Despite asking around, we ended up just using FB Messenger for my daughter’s first virtual “play date” with her friends. Some people struggled to connect but it seemed to work and avoided installing extra apps on non-techy people’s phones.
As I try to simplify the editorial process for these week notes, I’m exploring some IFTTT recipes to capture my tweets somewhere. It’s not playing ball though so I’m still relying on a weekly email digest.

Entertainment

Many people are familiar with James Cordon’s Carpool Karaoke but it was great to see one my DJ heroes try something a little different. #NoddingAlong
http://twitter.com/Si/status/1243507417268269056
Fantastic to see Defected return with another virtual festival of house music DJs, this time with a range of archives and bedroom slots. Apparently the first one reached over 2m people which is phenomenal.
With many events being cancelled this year including Olympics and EUROs, it was great to see ITV take the initiative and pull out some archives.