My 2018 in review
The past year has been transformational in many, sometimes bittersweet, ways. Here’s some milestones and reflections.
Prologue: deciding to move jobs
As a kid, I visited Ortisei — Giorgio Moroder’s birthplace — many times, to hike the summer mountains with my family. I have some great memories, including watching the 1994 Football World Cup Final while a heavy thunderstorm caused the electricity to go on and off all night. My last visit was in 2002. In January 2018, I brought my friends to Ortisei for a ski weekend. I felt very nostalgic at times, but also misteriously energised, feeling an urge to bring about some changes. In Ortisei, some hikes had been modified, restaurants had been turned into hotels, cablecars had been renovated. I went back to one of my favourite restaurants, 16 years after my last visit — “that must have been 4 owners ago”, the waiter remarked. However, one pizzeria in town was still being run by the same waiter from 1994, albeit with greyer hair.
All of this walking through memory lane made me a little nostalgic, while the intense cold –with -10C in the evenings–facilitated a few nights in. While chatting with my friends and drinking grappa, I found myself thinking about change, and specifically moving jobs. I had been with St George’s Hospital Medical School for 9 years. I had flirted a few times with moving on, but the work had kept being interesting enough for me not to try seriously.
Attempting to move jobs…
Early in the year, I started having a few chats, both with friends and people I respect in the industry. These conversations really helped me understand a few things: firstly, that I had a preference to work in the public sector; secondly, that I wanted to work with data, in the most general terms; finally, that I wasn’t looking for a technical role, but a more generalist position that could benefit from a broad, hands-on knowledge of technology.
I applied to the role of Chief Digital Officer of the Food Standards Agency, and made it all the way to the interview. It was an incredibly positive experience. I learned a lot about myself while preparing the application and the interview, and during the interview itself. I didn’t get the job, but felt really empowered by the experience. Don’t get me wrong: receiving rejections is rarely pleasant (and, in this this instance, I received it on my birthday! A sign of fate? Luckily, I had lunch with my friend Gareth, who helped me a lot to process the news). In all honesty, though, going through this application and not being successful helped me focus on what I really wanted to do, and how to get there. I asked the panel for feedback. Not even a day later, I received some very in-depth analysis of my interview and application. I still have it in print. It was the most useful feedback I’ve ever received after a job application, and I used it as guidance for drafting new job applications (and, in one case, I even followed its pattern to send feedback to a candidate I interviewed).
Meanwhile, I was not staying idle
It was a busy year both in my day job and as a freelancer. I wrote an article about Brexit and Eurovision for The New European which ended up in print as a 2-page spread (I was later interviewed by Francesco for Corriere 7 about my personal experience of Brexit as a dual-national living in London).
There was a new episode in my “face average” saga. I worked with Neo Mammalian, a PR agency, to create the average Faces of Fashion using Vogue cover models. Although intended for a commercial client, it was picked up by The Independent, and D.it, an Italian magazine, for its potential to expose racial bias.
I had the opportunity of doing some interesting work at the crossing between data science and data strategy for Power To Change UK, together with David and Stephen, and for Newington Comms with Tom. I was the second most-voted elected member of the Open Gov Partnership Civil Society Network steering committee. The network involved some great discussions with civil servants and politicians, including with Minister Margot James, but I feel I didn’t contribute as much as I wish I had — I was distracted by my job applications. There’s probably a lesson or two in this for me. I do hope, however, that the action on Open Government commitments will go on — some really capable people, who are activists and officials, are involved.
At St George’s, I helped supervise a neuroscience post-doc researcher who’s adopting natural language processing to make neurological assessments, and helped him prepare a presentation of our research at the Maudsley Philosophy Group — a challenging audience that included psychiatrists, neurologists, psychoanalysts, and Lord Owen. Meanwhile, a paper about political language analysis written by Ben and me was accepted for publication. I delivered a high-performance computing platform and framework, which I’m sure will be vital for St George’s future success, and started a project to have the intranet redesigned, based on user research and modern digital practices.
After six years, my newsletter got past 900 subscribers and reached $60/month of Patreon donations. It also made GIJN’s 2018 data journalism Top 10.
ITV’s Peston on Sunday used my Parli-n-Grams website live on TV to look into how much MPs talk about Russia — this being at the height of the Salisbury poisoning crisis —and awarded me its “Geek of the Week” badge.
Bringing people together was rewarding
I was involved in a few community events. I helped run Open Data Camp in Aberdeen and UK Health Camp in Manchester, two unconferences I co-founded and deeply care about. They allowed me to work and hang out with some of the best people I know who work on open data and health. I also attended ThingsCamp in Birmingham, which gave me the chance to spend some quality time with Martin, Lucy, Pauline & Ted, Julia & Nat, and to get to know Teresa. Some of these people have been incredibly good to me over time and may not realise how helpful and important they’ve been — a thank you to all of you.
As a techie in UK Higher Education, I had mourned for a few years the demise of Dev8D, an incredibly good event for developers in academia which was last run in 2012. At Dev8D I met a few great friends and co-conspirators (Tim, Mike, Alex, and many others). I managed to convince Anna at UCISA and Martin at JISC that it would be a good idea to do something along those lines, and we delivered together the new Dev.Ac.Uk event which saw 85 academic technologists hosted for free for over 2 days in Birmingham for a residential conference. It was good to be part of it and see a mixture of old and new academic technologists come together as a community, once again.
I had to let go of some other things, though. For a while, I was the Chair of Logistics for FOSS4G, an international geo conference in Dar Es Salaam. I realised that the distance and lack of legal ownership made it difficult for me to feel at ease with running anything, and decided to step down. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I believe it was the right one, as it helped the rest of the organising committee get more local help on logistics. I hear the conference was a success, thanks to the steering by Mark and the involvement of great people like Steven.
Moving jobs, finally
When I saw the job advert for the role of Head of the Developing Data Unit at the Department for Transport, I could not believe what I saw: it felt like the job description had been written for me. “This is either me, or someone I know” was my first thought. Using the lessons learned from my previous application, I went through the process feeling more at ease than I thought I would. The interview, on one of the hottest days on record, was… fun! I experienced it as an incredibly interesting two-way conversation between people with a common interest. I walked away feeling I had it. Two days later, I received an offer. It took a few months to sort out all the admin, but, on December 5th, I started this new adventure.
It’s all about the people
When I say it was a bittersweet year, I mostly refer to some great people who are no longer with us. First of all, my grandma, who passed away the night before my interview. Then, the sudden and tragic passing of David and Hendrik. I had spent a few recent evenings with Hendrik when both of us had been looking for jobs. My office is about 50 metres from where both David and Hendrik would have been based. They were both incredibly important to the developing of my ideas on data, the public sector, and digital services. Death, especially at a young age, is sad; but, to me, it’s also a reminder of the importance of putting things in the right perspective: people matter more than we often admit, and it’s important to recognise it.
So let me send out a few thanks to people who helped me this year. Earlier in the year I had a great chat with Julie that set the seeds for making job applications. Alexander spent a lot of time with me hearing about my messy career direction, advising me on where to head, and helping with the applications. Gaia has been a great source of personal and professional support, and by chance we’ve ended up working in relatively similar roles. I owe Dan more than a pint for sitting down with me a few times and scribbling down his thoughts about my job applications. Adam once spent two hours with me on a Skype call helping me understand the competency framework. @jukesie shared his immense knowledge of digital, made some incredibly interesting introductions, and acted in extremely kind ways on more than one occasion. Paul gave me some incredibly analytical help, while Paul helped me review some options, as did Paul (I really wanted to write this sentence). Sarah and Tim were absolutely outstanding at offering me some background to DfT and the Civil Service, aside from being great partners-in-crime to attend gigs together. Although I didn’t speak one to one with Janet, I attended earlier in the year a fantastic user research workshop she ran that really opened my mind to new ideas. Gavin listened patiently to my soul searching whereabouts a few times, and I still owe him several drinks for helping raise the profile of open data in the public sector. Harry helped me investigate some directions. Steven helped me review applications, and he mentored and encouraged me at times when I felt I really didn’t have it. How could I not mention Angi and Kevin, who’ve been responsible over the years for letting me rediscover time and again my passion for a people-driven approach to technology? And what could words add about the awesome Teresa and Nicolas, who volunteered invaluable help for my job interview, at a time when we barely knew each other in person? I’ll probably close this list here — but this makes me wow: there are really many people out there who offered me help, often in exchange for absolutely nothing but my gratitude. You people are awesome. Thank you, with my whole heart.
Travelling, singing, playing
Although a lot of my 2018 revolved around work, there was plenty of time for leisure. I had my 10 year anniversary with Imperial College Choir, which included singing one of my favourite and most challenging pieces ever, Bach’s Mass in B Minor. I returned to playing some form of rugby, joining a Tag Rugby team and winning the winter league! I only knew one of my team mates previously, but I’ve now gained a few new friends.
I travelled to Berlin (here’s my blog post with some out-of-the-beaten-paths recommendations) to inflict on myself 10 days of intensive German classes. It was great to hang out with Anke, who showed me a brilliant exhibition in deep East Berlin about Plattenbaus, and Meike, who invited me to bunny-run bingo nights and 17-storey Paternoster Lifts. In November, I travelled to Japan with Claudio for three weeks, and met old and new friends 10,000 km away from home.
I went to Vanessa and Jamie’s wedding celebrations on a day so hot that I had to wear shorts, then to Chris & Dani’s and Marc & Shakir’s weddings. I’m grateful to all of them for sharing with me such great days, but this picture with Vanessa wins it ;-)
What’s next?
2018 was a very full-on year with a lot to think about. 2019 will require high levels of energy and commitment not just for my new job, but also to work on my personal flaws. The amount of people I met and engaged with doesn’t tell the full story about my ability to be with people: I find social interaction difficult some times. As an introvert, I spend energy to see people, and I need time off alone to recover. Understanding this about myself was a great step in becoming more social and sociable (something I’ll always thank shad for introducing me to the concept when I had no idea about it) and it’s also helping me handling human interaction in the new job, which requires me to meet people frequently. I also want to become more proactive in reaching out to people, rather than waiting for them to suggest we meet. Mary’s idea of a list of #100people is something I’m working on. I’ve also started mentoring younger people who needcareer advice, and I’d love to do more of it.
Do get in touch if you have suggestions, feedback, or if you simply fancy saying hello. Happy 2019, you all! :-)
