Back to weeknoting after a short break.
3 things this week
Here’s what I got involved in during the last 7 days.
Content In Action
An absolute privilege this week to get to take the Content Design London Content In Action training alongside my work team. It was everything I hoped it would be and (honestly) a little bit more.
I’ve been working with digital content for 25 years and focused my MA on content strategy for local government but still know I have so much more to learn about the discipline of content design. Even the skills I’ve been able to use regularly benefit from the tune up, and looking at them from new angles.
This course offered me all that, and was also a great reminder of how we all think differently, learn differently, bring different experiences, while ultimately wanting to do the best for our users.
If you’re interested in content design – or user centred design more broadly – I highly recommend Content Design London for some training.
Among The Wildflowers
This week the record label I co-founded and run, Reckless Yes, made our first release in 2.5 years. The compilation, Among The Wildflowers, is our 150th as a label and features 10 amazing independent artists across a real range of genres.
What they all have in common, aside from being brilliant, is they encapture the beauty and resilience of wildflowers. They can be overlooked for not fitting the industry standard of genre, age, and otherness yet are vital to the music eco-system. It’s a real privilege to get to curate their art and represent it this way.
Promoting a record seems harder than ever and we’re starting to move back to targeted community building around our artists, rather than trying for blanket coverage (although the blanket is small and light for independent artists anyway).
The algorithms of streaming platforms are set to serve up the familiar, not aid discovery of the new and so we’ve stuck with a limited digital release. We’ve sought out more in-depth coverage on key publications – hitting the heart as you scroll by a post on socials is the norm, but if you’re going to click through we want to reward you richly. Even with 10 artists and 1 label (around 30 individuals in total) getting traction on socials alone is time-consuming and expends creativity you would otherwise be putting directly in to your art. The merch desk at live shows is likely to continue to be our key sales point (btw, come find us selling our wares between dancing to bands at the Utterly Fuzzled All Dayer in York on 18 October).
Despite the challenge of the modern music campaign it’s been a joy (and also a relief) to see the sales come in, and we can’t wait now for the album to start landing with folk and hearing what they think of it. We hope they discover a new favourite track or artist, we hope they will be interested in what we curate and support next, we hope it brings a little escape from the current state of the world.
You can get your copy of Among The Wildflowers on vinyl, CD and limited-Bandcamp-only digital on our Bandcamp page, or
Love what you do
I’ve just had to have a new roof on my house. While this isn’t a surprise I would recommend to anyone, I have been fortunate to have found the best team of roofers to carry out the work.
Not only did they make use of a drone to assess the roof, they made sure they were sending me images and video explaining the work and progress throughout the job. This was all great – and that was partly because this team clearly loved what they do.
They spoke passionately and in depth about the materials they were recommending and using, explaining the pros and cons as well as the cost and effort needed. They (seemed at least) to relish the opportunity to gently educate me alongside answering my questions. They (again, my perception) took the challenges as par for the course – the bad weather was just something that happened and they needed to focus on the re-prioritisation of tasks not complaining about it.
They could be blunt with each other about their needs but were in the next moment laughing and singing along to the radio – secure as a team, their individual contributions and the way they came together on a job. Some liked the detailed work, some liked the brute force of chucking stuff into a skip. They all made my new roof happen in a way that an individual wouldn’t have managed.
Is thinking about this a way of distracting myself from this sudden cost? Absolutely. But also if you’re in Derbyshire and need roofing work drop me a DM and I’ve got just the recommendation for you.