Generalists Unite and Process Delight

Weeknote #18 (1 - 7 September 2025)

· Weeknote,automation,generalist,IGD,Creativity

Last week was mostly about meetings, meet-ups and calls. I can’t remember a week in the last 6 months where I was so busy, socially.

In no particular order:

  • On Monday, a quick discussion about the meeting I was due to talk at this week. Decision taken to postpone until late October, due to the London tube strike. Unfortunate, but sensible.
  • Wednesday evening in central Bristol for International Generalist Day. A lovely time and an amazing turnout of people. I came away having had some great conversations.
  • The regular Friday morning GovCamp Cymru call. Making great progress with only 2 months to go to the event.
  • A catch-up with a friend / ex-colleague to set up some practice runs for my (now delayed) talk in London, and a look back on International Generalist Day.
  • A Friday evening in Cardiff Bay catching up with friends from Dorset.
  • A Saturday evening in Portslade Old Village watching a friend’s band (as part of a short weekend in Brighton).

Other than the overload of socialising, it’s been 50/50, time-wise, between ‘professional’ and ‘sideline’/hobby activities. (Although the boundary between these is getting more and more fuzzy, to be honest.)

  • I wrote a couple of posts for The Ode Map: “Sources of Creativity: Annotations” & “Sources of Creativity: Found Words” - the latter scheduled for publication on 9th September.
    I also put together an outline for another post.
  • Started drafting “Solace”, a new poem for the new book.
  • Scheduled the next fortnight’s social media self-promotional posts.
  • Got myself a fully-working n8n flow, which I estimate will save me 8 minutes per run. The time saving is not the achievement here (it’ll only run once or twice a week). Rather, it’s what I’ve learned about: n8n; AI agents; Airtable API - all of which will be in big demand for the next automations on my list.

Watched ‘Departure’ series 1. I liked it but, as seems to be the norm nowadays, the ending was a cliff-hanger. All well and good if there’s going to be a second series. But I’m getting tired of every program ending with loose ends. (C.f. ‘Wednesday’ )

Listened to: M.I.A.; I Speak Machine; Junior NRB