Welcome

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I write and share ideas, tools, and stories for people navigating digital work in cultural organisations, whether you're leading a team, making strategic decisions, or you're just curious about this stuff.

Here’s what you can expect and where to find more if you’re interested.

I hope what I send is useful and interesting but if it isn't then you can unsubscribe at any time.

Start here: popular picks

Here are a few favourites to start with:

• Essay: What do we actually mean when we say ‘digital’?
• Report: Beyond the Promise: looking at why and how digital projects in the cultural sector fail
• Podcast: Kati Price on leadership and digital storytelling at the V&A
• Tool: Digital Readiness self-assessment

Schedule

I send a newsletter every Friday called This Week's Best Things. It is a weekly roundup of news, ideas, tools, and oddities that's designed to spark thinking, inspiration and signpost interesting or useful things you might not otherwise come across in a busy week of work.

You can find all the editions of This Week's Best Things here.

I also send less frequent essays and articles (maybe once or twice a month) about particular topics, challenges, or ideas that I've come across either in my work with cultural organisations, or that feel worth exploring.

Here are a few of the most popular:

• What do we actually mean when we say ‘digital’?
• Embracing seasonality - we're not built for 100% all year
• Is curiosity a leadership superpower?

Research

I recently published a report on research I've carried out into digital failure in the cultural sector.

It's called Beyond the Promise and it contains real stories of failure from people working in the sector alongside analysis, lessons and practical recommendations.

Tools and resources

I regularly try to develop and share free tools and resources that might be useful for digital practitioners and leaders working in the cultural sector to guide and inform digital work.

These are things like self-assessments, frameworks, and guides.

Podcast

I host a podcast called Digital Works, and every month I share a conversation I've had with someone interesting about some aspect of digital work or thinking.

Here are some of the most popular episodes:

• Kati Price (V&A) on how digital teams are structured, leadership, investment, and digital storytelling
• Seb Chan (ACMI) on the power of 'digital imagination', the importance of experience-focused roles in museums, and understanding the importance of capital in predicting the future
• Matt Locke (Storythings) on remote audiences, attention patterns, formats, and shifts in behaviour
• Hilary Knight (AEA Consulting) on the importance of team culture, the value of being entertaining, and the strategic role of digital
• Mike Keating (Art Fund) on the collaborative development of AI policy, balancing the priorities of being both a membership and sector support organisation, and the impact of COVID on Art Fund's digital transformation
• Nick Sherrard (Label Ventures) on experimentation and innovation, risk models, new approaches to partnership, and why some organisations might deserve to die

You can find all episodes of the podcast here.

Get in touch

If there’s a topic you’re wrestling with or a challenge that keeps cropping up in your work then drop me a note: [email protected], I’d love to hear.