Weeknote 136

Conf in Edinburgh and weekend asado

• I spent much of last week in Edinburgh for the SDinGov conference—a fairly spontaneous trip, prompted by the head of my team, who encouraged me to go since there were spare tickets no one else was claiming.
• I could only attend one day of the multi-track event, so I chose my sessions carefully. It was great to see my former colleague Stéphanie Krus speak on accessibility, and I particularly appreciated the joint talk by Ollie Sweetman (HMRC) and David Hopkins (DWP Digital) on Neurodivergent design thinking. Martha Edwards’ session on how design can survive and thrive in the era of government efficiency was another highlight.
• After the conference, I had a little time to explore the city. I was struck by how much Edinburgh has changed since my childhood visits, though I was happy to find my favourite model train and bus shop, Harburn Hobbies, still going strong.
• My train ride to and from Edinburgh was with Lumo, a low-cost open-access train company here in the UK. Both trains were full booked, luggage space was scarce, and working on a laptop from the small seatback table for four-plus hours proved rather uncomfortable.
• Switched from Android to the latest iPhone this week after 16 years on the same platform. I think the closer alignment in UI design between the two platforms makes the transition less hard to get over.