Week 93 was jam-packed. The majority of it was spent on Swarmize/Lewesdon, hammering out the site’s basic UI. By the end of the week, a lot of the core functionality of the site existed – search was up and working, I’d solved a lot of workflow issues and create an end-to-end of the creation workflow, and integrated all the code from the earlier Sinatra-based spike. Even at this stage, I’ve been understanding the workflows and IA of the project better primarily through the act of making: chipping away at the code to reveal what the product wanted to be all along. Sometimes, that means going backwards to go forwards, but the breakthroughs came in the end, and I was pleased with that.

On Monday, I spent the day with David Varela, planning for the 3-day workshop we’re running in August for CreateInnovate. We came up with a flexible but detailed timetable, a variety of ideas for what we wanted to fit into the workshop, and a coherent structure that ought to help our participants develop their ideas. It was a fun day, and I’m looking forward to delivering the workshop with David.

And on Friday, I spent the day mentoring on the ODI‘s Open Data In Practice course. It was one of the best cohorts for the course yet – the participants all had fascinating backgrounds, and by the end, universal enthusiasm to take what they’d learned back to their day-jobs.