We use ‘people analytics’ — using data to understand who we are and what we’re like — to grow our business in a healthy way. Here’s an update on who we are in 2020. — Last year we wrote about how we’ve tried to apply our good principles and distinctive company practices to the way we’re trying to grow the business. I wrote particularly about how we’re trying to use demographic data about the Convivio team to help us understand who we are now, and…

We spent a day planting trees with the Heart of England Forest project as part of our tree-planting initiative to help save the planet — Last year Convivio made a commitment to support tree-planting, to play our part in helping to save the planet. This is the pledge we made: three percent of our profits to support tree-planting; three days each per year to help plant and prune; make our tech to be climate neutral.

How to make sense of complex data by exploring the interconnectedness of all things — In our recent projects we have found ourselves working with increasingly larger amounts of information and substantially more complex data. Largely, we have been able to rely on our tried-and-tested approaches to handling that data, and we’ve managed fairly well in our projects in the most part. However, we’ve also…

Our pledge: 1) three percent of our profits to support tree-planting; 2) three days each per year to help plant and prune; 3) make our tech to be climate neutral — All of us at Convivio are conscious of our impact on the world, but in recent years we have all become more aware of the climate crisis that the world now faces. Global heating is a real and present danger causing dramatic changes to the planet. …

We are a small business but we want to grow. To help us do that in a healthy way, we’ve been working on our ‘people analytics’ — using data to understand who we are and what we’re like. — We are now approximately three years into growing our agency business. In that time we’ve put in place some really good principles, which have been established in many healthy practices throughout the business, such as our approach to healthy agency finances, publishing our annual financial results (2018, 2017) and being…

A short story. — He was twenty minutes late, uncharacteristically. He had sounded distressed on the phone, but he was always reliably on time, even when tense or upset. After twelve years together you know someone. You know what they like for breakfast; you know how they respond to bad drivers; you know the…

Along with plot, characters are essential elements of stories. Seems straightforward, right? — Characters are at the core of stories. The events in characters’ lives, and the reasons those events are connected, unfurl the patterned cloth of the plot. Without characters in whatever form they take, animal, vegetable or mineral, events happen without meaning. Characters have a point of view; characters are able…

So you’re preparing to build a large-scale digital service. Or you’ve been running a large and important digital service for a while. You’re worried that it’s become or going to be fragile and vulnerable. What can you do about it? — Large digital services are entirely normal in the modern world. There’s lots of them around and we use them every day, and because we use them every day they need to be resilient, to withstand the scale of demand they experience.

Since finishing my PhD I’ve read lots of fiction again. Here’s a belated recap on books I read in the second half of 2017. — I wrote a blog post last year about getting back to reading fiction again after finishing my PhD, and reading novels in particular: 5 ways to catch up on reading novels Novels are magical. In a novel, you get lost in another world. No two people read the same story; no two readings are…medium.com