This was the first week in a long time I didn’t have anything urgent on my todo-list, and it coincided with the first outbreak of beautiful weather. That resulted in spending a lot of time in the garden, enjoying being outside. Watching the family of swans that float by feeding twice a day.

This week I

• Followed up on a session last week that was the kick-off for implementing an MoU between a client and the EU’s JRC. Asking for feedback of the participants, discussing it with my JRC counter part and planning in-depth sessions on three topics for later this month.
• Wrote a project proposal for a client, the work for which has already started. Not the right order of things, but a sign they were quite eager to start working with my colleague.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Had the winter tires on the car changed to the summer tires
• Got an unexpected exciting sneak preview of how my last year’s research for the European High Value Data list is getting implemented in the European geo-data portal. I’m eagerly waiting for the implementing law being published to see how big an open data leap the member states dare to make. But the current sneak preview promises much, which would mean the work having had a real impact on European open data.
• Celebrated Y’s birthday this weekend once more, this time with her other uncle and aunt and cousins.

Before writing these week notes I sat at the water side at the bottom of our garden watching the swans feed. Such amazing animals, and beautiful to just sit there watching them from just a few meters away.

The family feeding

Ugly ducklings

The parents come check out my intentions every now and then, where I sit on the water’s edge

images by Ton Zijlstra, license CC BY NC SA