Another summer week, allowing plenty of time in the garden. The roses have exploded into full bloom, bringing enormous amounts of color.

This week I

• Did the company’s invoicing for May
• Worked with a colleague building a better instrument to look ahead in terms of how busy the team is, and how much budget is left in ongoing projects (versus where we thought we would be), as an extension of our current liquidity forecast that I keep. The thing we want to stay on top of is that this sort of financial information is not intended as a steering and control instrument for how many hours someone should bill, but to keep on doing the right and energising things, and keep our team in balance.
• Did a session with an organisation on medical data standards, to present and discuss the emerging legal framework on the EU’s digital and data strategies and the planned EU ‘health dataspace’ as part of that
• Presented and discussed the same EU legal framework, now in the context of the EU Green Deal policy goals and how it connects to the policy goals and work, and thus the data governance, of the Dutch ministry for infrastructure and water management
• Connected my Kindle hihglights directly to my note taking system
• Had a reflection session with our colleague E, who’s been with us for 18 months now with her temporary contract ending this month. I’m pleased we could offer her a full and permanent contract, and more pleased she accepted our offer.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Discussed and planned several in-depth meetings with the EC’s JRC on digital twins, data governance / ethics, and the Green Deal dataspace, together with my client and key Dutch dataholders and users. They will take place at the end of the month.
• Cut out the boarding underneath the kitchen cabinets, which once you get over the apprehension of doing irreparable damage to parts of your home, is an ok job. This in anticipation of having new appliances installed. The fridge was done today, the dish washer ultimately wasn’t. So for the next two weeks we’ll keep doing dishes like it’s 1991. The global microchip shortage apparantly isn’t only impacting the car industry, but also the appliances: most dish washer models are out of stock.
• Spent a great day with E and Y, enjoying ourselves visiting Utrecht. For Y we organised a visit to the Miffy museum as well. Y is almost too old now so it will be nearly the last visit for her.

The many Miffy books Dick Bruna created, image Ton Zijlstra license CC BY-NC-SA

Sun shine some where, mural on the corner of Wulpstraat and Oosterkade, image Ton Zijlstra license CC BY-NC-SA