The final week of Y’s school vacation, meaning a semblance or regular routines will restart after this week. I also found my own footing again this week. Last week I wasn’t able to get into work much, even if I did enough as such.

This week I

• Only had a few external appointments
• Properly restarted work on one of my main projects, not so much on the other yet.
• Used the weekly team call to explain the current financials of the company, as I do every month. We are always completely transparant to the entire team about the financials. One of our team has now volunteered to also get involved with the book keeping and invoicing, potentially freeing up some of my time that way.
• Had the weekly client meetings. One of them in a client office that was already mostly dismantled, as the coming weeks it will be emptied out and rebuilt differently. I also arranged for the client team to use my company’s offices for our weekly day of working together.
• Discussed with a client my plans for next year. They would like to keep me on board, and I would very much like to keep working on the topic (EU data legislation implementation), but I was also open about my sense that we need to find a way to make the work more exicting for me and the team itself. I was glad I mentioned that, as it resulted in immediately getting some space to create that momentum in the coming months.
• Spent a day at our office in Utrecht, for our monthly all hands meeting.
• Discussed the EU High Value Data implementation path with the responsible ministry to plan the months ahead.
• Had a long conversation with Napo, of the Italian open data community, with whom I did the advisory study for the EU High Value Data legislation (he was responsible for the geo information chapter, I for the meteorology, and earth observation and environment chapters). This as part of an effort to see if I can strengthen the European civic network around the EU data spaces.
• Did some additional outreach for that European network, and started creating a web page to easily track and share the network.
• With E spent Friday and the weekend in the northern city of Groningen (Y had a sleepover with her niece). It was great to just hang out with the two of us. Enjoying lengthy dinners outside, browsing a fun bookshop for over an hour and a half, sipping coffee. Our hotel was right in the city center so we did everything on foot.
• Today picked up Y at her niece’s and celebrated the birthday of her other niece with family.