I have a bit too much on my plate, and it leads to me putting some things off untill there’s no room to do that anymore. Not a very productive or healthy place to be in, so hoping it will be just for a few weeks like this, and trying to bring colleagues on board to help.

This week I

• Spent a morning in beautiful Dordrecht with my business partners discussing the company.
• Participated in a workshop about the Green Deal Data Space and its use for biodiversity use cases.
• Had a conversation with a potential new hire.
• Participated in a workshop by the EU Environmental Agency on shaping the Green Deal Data Space.
• Booked train tickets and hotels for two November conferences
• Had a conversation with the founder of a new foundation working on the bridge between democracy and digitisation.
• With a client designed the plans for 2024 in working with their client on shaping the EU data spaces and their impact on Dutch government.
• Spent a day at the office.
• Wrote items for the company newsletter
• Prepared a meeting about the 2024 budget of the Interprovincial Ethics Committee
• With colleague F did the third stage of the European open data portal maturity survey on behalf of the Dutch government data portal
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Had a meeting with the team at the health ministry responsible for the national position in the negotiations about the EHDS, the laws governing the coming EU Health Data Space, to start discussing the overlap with the work on the other sectoral data spaces.
• Had a meeting with our bank about our mortgage, looking ahead at the financial situation after my retirement age. Summary, nothing much to worry about in terms of affordability, even without much of having a pension fund.
• Had a meeting with the ethics committee of the National Statistics Office to hear about their work and mandate. As part of my work for the interprovincial ethics programme I’m building an overview of other ethics committees, their roles, constitution and mandates.
• Participated in a workshop organised by StoryConnect, a company I was a partner in until 2014. Good to hear about their path and growth since then. Next month they will take part in my company’s monthly meet-up to explore how narrative inquiry can play a role in our citizen science and participation oriented work.
• Took part in the Open Knowledge global network call to find people willing to help and contribute to building a European network of civil society organisations around the coming EU data spaces.
• Despite Indian summer weather in the weekend, did some usual October 1st prep in the garden for the winter season. Disconnected the irrigation sytem, donned my wading suit and cleared the water board at the bottom of the guarden. Didn’t get around to fixing the guarding lights (after having disable them while hunting down a short circuit.)
• With E decided on a new couch and the fabric for it, and ordered it at the local furniture store. It’s not a replacement but an addition, and it should be ready shortly before the end of the year.