The week felt very sluggish and I had trouble staying focused. Up to the point I forgot and missed two planned calls. Which is not something I usually do. Still some things got done. This week I:

• Discussed salary scales within our team
• Did some work to shape the content of a track on EU data spaces and legislation that I am leading for the BeGeo conference in March, which is part of the Belgian EU presidency program.
• Presented the EU legal developments and dataspaces to a group of interested civil servants of my local city government. Good discussions. Also H and D were present who will write an article for the local newspaper about it.
• Had the usual weekly client meetings
• Had a conversation with the team of data.overheid.nl the Dutch open government data portal, about the adaptations needed w.r.t. the upcoming mandatory high value data publications, and the implementation of the Data Governance Act.
• Started writing a paper on a regional spatial planning data space before realising that was the wrong approach. Started stripping it down again to an outline to first discuss with the client. Staying focused more on the questions rather than attempting to provide answers upfront.
• Paid the salaries as well as the annual bonuses (which is a collective one for employees only, a fixed percentage of any turnover above the budgeted break-even point)
• Did the bookkeeping needed to be able to do the VAT filings for the fourth quarter of 2023 early next week.
• Fetched Y from school on Wednesday, going shopping for a birthday gift for a friend, before bringing her to her weekly drawing lessons.
• With my internal team discussed the work and planning in the coming months for a client.
• Wrote a project proposal for a client in the energy sector on AI ethics.
• Spent Friday afternoon with Y, just hanging out.
• With E and Y first visited a ‘talent garden’ activity for Y on Saturday morning before cycling to a local farm and their shop, for coffee and some regional products.
• Attended a large party at E’s brother and family’s new home, as house warming and for both their birthdays. A fun party with lots of old friends from university. I spent the next morning making notes of various conversations I had about topics like AI-assisted medical innovation, drone radars and id wallets.
• Mentioned a Zelda game for our Switch that I read about in someone’s blog, and received it as a gift from E. Played it myself, and with Y.
• Prepared a presentation for the following week.

Cycling through the fields along the Laak river to a local farm