Another week overly filled with appointments, and that didn’t work very well for me in my current mindset. I did succeed in finding a little bit of mindspace, and also took the meetings themselves easier than I had thought. Still, I’m glad the next two weeks will be mostly downtime. School holidays have started this Friday.

This week I

• Wrote a contribution to the public consultation on the European normalisation regulation for a client. With new data laws in place (Data Governance Act, Data Act, AI Act, High Value Data directive) and the various boards they create, as well as the impact that shaping the European single market for data (aka the common data spaces) will have w.r.t. the need for standards and norms, it is useful to consider the existing normalisation framework (from 2012) in that light and see if it is still fit for purpose. I had things to say about transparency, the involvement of a much wider range of actors, and disallowing fees at the point of access of agreed norms.
• Had my weekly session with the psychologist to help deal with my burn-out. I hadn’t been able to do a lot with last week’s session, though I had wanted to, and we extended on that.
• With colleagues had a look at the CV’s and letters of interest of five applicants.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Had a summer lunch with a client team
• Attended multiple sessions on the Dutch government data infrastructure, its architecture and the way it is or isn’t connected to EU frameworks and data spaces.
• Had a session with our team to plan ahead for our work for the interprovincial ethics committee. We will take on a more intensive role, w.r.t. research and writing and had to define or path for that.
• With a client did the preparation for a meeting in early September, because our holidays don’t overlap.
• Had an internal conversation on the potential impact of the newly appointed far right government on our work for national level government entities.
• Discussed international and European developments with the ‘international’ team of a client, specifically also upcoming calls in the Digital Europe Program.
• Wrote a first braindump about topics and destinations for a potential study trip a client wants to organise next year.
• Had a haircut.
• Made a new version of a plan for the Dutch ActivityPub infrastructures in light of a potential subsidy, and discussed it with the potential funder.
• Did some early bookkeeping for the VAT returns due end of July.
• Picked up Y from her final school day.
• With Y helped Asterix and Obelix beat the Romans, that had invaded the living room.