Some brief thoughts about Brexit, sparked by an advert seen on the Rome Metro. | Continue reading
You don't need to see more photos of ruins in Rome, but I took some anyway. Sorry. | Continue reading
Some stuff I listened to and read this year, because lists are what you write in December | Continue reading
I've started sharing a list of rules-for-weeknotes with teams that want to do them; I think they're useful rules, because they give teams new superpowers. | Continue reading
After months out of stock, my book is back: as a newer, more up-to-date *revised edition* oh yes. | Continue reading
Archiving my terrible academic efforts digitally, so that I can throw away some old papers | Continue reading
Hello RSS subscribers I've added a shoebox to this website. It's a place to put digital odd-and-ends. Bits of old stuff. Scanned documents. Half-arsed ideas, abandoned projects, snippets and scraps. Putting them here means I can delete them from my hard drive, or throw away some … | Continue reading
I can't decide what to do with my thousands of digital photos that are littered across the web and my hard drive. What a mess. If you lot have any suggestions, I'm here for them. | Continue reading
New on my mind: thoughts about teams and memory. What do you need in an organisation to make remembering happen? Starting to think there's a whole book for me to write about this. It starts with this post. | Continue reading
Three things I've seen on the internet recently have given me three reasons why government (and other orgs too) should pay more attention to, and spend more money on, writers and the clarity they bring. (I mean yes, this is also the rantings of a writer who's looking for work. Bu … | Continue reading
We enjoyed a break in north Wales, on the Llyn peninsula | Continue reading
My first speaking gig for a while, and it's just down the road in Bath | Continue reading
Testing stuff. Honestly you can just ignore this | Continue reading
Slides have inertia; they live on in duplicated presentations for years. That's not always a good thing. | Continue reading
Yes, you should avoid clichés in your writing. But in your bad first drafts, they can be quite helpful. Especially for your editor. | Continue reading
Watch these pressos to see how good presenting is done | Continue reading
I tried a website that claims to generate short text summaries of YouTube vids, and it seems to work | Continue reading
Observations on Panic's admirable skill at making a product announcement video that does things right | Continue reading
Some thoughts on Playdate, with a bit of useful background info on how terrible I am at videogames | Continue reading
A few snippets of feedback worth archiving | Continue reading
I helped Kayley Hignell at Citizens Advice with a piece of long-form writing about the current state of welfare benefits in the UK. | Continue reading
Thinking out loud about "stakeholders" as "opinionhavers", and why good open comms can help with all that stuff | Continue reading
I hired Elliott Cost to redesign usethehumanvoice.com, and now the template he created is available to all | Continue reading
TLDR: I'm available for new work, as of April. Give us a bell if you're interested. | Continue reading
The conversation that took place between me and a member of Post Office staff today, when I tried to post a book to another country. | Continue reading
What happened when I joined the International Design in Government meetup | Continue reading
Things I learned by sitting next to someone who did it very well indeed | Continue reading
Why "working in the open" is a great way of overcoming your own built-in editor brain | Continue reading
How my training course helps you write like you speak | Continue reading
Knowledge transfer is hard and time-consuming; so there are many circumstances where it makes more sense to hire an editor than to hire a copywriter | Continue reading
Back once again in your RSS reader | Continue reading
I'm looking for professional help to make this website better. Can you help? Do you know someone who can? | Continue reading
It's that time of year, folks. Here's an overview of the mischief I've been making in 2022. | Continue reading
Here are five of my favourite RSS feeds, you should give them a look, yes you should. Cold out isn't it? | Continue reading
A sad post about a sad end for a silly cat. | Continue reading
A quick tip for teams writing words: think about what the finished thing looks like, and how you expect readers to get their eyes on it. | Continue reading
An early adopter writes and whinges | Continue reading
An indie kid in the late 80s finds his heart captured by glorious soulful pop music | Continue reading
I've spent some time playing with iA Presenter and I like it a *lot* - particularly the way it exports HTML. The result: slides that can live on the internet, and work like web pages. Slides you can use in a browser, with the entire internet waiting for you in the adjacent tab. I … | Continue reading
What am I saying? I mean *one of* the rich morons. Also: iA Presenter invites, for them what wants 'em. (Do you even need one? Not sure.) | Continue reading
Cathedrals as screens; places of worship as Instagram fodder. Maybe that's a bit too cynical. Anyway, an evening out with pretty lights. | Continue reading
Yet another explainer for the flummoxed | Continue reading