What happens when a team of data people have a day to write?
Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been asking ourselves the same question and have tested it out three times now! At the start of October we came together as a team for our third ever Blogathon. We paused our usual projects and carved out time for us to capture ideas, share experiences and reflect on some key questions that shape our work in data today.
It hasn’t just been about creating content for our blog - but is also about giving us the space, time and permission to explore our worlds, challenge our thinking and to open up conversations with ourselves and the wider data community.
What are our Blogathons for?
We introduced our Blogathons at the beginning of this year to give us the opportunity to create and collaborate around content. We want them to be a space to:
Create - new articles, explore new ideas and discover different perspectives
Connect - with each other, the data community and our readers
Contribute - to the company’s story, make an impact and share our thoughts with the wider community
Celebrate - our experiences, our creativity, our team and each of our individual voices
What did we do on the day?
We started at 9.30am in West London at the National Archives. We discussed the format of the day, the reasons for being there and the ideas we each had for content creation. We also looked briefly at the topics we’ve previously written about and celebrated the fact that we have already published 65 blog posts on our website - which we are incredibly proud of!
Some of the team had just been to the Open Data Camp (ODCamp) conference in Edinburgh and were excited to capture and share their experiences on paper. Others had come with multiple topics to explore and invited everyone to share their thoughts and/or to further the ideas on their own if they wanted to.
After an initial ‘Welcome presentation’ and ‘Brainstorming’ session we decided to settle ourselves on the upstairs mezzanine floor to start writing.
Overall it was a very fun, thoughtful and productive day with a wonderful lunch in the middle at a local pub: Tap on the Line in Kew.
What topics did we write about?
We explored a range of topics including:
What are schemas for?
How data drives video games
ODCamp reflections
Digital ID without the downsides
Digital accessibility benefits everyone (not just disabled people)
Q3 Blogathon reflections
We will be aiming to complete these in the next few weeks and to share them via our blog.
What we learnt?
Each Blogathon has given us a good way to collaborate and learn from each other. We have discovered that by doing this regularly it has helped us to build stronger bonds within our team and to strengthen our collective voice as a whole.
It has also enabled us to build consistency in our publishing. We can make sure that everyone has the chance to contribute and that our collective expertise, perspectives and ideas can be shared with the wider community.
What’s next?
Now that we have completed three Blogathons, we will aim to continue with this rhythm of holding one every quarter. We have found that it has been really valuable to take the time to pause, reflect and share.
On the Blog itself, we will continue to explore some of the big questions in data - from data governance, digital services, and data architecture through to exploring the challenges in data management, data culture, AI and emerging technologies. Our aim is for it to keep growing and to serve as an increasingly useful resource for everyone in the data community
Writing together has shown us how much we can learn from each other and we can’t wait to keep sharing new insights with our clients, partners and community.
To read more about our Blogathons explore our previous articles: Reflections on our first blogathon and A successful Blogathon Q2 for Register Dynamics!
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