Weeknote 25th November 2022
There shouldn’t be any more awards events just for women.
Bear with me.
The highlight of my week this week was actually the Women in Tech Excellence Awards. It was a privilege to be there amongst so many amazing women including my fellow finalists from NHS Digital and to have the support of our organisation at exec level with Exec Directors John and Helen attending too. I was also proud to receive the highly commended award in the Digital Leader of the Year category, something that I wouldn’t have achieved without the work of our incredible user researcher community.
There was a brilliant and very inspirational keynote from Catherine Mayer. Of the many great things she talked about, believe it or not, was cake. People think equality is like a cake and the more people have of it, the less there is for others. We know that that isn’t the case. One person having equality doesn’t take it away from someone else. We can all have it.
We shouldn’t need to have awards ceremonies or events specifically for women in tech or for any other underrepresented group. They shouldn’t need to exist. We shouldn’t need to raise the profile of women or push for equality for underrepresented groups. Unfortunately we do but I’m intent on pushing forward to a future when we don’t and where there is no need for award events specifically for women.
Other things that happened this week included Tom introducing more people to our new user research lab and also running a really useful virtual tour for those that couldn’t make it in person. I also met with some of our comms colleagues about organisational audience work and with our directorate support team to look at resourcing.
Next week
- Capability building work
- Linking potential inclusive design work with wider NHSE digital inclusion work
- Maturity model community of practice
- Product mindset workshop
- UR lab collaboration conversations
