Weeknote S10:E02
Theme — To tire of London…
“Weeks are the four-on-the-floor kick-drum of eternity” Russell Davies
This week has been dominated by a trip to London for Neurodiversity in Business. I travelled on Monday allowing me to have a couple of great catch ups. I also spent an hour in the cafe formerly known as Grind [Simon Everest & Jeremy Gould] in the Whitechapel building. During this time there was a huge hail storm.
I had Thai food from Spitalfields market for dinner and saw the lovely sculptures of actual rescued elephants on Brushfield Street. I also have joined the hoards of people with a Uniqlo cross body bag and bought a dress which I wore on Tuesday. Total cost under £35.
On Tuesday morning I walked to the Etc venue on Bishopsgate and joined the Neurodiversity in Business Conference 2024.
I knew some of what to expect as they had used an Event app which was excellent.
The Venue floor plan was especially helpful
I was able to favorite sessions from the three track agenda to make my own agenda although I only made it to three of the six sessions I bookmarked. The ones over the lunch and refreshment and networking break and the 11:15 session due to being in great conversations with people in the exhibition area (and the ADHD).
I saw Sir Robert Buckland who was a speaker in the Plenary and who launched the recent Autism Employment review which I attended a few weeks ago. I got to say Bore Da.
I attended the session, Fireside chat: Avoiding Tokenism — Fostering Neuro-Belonging> with Jude Guaitamacci, Paul Fox and Zoe Gould who I know from her time in Government. It was great to see Zoe and it was a great session.
One of my fellow participants brought her support dog with her who was very calm and friendly and spent most of the sessions under a table.
Stephen Lismore from DWP ran a co-creation session about the Buckland review, however it was difficult to keep the conversation on track as people had other questions for him. I could not contain my inner facilitator and had to get a mic and run around with it to make sure people could be heard. I think we could have done with using some Liberating Structures and getting agreement for the purpose of the session at the beginning.
My favorite session was Nancy Doyle and Almuth McDowell with their findings from the NIB Academic Research. I loved their response to style feedback from the NIB marketing people on their slides which was to “throw our toys out of the pram and insist they give us the original ones”. 🤟🏼
Unfortunately it took a while to do that and so we saw the copy with the notes for a while followed by the conference home screen during which time the profs carried on using Nancy’s phone for notes 👏 Brava.
There was some great people at the event. I had a chat with Alex Partridge of UNILAD fame over lunch. We talked about University and how challenging it is for different neurotypes.
I did find that the event leant more towards a corporate view of employment and think that NeuDICE should hold a similar space for self employment in the future. There is a need for this type of event however the costs for being involved would not stack up for lots of people.
One of the standout humans from the day was Char Bailey who Emcee’d the event and was such a calming, lovely, force of nature.
Travelling around London was tricky from Waterloo to Aldgate, there seems to be a lot more steps, including the change, than my previous journey from Kings Cross. I have also slept most of Wednesday and Thursday so I am looking at a stair climbing shopping trolly for next time. What do you think? #old
On Wednesday morning I took Roxy for a check over of her cut foot. It is healing well and apart from a refusal to eat her normal food for the first few days of the week she is fine. Back once more on Monday and that should be that. She has been very well behaved and not been licking it or chewing at the wound. I’d say she is sleeping a lot but since she is part dormouse that is not unusual.
On Friday I had a coaching chemistry session with a new client which was excellent and a coaching session with a regular client who is under the cosh at the moment but still smiling and making time for the coaching sessions.
Thursday and Friday have been sunny days which makes me very happy.
Next Week
Next week I have a call about the training formerly known as the Service Owner Programme which will be interesting.
Have a great weekend
