Weeks 583 & 584

Mon 16 Mar to Fri 27 Mar.

Howdi folks. I hope you’re all well and coping with whatever quarantine conditions you find yourself in.

• We learnt that this was to be our last sprint on the TAA project for the foreseeable future. We did have another sprint scheduled and were in talks to extend further but that’s all on hold for now. I’m proud that we were able to stop at such short notice and leave everything in a really good shape. Although the unexpected stop also makes me wonder whether we were definitely always focussed on the most important things.

• Apart from all being remote week 583 was mostly business as usual. Week 584 wasn’t: with schools and nurseries closed we found ourselves having to share childcare duties which reduced the amount of time we were available to work. With Chris expecting a new baby any day and Ben and I sharing childcare duties we’re probably down to about the equivalent of 2 full time people at the moment.

• We’ve started to discuss whether to give up our office to reduce our outgoings. We have a break clause we can invoke but need to make a decision in the next couple of days.

• We’ve shuttered Mission Patch for now given that it’s become quite a bit harder to fulfill any orders.

• In more positive news, we are part of a loose network of digital organisations that have come together under the banner of Catalyst’s Digital Teams to help charities respond to the new challenges they face due to COVID-19. It’s very early days but it’d be awesome if we were able to use our collective experience and expertise to make a real difference to people at this time.

• James M’s change to the AWS CDK has been merged and was released in version 1.29.0. Great work, James!

TAA

• We moved everything to TAA-owned accounts and paired with James T to bring him up to speed on how everything fits together.

• We increased the number of survey responses that are included in an organisation’s Audience Report. In preparation for some of these organisations submitting their reports to the Arts Council of England.

• We added a couple more Insights to help users understand their audience including one that segments audience by Mosaic UK.

• John gave the site some design love and it’s looking awesome!