Autumn Blogathon: Sharing ideas and building on experience
At the end of September, we came together as a team in London for our sixth Blogathon. It was the first time Jack and Jean had joined us for one, and we were really pleased to have them with us.
As a team, we've come to look forward to these gatherings. They give us a chance to step away from our day-to-day work, spend time together and share our thinking and experiences across different areas of our work.
Why we blog
We started the day by reminding ourselves why we blog and what we want to get out of it. We talked about who we're writing for, what we want to share and how we can make our content as useful as possible to others.
We also reviewed our 20 most-read blogs to get a better understanding of the topics people are reading and finding useful. Some articles had also kept readers engaged for longer, so we spent some time looking at these and discussing what might be encouraging people to spend more time with them.
Some of these included:
Looking at these gave us some useful insight into the kinds of questions and topics people are interested in, as well as what makes an article useful enough for someone to spend time reading it.
It was a useful opportunity to reflect on what we've written so far and think about how we can continue to develop our content.
Developing our ideas
Following our last Blogathon, we wanted to continue building on our approach of focusing on real challenges we've seen through our client work.
Before the day, each member of the team had chosen a topic based on a challenge or frustration they'd seen a client face. Everyone had also spent some time gathering their initial thoughts, experiences and ideas to bring to the session.
On the day, we worked in pairs to develop these ideas further. This gave us the opportunity to bring together different perspectives, share our experiences and explore each topic in more depth. It was also a good way to support each other in shaping our ideas into articles.
The topics we worked on included:
How to improve software quality without slowing down development
Can you use AI if your data isn't ready?
The hidden work behind great digital products
Why data validation is harder than it looks
Designing services around what users need to know
Why do data catalogues fail?
Complex work doesn't need complex language
Is your data telling you what you need to know?
These are all challenges we've come across in different ways through our work. By sharing our experiences and different approaches, we hope to create articles that are useful to others facing similar situations.
We're looking forward to developing these further and sharing them on our website over the coming weeks.
Time together as a team
As a fully remote team spread across the UK, having the opportunity to come together in person is something we really value. Our Blogathons give us dedicated time to work together, share ideas and learn from each other, as well as the chance to catch up and enjoy being together as a team.
We also took some time out from writing to explore the Revolution 250 exhibition at the National Archives. The exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence and explores the emergence of the United States between 1763 and 1783. It was an interesting opportunity to explore something different together.
We also enjoyed a hearty lunch at The Rose and Crown in Kew, giving us more time to catch up and reflect on the day.
Looking ahead
Each Blogathon gives us the opportunity to build on what we've learned from the previous sessions, both in how we work together and in the content we create.
This time, reviewing our most-read articles helped us think more about what our readers find interesting and useful, while working in pairs gave us the chance to build on each other's ideas and experiences.
We're still learning as we go, but it's great to see how our Blogathons have developed and how they continue to give everyone the time and space to share their knowledge and contribute to our wider content.
We look forward to sharing the articles we've been working on and hope you find them useful.
Read about our previous Blogathons:
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