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Rich Blake

@richblake

Agile, public service, facilitation. He/him.

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22.08.2023
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Latest posts by Rich Blake @richblake

101 Reasons why I couldn't be a content designer number 76.

I ask questions like 'what's the proper, but not proper noun for that? '

'Do you mean what's it called? '

Yes i do.

04.03.2026 18:51 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Thanks, that's kind of you to say!

It's deffo and old reliable.

03.03.2026 17:47 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
An A0 worksheet, hand drawn. It has four sections. Gestation, birthday, maturity and creative destruction. It also has two traps labelled on the far left and far right. The scarcity trap and the rigidity trap. Theres not yet anyone's contributions to it.

An A0 worksheet, hand drawn. It has four sections. Gestation, birthday, maturity and creative destruction. It also has two traps labelled on the far left and far right. The scarcity trap and the rigidity trap. Theres not yet anyone's contributions to it.

Spent the afternoon guest facilitating a liberating structures eco-cycle for another team.

It helped me practice my skills in a space that I'm not too comfortable in, and I get to hear what my peers think of the practices they use.

Lots I can take back and think about in my own work.

Win win.

03.03.2026 17:43 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If you see one thing at the cinema this week. Treat yourself and go see Secret Agent.

27.02.2026 23:13 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Nouvelle Vague is a fun film.

25.02.2026 22:23 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Here I am pitching a dummy hang up call button in video call software.

Never again will someone say 'is there anything else you want to talk about' where you confidently say 'no' only to be immediately struck by a new thought when you hang up.

25.02.2026 10:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Preview
Tackling Technical Debt Without Stopping Delivery - Rumman Amin How to manage legacy systems, reduce risk and modernise sustainably without asking teams to stop everything

We've seen why it's critical to run things safely. Often this can be traced back to decisions made over time.

This framing is helpful for teams. Adds weight to raise outside of retros.

Short post on tackling tech debt. Make it visible + modernise incrementally.

rummanamin.co.uk/tackling-tec...

16.02.2026 13:16 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
What's with all of the missing park benches? โ€“ Rich Blake When you remove something people rely on, good communication becomes a necessary part of the service. Even for something as simple as a park bench.

If your venn diagram niche is

public benches
service design
accessibility

then I have a short blog post for you

What's with all of the missing park benches? โ€“ Rich Blake share.google/CkdeSUmPbX7T...

14.02.2026 20:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 2 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That feeling when NS&I send you an email on premium bonds draw day, only for you to log in and find it's just a duplicate 'secure' message copy of an email they sent you 4 days ago.

03.02.2026 12:09 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Thinking about making an illustrated picture book called 'look mum, that looks like grandad' and it's just a series of different people, animals and objects wearing a flat cap.

31.01.2026 18:14 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Weeknote 4 โ€“ What I took from Saipan โ€“ Rich Blake What a football film revealed about team dynamics.

What can you learn about team dynamics from watching a film about football?

Quite a lot actually.

See my weeknote.

richblake.github.io/blog/weeknot...

26.01.2026 11:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Weeknote 3: A good week for deep work โ€“ Rich Blake A week of deep focus, good films, and small reminders that the right conditions make all the difference.

I'm slowly trying to get into week-noting and writing more about creating great teams as well as living with arthritis.

Feel free to follow along.

Oh, and there's a backlog of ideas linked from the homepage.

richblake.github.io/blog/weeknot...

21.01.2026 17:06 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

At least the worst user journey about going to the library in the sodding rain only to realise you forgot to bring the book you wanted to return is that you can just renew it and get another book.

15.01.2026 16:38 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Trying to decide how to log a cook book in story graph.

100% when you've done the flick through of the pictures and decided what you like the look of?

100% when you've read all of the prose at the start of the book?

100% when you've cooked every recipe? surely not!

24.12.2025 11:29 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I hear Mutley in this photo.

05.09.2025 18:31 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Top work! What are your top picks so far?

01.09.2025 13:10 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

My service to Hertford North (on the tannoy) says Cambridge North on all of the in train signs.

I am feeling quite tired. so let's see if I end up in the right county or not.

28.08.2025 20:21 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Need to spot a Brit in Helldivers 2?

Simple!

Watch for people getting into the right hand side of the fast recon vehicle expecting to put the pedal to metal and get the hell out of danger.

Then a sad pause, followed by a 'loop of shame' where we run around to the left side. Drive on Diver!

22.08.2025 18:26 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Welcome to Jira Camp.

We're going to stand in a circle, and update each other on how we got on.

When you're done. just trust fall into the arms of the next person so they know it's their turn to talk.

13.08.2025 14:22 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I WAS RIGHT FFS!

06.08.2025 17:16 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

In today's episode of Rich is an idiot. I've been playing a lot of Clair Obscur.

It has a lot of French swearing in it, which I don't know the words for ๐Ÿ˜‡

Anyway I've figured out that they're not exclaiming about a Canadian dish of chips, cheese and gravy when bad things happen.

06.07.2025 11:59 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
A large rusty nail points pointy bit up on a very old rickety picnic table

A large rusty nail points pointy bit up on a very old rickety picnic table

The pricks in my pub come with a follow up tetanus shot.

03.07.2025 16:32 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Who's taking part in 'bring your parents to work day' tomorrow.

And will it help them understand what you do?

How many of them are going to have a sleepless night thinking you're going to physically put them inside a computer?

02.07.2025 19:54 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Was feeling the high of hearing my new PC is on the way.

Then hit by the car crash low of seeing the words 'our delivery partner is DPD'.

30.06.2025 17:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This is a really nice post. Would love to see more writing like this everywhere I work in the GDS.

25.06.2025 17:51 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Slack is such a menace for focus.

18.06.2025 09:22 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Playing a co-op campaign of BG3 and my companion made a bad roll which angered Scratch during the meet.

And now I need to spend the next sixty hours campaign being cross at them.

Poor Scratch.

14.06.2025 23:25 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Ah! Sunshines out.

Time to start my annual campaign annoying my science friends by saying

'Ahh time to cool down with a refreshing, cooling cup of tea'

14.06.2025 17:57 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Hello Germany ๐Ÿ‘‹

Please can you think about the name of the compound noun that you'd use to describe the feeling of editing a 500 page document using Microsoft word on a slow laptop.

If you can't help, I may need to learn how to communicate in emoji. ๐ŸŒ๐Ÿ˜ญ๐Ÿ˜ฑ๐Ÿšจ๐Ÿ˜…

12.06.2025 17:40 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

There's been a great disturbance in the force.

Jira has moved the drop down to transition the state of a story.

The plans for the death star can't go into 'sent' if you can't find the drop down to change the status from 'open planetary shield' after you've fought Krennic on the Comms tower.

30.05.2025 10:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0