{"id":3848,"date":"2025-12-05T21:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/osian.cymru\/?p=3848"},"modified":"2025-12-09T00:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T00:08:40","slug":"weeknotes-5-december-2026-community-meet-ups-and-mentoring-niceness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/osian.cymru\/en\/weeknotes-5-december-2026-community-meet-ups-and-mentoring-niceness\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknotes: Community meet-ups and mentoring niceness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week included 2 of the final 3 events I’m participating in or arranging – by the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content Design Cymru meeting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, we welcomed Dan Warren from Parkinson’s UK to the Content Design Cymru community. It was great. Dan is down to earth and showed what he did to measurably improve user experience on the Parkinson’s UK website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a coordinator (I never liked the term ‘lead’ in a community sense, although it is a bit of everything behind he scenes), I had tried to badge this as a ‘hear from a peer’ (Welsh: ‘hanes un ohonom’) session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hope is that we can get more ‘doers’ to share what they’re doing as peers to others in the community. And not just guests from outside, but those those who are part of the community. By giving it a little rhyming ‘brand-line’ I hope it might help members to know what they’ll get – a warts-and-all view of the real work of another content designer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the struggles is to get members to open up about their work. We all sometimes feel that our work isn’t interesting or worth talking about. I often feel that way (and weeknotes helps me unpick that feeling). I also wonder if this is a symptom of members working in programme-led or busy business-as-usual teams, where it’s often harder to define ‘projects’ or measured, continuous improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student Loans company’s community<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My ex-colleague and partner-in-design-crime, Vic Smith, invited me to a community of user-centred designers at the Student Loans Company. I was talking about bilingual design and and how collaboration is even more important in bilingual contexts. Most of them are based in Glasgow, so I don’t know how many will directly work on bilingual (Welsh and English) projects. However, they asked many very good questions, which showed that they were interested and intrigued. And I’m glad they asked questions, as I loved hearing the wonderful Glasgow accent again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing that didn’t go well was that my son somehow<\/em> escaped his minders (my parents), and then came into my office and pestered me for a portion of his beloved raisins for 35 minutes of the 45-minute presentation. This was a test of patience, focus and ignoring your offspring, but I did have to give in a couple of times and let him show off his smile to the camera. He had everyone swooning over him, as always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentoring<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have started to mentor someone form another organisation, with whom I was put in contact by another ex-colleague of mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a privilege to be asked. After the first session, where the mentee was really open an honest, I still wasn’t at all sure I could help, really. Their organisation seems big and complex. Many things are out of the mentees’ control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I definitely don’t have all the answers, so for the second session I changed tack a little. I suggested I’d help them to look more objectively at their role, the external expectations and their own expectations of being a content designer. We used the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework for a content designer<\/a> to frame the discussion. The aim wasn’t to score capabilities. Rather, it was about considering:<\/p>\n\n\n\n