When I moved to my new role at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, I (foolishly?) stated that this was the first time in twenty years that my role hadn’t involved some communication aspect. Well, that didn’t last long. Six months in, I’ve joined the speechwriting pool, honing speeches for the senior management of theContinue reading “Call me Sam”
Author Archives: Antonia
Why Only Connect is the best thing on TV
On nights when my husband and I are watching TV, the after-work ritual is Pointless on BBC1 followed by House of Games on BBC2. But Mondays are special – Mastermind, followed by Only Connect, followed by University Challenge. I love Mondays. I’ve always enjoyed quizzes and general knowledge and that sort of thing. When we were kids, weContinue reading “Why Only Connect is the best thing on TV”
Should we think about work more like university and less like school?
I recently had time to do more reading than I usually manage and used it to finish reading Deep Work by Cal Newport. It’s a book, and an idea, I had read about a lot previously, but there’s much more to it than just the idea of reading emails v writing something. And it chimedContinue reading “Should we think about work more like university and less like school?”
What can we do to make theatre more sustainable?
Last year I returned to directing for the first time in quite a few years. There was a lot that had changed about the processes around organising a production – Google Forms! Whatsapp! Facebook marketing! – but one that really hit me was the consideration of waste in theatre and how this was never reallyContinue reading “What can we do to make theatre more sustainable?”
10 lessons about teamwork I learned through theatre
You’d have thought I’d have flogged the “theatre direction = leading” analogy to death by now, but it was given another lease of life last week, when I was asked to speak to the off-site gathering of a team about what theatre can teach us about teamwork. I distilled my thoughts about it into 10Continue reading “10 lessons about teamwork I learned through theatre”
October’s interesting reads
Here we are again with a few of the things that have sparked my interest from around the internet (and a little beyond). I’m currently reading Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, about prediction and forecasting. It’s well-written and informative, and also a nice complement to working in foresight (which isn’t about prediction). There’sContinue reading “October’s interesting reads”
September’s interesting reads
I love that I get to read so much in my new role. I hope you find something here to inspire you. I loved this piece on how public intellectuals over-simplify the future. One of the basic tenets of doing foresight work is that we are not trying to predict the future, rather explore possibleContinue reading “September’s interesting reads”
August’s interesting reads
Here’s a collection of some things that I’ve found interesting, noteworthy or curious this month. I’m always banging on about the risks of future historians of our digital dark age/white noise. This article is a good exploration. We were recently on holiday in the UK, and in one village that we visited, I tried toContinue reading “August’s interesting reads”
A new chapter
As those of you that I am connected to on LinkedIn will know, I have recently started a new job. I’ve moved to the Joint Research Centre, which is the Commission’s in-house scientific service. I’m in the EU Policy Lab, working on “the strategic foresight agenda and … the development of foresight and horizon scanningContinue reading “A new chapter”
Is blogging back?
I recently reorganised this website and brought in content from sites that I set up ages ago – 2008 for the first ones. It made me realise how important blogging was to me in those days, when I was part of the EU blogging platform and met so many great people that way, some ofContinue reading “Is blogging back?”