06 Feb 2026 5 min read monthnote

Monthnote, January 2026

View facing out of Detour Espresso, Edinburgh. I wrote some of this post here.

What is this?

This is my monthnote for January, a post where I reflect on the previous month's work, alongside other life stuff.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed I wrote a few of these at the start of last year, and then promptly stopped. Things got busy I guess.

I didn't send them out as newsletters at the time as they felt a bit niche. Also my wife said they were boring.

But I've noted a refreshed groundswell around "working in the open" and the role weeknotes and monthnotes play in that. There are lots of takes on the concept, but I like this helpful post by Kuba Bartwicki, who works in the UK Government Digital Service:

"Writing about a piece of work forces you to reflect on it, which in turn improves the quality of it."

Anyway, maybe they're still a bit niche. If you feel your eyes start to glaze over I won't be in the least bit offended if you skip any mention of Monthnote in future subject lines.

And yes, I'm aware it's February.

What I've been working on

Like the friendly benevolent social network it is, LinkedIn kindly reminded me I've now worked at Research Data Scotland — RDS to its friends — for four years.

Anniversaries can be handy points to reflect, and I'd say quite a lot of January has been spent in contemplative mode.

One of the reasons I love working at RDS is a company culture where we're always striving to improve, ask questions, not get stuck in our ways.

I've banged on about incremental delivery for years, but it's rare to have it so embedded in a workplace. Staying curious is essential in an ever-changing world.

All this has got me ruminating on the word 'data'.

Whether you think data is — or indeed isn't — the new oil, or a grey-faced android in Star Trek, it's not a one-dimensional thing.

Our organisation deals in data; data is our middle name. But the type and use of this (or is it these?) data needs context.

The data we're interested in is largely, but not exclusively, held in Trusted Research Environments (big props to my uber-talented team who commissioned this award-winning animation). But there's also metadata and synthetic data. Data that can be personally identifiable, or pseudonymised, or anonymised. Data curation, data linkage, data spines, data dictionaries.

Still with me?

The point is sometimes, when context is missing, things get confusing. People end up on different pages, or occasionally entirely different books.

So my January reflection is about, well, reflection. It's not just navel gazing; it's vital to keep things moving.

A few highlights, in no particular order:

Annual planning: the organisation is in the throes of pulling plans together for our next financial year, which come on the back of some candid and revealing all-staff sessions towards the end of last year. This chimes directly with my point above re: being on the same page. To do this well you need the structure to support it.
I'd previously drafted a positioning paper on the use of AI to go to our board, and I've picked it up again this month. I initially started penning it last year, and it's eye opening to observe how things have shifted in just a few months: none of your Claude Codes or OpenClaws or MoltBooks or Nano Bananas back then. How does one keep up?
I also wrote a paper on data governance and information security, an area that gets all the more challenging with the proliferation of AI. Pulling it together was useful as it made me focus on the stuff we're doing really well in terms of staying flexible and adopting new practice, but also the places where gaps could emerge if left unchecked.
We're in a bit of a pivotal moment when it comes to decisions around the scope of the services we offer. Just as the different interpretations of data can be bewildering, where that data resides and how people access it is also not straightforward. Again, it's taken some stepping back to properly size this up, and some honest conversations about our main areas of focus. Meantime, lots of great developments on our Researcher Access Service (Adam's weeknotes are so much better than mine if you want actual useful detail).
Adjacent to the day job, some exciting and evolving conversations about GovCamp Scotland and Society for Hopeful Technologists. Good people striving to do good things, yay!

Reading, watching, listening

Dark nights and dreich days make it all the more acceptable to sit around and consume culture, non?

📺 Films & TV

Two cinema visits: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Marty Supreme were both superb, and both have some fine 1980s musical accompaniment.
I desperately wanted to like Die My Love (great cast + Lynne Ramsay's previous form) but it was just so traumatically downbeat there wasn't much to cling onto.
Rewatching Murderbot, so much fun. 24 minute episodes too!
On some friends' prompting, watched the first episode of the final season of Queer Eye. I dropped out many seasons ago, so was a bit sceptical, but it was genuinely emotionally jarring to observe how different the world feels since it (re)launched in 2018. Everyone cries, I did too.

📖 Books

The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura. Strange and beguiling. Also short.
The Fraud by Zadie Smith. So good, and draws many parallels between life in the 1800s and our fractured modern world. She's on this very entertaining episode of The Rest is History talking about the bizarre twists and turns of the Tichborne case.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Weir previously wrote The Martian (which I enjoyed both the book and film adaptation of) and this is an even more fantastical tale of outer space, friendship and acceptance. I was gutted when I finished it, film out soon.

🎧 Music & podcasts

The mixtape post I published at the end of last year had both the lowest open rate and traffic of any of my posts and — by a country mile — the highest amount of clicks. In that spirit, according to Apple Music the three tracks I've played the most this month are:

Long Live Love by Sugar. I'm thoroughly enjoying the brand new single from a band whose indispensible Copper Blue soundracked my days at university, about 100 years ago.
Don't Save Me by HAIM. I happened to hear it on 6Music and remembered what a perfect pop song it is. So I now listen to it every day.
Hardly Go Through by Steve Mason. The recent triumphant return of The Beta Band has been a joy to behold, but it's worth remembering frontman Steve Mason's solo stuff is just wonderful, particularly this lush wee gem.