KIND network update
Week beginning Mon 2nd December 2024
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to our regular KIND network update. We’ve had several requests for help with interview preparation over the past couple of weeks. That means that we’re going to develop a couple of regular sessions designed to help people build and practice their skills as interviewees (and as interviewers) over the coming weeks. If you’re looking with some trepidation at an interview task or similar, please get in touch and we’ll try and arrange support for you.
A couple of miscellaneous reminders for you this week:
- We’re still looking for volunteers to help lead some of the discussion sessions at the unconference on the 11th Dec. See the discussion on the Unconference Teams channel for more details.
- I’ve also put out a call for training requests via this form - please let me know what training sessions and courses you’d like to see during the first few months of 2025.
Hope to see you at something soon
Brendan
Wins of The Week
In the spirit of #IAmRemarkable, we do a weekly wins of the week thread to celebrate the professional (and personal) achievements of the community. A non-random selection of some of the firsts from this bumper clutch of wins:
- Running my first sub 30 min 5k!
- Running my first workshop!! Learned a lot…but got good feedback which was nice to hear :)
- Created my first funnel plot in R
- Bought my first Christmas jumper of this year… (I have a few) Not wearing them until 1st December, but then all systems are go! Also googled Lambda formulae and looking forward to demystifying the mathsspeak - I love a formula but I rarely know correct terminology for these things!
- Got the team’s first publication out. Hopefully many more to come!
Well done all, and looking forward to hearing your wins of the week in future.
<!– ## Training sessions
Events
- 3-4pm, Mon 2nd December 2024. All welcome at the Community Meetup - our regular Monday get-together/webinar/tech demo. Full details and joining links via the community meetup channel. The theme this week is programming in Excel. We’ll be looking at the more ambitious end of Excel work, with some examples of VBA, Lambda formulas, and (assuming the tech gremlins favour us) with a demo of Python in Excel. All very welcome - we’re obviously going to be more at the technical end this time round, but you definitely don’t need to be an expert to come along.
- We’re running a KIND introductory session aimed at learning and development professionals this Wednesday 1-2pm. Come along to find out more about how the KIND network can help your organisation with training and development.
- 1-2pm, Tue 26th November 2024. The Scottish Community of Data Analysts is a community of practice for those working with data in territorial NHS Boards. Next week, the presenter will be Zeg Ashraf & Emma Berry - Homelessness Data.
Book of the week
Mervyn King. 2016. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy.
ISBN 978-1408706114, Worldcat.
Colin Smith, an information analyst at NHS GGC writes to recommend this book: ‘A very interesting book from 2016. Not medical but given we’ve another potential round of ’austerity’ on the way, still relevant as to how we run the economy and fund the NHS and public services.’