Love in a time of Corona
No self-respecting blog is complete without a slightly misinformed high literature reference; and this one’s no different! However, our wider mission is less about the scholarly symbolism (although with Marquez, I’m sure there is some), and more about the ‘misinformation’ bit.
You’ll have heard that Covid-19 is changing our world as we know it. Into what, no one really knows yet. What we do know, is that we are having to learn fast on every front from adjusting to domestic lock-down to making sense of the avalanche of ever-evolving information in living our lives and doing our jobs.
You will also have heard about the enterprising and relentless determination of organizations providing public services under these extraordinary circumstances. And if health service delivery wasn’t difficult enough by itself, these challenges are compounded by the even larger and complex knock-on effects of the resulting isolation measures. Issues that are hard in the immediate term are unfortunately also the kind of problems that get worse over time. So not easy.
Even with the 40 minute limit on free video-conference platforms which as one Twitteratti commented, was worth paying to keep on account of it driving shorter more efficient meetings, weeks can feel like an endless box-set starring your workmates, (how I miss my tube commute!). And come with an ever-present side-order of assumptions, facts, fake news, reflective blogs and guesses. By the way, a ‘guesstimate’ is not a thing. It’s either a guess or it’s an estimate, it’s not both.
Key to finding our way through this is recognizing that these are all part of a narrative that we hope might converge into collegiate sense. And not only that, but, inform the design of some real-world actionable insight. This environment is generating some bold and pioneering innovation and at accelerated pace. While this is obviously a good thing, operationalizing these endeavors are which necessarily focused on a specific immediate local or specialized problem can be understandably myopic or disparate. This site is designed to provide a platform to pull these together where pioneering thinking and working practices process and culture can be optimized as greater than the sum of their parts.
Curated by what has affectionately been branded the ‘data dirty dozen’, covid19response.uk is made up of volunteer specialists drawn from the fields including research, data analysis, tech, building design, psychology, housing and medicine.
Our aim, to help service providers optimize their response to the challenges thrown up by this pandemic and its knock-on effects both in the immediate and longer-term.
Please over-look if this call to action/invitation post is a bit ‘bloggy’ in tone. We’ve done away with gratuitous copy-writing to get live as soon as possible. Motivating or annoying, we need your input and feedback. Use your powers for good or ask for help. As a 80s-business-speak-type advised me this week “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’.
