Happy November! (Wait, it's what month?!)

The cold season has officially begun!

At least, it has begun here in Farsley, home to the legendary “Merry Christmas Farsley light”:

Since launching the new-look Fish Percolator, I’ve managed to post something new on the blog every week and I’ve had some great feedback from you all (I’d love more too - especially if it’s constructive!)

Fish Percolator has now started its next 6-month contract with a very exciting client that I can’t wait to tell you all about once it’s done. This means that, while content on the blog won’t be frozen it might be a little chillier. ☃️ I promise there will still be something great every month to tell you about in this newsletter, though!

I continue to be very keen to talk to anyone who thinks they could benefit from the leadership consultancy or coaching. 6 months is not a long time, and maybe there are things we can squeeze in before then! My day each week for taking calls is going to be Wednesdays so I look forward to speaking with you on a Wednesday soon!

Book a call or get in touch!

I made my first ever video essay! It’s a bit of a broad dive into non-functional requirements, why your tech team might want to care about them and how to bring them into your workflows, as well as my rundown of the top ten NFRs I always like to think about.

And I do it through the lens of creating a product for Kate Bush fans. 💃🏻

I was learning how to do video editing on the fly (DaVinci Resolve is cool huh?) so my editing technique improves significantly as the video goes on. 😅 Stay tuned for some outtakes at the very end!

Or read the text version

It’s been a busy month on the blog and I’m really happy with these posts. Let me know what you think!

People don’t often think of karaoke singers as humble people, but hosting karaoke events has taught me a thing or two about humility! My blog post “The karaoke host’s rule” has some tips about when - and when not - to be humble in the workplace.

One week in November every week is Trans Awareness Week, and in my post “My tips for trans inclusion at work” I share a personal perspective on how - and why - to make your team more inclusive of trans people.

(💕 This post did numbers on LinkedIn! I really appreciate all the reposting and commenting that you do - it helps me to know my content has meaning and is useful to people!)

The first downloadable resource from this blog is a poster that is a proven (for some) cure for impostor syndrome! This is a short one but not everything you read comes with something to print out and put on your wall!

Read more on the blog

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By the time this goes out, it will be December and that means it’s time once again for Advent of Code: Eric Wastl’s annual coding challenge that can be attempted in any programming language.

The puzzles start challenging and work their way up to brain-melting. Previous years have had 25 puzzles for a maximum of 50 points (my record is 43) but this year there are going to be 12 puzzles instead - I don’t know if that means it will be easier or harder.

If you’re considering taking part please join the Fish Percolator leaderboard! The join code is 276579-410ff49d. Or follow along with my solutions in this git repo.

[I’ll put out one more newsletter in 2025 so I’ll save my festive wishes until then!]