Another beautiful #monkigras 🥰 Such an eclectic mix of speakers, and (as ever) incredible food and drink.

“The way you communicate a plan is as important as the plan itself” @mattlemay.com #monkigras

"If we make responding to change part of the plan we are more likely to actually do it.". - @mattlemay.com Sounds like #monkigras

Resilience in communities, in Oaxaca and Minneapolis, boils down to recognising interdependence and simply helping others when they need it @kimmykimkimber.bsky.social @wiredferret.bsky.social #monkigras

It is so inhuman to take what other people need. I think there are a lot of people with a “wendigo spirit” in power right now. Great talk on resilience in communities by @kimmykimkimber.bsky.social and @wiredferret.bsky.social #monkigras

Speaker book recommendation: "Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression" by Iris Gottlieb #monkigras

Intersex births are about 1.7% of births which is about the same as the percentage of kids with red hair. #monkigras

I’ve never played it but I have friends who have — love @azimman.bsky.social using Silksong as an allegory for describing the experience as a cis parent raising a trans child. #monkigras

“We can have a future where every student and teacher is supported by cognitive aids built for their benefit and growth. Not for exploitation and surveillance.” Really appreciate the optimism in this talk, @daniloc.xyz, admittedly I’ve been quite pessimistic lately. #monkigras

An actual prepper talk with Chad Metcalf talking about the US variety of the movement. "Prepping is about personal agency".

“Enshittification comes from an asymmetry of power” @danielroe.dev talking about ATProto #monkigras

Absolute comedy from @danielroe.dev talking about npmx #monkigras btw . He is about communities but says 10x developers is bunk. "Life is about building a sense of community.".

“The teacher is also the learner. And a commitment to learning means being continually revealed to yourself.” - @suesmith.lol #monkigras Whew.

I love that @nathenharvey.bsky.social is making sure we all have enough fucks to give

Immigration and trans rights. Everything is super fucked up and trans people are increasingly having to become legal experts. @lizthegrey.com on, for example, what it means to be a refugee or stateless person. Important talk at #monkigras. The UK EHRC ruling is also super messed up.

Small Beer is a B Corp brewery in Bermondsey, focusing on low-medium ABV 2.5-2.8%. All the flavour, none of the headaches - cheers to that 🍻 #monkigras

Learning requires going from abstract to practical and back to abstract, in semantic waves. Learning by doing when coding cements what has been learned @suesmith.lol #monkigras

Centering GMT on the world means time "caught colonialism from its humans" - @ashley.rolfmore.com Lmao what a way to say it! #monkigras

A system always includes the mental model of the people using it, the people, the tools, and the dialogue. Numbers are scary because they change how the world affects people. Show your working Be correctable, not just correct Extent existing mental models Design for safe failure

Design for safe failure modes, says @ashley.rolfmore.com #monkigras

It’s #monkigras time again!

"AI" is now shorthand for "I don't trust this." I'm speaking at #MonkiGras next week about the gap where engineers and humans meet: the number on the screen, and what that means for the ongoing crisis of trust in institutions. Preview: Medieval accounting meets 90mph LiDAR. 🚇

Bloody hell this talk is already great. @lauratacho.com crushing it, arguing and explaining how our sense of wonder can blind us to the realities of the situation. #monkigras is go.

“Skepticism is the main cornerstone of being prepared” - Laura Tacho #monkigras

My JND is 0.0032, whatever that means 🎨 Found this game weirdly therapeutic www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd... #WhatsMyJND

Beautiful live sketch notes from Jenny Leonard 🎨

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Christine Liang, DSIT: “1.6m people in the UK are offline…Blockers can include cost of device/connectivity.” Programmes to refurb old gov devices and pass them on to digitally excluded people address both waste and exclusion at the same time.

Astrid Wynne: “The first rule of sustainability is: don’t“. Efficiency metrics are helpful, but prevention of unnecessary products/services is more powerful.

Carbon is just one metric we need to consider in environmental impact. Including the cost of mining precious metals and processing physical materials requires a full life cycle assessment, which is much harder for organisations to do.

Emma Charles worked out that a recent procurement process had an equivalent carbon cost of 4 tonnes! An average of 300 hours contributed by 30 suppliers competing for a relatively small government contract 🤯

Claire Robinson is passionate about net positive (net zero doesn’t go far enough!)

Mary Creagh: “ICT is already responsible for 4% of global emissions… how we design, build and buy digital technology matters!”

Venue for the GDSA Summit is 👌 Institution of Civil Engineers is very fancy.

AI agents will join up government before government joins up government. This may be a mixed blessing. Blog post. with some reflections about my recent agentic adventures: loosemore.com/2026/02/25/a...

Chris talking about his work with the Green Web Foundation 🌱@mrchrisadams.bsky.social

Speaking at Land Talks next week - come along! luma.com/ba8uvclo

🚨 Are people sicker now than in 2019? Civil servants in England are. Sickness absence rates have *risen by between 12% to 23% across the age groups*. Are things getting worse? It certainly looks like it. This is exactly what we predicted repeat covid infection would do.

Breaking: Tragedy at the Winter Olympics

Good post from Ayesha about the clash between product and programme thinking ayeshamoarif.substack.com/p/making-pro...

Welcome! 🤗 @franco-grech.bsky.social

“AI isn’t taking your job, the people making the decisions are” “Responsibility must be shared, not outsourced” “Being able to ignore the doom and gloom is a privileged position” “Be hopeful AND cynical” Necessary truth bombs from @elmosmoe.bsky.social at @sdingov.bsky.social #sdingov

Brilliant keynote from @rdietkus.bsky.social at #sdingov about public services as care. She also talked about hypernormalisation. This world were living in and what were witnessing is not normal. “There's wo truths, what we feel in our bodies and what the world insists we perform”

Love the focus on choice: we can choose how/if we use AI! Dystopia is not inevitable! @elmosmoe.bsky.social #sdingov

So many great points being made by Steph Wright on AI in today’s keynote. #sdingov Copilot Agents are here, slowly creeping into our workflows. Local Gov needs more support in how to: - design for fairness - mitigate bias - measure accuracy of agents - design for human in control

“Everything shareable across government in one place – to support the delivery of digital services” @nikolagoger.bsky.social sharing their cross-gov Reuse Library work at #SDinGov: reuselibrary-dev.apps.cloud-platform.service.justice.gov.uk

The 10 year health plan mentions the NHS App 55 times! How can the NHS App team live up the weight of expectation, manage their roadmap, and avoid becoming a [email protected] #sdingov