Weeknotes: Week 2 - Q1 - 2025
It's been another week! My god they go past quickly. I promise i'm not going to start every week by saying that. I totally jinxed the weather report last week as it's rained non-stop since my last weeknote. This one is also going to be pretty short as I'm still on holiday and with all the rain I have been putting all my time into keeping kids occupied while the rain hammers down. While i'm thinking about that (and trying to push aside the PTSD), if you haven't been to your local library in a while i'd highly recommend you do. They're a fantastic underrated resource and an ideal free, destination for a rainy day.
Blog updates and tweaking the More Than Machines site
I've spent some time this week tweaking the two main websites in my life, this one and the More Than Machines site. I'm notoriously bad at communicating what i'm doing and I need to change that this year. I've been reading a lot about how social media is used for marketing these days. It's been a while since i've been involved in this world and a lot has changed but the principles remain the same. Essentially "write good content" -> "Link to article" -> "Link to product" -> "Ask to buy" -> "Deliver". Seems simple on the outside but it's a lot of work. Of course AI has a role to play here and i've been building some things to help me. More in this maybe next week. Hopefully social media is still a thing by then and hasn't imploded. At the moment, it feels like anything could happen. Eitherway, I need to have a good blog and company website to make this work so that's what i've been working on - you could say 4 years too late.
My first journal article of the year
Just before Christmas I was asked by the Australian Farm Institute to contribute an article to their latest journal. The journal looks forward to the next 20 years of agriculture here in Australia. My contribution was What data management approaches will help Australian agriculture prosper in the next two decades? The synopsis is:
The future of Australian agriculture hinges not solely on improving the production practices that have defined it for generations, but also on its ability to transform into a sector that fully realises the potential of its data. The challenges facing the sector are mounting: the unpredictable and often devastating impacts of climate change, the increasing consumer demand for sustainable and ethically produced food, the volatile fluctuations and growing protectionism in global markets, and the ever-present need to increase productivity while managing resources responsibly. To navigate these complex realities and ensure long-term prosperity, Australian agriculture must fundamentally embrace data as a strategic asset. This requires not simply collecting data, but also implementing robust data management approaches that enable the sector to derive actionable insights, enhance decision-making, increase automation and unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation. This essay will examine the specific data management strategies and policy opportunities that will be essential for Australian agriculture not only to survive, but to thrive, in the next two decades, securing its economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and global competitiveness. We will explore the practical steps necessary to move beyond the current fragmented efforts and toward a unified, productive, data-driven future. This essay also seeks to provide a detailed understanding of what constitutes ‘data management approaches’ and how they can create prosperity across the Australian agricultural sector over the next 20 years.
I'll hopefully be able to publish some excepts in the coming weeks.
Getting out more
One of the things I am also working on this year is leaving the house more. I spent the majority of the last 18 months on my own, never leaving the house. I'm proactively sorting this, this year. I'm not going to be going to evokeAg in February for a variety of reasons but i've lined up a couple of other speaking gigs this week already. If you're reading this and would like me to come along for a chat please get in touch. I've also been looking for a good local co-working space. It turns out that there's loads of them but being ultra picky and a little agoraphobic means i'm yet top find the right one. I think I want to surround myself with more people until it comes to actually surrounding myself with people. Then things get. Complicated. I will find somewhere though this quarter.
Code snippet of the week
A little code snippet I thought i'd share that I wrote this week. Nothing ground breaking but I needed to post to bluesky from an agent workflow. It turns out it's really easy.
That's probably about it
That's probably about it for this week. I could tell you some of my thoughts about current skatepark design as i've frequented a few this last month but will probably save that for another time.