Why I Started The ffocws Notebook
There are plenty of places online where technology is discussed in terms of product releases, features, or the latest trend. But in my experience, the most interesting and often most important conversations about technology happen elsewhere.
They happen inside projects.
They happen in the spaces between strategy and delivery.
They happen when systems meet reality, and when people are asked to adapt, change, and keep moving forward.
I started The ffocws Notebook as a place to capture some of those reflections quietly, thoughtfully, and with focus.
This is not a blog about technology for its own sake. It’s a notebook of lessons from working life: from delivering digital transformation projects, navigating complexity, learning from setbacks, and occasionally stepping back to see the bigger journey.
Technology Is Never Just Technology
Most of my professional work has involved large-scale systems, organisational change, and the sometimes messy process of modernising the way an organisation operates. Whether it’s implementing new platforms, improving governance, or designing recovery plans for the worst-case scenario, I’ve learned something simple:
Technology is rarely the hard part.
The hard part is what surrounds it:
culture
ownership
clarity
leadership
trust
and the reality of delivery
Digital transformation is often described in neat diagrams and ambitious roadmaps. In practice, it’s more human than that. It’s a gradual process of aligning people, processes, and platforms — usually while the organisation still needs to function day-to-day.
That gap between the planned and the real is where most of the interesting lessons live.
A Notebook of Projects, Platforms, and People
The ffocws Notebook will explore themes that sit at the centre of modern IT work, including:
Digital transformation in the real world
Delivering technology projects with clarity and purpose
Microsoft platforms and enterprise systems in practice
Cyber resilience and recovery planning
Governance, risk, and organisational readiness
Leadership reflections from inside complex environments
These are not abstract topics. They’re grounded in the everyday reality of organisations trying to improve how they serve customers, manage risk, and build systems that will last.
I’m particularly interested in the practical side of delivery the work that rarely makes it into conference talks, but shapes whether projects succeed.
Why “ffocws”?
The Welsh word ffocws means focus and that idea matters more than ever.
The technology landscape is busy. Noisy. Fast-moving. Organisations are being pulled in multiple directions at once:
adopt AI
modernise platforms
improve cyber resilience
manage technical debt
deliver more with fewer resources
respond to rising expectations
In that environment, focus becomes a discipline.
This blog is a small attempt to write with intention to slow down occasionally and reflect on what matters beneath the surface of the work.
The Journeys in Between
Alongside technology and professional reflections, there may also be occasional notes from elsewhere — from travel, from quieter moments, from experiences outside the project space.
Not because travel is the point, but because perspective matters.
Sometimes stepping away from the familiar gives us a clearer view of it.
The subtitle of this blog says it best:
Reflections on technology, projects, and the journeys in between.
What to Expect Next
In the coming posts, I’ll be writing about topics such as:
what cyber recovery really looks like in a cloud-first world
lessons from modern workplace and platform governance
why file management becomes a strategic issue
how digital projects succeed or quietly unravel
what IT leaders often underestimate about change
Some posts will be practical. Others more reflective. All written with the same aim: clarity, honesty, and usefulness.
This is a notebook, not a broadcast.
A Closing Thought
Most of us working in technology spend our days building systems that are meant to support other people’s lives and work. That’s meaningful but also easy to rush through without stopping to reflect. The ffocws Notebook is my space to do that reflection. If any of these themes resonate with your own work or experience, you’re very welcome to follow along. And if you’d like to receive new posts occasionally, you can subscribe to the newsletter.
Thank you for reading and welcome.