From cheese tasting to BBC filming, it has certainly been a busy - and perhaps unusual - month here at DG Cities. Today we’re taking stock of April, reflecting on the developments and changes that made for an interesting and exciting month.

The DG Cities team has seen changes in the past few weeks as we said goodbye to our former Head of Special Projects, James Key, who has now completed his secondment and returned to Ofcom (and speaking of Ofcom, only while seeing James off did we learn that Ofcom employees are not actually civil servants. Consider us surprised - and now armed with a new fact to whip out at the next virtual dinner party). This farewell was followed closely by a hello, as we welcomed Sarah Butler on board as our new Smart Energy Specialist. If you’d like to learn more about Sarah and what she plans to do at DG Cities, you can read more here!

Amidst a flurry of new bids and proposals, we were also involved in some important discussions for both existing and new projects. Our Head of Research and Service Design, Ed, met with members of Greenwich’s disabled community groups to discuss digital inclusion and future projects, with around 30 participants tuning in! Meanwhile, Kim, Our Head of Smart Mobility, was a part of The British Standards Institution’s working group - PAS 1884 - on CAM Safety Driver standards. And, excitingly, some members of the team got their chance to step into the spotlight as they filmed with the BBC for our ongoing work on project D-Risk. We will be sure to share this when it’s live!

One notable highlight of the month was our first ever team Discussion Forum! It’s been over a year since we were last together in the office, and while our daily Google Hangouts keep us in sync, there is something lost when we aren’t physically in the same space. Those off-the-cuff discussions between meetings or the mid-morning coffee breaks that turn into brainstorming sessions can be difficult to replicate in our current, online-only reality. So, to try to facilitate this we decided to carve out time purely dedicated to discussion. This forum had no particular project in mind, but was simply an opportunity to explore topical city challenges, learn from our respective opinions and engage in a conversation where we could arrive at a joint DG Cities position. For our inaugural meeting, we focused on hydrogen fuel and the hydrogen economy, diving into the topic from an array of angles including sustainability, infrastructure, mobility, community and policy. It was a rich and interesting conversation, though - as to be expected - it left us with more questions than answers. We’re planning to share some insights from our discussion in the coming months, so keep an eye out for that. 

Finally, perhaps the most exciting update of all was our virtual team cheese tasting with The Courtyard Dairy. We were each sent an impressive (and enormous) spread of different regional cheeses and were guided through a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at some of Britain’s farmhouse cheese producers. We learned a lot and ate too much - the recipe for a perfect evening.