CAIO Weeknote #33
A week of exploring how best to prepare the future workforce in the region.
Monday
Happy Bank Holiday.
Tuesday
Caught an early train up and one of our hottest days of the year, luckily mostly in good air con. I was off last week, so I got through as many follow-up emails as I could on the train.
A chunk of my week is now taken up with organising our AI Summit this autumn with Mischa, who is temporarily supporting our team. It was never something that was mooted as part of my original role, and to get it right is time-consuming. There’s a balance between organising a brilliant conference and cracking through the ever-growing AI agenda to ensure that, come autumn, we will have enough good progress to announce. Now our brilliant comms colleagues are back from UKReiFF, we have their support, thankfully. A lot to do and owing to my sense of professionalism, I want a brilliant conference, and I want a brilliant AI Programme delivery to share, so I need to balance this daily.
We welcomed new starter Lisa to our team, the AI Programme Project Support Officer and I took her to lunch today, her first day, to welcome her to the team. I am a) thrilled that we have her to support the work of the team and b) delighted with the wealth of experience in project management that she brings with her.
Weekly planning on our forthcoming Smart Places strategy session with EY.
Dash to my hotel in the Wirral tonight, having selected the hotel I need for the most robust wifi. Fun to see the families with buckets and spades on the train.
How do you keep your AI skills fresh when much of the AI work day-to-day is strategic and, unfortunately, until we get more resources, admin? The platforms move so quickly, even week-to-week, to understand how they work, what they do, how they are changing and how organisations are using them, I now coach in AI tool use a few evenings every other week until summer. Of course, I have all this glorious out-of-work time now I’ve finished my MSc. The focus this week was on using Claude as a storyboarding tool to design the short prompts for a short video and using Google Flow to create Gen AI Video clips. The tools are both free and paid, and remarkable in what can be achieved with them.
Wednesday
I reserve my on-site days for as many face-to-face meetings as I can to drive our agenda forward. We kicked off with an energising in-person AI Programme Team meeting. At the start of my tenure in September, it was just Kayla and I, so it was brilliant to be around the table with Kayla now focussing on AI in Transport, Henry in AI and Education, and our temporary support stalwarts, Mischa on the AI Summit and Izzy on our conference presence management and AI-specific research from international AI Test Beds to Lidar. We welcomed Lisa to the team and raced through priorities, actions, how to help each other and direction for the week ahead.
It was great to have a 121 with Lorna, my Director, on feedback on our strategic planning and how we can better integrate the AI Programme Team across the Combined Authority.
Straight into our monthly Digital Transformation Leadership Team Meeting, with updates from my peers on Digital Services, Digital Infrastructure, PMO and Assurance. Great to hear how the Digital Services team have been transforming their teamwork and other internal teams with AI, and can’t wait to catch up more next week.
A quick turnaround to meet with the UK and I, Head of Education from Google, John Gallant, with the team at Kyndryl in the Royal Liver Building, just two buildings away. We had a tour of their brilliant innovation lab and a showcase of recent work by their young apprenticeships, making great apps in education. The larger conversation was on how we can all work together to help the jobs people in the region will need in the next 3-5 years and better provide for our future workforce. It may require a new way of working for some of our educational establishments, and I’ll pick up on conversations with our academic community from next week.
Travel back to London with a head buzzing with brilliant conversations, but an ever-increasing inbox to respond to.
Thursday
Call with our colleagues in DSIT to explore future joint announcements and working together on the key agenda.
Call with the team about working on our AI Test Bed governance and planning that I’m directing.
121 with Kayla to help her set her Smart Objectives for the year.
Call with fab colleague Rob Tabb from our Office for Public Sector Innovation to share our respective agendas and to ensure we are not replicating on both our approaches to prototyping.
Most of the time I had left out of meetings today was spent hastily arranging diaries to move our planned EY workshop on Smart Places to find two new dates to ensure our transport colleagues can attend. It will be a much better event with their involvement, and a huge thank you to the flexibility and hard work of the EY team.
Had an evening meet-up with the team at Holos Change, leaders in Cultural Transformation. Great to hear and understand how the team are working through cultural changes in large corporates. Always an utter pleasure to reconnect with Rachel Neaman, long-standing ex-government friend and Digital Leader, to discuss and share how we are working with Universities.
Friday
All-day workshop with Henry from my team and Ali Gellett from BIG AI Education to shape how we help and support school leaders, teachers and children in our region with their approaches to AI.
We worked all day in a room with no natural light on another glorious day, so we took our sandwiches to the park for a lighter working lunch and fresh air.
So inspired by what we can potentially create together.
Dash back home to deliver my final coaching session of the week after hours with a review and share of tools that can create a variety of dashboards: Perplexity vs Claude, Google Data Studio, Airtable, Retool, Gamma and more Google Flow which has changed features since last week.
A super productive week, but so much more to do.
Events that I’m speaking at - coming up
16-17 June: Global AI Cities 2026, Manchester
10 Sept: Connected Britain, London
10 Nov: Brilliant Festival, Liverpool
Tiffany St James
Chief AI Officer, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority
Isn’t that SEN app great Tiffany!