Sharon O&#x27;Dea

sharonodea.comFrontline Communication Isn’t a Frontline Problem | Sharon O’Dea80% of workers don’t sit at a desk, yet internal communication is designed for the 20% who do. Why frontline employees aren’t hard to reach, and what is.

Frontline workers aren't hard to reach, they're mostly just overlooked. sharonodea.com/2026/10/14/f...

17h

You know what, lads? If anything it’s a bit hot in the office today.

as.ft.comLondon’s tennis players cry fault as bots snap up court bookings‘Sniper bots’ that trawl reservation websites are distorting the fight for slots on the capital’s 1,400 public courts

How long till the bot battle takes on the 8am GP appointment scramble? Or is it doing it already?

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com

The reason you can't book a tennis court in London? The bots have got there first as.ft.com/r/d16b0eb8-2...

The current time in Morocco is... Monday night. It then helpfully suggested that if I’d like the actual current time, I could visit a different website. Trillion-dollar company, can’t tell the time.

On the train home and someone - a cunt - has sat down next to me with a Five Guys 🤢

If you’re UNLEASH World in Paris, pop by the Flip AI booth where I’m signing copies of my book. Grab em before they’re gone!

sharonodea.comWeeknote 2026/42: Just the right amount of frictionWhy good design isn’t frictionless: Dutch traffic engineering, browser warnings, and a week at home in Amsterdam. Plus Japanese garage metal and a 50th.

A Dutch traffic engineer took the lights out of a junction carrying 22,000 cars a day. Crashes fell. “When there’s a problem with a road, traffic engineers always try to add something.” A devastating assessment of several other professions I could name. sharonodea.com/2026/10/20/w...

telegraph.co.ukExclusive: Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in UkraineSpaceX founder had publicly blamed president for chaos over restrictions, but sources say he initiated them

That the UK government continues to give this man and his platform credibility by posting on there is absolutely indefensible at this point

Will Jennings📉🗳️@drjennings.bsky.social

If you are still on Musk's X, you are enabling his treachery.

Lasted just 0.5 Scaramuccis

sharonodea.comOrganisational capital, AI and the Spirit Airlines data saleDiane Coyle says relationships will be firms’ edge as AI spreads. Spirit Airlines’ data sale shows their residue now has a price. Why that matters for IC.

A bankrupt airline's 500m Teams messages attract eight-figure bids. @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social argues relationships are what AI can't easily copy. So naturally, we're finding ways to monetise their remains while giving employees reasons to stop writing things down. sharonodea.com/2026/10/15/t...

Hmm. The link to the Bennet School paper has broken since yesterday 😕

unleash.aiAI has a new name: Super Intelligence. Now what? - UNLEASH

Trump has renamed AI “Super Intelligence”. I'd roll my eyes and move on, but the techbroligarchy will fall into line and this nonsense will metastasise into corporate policy. My latest for UNLEASH the headaches this creates for enterprise tech, and how to respond. www.unleash.ai/risk-complia...

I was feeling particularly smug today having opened my EA dashboard, reviewed my triaged emails and to-dos, read my briefing for the day, etc. Got halfway to the gym and realised I’d left my kit at home.

theverge.comSilicon Valley is falling in line with Trump’s attempt to rename AIMusk, Benioff, Huang, and now Nadella have all capitulated to Trump’s ‘super intelligence’ rebrand.

I’m still using @theguardian.com ‘s co.uk domain 20+ years after they changed it, and I haven’t updated my Twitter app since that man named it after his daft obsession, so good luck with that. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

sharonodea.comWeeknote 2026/41Me presenting at DanPR in Ljubljana this week This year’s Dan PR conference was themed A World Without Stability, which is an awkward brief to hand to someone who has built their entire perso…

Weeknote time. This week: a talk about instability, delivered by a fairly reliable source of it. Also Slovenia autumnmaxxing, Belgrade on purpose this time, and Celebrity Traitors propped against a water jug. sharonodea.com/2026/10/11/w...

From today’s Telegraph piece on “welfare hotspots” 👌 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10...

sharonodea.comBuild for change: internal communication that holds when the ground movesInstability is now the operating environment. How to build internal communication and a digital workplace that hold, and adapt, when the ground keeps moving.

Resilience without adaptability leaves you maintaining an obsolete system. Adaptability without resilience gets you chaos with a new logo. New essay, from my Dan PR keynote in Ljubljana, featuring a robot in a hat: sharonodea.com/2026/10/11/b...

Gotta admire the commitment to infosec that comes with not updating a password in fourteen years. Top drawer.

For the love of all that is holy, can we not with this 'bleisure' nonsense?

marketingmagazin.si»Prihodnost dela ni ena sama. Prihodnosti je na stotine.« - Marketing MagazinNa Dnevu PR smo se s Sharon O’Dea pogovarjali o silah, ki bodo v prihodnjih letih spreminjale organizacije, od demografskih in tehnoloških do geopolitičnih in podnebnih sprememb.

“There isn’t one future of work. There are hundreds of them.” Yesterday I was in Ljubljana talking about what happens when demographics, AI, climate and geopolitics all start moving at once. Lovely write-up of my conversation with Marketing Magazin here. 🇸🇮 www.marketingmagazin.si/aktualno/nov...

There’s probably a word in German for the particular feeling of pride and anxiety when you give your own book to the academic you quote in it. Anyway, that.

sharonodea.comWeeknote 2026/40Two days of AI at Unite, the things dashboards can't count, a Kyiv bedroom insulated with Pravda, and 2,000 suitcases in Rotterdam.

Weeknote 2026/40: FOMO vs FOGI, a Soviet newspaper house in Rotterdam, packing sudoku, and Claudia Winkleman's mathematically perfect fringe. sharonodea.com/2026/10/04/w...

sharonodea.comUnily Content Studio and the problem with content enginesUnily's Content Studio makes internal comms content almost free to produce. Attention isn't. Why AI content engines need governance before scale.

New essay on AI content engines and why the natural volume of organisational communication, freed from all physical constraints, is infinite. Also features Jessica Fletcher, a woman with seven fingers, and a Vegas gambler halfway through the children's inheritance. sharonodea.com/2026/10/01/t...

sharonodea.comIntranet Findability: Why Employees Can’t Find InformationBetter search won't fix an intranet nobody can find anything on. Here's why findability fails in complex organisations, and how to diagnose it with research, card sorting and tree testing.

NGL, I think I still have mild PTSD from the corporate video years.

Sharon O'Dea reposted

Stefan Czerniawski

@pubstr.at

"Quite often the technology is simply the place where a much messier organisational problem has chosen to make itself visible." @sharonodea.com in characteristic top form on what ineffective search demonstrates about intranets and their organisations - much of which resonates much more widely

sharonodea.comWeeknote 2026/39: Organisational dark matterOrganisational dark matter: 99 hypotheses, content nobody reads, a Saturday spent escaping Teams, improv in Dutch, and Kusama at the Stedelijk.

Went into the office on a Saturday to write a talk about workplace interruptions, because it was the only day nobody could interrupt me. I also did improv in Dutch, combining two things I don't enjoy in one tidy package. Weeknote 2026/39: sharonodea.com/2026/09/29/w...

Still nothing 😭😭 Had anyone else had theirs for the Amsterdam dates?

Sharon O'Dea@sharonodea.com

Me refreshing my email till that Oasis code arrives

I can’t believe Oasis have made me yearn for the relative fairness of the Glastonbury ticket scramble.

Me refreshing my email till that Oasis code arrives

One of the British things I miss most are Normal Lunch Sandwiches. Here in Amsterdam there are plenty of gourmet €15, 1000-calorie sandwich options. It's just too much. A £5 Pret or M&S special, a Tesco Meal Deal. Hits the spot without ruining your appetite for dinner, at a reasonable price.

Duncan Weldon@duncanweldon.bsky.social

Can’t believe no one has ever thought of the idea of selling us hot food. I, for one, am both excited and, if I’m honest, a little apprehensive about the idea of warm food. www.ft.com/content/bdb6... Subway rival bets hot sandwiches will sell in UK’s ‘cold and rain’

Good morning, Campers! How your email finds me this morning

eventbrite.co.ukMeet The Authors: In Conversation with Sharon O'Dea and Jonathan PhillipsMeet The Authors: Sharon O'Dea and Jonathan Phillips on how to design digital channels that boost employee engagement and experience

Jon and I are talking Digital Communications at Work with VMA Group today, 1–2pm BST. Online, free of lanyards. Bring your awkward questions about channels nobody uses. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/meet-the-a...

metro.co.ukI’m a landlord making £100,000 a month — young people have no excuse to be poorSamuel bought his first home aged 17 with a 100% mortgage.

A landlord making £100,000 a month says young people have “no excuse to be poor”. Excellent. I love financial advice. Gather round, children, let's examine how he himself stopped being poor. metro.co.uk/2026/09/20/i...

The real problem isn't that he's rich, insufferable, full of shit, or even that he's a landlord. It's the trick whereby a person's own success is presented as proof that structural constraints don't exist. “I managed it” becomes “anyone can”. “Anyone can” becomes “poverty is your own fault”.

Especially when the story itself contains family assistance, extraordinary credit conditions, and a generational economic crash, and someone selling financial advice on YouTube.

metro.co.ukI’m a landlord making £100,000 a month — young people have no excuse to be poorSamuel bought his first home aged 17 with a 100% mortgage.

I particularly enjoyed learning that the £6,000 monthly utility bill is partly because of the swimming pool, hot tub and sprinkler system. Young people: have you considered cancelling Netflix? Samuel: regrettably the hot tub continues to exert inflationary pressure.

He also wants us to know the outfit he's wearing cost less than £100. This comes shortly after telling us he spends £550,000 a year renting his Dubai home and £20,000 A MONTH on travel. Avocado-toast discourse has achieved its final form.

metro.co.ukI’m a landlord making £100,000 a month — young people have no excuse to be poorSamuel bought his first home aged 17 with a 100% mortgage.

His advice for young people includes sourcing property deals, forming joint ventures and finding investors. Which is useful. Next week: “Can't afford lunch? Have you considered a leveraged acquisition?”

Then his monthly budget. £100k income. £45,833 rent. £20k charity. £20k travel. £6k utilities. £5k food. £2k wife's “no questions asked” money 🚩 £98,833 in all. And somewhere, Martin Lewis has just felt a disturbance in the Force.

metro.co.ukI’m a landlord making £100,000 a month — young people have no excuse to be poorSamuel bought his first home aged 17 with a 100% mortgage.

To recap the universal wealth formula: • be 17 during the aftermath of a historic financial crash • obtain 100% property finance • have a family member able to hold the property legally • acquire distressed assets • wait Young people simply don't want it enough.

He also says blaming landlords for high rents makes no sense because “the market determines the price”. My brother in Christ, YOU ARE THE MARKET. The rent isn't delivered to your house each morning by the Bank of England's weather balloon.

metro.co.ukI’m a landlord making £100,000 a month — young people have no excuse to be poorSamuel bought his first home aged 17 with a 100% mortgage.

Step one: be 17 in 2009. Step two: buy a £100,000 house with 100% bank financing immediately after the global financial system has fallen through its own arse. Step three: because you're too young to own it legally, have your stepdad go on the deeds. Why, many are asking, aren't Gen Z doing this?

The interview doesn't explain what the lender understood about that arrangement, which feels like quite an interesting detail to glide past. But never mind. By 20 he had seven properties, helped by buying when, in his own words, sellers couldn't sell and were trapped in negative equity.

bbc.co.ukEarl Spencer tells BBC Harry and Meghan's media treatment echoes what happened to DianaPrincess Diana's brother says she was "really brought low by all that criticism" and he saw her in "tears of despair".

21 Sept

Local folks: are solpersteines removed for cleaning or anything? Only two different plaques on my usual walk to walk are missing. Normal maintainence, or is there something nefarious/anti-semitic going on here?

Sharon O'Dea reposted

👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞

@jacktindale.bsky.social

20 Sept

Unless he’s raising an army in the Spanish Netherlands and claim the throne for himself with support of France and the Habsburg powers, this should not be leading the BBC headlines for the third day in a row. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

20 Sept

At the very fucking least, stop lending the platform credibility by posting government updates on it.

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social

my brilliant colleague @robertshrimsley.bsky.social on the threat from Elon Musk’s X platform www.ft.com/content/f270...

19 Sept

I had a vivid dream last night that someone I know had decked out their house for Halloween but all the pumpkins were in the style of Yayoi Kusama and I need someone to do this now cos I live in an upstairs apartment so I can’t.

17 Sept

Oh god me too. I keep having Nigel Farage and shitty nostalgic British Patriot nonsense pushed into my feed

Todd Kendall@alpinemigrant.bsky.social

Fuck you, Facebook. Putting this shit in my feed. Fucking enraging.

17 Sept

You know how you think some trends were recent and it turns out they were in 2007? I just had the opposite experience. O wondered when That Dress From Zara would start showing yo as retro, but it turns out it was was only out in 2019.