284.
In the year 284, the Roman Emperor Numerian died and was replaced by Diocletian.
The number 284 bus will get you from Lewisham Station to Grove Park Cemetery in London.
284 is also the smallest possible amicable number, paired with 220.
(Google really is great, isn’t it?)
284 is also the number of Sticky Notes that our assembled contributors put onto our latest Miro board during our Process and Assurance workshop. To give you an idea of what a that looks like, check out the photo below of our Horizon mapping section of the workshop. (I have blurred the image to keep the authors anonymous).
Big, small, different colours (we colour code by breakout room). As the host/facilitator of the workshop, I don’t take part in the breakout room sessions, so I can keep check on timings and discuss any timing tweaks we need to make. One of the most fascinating things during this time away from the main group is watching the board come together on Miro – it’s like watching something come to life. Watching different contributions be added, then interlinked and paired with other ideas from other people is a fascinating experience and also a helpful one.
The workshops we hold are only the beginning of the process of creating our roadmap. Then comes the drafting, tweaking and finalising of what will ultimately become the Automotive Council’s Digitalisation Roadmap. Between now and March, the team and I have a significant amount of work to taking these 284 sticky notes and analysing them to then turn them into a cohesive, unified and accepted Roadmap for the industry.
You can label them however you want to:
284 sticky notes.
284 pieces of data.
284 ideas.
284 proposals.
284 perspectives.
There’s a lot to take in, a lot to process. But that’s exactly how we need it to be. I’d be concerned if there wasn’t a lot to process and a lot to take in.
It would mean that the industry doesn’t have any ideas, plans or responses to the complex and evolving world of digitalisation and its potential applications. It would mean we’re going to get stuck doing what we’ve always done and aren’t looking to the future; to innovation and to embracing technology to support our work from the very beginning of our design process to the very end.
284.
A number? Yes.
But it’s also much, much more.