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Sharon O'Dea

@sharonodea.com

9.2K followers 1.6K following 1.9K posts

Consulting, writing and speaking on comms, collaboration & future of work. Cofounder Lithos Partners, DWXS and 300 Seconds. Gym bore. Takes too many photos of Amsterdam.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · May 23

🎉 Big news: I’m writing a book!

Digital Communications at Work is a practical guide for folks managing intranets, apps & comms channels. It’s packed with case studies, tips & lessons from the coalface. Co-authored with @digitaljonathan.bsky.social, published by Kogan Page, it’ll be out in 2026.

A woman with brown hair (me) sits behind a laptop covered with stickers

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 2d

Paris for an exercise class, Japan for a new adventure, and my suitcase living its best life somewhere in France.

New weeknote (comin' atcha from 39,000 feet above Mongolia) on change, chaos, gratitude, and doing ridiculous things just because you can.

sharonodea.com/2025/10/11/w...

Weeknote 2025/41

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris. Awe-inspiring, literally. A week of motion and mixed emotions: gratitude, nerves, excitement. Paris one day, Japan the next. I keep catching myself thinking how lucky I am —…

sharonodea.com

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Reposted by Sharon O'Dea

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 2d

anyway, I am pleased with this column, I think it is good, I hope you read it rather than just shouting at me for what you think it might say

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

By Jonn Elledge

Illustration by Roy Scott / Ikon Images
“Acomputer terminal,” Douglas Adams once wrote, “is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.” In the same way, while the platform known in happier times as Twitter is famously not the real world, that’s never meant it can’t affect it.

One of the less upsetting ways those effects can manifest is outlined in a new report from “reputation management consultancy” (euch) Montford Communications. Posting to Policy explores the way wonks, politicos and shitposters alike drive government action through the raw power of their takes. “A niche account posts something punchy. It lands,” the report explains, with more full stops than is acceptable anywhere but LinkedIn. “Traditional media pick it up. Politicians respond. And policy follows. This is the ‘posting to policy’ pipeline and it’s fast becoming the new normal.”

Not all the examples the consultancy gives of this pipeline in action are entirely convincing. The “Nick, 30 ans” meme may have generated discourse, but it has not, as far as I’ve noticed, led to attempts to actually rethink intergenerational fairness; and while Robert Jenrick’s fare-dodging video made some waves, the shadow justice secretary is not, appearances notwithstanding, a shitposter. The most persuasive example offered is the transformation of Motability from a worthy but obscure scheme allowing those in receipt of mobility allowance to lease cars, to a “something must be done”-level spending scandal through noise on X alone.

Montford’s argument isn’t wrong: it’s abundantly clear by now that things that happen on the internet rarely stay there, and while hacks and wonks hang out on the same platforms as those with actual power it’s unsurprising that ideas sometimes migrate from the former to the latter. That, though, does not mean these conclusions are either new or significant. I can think of things I put on the internet ten years ago that g…

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 2d

Thank you! Downloaded for flight.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

True, but I have quite a low tolerance for hippy nonsense generally. And yet there I am contemplating my life choices in a medieval church while dancing to Florence and the Machine in some silent disco headphones.

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

They do them in London too! I wanted to hate it because it’s hippy nonsense but annoyingly it’s really good.

www.wearesanctum.com

Sanctum – Mindful Movement Community

A transformative wellbeing practice that explores energy frequencies with mindful movement. Empower the body, expand the mind.

www.wearesanctum.com

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

Aww! Very kind of you! 🥰

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

Yes come over sometime! But not in the next 2 months because I’m away.

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

The Van Gogh does a late night clubbing/music thing last Friday of the month. Recommend if you’re planning to visit at all!

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

The ridiculous exercise class I go to did a one off special at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. I love that building, so I blagged a spot and went all the way to Paris to do a single exercise class.

And it was absolutely fucking beautiful.

Life is short; enjoy the shit out of it.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

I’ve had that same problem at H&M too. Uniqlo are v reliable, and the turn-up service v good for us Shorties.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 3d

Uniqlo and Gap (online/in Next) both do a 29, which is a size 11. The former do free turn-ups for too-long trousers.

M&S have a great range in petite sizes too.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Yeah I just get one as a walk-in London Boots every winter

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

As someone said on Twitter back in the day, it is genuinely easier to get hard drugs delivered to your home in the Netherlands than it is to get a flu jab.

You have to get a prescription, go pick up from the pharmacy, take it back to the GP to be administered. Costs like €100. So weird.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

I can’t get either in NL 😭

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

And this guy’s employees are paying tax at a higher rate. Are taxes only for the little people?

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Consider yourself fortunate

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

My own run-in with them ended with my having to get solicitors on the case. A dogshit company run by nine-sided cunts. Good riddance.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Absolutely no argument from me on that one.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

My response used more descriptive early Anglo-Saxon phrasing evoking phallic imagery and the bestowing of good luck.

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

I had little interest in visiting in the first place, but the fact that it seems to be actively attracting the worst people for the worst reasons makes me even less inclined to.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

The UK’s not losing a founder; it’s losing the illusion that people who profit most from society feel any duty to support it.

Anyway, congrats to Revolut’s founder on his new zero-tax residency. Hope the weather - and the optics - suit him.

Bridgerton Jonathan Bailey GIF

ALT: Bridgerton Jonathan Bailey GIF

media.tenor.com

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Public services, safety nets, infrastructure... that’s what makes risk-taking possible. It’s what lets people start fintechs in the first place. If your system only works when billionaires don’t pay tax, maybe the problem isn’t the tax.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

And I note that *every one* of these posts - and all the comments cheering them on - are from men. Men who don’t rely on public services, and so can’t imagine why anyone else might. If you can opt out of everything, you forget the commons even exist.

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Revolut didn’t spring fully formed from a Dubai sand dune.
It grew in London, funded by UK and EU investors, hiring UK engineers, built on UK infrastructure, by people educated in UK schools.

But sure, he “did it all himself.”

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Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea.com · 4d

Ah yes, the “lower taxes or the billionaires will leave” argument again.

Because clearly the only way to keep someone with $36 billion is to make sure they never have to contribute to the society that created the conditions for them to make it.

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