Weeknote 36/2016
This week I’ve been:
- Sending out Issue #227 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. Amongst others, it featured links on minimalism, data-sharing, and two-dimensionality. Many thanks to Makers Academy for sponsorship!
- Postponing the return of the TIDE podcast until next week. It’s been a busy start to the new academic year for co-host Dai Barnes, and we couldn’t find a time we could both make. We’re looking at shifting both recording times and the day we release the podcast each week.
- Catching up with various people, including Rosie Clayton, Dom Murphy, Phil Veal, and Sunil Rodger.
- Planning with my We Are Open colleagues ahead of the thinkathon we’re running for Creative Commons next week.
- Celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary with my wife.
- Fixing my Linux laptop. I use Elementary OS, which is based on Ubuntu. There’s a new version out today, and in preparation I had to fix some problems I had with apt-get, dpkg, and dependencies so I could install/upgrade software packages. Thank goodness for the Ubuntu forums and helpful people who document solutions!
- Liaising with various people about the UK digital co-ops retreat we’re helping organise at Wortley Hall (near Sheffield) in November.
- Facilitating a planning day (along with Bryan Mathers) for London CLC.
- Signing up for hotdesking at Campus North, after I realised I should spend one guaranteed day based out of my home office each week!
- Transferring my ebook to Gitbook (nearly finished!) More on this soon. I was inspired by what Albert Wenger has done with World After Capital.
- Starting going to Pilates again.
- Getting back in the swing of family life during term-time. Our eldest is now at middle school so is walking to school by himself.
- Spending much less time on Twitter and Slack in an effort to focus on the important stuff I needed to get done.
- Writing a lot more than usual because of the above point. In addition to those linked below, I also drafted a new post for DML Central:
- Not courage, but leverage (8th September 2016)
- Igniting my Mondays (8th September 2016)
- We’re preparing kids all wrong (8th September 2016)
- 5 reasons your business should employ remote workers (8th September 2016)
- Turning pro (8th September 2016)
- Less side-hustles, more hobbies please (7th September 2016)
- The bias against alternative organisational structures (7th September 2016)
- Why you should write a to-do list every morning (7th September 2016)
- MOOCs aren’t ‘massive’ just because they have lots of people taking them (6th September 2016)
- Other people aren’t there to tell you what to do (5th September 2016)
- Philosophy always wins (5th September 2016)
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb on ’employability’ (5th September 2016)
- Increasing your ‘serendipity surface’ (4th September 2016)
- Hidden privilege (4th September 2016)
- Should I keep encouraging my kids to do team sports? (4th September 2016)
- How to avoid Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) (3rd September 2016)
Next week I’ll be in Newcastle and then Gateshead on Monday, working from home on Tuesday, in Sunderland on Wednesday, working from home on Thursday, and then pottering about during my Friday ‘Doug Day’. I’d still really like to get down to London for Futurefest next weekend as it was excellent last year…
Image CC BY-NC-SA Jonathon Hurley
