Weeknote 10/2017
This week I’ve been:
- Doing different and diverse kinds of work. I’ve really enjoyed the variety of this working week in particular. I’m self-employed so I get high levels of autonomy and agency in my work anyway, but the focus of the things I’ve done for three different clients has been vastly different. It’s also involved a nice mix of working from my home office, travelling within the region that I live, and travelling further afield.
- Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #249 was entitled ‘Ain’t no time like the present’.
- Catching up with Thomas Steele-Maley, who’s currently doing great things in Dubai.
- Failing to record an episode of the TIDE podcast, as Dai and I couldn’t align our schedules this week. Still our episodes are quite long, so it will give people a chance to catch up!
- Sad to see the Azure Window in Gozo (an island off Malta) collapse into the sea. My family visited it on a number of occasions, as Gozo is one of our favourite places to go on holiday. It’s going to be a very different place as a result.
- Helping facilitate a Story Hack event at Gateshead Central Library. We used the Booktype platform to create a book in less than seven hours. The quality of the book wasn’t the important part; the focus was on collaboration and framing an interesting topic. We chose to question Wikipedia’s guidelines around ‘notoriety’.
- Interviewed for E-180 magazine. I really enjoy their regular newsletter, so was pleased to be able to answer some of the questions they had about Open Badges.
- Working with Laura Hilliger to install Discourse, an open-source forum platform for a client of our co-op. We’re configuring it so each user chooses a pseudonym and so can be as anonymous as they want to be to other users. However, those in charge of the forum will know who each individual user is. It’s reasonably high-stakes in focus, so you can’t access it without a login to the forum itself.
- Running a thinkathon for the NCCA in Dublin, Ireland with Bryan Mathers. We stayed in an apartment that was quiet, yet also right opposite the famous Toners pub! It was good to help Fred Boss and colleagues think through Open Badges.
- Writing:
- My sites are now hosted in the European Union (Open Educational Thinkering, 9th March 2017)
- How to build an architecture of participation (Open Educational Thinkering, 9th March 2017)
- Blogging for a third of my life (Open Educational Thinkering, 8th March 2017)
- Preparing for ‘Story Hack’ (Open Educational Thinkering, 6th March 2017)
- Automation and identity (Discours.es, 6th March 2017)
Next week, I’ll be finishing off that discussion forum piece of work, recording a new chapter of my audiobook on productivity, and preparing for a couple of upcoming trips to record some ‘quality mountain days’ in preparation for my Mountain Leader course.
I make my living helping people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology. If you’ve got something that you think I might be able to help with, please do get in touch! Email: [email protected]
