Weeknote 36/2018

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out a special edition of my Thought Shrapnel newsletter. This one was called ‘ Post-holiday email-based survey 📋 🤔 💡 ’. Thanks to those who back me via Patreon plus those who continue their support via Gumroad!
• Recording, editing and releasing Episode 106 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host Dai Barnes. We entitled this episode ‘Keeping track of all the things’ and discussed MoodleNet milestones, Seth Godin’s approach to learning, assassination markets on the blockchain, keeping track of articles you want to read, and more!
• Working on the MoodleNet project (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri):
  • Interviewing applicants for the MoodleNet backend developer (Elixir) position.
  • Debriefing about some drama that happened in the ‘fediverse’ at the end of last week, and what we can learn from it for MoodleNet.
  • Doing some more thinking about data models.
  • Working on v0.7 of the MoodleNet overview slide deck, which we’ll use as the basis for our presentation at the ALT conference next week.
  • Presenting our Quarterly Team Review Report to the management team.
  • Updating our milestones on GitLab.
  • Hanging out with Mayel (and, sadly, only Mayel) for the first MoodleNet ‘office hours’. We’re reconsidering the format.
  • Presenting to the Open Source team and answering questions. .
• Helping London CLC on Wednesday with a yearly retrospective of their work on. It was a We Are Open co-op collaboration with colleague Bryan Mathers who was in the room, while I joined remotely.
•  Curating interesting things I came across on the Thought Shrapnel blog:
  • What do happy teenagers do?
  • Burnout-prevention rules
  • Feedback from the community
  • Fluency without conceptual understanding
  • Dealing with the downsides of remote working
  • Natural light as an ‘office perk’
  • The importance of marginalia
  • We’re back (with lots of new links!)
• Thinking about norming and performing in online spaces. More to come on this topic, I’m sure.
• Getting used to my new home on the fediverse at mastodon.social, which was actually the first account I registered back in 2016. I’m also posting occasionally to my Pixelfed account. (If Mastodon is like a decentralised Twitter, then Pixelfed is like a decentralised Instagram.)

Next week, I’m working from home on Monday, then in Manchester for the ALT conference from Tuesday to Thursday.

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Image from p.118 of the excellent Life in Code by Ellen Ullman