Weeknote 26/2015

Well, here we are, half-way through 2015! This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Issue #179 of Things We Learned This Week, thanks to the sponsorship of Think Associates! (I’m looking for a sponsor for September…)
• Down in London on Tuesday and Wednesday (as usual). I stayed at citizenM London Bankside, mainly so I could take photos as inspiration for our upcoming loft conversion!
• Leading a ‘brown bag lunch’ at City & Guilds on Open Badges with Bryan Mathers. Good turnout and even better Q&A.
• Going out for dinner/drinks with Chris Kirk, Jason McGonigle, Harry Kinloch, and Bryan Mathers,
• Breaking the screen of my Sony Xperia Z Ultra by putting it in the pocket of my bag and cramming it into a locker while I went swimming. I’m going to try and fix it myself.
• Releasing Episode 15 of Today In Digital Education, the podcast I record weekly with Dai Barnes. This week’s episode was entitled Gizoogle ya data.
• Plotting and planning some digital strategy stuff with Chris Kirk.
• Performing some visual thinkery around Open Badges with Bryan Mathers.
• Meeting up with Darshan Sanghrajka for coffee. He’s a fascinating and inspirational entrepreneur with a heart for social justice.
• Made chair of the C&G Open Badges Strategy Group. One of the first things I’ve done is to create a meta-level Trello board to track projects. I found this post on the Trello blog invaluable, and will be writing more on this soon.
• Reading Stoner by John Williams. It’s a melancholic but very moving novel. The writing is on a level with Paul Auster, if not beyond.
• Discussing my pension options with a financial advisor. I was slightly unnerved that I seemed to know more about my options than he did…
• Catching up with Steve Boneham and Andy Stewart. I’ve invited them to my super-secret Slack channel.
• Going for lunch with Jonathan Sanderson. We share a mutual friend in the shape of Vinay Gupta and met in the rather lovely Tyneside Cinema cafe.
• Writing an article for FE Week, planned with and illustrated by Bryan Mathers about technology and culture. I also wrote about Mozilla pushing on with Web Literacy Map v2.0.
• Thinking about how I’m going to structure my week post-September. It looks like I’ll have a day a week open for other clients. I’ve got a few things queued up, but get in touch if you’ve something for me to get my teeth into!

Next week I’m working from home on Monday/Tuesday, then down in London Wednesday to Friday. It’s TEDx Newcastle on the Sunday, which I’m looking forward to attending.