Month: June 2015

Weeknote 25/2015

Posted on June 19, 2015June 27, 2015 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Publishing issue #178 of my newsletter, Things We Learned This Week. The awesome people at Think Associates are sponsoring June’s missives.
Spending three days in London due to a meeting on Monday afternoon. I stayed at the City Marque Clerkenwell serviced apartments (fast becoming one of my favourite places to stay).
Finalising an Open Badges 101 presentation for use internally in City & Guilds. Bryan Mathers and I are running a ‘brown bag lunch’ for staff next Tuesday.
Swimming – twice in London at Golden Lane and then once in Ireland. It can be meditative at times.
Releasing episode 14 of the TIDE podcast. Dai Barnes and I decided to call this one Foucault your edtech.
Meeting with Paul Bailey and Simon Whittemore from Jisc about learning analytics and, inevitably, Open Badges.
Making some recommendations around team collaboration for City & Guilds, building on this wiki page.
Buying an iPad Mini 2 (16GB cellular). I spotted it was £185 via HotUKDeals so it was almost rude not to buy. It’s partnered with this very smart cork case. I find an iPad mini pretty much the perfect conference device: battery life is amazeballs.
Attending Nesta’s Ready Player Two event as part of London Technology Week, which was great. Afterwards I had dinner at Pizza East in Shoreditch with Oliver Quinlan.
Participating in an invite-only Jisc Digital Capabilities event run by Helen Beetham where we got to play with pipecleaners! I enjoyed catching up with familiar faces such as James Clay (now at Jisc), Josie Fraser, and Sheila MacNeill.
Adding links to my discours.es blog.
Nipping home overnight on Wednesday/Thursday to see my wife and children.
Travelling to and keynoting the CELT conference in Galway, Ireland. Catherine Cronin‘s been saying I should come over for years so I was glad to have a chance to go. What a beautiful, friendly place! Many thanks to Iain MacLaren, Sharon Flynn, and the rest of the organisers for the warm welcome. I enjoyed the other keynote from Siân Bayne – especially the stuff on twitterbots! You can find my slides below:

Identifying, scaffolding, and credentialing skills in an ever-changing digital environment from Doug Belshaw

Travelling home Friday/Saturday via Dublin. I’m writing this on the wifi-enabled bus from Galway. In both places my accommodation is/was provided by Radisson Blu – always exactly what you need after travelling.
Writing:
- Three of the best people I’ve ever worked with…
- Important news for subscribers to my weekly newsletter

Next week I’m taking it a bit easier after three weeks of more intensive travel. I’ll be in London Tuesday/Wednesday as usual but otherwise working from home. I may also organise a family camping trip to Galway for August; the original plan of heading to the area around Parco Nazionale del Gargano and back in a week is looking slightly ambitious!

Three of the best people I’ve ever worked with…

Posted on June 18, 2015June 19, 2015 by Doug Belshaw

…were colleagues at Mozilla. Like me, they’re all doing their own thing now. It would be remiss of me not to point you in their direction, on the off-chance you’re not already aware of their work.

Laura Hilliger (@epilepticrabbit)

I’ve known Laura for a while as she wrote her Masters thesis on web literacy. She left her position as Education & Training Lead at Mozilla last week to pursue the next chapter of her career, explaining her move in this post.

Laura is an American living in Dresden, Germany. You should hire her to do anything learning related as she’s has the creativity and capacity to get anything done that anyone throws at her! She’s super-talented.

Laura’s LinkedIn profile

John Bevan (@bevangelist)

John seems to know everyone. It was kind of his job to do so when he was on the Engagement team at Mozilla, getting the word out and raising money. Since then, he’s been at Nesta, and he’s also worked for the BBC, The Guardian, Rewired State, you name it.

His current focus of attention is dotcomrades doing something about trade unions in the networked era. I went to the alpha launch event in London last week and he’s definitely onto something. Find out more and get involved via his blog post.

John’s LinkedIn profile

Kat Braybrooke (@codekat)

Kat is one of those people – like many I worked with at Mozilla – who defies categorisation. She’s talented technically, but driven by cultural endeavours and her sharp designer’s eye.

Leaving Mozilla in February, Kat upped-sticks from Vancouver and moved to London. She’s “taking on small contracts with value-based projects that aim to make the world a better place” and particularly interested in “web development, curriculum design, participatory research or community curation.” More about that in this blog post.

Kat’s LinkedIn profile

There’s so many talented people who have left Mozilla over the last year that this could have been a fairly long list. I wanted to point you towards Laura, John, and Kat as I think there’ll be some of you who could benefit from knowing them better.

As for me, I couldn’t be happier at the moment. I’m working primarily with City & Guilds around digital strategy and Open Badges, as well as the occasional workshop and keynote for other organisations. I’m designing a little bit more capacity into my schedule from September onwards, so if you’re interested drop me a line: [email protected] or let’s connect via my LinkedIn profile!

Easiest option

Belt and braces approach