Month: November 2015

INCOMING: #BelshawBlackOps15 (Part 2)

Posted on November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 by Doug Belshaw

Every year, I spend a couple of months away from social media, personal email, and blogging. It’s an attempt to allow a different version of myself to take the limelight.

In past years, the months I’ve chosen to take off have been November and December. These months coincide with the nights drawing-in up here in Northumberland. In 2015, however, I’m experimenting with a small change; this year I chose August and December as my ‘months off’. While I’ve definitely found benefit in an single, uninterrupted eight-week stretch, my situation is slightly different this year.

In April, I left the Mozilla Foundation to set up Dynamic Skillset. While I was fortunate to have a lot of freedom over my working patterns at Mozilla, I’m now fully in control of my own schedule. It’s a wonderful feeling and one that I feel I’ve spent my career (so far) working towards.

The August experiment worked well. In fact, it was during August that, after consulting with family, friends, and a financial advisor, I decided to experiment with a four-day working week. It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions, but so far it’s been a revelation.

One day, I hope to be in a position to completely disconnect during my #BelshawBlackOps period. In financial terms, that would mean being able to support my family using the money I earn in just 10 months of the year. Things are going well, but that’s probably a while away yet — especially at four days a week!

As it is, during December I’ll still be available via my Dynamic Skillset and client email addresses. But I won’t be reading or replying to any personal email. Nor will I be writing anything for public consumption. And, perhaps most importantly, I’ll be off social networks.

From December 1st, for a month, I’ll be pausing my personal, published, digital output. This means no Thought Shrapnel weekly newsletter, no episodes of Today In Digital Education (TIDE), no posts or replies to comments here or on any other blog, and no replies to non-work emails.

Questions? Ponderings? You’ve still got a couple of weeks to put up with my digital detritus! Let me know your thoughts.

Image CC BY-NC Geraint Rowland

Weeknote 46/2015

Posted on November 14, 2015November 14, 2015 by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

Spending two days working in London, and one from home for City & Guilds. The rest was made up of meeting with people and preparing for a busy week next week.
Sending out Issue #193 of my newsletter, Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel. It featured links about, amongst other things, ad-blocking, podcasts, and… sausages! This month’s newsletters are in association with Dynamic Skillset.
Releasing Episode 30 (‘Private Badges’) of the Today In Digital Education podcast, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes. In this episode we discuss security and privacy on Android devices, the axing of ICT examinations in England, recent updates around Open Badges, and social media vs. reality!
Attempting to get into a state of nutritional ketosis after listening to this long (but life-changing) Tim Ferriss podcast. The initial plan was for my wife and I to fast from Friday lunchtime until Sunday dinner, while taking MCT powder. In the end, I managed to get to about 1.5 mmol/L in less than 24 hours but it was pretty hard and I didn’t get there by fasting!
Teaching this week’s session of Computing Club at my kids’ school. We continued with some Mozilla Thimble but I want to get them onto the Code.org Star Wars resources!
Pleased with an interview for AACE around digital literacies that came out when I was away.
Successfully taking a potentially-big City & Guilds project through pre-acceptance without any pushback. I was ably helped in this enterprise by Anup Chudasama, Harry Kinloch, Steven Rick, and Bryan Mathers.
Purchasing a lifetime subscription to Brain.fm (via a now-expired AppSumo deal). It claims to be ‘audio brainwave training to tangibly improve focus, relaxation & sleep’.
Speaking to around two hundred Year 10 (i.e. 14/15 year-old) pupils at a school on behalf of Dynamo North East. The focus was on careers in IT and, despite Ofsted being in and an inevitable tech fail, it went pretty well.
Trying to improve my operational security (‘opsec’) after reading this article. I’d already flashed my smartphone with CyanogenMod, turned on all the privacy settings, and removed all Google services/apps. You don’t have to go as far as me, but you should definitely read the Basic Android Security Setup guide.
Meeting with:
- several people at Newcastle University’s SOLE Centre. They’re interested in finding ways to badge the outcomes of self-organised learning environments, and more.
- various people at City & Guilds about badges.
- Graham Brown-Martin, for whom I always have a lot of time. He was kind enough to give me a copy of his excellent book, Learning {RE}imagined and took this great selfie of us at Shoreditch House.
- Eric Stoller, who only come onto my radar last year when he moved to the UK. We had an interesting conversation along with Bryan Mathers.
- Hung Lee from workshape.io, a great tech recruiting platform I’ve been telling everyone about.
- Harry Kinloch from City & Guilds. We went out for dinner and talked about life, the world, and everything.
- Craig Reid from North Tyneside Council about alternative routes into employment.
- Chris Stone who I bumped into yet again on the train home this week. He’s a great guy and I enjoy our conversations, despite only meeting a few weeks ago.
Going to Pilates again. I hadn’t been for a while and forgot how hard it is on your core muscles!
Confirming details around a (free!) workshop I’m running for EdLab on December 2nd in Manchester. It’s around digital skills and working openly with more information here.
Inaugurating ‘Slacking off’, a new Friday thing where some of us from my super-secret Slack channel hang out via appear.in to mark the end of the week. This week I hung out with Dai Barnes, Laura Hilliger, and Eylan Ezekiel for a bit and it was great!
Writing:
- The New Nepotism
- Why the future remains bright for Open Badges

Tomorrow (Sunday) I’m making the long journey on the train down to Worcester, where I’m speaking and running a workshop on digital literacies on Monday. Then I’m heading to London (via Birmingham). I’ll pop down to an event in Eastbourne with Bryan Mathers, go back to London, and then come home.

I’m looking forward to the work (as it’s interesting) but definite #sadface that I’m spending almost a whole week away from home.

The New Nepotism

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Doug Belshaw

Nepotism is a word which is ordinarily used pejoratively. That is to say, nobody wants to be accused of it.

nepotism, n. unfair preferment of or favouritism shown to friends, protégés, or others within a person’s sphere of influence.

The old version of nepotism was guilty of saying, “You’re my friend from the tennis club so I’m going to give you this unrelated opportunity”.

People were given jobs independent of aptitude or talent. It was all about connections and relationships within a very small network. It’s the reason sinecures were so common until the mid-20th century.

Nowadays we like to think we live in a meritocracy. Despite the modern origin of the word being satirical, we equate being meritocractic with ‘fairness’. We’re probably correct in that assumption.

However, the hiring practices this has led to are sub-optimal. I’m not sure there’s a single person who would design the system we’ve got if they were doing so from scratch.

Yes, it’s illegal in many jurisdictions to even ask on an application form about someone’s age, gender, race, or sexual orientation. This is a step forward for equality. Great! The really sad thing is that it often leads to bland mass of undifferentiated application instead of truly embracing diversity.

As a result, for better or worse, people have found ways to bypass stifiling recruitment practices. The New Nepotism says, “You’re my friend / former colleague from a previous project/organisation. We successfully created something awesome together, so I’m going to give you this related opportunity.”

I’m guilty of having received opportunities through New Nepotism. I’m also guilty of giving them. My point with this post is to say that we’ve got a twin-track system where one track is the direct result of the other. We look for colour and diversity through relationships that we’ve already established because CVs and application forms are so limp and lifeless.

Perhaps we could move beyond New Nepotism through a system like Open Badges? No two human beings are truly alike, so why should their credentials? As soon as we have a system that truly captures the value of people’s experiences, then we can hire based on talent and experience —rather than who you’ve already happened to work with and know.

Image CC BY-NC Andy B