Weeknote 01/2017
I had a great hiatus and have begun the year fully refreshed and ready to get on with stuff. December is an important month for me each year, as it not only features my birthday and Christmas, but my self-imposed absence from usual routines means I get to reflect more deeply on who I am and what I stand for. I’ll write more about what that means in practice (if I don’t, nudge me!)
Anyway, this week has been a four-day week due to the public holiday in England on Monday. I’ve been:
- Re-connecting with people, both on Twitter and in our Slack channel. It’s been good to be away, but it’s also great to be back among familiar faces.
- Sending out Issue #240 of Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter. I’d considered changing the frequency of this, but I settled on just changing the layout and format a bit. It includes links to posts I wrote on other people’s sites during December.
- Selling lots of stuff on eBay, as I transition away from proprietary, locked-down stuff. Gone is my Chromebook Pixel (eBay), my Mac Mini (eBay), Sony Xperia Z3 Compact (to my son), and Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (to my wife). In their place I’m using a OnePlus One (as it has an unlocked bootloader), a bq Cervantes Touch Light (Linux-based, accepts SD card to store my DRM-stripped Kindle purchases), and my trusty Lenovo X220 Thinkpad until I decide which Linux laptop to get next…
- Putting together Badge News, a brand new, bi-weekly newsletter from We Are Open Co-op. It’s made possible thanks to some foundational sponsorship and includes the latest updates on the Open Badges specification, featured articles from the community, and details of upcoming events. The first issue went out today!
- Collaborating and planning with Educators Co-op for an upcoming webinar on badge platform/website design (16:00 UTC, January 16th).
- Testing out and finalising an automated Open Badges course that Laura Hilliger and I started after the We Are Open Co-op meetup in December. More on that soon — we don’t want to launch it at the same time as Badge News, as that would just confuse people. We’re also discussing the possibility of sponsorship for this, too.
- Attending the first community call of the Open Recognition Alliance.
- Discussing potential work with a UK government department. More on that soon, hopefully.
- Finalising plans for trips to Jersey, London (I’m at BETT on the Friday afternoon and Saturday), and Geneva over the next month. I’m hopefully heading to Canada towards the end of April, too.
- Changing the avatar I use online, as I do at the start of every year. You can see it on my Twitter account or start here page if you’re interested. Whereas the one I used in 2016 was ‘business Doug’, this one is ‘on top of a mountain Doug’. I also took the opportunity to update my description of what I do: “help people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology”.
- Writing:
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Announcing ‘Badge News’ — a bi-weekly newsletter for the Open Badges community (We Are Open Co-op, 4th January 2017)
- The trials and tribulations of being a digital parent (Discours.es, 2nd January 2017)
- Language creates space for conviviality (Discours.es, 2nd January 2017)
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Contemplation vs. distraction (Discours.es, 1st January 2017)
- Your smartphone works for corporations (Discours.es, 1st January 2017)
- I’m back! (Discours.es, 1st January 2017)
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Next week I’m at home for my grandmother’s and daughter’s birthdays. I’ve got plenty of stuff to get set up for this year, and from the week after I’m travelling every week for a few weeks.
I’m very much looking forward to this year! April will mark two years of my becoming a consultant, and 1st May will be the first anniversary of We Are Open Co-op. If you’ve got something that you think we might be can help with, please do get in touch! Email addresses below:
Image CC0 Neslihan Gunaydin
