Weeknote 16/2017

This week I’ve been:

• Sending out Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely structured around education, technology, and productivity. Issue #254 was entitled ‘Eggistentialism’
• Travelling back from Devon. I flew down to spend Easter with my family, who had travelled down in the car to the in-laws while I was in Northern Ireland. We drove back together via London after climbing Haytor, eating lots of chocolate, and playing PS4 games.
• Upgrading my Oneplus One to LineageOS, a fork of the CyanogenMod project. That means I’m now running Android 7.1, so I can lock down my device even more than I could before! The only thing I don’t seem to be able to re-enable is shooting photos in RAW mode…
• Working with London CLC. I ran a two-hour workshop for them, which was focused on writing in networked spaces. I borrowed liberally from MailChimp’s excellent resource on Voice and Tone, as well as introducing the team to Telegra.ph, Write.as, Hemingway, Product Hunt, Betalist, Mastodon, and more!
• Preparing for my trip to Canada next week. I’m not packed yet, but there’s a level of mental preparation required for a 10-day trip away from home that covers three discrete ‘events’.
• Collaborating with my We Are Open Co-op colleagues, as well as Rosie Clayton, during our April co-op day yesterday. We invited Rosie along to get to know her better and to help us think through a Ufi bid we’re thinking of making. Read more here.
• Doing admin. <yawn>
• Answering questions about digital literacy from Sally Pewhairangi, a librarian from New Zealand. I blogged my responses here.
• Issuing more badges to those who have completed Badge Bootcamp, a self-paced email course for those new to Open Badges.
• Pondering many things, as I often do during holidays, including my (so-called) career, where we live, etc.
• Visiting my 93 year-old grandmother, who’s currently in hospital.
• Spending more time on Mastodon, the new(ish) Twitter-like network. I’m going to spend the month of May on there, as I think we need to spend time building decentralised, non-VC funded systems. I’ll just be posting blog posts and newsletter updates to Twitter. You can connect with me once you’ve signed up — I’m [email protected]
• Writing:
  • Skills in the Key of Life — We Are Open Co-op Day: April 2017 Edition (We Are Open Co-op blog, 21st April 2017)
  • Can digital literacy be deconstructed into learnable units? (Literaci.es, 21st April 2017)

Next week, I fly to Canada (via London) on Monday. I’ve got a meeting and wandering around Toronto on Tuesday, then I’m running a two-day ‘intensive collaboration’ with the Ontario MLN on Wednesday/Thursday. Between Friday and Sunday I’ll be at the Creative Commons Summit, before travelling on to Calgary.

Image CC BY Archangel12

I make my living helping people and organisations become more productive in their use of technology.  If you’ve got something that you think I might be able to help with, please do get in touch! Email: [email protected]