Month: October 2021

I’m composing this from bed, a privilege afforded to me by both being on holiday and it being ‘blackout weekend’ for youth football. In a surprising breakout of common sense, the FA have decided that it might be a good idea to have a week when families aren’t ferrying their kids to matches and can, instead, go and do other things.

We’re heading off to Scotland later today. In a weird quirk of geography, we’re going no further north than where we live in Northumberland, but instead heading due west to Dumfries & Galloway for a few days. I had less work to do than I expected on Friday, so ended up creating a custom Google map of destinations we could go to — indoors and outdoors.

---

This week’s involved a mixture of work, meaning I’ve been context-switching a bit. With Julie’s Bicycle I was helping them finish off an Arts Council England funding bid, and screening the last applicants for the now-closed Product Lead position. They’ve had some great applicants, so will have a difficult decision to make.

Laura’s back from holiday and I think she may be glad that she spent some time away but also that she’s no longer surfing Poseidon’s rage tears. Together we worked on the Keep Badges Weird project for Participate, something which we’re running a session on at next week’s Badge Summit. It’s going to be great.

Other than that, we had our monthly WAO co-op day to which we invited Joe Roberson to discuss collaborating on relevant funding bids. We know Joe through our work with Catalyst over the last 18 months, and he had some smart things to say about our organisational structure (do we need an asset lock?) and about approaching funders.

Laura and I also met with Catalyst and Dev Society to figure out how to form a coalition to help cohorts of charities supported by the Charities Aid Foundation. We also recorded the latest version of our podcast with guest Kudzayi Ngwerume.

---

Away from work, I was discharged by the physio after two sessions as I’m doing my exercises properly to repair my shoulder. I think I damaged it using the Smith machine incorrectly about six months ago, but it’s getting a lot better.

I’m collaborating with a neighbour to run Morpeth’s first-ever Climate Café next month, and we met again to figure out logistics. We’re inviting neighbours and their friends/family to the first one, so we’re expecting no more than 20 people at the local youth centre. As we’re both educators by training, we have to actively suppress over-facilitating it, which I think we’ll manage. It’s not for a couple of weeks, so we’ve still got plenty of time to over-think things…

---

I didn’t write anything on this blog this week, but published several things at Thought Shrapnel. I’d encourage everyone to read either my overview, or the original article by Anne Helen Petersen about fall regression. You won’t regret it.

• Brand-safe influencers and the blurring of reality
• Psychological hibernation
• Twitter acknowledges right-wing bias in its algorithmic feed
• Otters vs. Possums
• What are microcredentials?
• Walking the Covid tightrope 
• Kith and kin
• Bring Your Own Stack
• Fall Regression

This morning I was exploring various blogs via 250kb.club and ended up navigating to a fantastic post by Nathan Toups entitled nonparticipation. I can’t prioritise writing a separate post about it before going away on holiday, but I’ve already read it out in full and discussed it briefly with our teenage son. Lots to ponder.

---

Next week, then, I’m on holiday. Several days in Scotland with the family, a brief appearance in the evening at a conference (it’s Whisky Wednesday, so I will have one in hand), and then some time at home for tinkering. After that, I’ve only got the month of November and the first week of December left to work of 2021.

Those who read my last weeknote will not be surprised to learn that I haven’t slept that well this week. Sleep is the most foundational of what I usually refer to as ‘the three pillars of productivity’ along with exercise and nutrition, so it’s had a knock-on effect on the amount of exercise done and my overall output. I’ve also got a slight cold. These things multiply in their effects. Stupid slug.

Despite this, I spoke at Israel EdTech Week in conversation with Shir Boim Shwartz, Director of Innovation and R&D at the Center for Educational Technology (CET). I’ve known Shir a while, and a couple of years ago helped design and was the ‘face’ of a MOOC on digital literacies for teachers in Israel. It’s pretty awesome how things pan out when you work openly: recently I’ve noticed a lot of traffic from Kazakhstan to my website. Low and behold, The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies is being used as a course text at the national university!

I also recorded some audio with Tamás Harangozó for the European Basic Skills Network’s EPALE podcast on digital literacies and Open Badges. I’m never sure these days whether what I say is insightful, or the equivalent of Grandpa Simpson shouting at clouds. Probably a bit of both.

---

It was Hannah’s birthday this week. She’s 69 days older than me, so being the loving and lovely husband I am, I tend to use this period of time between our birthdays to make comments about how I can’t imagine being as old as [however old she is]. I’m hilarious, I know.

There are three things that we both enjoy doing on our respective birthdays: walking, eating, and drinking. We take each other’s birthdays off work to pursue these activities and, for Hannah’s birthday this year, we ended up in Whitley Bay and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We did about 25,000 steps and ate and drank a lot. It was great.

---

Most of my work this week has been with Julie’s Bicycle. As Laura was still away, puttering around the Mediterranean, it’s up to me to advise the joint MD’s on digital strategy. I’ve also been screening candidates, asking questions in interviews, and providing technical input into a funding bid they’re currently preparing.

I had another interview with Open Climate Fix, but it became clear to me about halfway through that, although they’re doing important work, the hole they’re trying to fill is not Doug-shaped. I should hear back either way from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) this week.

---

On the writing front, I published Blogging from localhost to IPFS here, and the following over at Thought Shrapnel:

• Reducing long-distance travel
• Time millionaires
• On the digital literacies of regular web users
• Leisure is what we do for its own sake. It serves no higher end.
• UK government adviser warns against plans to force the NHS to share data with police forces
• Sports data and GDPR
• Precrastinators, procrastinators, and originals
• Why commute to an office to work remotely?
• On ‘sportswashing’
• On the dangers of CBDCs
• Subsidising trains via a tax on internal flights?

I’m quite interested in pursuing blogging via IPFS, but need to find a better workflow. I guess it makes sense for my posts about decentralisation to be available in a decentralised way, although experience tells me instead of spinning up another blog I should be applying Occam’s Razor.

---

Next week, Laura’s back and we’ve got some podcast recording and general work planning to do in a co-op half day we’ve got scheduled. Then I’m taking half-term off, as we’ve booked an Airbnb in Dumfries & Galloway for a few nights. I’ll still be involved in the Badge Summit session we’ve got planned with Participate around our ‘Keep Badges Weird’ project, but otherwise taking it easy.

---

Image based on a photo from Ouseburn, looking along the River Tyne towards the Baltic and the bridges that join Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Gateshead.