Weeknote 44/2021
This week, I’ve been spending most of my time catching up with things I missed with and for Julie’s Bicycle during half-term. Laura and I have spent some time starting on digital strategy work for them, and I find it really interesting how we start working from opposite premises. Laura, quite rightly, points out that we/she has done this kind of stuff before, so pulls out something relevant, and remixes it into something awesome. On the other hand, I tend to start from first principles, and then pull in relevant bits from things around the web (including my own work) where relevant.
The good thing is that we end up combining our work to make something better than the sum of its parts. That’s why being part of a co-op and having colleagues as a consultant is so great. Talking of the co-op, we’ve been approaching funders after inviting Joe Roberson to our co-op day last month. The idea is that we’d partner with current or future clients on funding bids to, you know, make the world a better place. It turns out that we’re probably going to have to update our articles of incorporation to include an asset lock. So I’ve been asking the CoTech network for help.
Other than that, our intern Anne has done a great job chopping up the recording of our Badge Summit session for Keep Badges Weird last week. We’ve put them on our (updated!) YouTube channel. Please like and subscribe, etc.
Most weeks, I try and catch up with someone and see how they’re doing. But I forget to write about it here. So this week, I had a virtual coffee with Pedram Parasmand. I worked with Ped as part of a Catalyst project last year and, not only his he a very talented individual, he’s great fun. Separately, I had a good old chat with Gavin Henrick who I worked with at Moodle, but knew beforehand. In fact, he was the reason I went to work on MoodleNet.
The only other thing to mention is that I tried to go to several working group calls, webinars, and even the ePIC conference. But life got in the way a bit. Specifically, organising a Climate Café for neighbours this weekend, as well as making sure our son was OK. He had both the Covid vaccine and flu jab on Wednesday and had a bit of a reaction to them. Although his temperature had come down by Friday afternoon, he still had two days off school.
Last week, I mentioned that I was counting down the working weeks until the end of the year. So, of course, a client got back to me to say that they’d been successful in their bid to bring me over to the Netherlands to speak at the Dutch National Libraries conference, week beginning 13th December. This is actually awesome, as I really enjoyed my last visit over there and it’s an interesting structure, with the three-day conference taking place in three different locations!
I think I might take the first week of January 2022 off, instead. The beginning of the year tends to be reasonably quiet on the consultancy front anyway…
Next week, it’s work for Julie’s Bicycle and Participate, and then probably starting to plan for the Dutch National Libraries conference. I might work in a coffee shop a couple of times, as I did on Friday for the first time in 18 months!
Image based on an original photo CC BY Jeff Djevdet
