Weeknote 33/2024
My wife and I are currently away to celebrate our wedding anniversary. While the actual date isn’t for a couple of weeks, logistics at the start of the school year dictates that it’s now or never. We haven’t gone far; we’ve left our eldest home alone, while our youngest is staying over with my parents.
The weather has started to feel autumnal this week, which is no great surprise, I suppose, given that we’re at the back end of August. We’re entering one of my favourite times of the year to go camping — although for various reasons (moving house, the weather, logistics) I didn’t go last year. I almost snuck out on Friday night, but it was ridiculously windy.
I published a fair amount this week. Here, it was all related to my Systems Thinking module TB871:
- Miscellaneous CSH stuff
- The ‘eternal triangle’ of systemic triangulation in CSH
- Systemic boundary critique in CSH
- Systems vs Reality in CSH
- Comparing CSH boundaries with SSM boundaries
Over at the WAO blog I also published the first post in a three-part series of An Introduction to Systems Thinking. Meanwhile, at Thought Shrapnel, I released the following onto an unsuspecting public:
- Begetting strangers
- The thorny problem of authorship in a world of AI
- Government and algorithmic bias
- ‘Meta-work’ is how we get past all the one-size-fits-none approaches
- Reimagining misinformation
- Where in the world is that shadow?
- Dark data is a climate concern
- There is no such thing as a life that makes sense
- Google Calendar illustration trigger words
- You get water from food as well, you know
- Tugging at metaphors
- You don’t need permission, you need advice
On the work front, we continued work on the JFF and IRC project around user research and evaluation of the latter’s Job Readiness Credential. I’ve mentioned this a few times, and so regular readers might be wondering what it looks like (click to enlarge):
We didn’t have a hand in designing the credential, and so there are some things which are coming out of the research with IRC staff, clients, and employers, that we expected — but also some things that we didn’t. As I always say: badges and credentials are a ‘trojan horse’ for organisational change and better-serving your audience.
We’ve been responding to some tenders this week, in one case organising a call for potential consortium partners. This went really well and, even if we don’t get that particular bit of work, it’s good to build relationships for the future. I also had an interview right after a migraine with Friends of the Earth about a potential ‘Greening AI’ research project. We should hear back about that last week.
One bit of work which is going ahead involves helping Skills Development Scotland for a few days as they think through how they might be able to use Verifiable Credentials with My World of Work. Hopefully that will lead to a longer engagement, as it’s a great use case.
Although we didn’t go to Colorado for The Badge Summit this year as we have in previous years, Anne did submit an updated version of her talk about how Open Recognition is a feminist practice to the Virtual Badge Summit. It’s well worth a watch.
Other than that, I’ve been sending my sister congratulations on her birthday, taking my son to work and my daughter to the opticians, running (~30km this week). I published my weeknote too early last week to mention that my son scored on his debut for his new football team, a brave header from a corner. As a defensive midfielder, he doesn’t score many, so it’s nice for him to have grabbed one.
I’ve got my next MSc assignment due in a couple of weeks’ time so I need to knuckle down for that. I haven’t treated this module the same as my previous one, taking the provided activities more as ‘suggestions’ than things I have to do. I’m still not sure what to do r.e. study after these two foundational modules, as I’m not keen to be studying over Christmas again. We’ll see.
Next week, it’s Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow and so a shorter working week. Our two teenagers start back at school halfway through the week after next, with my daughter starting high school, and my son going into his final-ever year of school. He’s currently thinking about Geography at university, but that may change.
Photo of Durham cathedral taken by me earlier today
