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“It’s About Time!” Introducing Synechism Ltd.

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I did something this Bank Holiday weekend that I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years: I registered a Limited Company with myself as sole Director.

Synechism Ltd.

Why now?

It’s not that I’m looking to leave my current employers in the short-term, it’s more to do with getting things in place for when I finish my doctoral thesis in July. I want to start working with people on interesting projects and setting up a company helps me do that in a straightforward way.

The new site for my business is at Synechism.com.

What kinds of projects?

The tagline of Synechism Ltd. is making connections, creating meaning. I’ve developed a modified version of the Hierarchy of Understanding developed by Briggs, et al. (2002) upon which I’ll be basing a lot of my work.

I’ve a wealth of experience from Primary and Secondary school level through to Higher Education, so the majority of my projects in the first instance shall be focusing on the education sector. However, through my work with businesses and third sector bodies in the last couple of years, I’ve realised how much they could also benefit from working in partnership.

The wonderful thing about the technologies available to us is that I can just as easily work on a project with someone in a different continent and different timezone as I can with those local to me. For example, a week ago I presented to a conference in Australia from the comfort of my study.

I’m looking for educational institutions, businesses and third sector bodies who are interested in the kinds of things I am – namely:

  • Models of learning
  • Digital and New literacies
  • Knowledge workflows
  • Productivity 2.0
  • Mobile learning
  • Open Educational Resources
  • Google Apps Education Edition

That doesn’t cover everything, but gives you a flavour of the kinds of connections and meaning-making I’m talking about.

I want to know more!

Great! Head on over to Synechism.com and click on the contact details. 😀

How I’m organising my digital outputs in 2011

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I had a fascinating Skype conversation with Amber Thomas, a JISC Programme Director. She mentioned the concept of liminality in reference to the ‘trajectory of ambiguities’ idea I’ve been writing about in my journal article. It struck me afterward that I need to firm things up a bit given that I seem to exist in somewhat of a liminal digital world.

So here’s what you’ll find me doing where in 2011:

Synechism

I’ll be writing, as usual, at dougbelshaw.com/blog about user outcomes (including: education, technology, productivity, leadership, design). I’ll be posting around 1-2 times per week and won’t be writing the ‘Things I Learned This Week’ series. It’s a shame, but it’s too much of a time-suck to justify.

Doug’s clippings

I’m going to be using dajbelshaw.amplify.com to clip things of interest I come across online, adding my thoughts as I go. These will be auto-tweeted and saved to delicious.com/dajbelshaw.

Twitter

I’ve cut back drastically on the number of people I’m following on Twitter (@dajbelshaw). It might be just me, but the signal/noise ratio seemed to decline sharply in 2010. I’ll be autoposting things from here and Amplify and using it for mainly work purposes.

Facebook

I thought I deleted my Facebook (http://facebook.com/dajbelshaw) account in mid-2008, but it turned out I simply deactivated it. It’s now re-activated and I’ve gone about removing almost all of my ‘friends’, cutting back sharply to just my immediate family and close contacts. If you’re not one of those, I’m afraid I’ll be ignoring your connection request. Sorry.

As Facebook is the most popular social network and because pretty much all my close contacts are on it, I need to know how to use it effectively. Facebook’s also a great way to organise events and get groups started (without necessarily having a direct connection to people). More on that later, although you can (and should) ‘Like’ this blog there already.

LinkedIn

My policy with LinkedIn (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/dajbelshaw) is simple: I need to know who you are, have dealt with you in a professional sense, and met you in person to connect with you. I’ll only waive the latter condition if you’re somebody I know really well online. It’s a professional, not a social, network.

Quora

I’m still experimenting with Quora (http://quora.com/Doug-Belshaw). Coming back to the notion of liminality, it’s a great example of what happens when boundaries are broken down as a result of new ways to connect to people. I really like the way it’s structured and it marries Yahoo! Answers with Digg and wiki-like functionality. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll connect with anyone on there. :-p

I’ve got more to discuss in terms of how I’m organizing things – especially related to academic stuff. This post covers just what others will see.

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