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Author: Maren Deepwell

Reclaiming Halloween Radio

Earlier this week I got to join the folk from Reclaim Hosting for a spooky radio extravaganza! Across a couple of different timezones and radio stations, Reclaim Radio and DS106Radio, we ROCKED the airwaves. I love radio as a medium to have fun for virtual teams. It’s super engaging, not screen based, it’s synchronous and at the same time gives everyone space to do other stuff whilst listening. It’s also, when you have a team…

Happy Hybrid Halloween… or the spooky side of virtual working.

It’s my third week as a hybrid organisation of one, and I am enjoying the new working routine! It’s very busy and also tiring to have so many new things to deal with each day, but it’s very much what I was expecting. What I am missing at times is of course the colleagues I have worked with for many years, and in a more abstract sense, a bit of fun and interaction that comes…

Step away from you screen…

… and come walk with me. How about a day along the windswept West Wales Coastal Path? The title image for this post is taken at the tip of the St David’s peninsula around this time of year. Let’s have a day buffeted by autumn winds surrounded by colourful heather, looking out to the endless horizon. I would love to have a day like that today. In reality, although that part of the Coastal Path…

Are you returning to the office, five days a week? The week in hybrid working click bait headlines…

This past week all my networks about hybrid and virtual working have been dominated by attention grabbing headlines from this year’s KPMG CEO Outlook survey: Most bosses think you’ll be back in the office 5 days a week within 3 years (Fortune) Two-thirds of CEOs think staff will return to office five days a week (The Guardian) Most executives expect a full return to the office by 2026 (The Times) These headlines are usually accompanied by…

The start of a whole new chapter: Day 1

Today is an exciting day. It’s the first Monday of the first week in which I am full-time in my new business. Maren Deepwell Coaching & Consultancy is now fully underway. Woohooo! It’s been a long time coming, and I didn’t really know what to expect from today. It feels a little strange not to return to the familiar busy inbox and long-time colleagues after returning from a two week holiday. Instead I sit at…

The story behind… Hybrid Working Habits

In this week’s podcast I share some of my personal history and how I came to be so interested in all things hybrid and virtual working. From Germany to London in my art school years, and from Athens to Oxford as my work moved from Art to Anthropology and then Education, this episode sets out what I think is interesting about hybrid and virtual working, why it’s important and why now is the time to…

There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary hack

This morning’s Memex 1.1, John Naughton’s Substack newsletter, including this quote by Dave Winer: “There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary hack.” and it feels like a great theme for my day today, which I am spending sorting through my own temporary hacks from the past 15 years. It’s my day to clean out my archive of files and emails at ALT, the last steps in a long handover process. Documents I filed away in…

Plant pace… moving through change

Yep, this is another post about houseplants… or rather things we can learn from plants. I’ve previously published leadership lessons from office plants and in the same spirit this post is all about houseplant inspired tips for managing a period of change or transition. It’s inspired by my own experience of moving between jobs this month and my adventures in caring for a growing collecting of plants in my home and home office. It’s the…