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Category: leadership

The joy of not working.

This month I am taking a proper break from work for the first time since I started working on a self-employed basis full-time. I love running my own micro-business, but when it comes to taking holidays it’s not yet working for me. I find myself fretting about work and checking emails or committing to things because of my clients’ schedules and as a result taking a complete break from work hasn’t happened so far. Now…

Twenty years of blogging… now on ReclaimPress

I recently shared that as part of my work with Reclaim Hosting, I had the privilege to talk with Bryan Mathers and Meredith Huffman about the story behind ReclaimPress and as a result there’s a case study all about ReclaimPress on Reclaim the blog, that is definitely worth having a look at (I wrote it, so I might be a little biased, but hearing from Bryan and getting a healthy dose of his creative genius…

WiAL Webinar: My Leadership Journey

The ASCILITE’s Women in Academic Leadership Initiative aims to provide mentoring opportunities for academics and brings together its members via a community approach to support each other to progress in academia. Thanks to a recent invitation to speak at an upcoming WiAL webinar, I have started to think about my journey as a leader and what I could usefully share with this group of inspiring and aspiring academic leaders. My story, like so many of…

Open leadership in practice: Unsung hero skills

Recently, I have done much work in leadership development. Both in the workplace and when I coach clients, I come across emerging and established leaders who have developed strengths and skills gradually over time, whether through informal learning or through practice or also outside of work. Especially where skills have come easily, grown over a period of time or when we have learnt something just for fun, these are often overlooked in favour of those…

Behind the scenes of Digital Leadership

‘Digital Skills for Emerging Leaders’ is a new micro-credential course from the Digital Learning Institute that I am working on together with the amazing Lynne Taylerson. It’s a super project to be involved in, and it’s extra special for me as I get a change to collaborate with Lynne outside of our other favourite project: AmplifyFE. Usually we work on this kind of project at a distance, using the kind of digital skills we talk…

Six months of gold dust.

Today feels like a milestone day. The clock’s have changed here in the UK, it’s the last day of the first quarter of the year… spring is underway (if still a lot wetter than I’d like) and I am freshly returned from an inspiring week in Cork at the OER24 Conference. It’s also been six months now since I started working in my new ventures, over a year since my departure from ALT was announced……

OER24: Blogging is the way… open is the way

I am still in Cork, Ireland, as I write this post, feeling both tired and elated after a wonderful week at the OER24 Conference. My first time attending the conference as a delegate was a great experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The Co-Chairs, Dr Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin and Dr Tom Farrelly from the host institution Munster Technological University (MTU). led a fantastic effort together with ALT’s team headed up by Kerry Pinny, and the…

Finding my podcast voice

It’s been 18 months since I first launched my podcast, and this academic year I have stepped up the pace with a new episode every week. 65 episodes later… I still enjoy the process of making the podcast and it’s been very, very useful for my professional practice. It’s also a (for me still relatively) new way to sharing my work and I have tried to find the right tone in this medium, tried to…

5 months into re-inventing Mondays

Here is a snap-shot of today, 5 months into re-inventing Mondays: This morning, a Monday morning, I woke up around half six. I got up, we had tea and the dogs had their breakfast. Around 8am I headed out with the dogs and for a change it wasn’t raining. We did a 5km route, down the river and back again. Not many people were out, but we said hello to the runners and cyclists we…

4 months into re-inventing Mondays

Time has flown by. It feels like only a moment ago that I was blogging about being 3 months into my career transition… and here we are, having passed the four month mark. Looking back at my previous posts on this topic has inspired me to share some updates about how things are going, how much my efforts to re-invent Mondays are bearing fruit and how free-lance life is treating me. In case you missed…