Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Newsletter, November 2026

    Newsletter, November 2026

    Hello again!

    This month I am looking forward to my keynote at the Ascilite Conference in Brisbane, continuing my work with GO-GN and a new Reclaim case study, which comes out later this week!

    If you work in Open Education, please complete the GO-GN Impact Survey – thank you!

    I can’t quite believe it’s November already. Time is really flying past, and I am grateful indeed that that I had the opportunity to catch up with some of my favourite people at the ALT Conference in Cardiff last month, complete with shoe tweets, stickers and fab conference radio.

    My diary for 2027 is starting to fill up, so reach out if you’re thinking about coaching or consultancy work with me in the new year, or just want to say hi, email hello@marendeepwell.com .

    Fresh podcast episodes

    Find us on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Castsor via RSS Feed .

    Recent blog posts

    Have a good month… and as always, thank you for reading.

  • Without you, it wouldn’t have happened.

    Without you, it wouldn’t have happened.

    Earlier this week, Patrick Stewart died, and I was absolutely devastated. Patrick Steward’s Captain Picard was a huge part of my childhood and I have blogged many times about how much he, and Star Trek – The Next Generation more generally, inspired me in my life and my work. Being a late Gen X-er, I am firmly in camp Star Trek, not Star Wars.

    There’s so much else Patrick Stewart achieved and inspired in his life, it feels a little callous to mourn him most as Captain Picard, but in my life, this figure mattered more. His calm, quiet, humane example of leadership inspired me throughout my life. He is definitely a (fictional) figure, about whom I feel that he is an essential part of my personal mythology. Without him, I wouldn’t be quite the same person.

    Fortunately, later in life I met real people who inspired me, and without whom, I feel things wouldn’t have happened in the same way. Luckily for me, quite of few of these pivotal relationships continue in some form, even if the cadence of our conversations has shifted. My mentor Margaret, for example, became a friend.

    Margaret was my first proper coach and mentor, and we had several conversations that shaped the future of my career. I have recently thought a lot about those special conversations, those moments when you have an idea or a realisation or someone says something that really stays with you… and things are never quite the same again.

    Since I have started working as a coach and mentor myself, I have had a few people come up to me and tell me that something that we talked about or something we did together made a difference to them. That I was part of such a pivotal moment for them, a moment that made a difference, a moment without which things wouldn’t have happened in quite the same way.

    It’s a deeply humbling experience, and immensely rewarding, to feel that you made a difference to someone, helped something happen.

    Also, I realise now what Margaret meant when she said that she didn’t do anything, and that it was all me. What I took for her natural modesty was instead a truth I couldn’t see at the time: namely that it was all me. Just as I can see how my coaching clients or mentees make it all happen themselves. It is their energy and drive that makes it happen.

    I am there for the moment, the moment in which they realise that they can. And that moment is what really matters. After that, they just do it all by themselves.

    So, thank you, Patrick Stewart, for giving me a Captain Picard who was there for some of those moments for me. I will forever be grateful.

  • 100% human made.

    100% human made.

    One of the joys of being a pen pal is that I sometimes get a real surprise in the post. This happened this week, when I received a thick, promising envelope all the way from Hawaii, from fellow coach, artist and friend Wendee.

    The letter contained a mini personal newsletter for friends and pen pals, a print and was beautifully decorated with stickers. I loved it!

    Photo of a pen pal letter
    Wendee’s newsletter and beautiful art print.

    Being a pen pal is a great way to connect and keep in touch, particularly when the occasional Zoom call doesn’t really bring the same level of connection and joy.

    There’s also something inherently person about handwriting and addressing an envelope, and Wendee included at the end of the letter the following phrase: … “this 100% human made adventure”… and that made me both smile and pause.

    I felt it was poignant to emphasis the handmade nature of the communication (and also made me wonder about something I hadn’t considered before, which is just how many family or holiday cards and newsletters now are no longer 100% human made. To me, it’s a sad thought).

    I have considered for some time to make a kind of badge that I might add to this blog in future, emphasising that this, too, is a space free of blog posts written by an algorithm.

    So much of my life is made by hand, so I don’t think I will. Otherwise everything I make and create would have to have a sticker, and that would feel odd.

    I am deeply grateful that the art of letter writing continues to be alive and kicking, and this evening, Halloween, a few small hand-carved pumpkins flicker brightly in the darkness, whilst I write letters to friends far away.

    Happy Halloween!

  • Shoe tweets, radio, running… #altc26

    Shoe tweets, radio, running… #altc26

    This year the ALT Conference happened in Cardiff, my adopted hometown, and I simply couldn’t miss it!

    It’s been a while since I managed to attend an ALT Annual Conference, and I’ve blogged before about how it feels to return and I also shared a preview of my conference leadership workshop.

    If you’d like to learn more about my session, then take a look at the info and slides at the end of this post 🙂

    Conference Run

    Early morning at the River Taff, where our run started.

    As part of my contribution to the Conference Committee, I volunteered to help organise a local run the morning of the event. This was a really fun activity led by Megan, one of the Conference Co-Chairs, and I was glad to be involved.

    Of course, it was raining and still pretty dark as I made my way to the West Gate of Bute Park to meet the group, but we had a fun round taking in the river, the Secret Garden cafe, the Welsh Royal College of Music and the Cardiff Castle! By the time we got back, we were ready for the conference 🙂

    Conference radio

    Life is busy these days, so I was only able to attend one day of the event in person. Which is why I was doubly glad and grateful to have the amazing Thursday Night Show Radio crew broadcasting altc radio!

    I listened to the schedule for most of Tuesday, and enjoyed is massively. Big kudos to Dom Pates and all of his special guests, and to the conference team for keeping the conference radio spirit alive.

    Conference shoe tweets

    In the run up to the conference I had a lovely catch up with Simon, the other co-chair, and we only realised afterwards that we missed a great opportunity to an “all brogues” shoetweet.

    It’s been years since the days of conferences shoe tweets… and I miss it! So I set out to the event ready to take those show photos. Thankfully plenty of lovely folk were game, and before we knew it, we were conferencing like it’s 2017!

    It was such a joy for me to take part in the event, and the best part was no doubt to catch up with lots of colleagues in person!

    I also went to plenty of inspiring sessions, and learnt a lot along the way, and the best bit was to see so much excellent work happening across the community.

    Conference moment – Image taken by Puiyin 🙂

    My #altc26 workshop

    Inspired by the conference theme “Digital Ecosystems for Lifelong Learning”, this workshop offers a reflective and practical approach to developing digital leadership capabilities for managers and leaders.

    Slide deck with resources and references

    A snapshot of getting my conference materials ready.
  • Help the GO-GN Penguins!

    Help the GO-GN Penguins!

    If you have worked in Open Education for the past ten years or more, you will have met the GO-GN Penguins!

    Whether you have seen them tumble out of the research methods handbook, help promote the fabulous work of GO-GN doctoral researchers or followed their adventures to Open Education conferences across the globe, the GO-GN penguins have done much to help promote Open Education research, policy and practice.

    Now they need YOUR help!

    I am working with the fabulous GO-GN team to collect evidence of the impact of GO-GN and we’d love to hear from everyone who has made use of a GO-GN resource, been to an event, joined as a member or even become an alumni.

    Please complete the survey and help us spread the word.

    Complete the survey

    To learn more, read the official announcement from GO-GN

    Tell us about your experience of GO-GN!

    Over the next few months we will reach out to everyone in the GO-GN community to hear about your experience of our network, starting with the GO-GN Impact Survey. We are keen to hear what works well, how we have made a difference and what more we might do in the future to grow our network and expand our reach.

    Why are we doing this?

    GO-GN has achieved much in the past decade. As our network continues to grow, we want to ensure we understand what’s working and how we could do even better. We also want to celebrate what has been achieved across our community and reach a wider audience for our research and publications.

    Sharing your feedback about GO-GN will directly inform our sustainability plan and support GO-GN’s future development.

    What’s involved?

    From September 2026 into spring 2027 we are running an evaluation of all our core activities, including our membership offering, events and publications. We have appointed an external lead, Dr Maren Deepwell, who will work closely with the GO-GN co-ordination team. We will be reaching out to everyone in the GO-GN network to contribute.

    How to contribute

    Take part in this 15-minute survey to help us evaluate the impact GO-GN has had on our members and alumni, the wider network and the open education community.

    Complete the survey

    Whether you are new to GO-GN, the Global Open Graduate Network, in the middle of your doctorate, involved as an alumni or joined us as an expert or friend, we want to hear from you!

    Visit the original post on the GO-GN blog

  • Blogging my way into the new season

    Blogging my way into the new season

    It’s autumn and I have a lot to blog about. I haven’t yet published my usual mid-year look back at the posts I have published so far this year. Instead, I’m keen to chart what’s on my mind to blog about.

    Some of these might find their way into a post, some might not. The purpose of this post is to record my thoughts, empty my mental list of topics and enjoy the process of blogging.

    Here goes:

    • Evergreen posts: I am NOT a fan of not including dates on posts, and yet more and more themes automatically omit this information. Partly, apparently, to make readers feel that posts remain current and also to aid a clean, minimalist look, but I imagine mostly for other reasons. I have lot of thoughts on this in terms of open knowledge sharing, accountability, being able to reference posts and so forth.
    • Reading adventures: My love for reading is constant, but my habits do change and this year what I’ve been reading has shifted thanks to joining a local book club which only reads Welsh authors/stories. That in turn has inspired me to revisit books I read when I was younger and re-read them to see how they land with me now. I have a few authors in particular in mind, including Stefan Zweig, Jospeh Mitchell, Flannery O’Connor and Mary Oliver.
    • Georgia Ruth: A few weeks ago I went to a very unique musical event with Georgia Ruth, a Welsh artist whose music and book I really, really like. It was a local venue, a converted church that featured not only a graveyard but also a pizza oven (my ideal combination!) and Georgia Ruth performed solo with her harp.
    • 3 years at Reclaim: Thanks to Slack I realised it’s been three years since I first started working as a consultant with Jim and the team at Reclaim, and it’s been such a joy to me to have not only such lovely people to work with, but also many different projects, from podcasts to productivity tools, and from conference organisation to industry case studies. I was a big fan before we started working together and I am still a big fan now.
    • Reclaim case studies: I also want to blog about working on two case studies over the summer, based on interviews with the teams behind two stunning projects, which inspired me greatly and which show so clearly how open web projects can not only survive but thrive in our age of automation.
    • Ascilite conference prep: I’ve started to prepare for my keynote in Brisbane next month (and I can’t quite believe I am REALLY going) and it’s made me look back at just how long Ascilite has been part of my professional life. I think it’s been about 20 years, and maybe an open journal project I worked on for ALT back when I first started.
    • Music is hope: I love Ted Lasso, and inspired by the “Football is Life” I want to blog about how listening to new music gives me hope about the world. I used to listen to my favourite music and albums over and over again, and even with the advent of playlists I never used to stray far from my favourite decade(s). This changed when I married a man who not only loves music but also collects vinyl. He inspired me to listen to new artists and discover bands and records I love, and who are creating new music now. It REALLY means a lot to me that artists are making albums now that I love as deeply as I loved records when I was 17. Music is hope.
    • Autobiography project: I am thinking about writing down what I can remember of my first decade in the UK. I have hardly any photos of that time, 1997-2007, and I am curious what I can recall and piece together. I am not envisaging that to be a public undertaking, but it could be a fun personal project for next year.
    • My dad. He turns 85 later this year and I have blogged about his legacy and influence on my life before, and I have more I want to reflect on.

    Ooooooops. That’s turned into a longer list than I had expected. Clearly I have more to blog about than I had thought. Must get to it 🙂