Author: Maren Deepwell

Organising a Conference of Firsts

It’s been a lot of fun to be part of the team behind Reclaim Open last week. I love the buzz that comes with delivering an event months in the planning, especially when there’s so much innovation in the mix. In this post I share some reflections on the process behind the scenes, but first… you might ask why go a different path when it comes to online events? There are plenty of tried and test formats, platforms and services out there, so there’s no real need to re-invent the format yet again. Or is there?

Tailored format: A first amongst firsts

Reclaim Open has always been a creative, one of a kind conference, celebrating many firsts in its inspiring history. So it feels only fitting that this year’s format followed in the footsteps of firsts and broke new ground taking the conference online, onto a blog near you, to DS106Radio, to the game table, the quiz, the keynote panel and student showcase. It’s a privilege when you work in a community of digital educators that you *can* push things into a new direction and still take enough people with you to make it work.

Likewise, working in a small team with lots of competing priorities and limited resources always brings out the best in conference planning to my mind, because you focus on what you really, really want to do for and with your participants, rather that rehashing things just because you’ve done them before.

Jim and I have a running joke about conferencing firsts, and I feel it’s certainly time to sing it one more time: “We did it again.”

Blog-A-Thon

We started the event with twelve hours of blogging, with a post being published on the hour, every hour. It was fabulous, and offered space and time for conversations to develop, for connections to be made.

As with every format that you invent on the fly, there were some minor practical issues in the first hour or two, but after a little while everyone got into the stride of the Blog-A-Thon and the chat bloomed. It brought back memories of amazing conference formats like PressED, and TAGSExplorer Twitter-hashtag conversations, and reminded me precisely why it can be so much fun to work on the open web. Swapping rss feeds and blog roll links was in full swing by the time the first afternoon rolled around, and the community of practice group was very active alongside new faces and first time participants.

Digitals virtuosity

Switching between formats, moving from radio to website, and from webinar to game show takes A LOT of doing. It only works because the team behind the event has the highest level of digital skills, confidence and tech set up.

Briefing staff in whatever format you use to ensure speakers get the support they need and have a good experience is one of the most crucial things about online conference delivery in my experience, and it’s hard enough when your are using one platform to do everything. It becomes a lot more demanding when you switch between formats, managing dozens of speakers across time zones, from single individuals with slides to group plenaries that host 8 speakers simultaneously.

Big kudos to everyone involved for upping their game!

It takes heart

In this age of AI and digital abundance it’s easy to loose heart, to feel that one’s voice doesn’t really matter, especially if what you are interested in goes against the dominant narrative. It takes a lot of heart to make your voice heard above the noise, and one of my hopes for the conference was that it would deliver a much needed dose of inspiration and encouragement to everyone participating – and wow, it really did!

Bonnie Stewart’s keynote was simply awesome and helped open up that conversation during the event, and is definitely worth re-watching and is the student showcase that brought together four very different, innovative projects and opened up the keynote stage to emerging voices from the open web.

… and my session

If you’d like to take a closer look at my own session, then listen to last week’s podcast episode in which I explain a bit about the back story and share highlights from my session. Thanks to Bryan Mathers for the awesome illustration:

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10/11/2025
Conference post #ReclaimOpen25
I’m taking part in the Reclaim Open Conference this week, and my contribution is for the blog-a-thon. If you’ve landed on my blog for the first time, howdy! Welcome!

I’ve been blogging here since 2008 and I also send out a free monthly newsletter and host a podcast about hybrid working and leading in distributed organisations. I work as a consultant and coach with non-profits and small organisations, mainly in education and technology.

If you are a returning visitor, great to see you!

Here is my conference post in full, and a big THANK YOU to Bryan Mathers who captured the visual thought for the session and created this lovely image that now heads up the post!

Blogging as a professional practice superpower

A really common issue for leaders in Higher Ed and elsewhere is worrying about “is it just me who is struggling with this?”. When everyone works from home and all you see is a carefully curated or blurred background with a professional, well-groomed headshot framed by a flattering camera angle, it can be hard to get a sense of how others are coping day to day and easy to feel that you are the only one who is struggling.

I think this is where blogging can not only help, it can become a professional practice superpower.

Open practice in a leadership position is different from sharing things like new publications, or blogging about exciting projects. Many professionals in leadership roles maintain public profiles or a web presence like a blog. What I’m interested in is not necessarily about having a blog, but about the practice of blogging in itself.

The process of getting whatever you want to say in a post and press publish.

It’s about the joy of blogging, the sheer exuberance of having a space, a domain, to make your own. A vault or a personal archive as I’ve blogged about before.

It opens up a space to share the practice of leading, of managing people, not just the end results – and the reflective space it opens up can be incredibly powerful.

There are however some barriers to blogging, especially in a leadership role. When you are everyone’s boss, it’s not always easy to maintain an authentic space on the open web. So I use a couple of strategies to blog about my professional practice, specifically:

Choose a format that works: I vary how and where I blog, from my main WordPress site to voice recordings.

Modify how openly to share: from public, to semi-private to fully locked-down depending on topic.

Keep a list for the long term: I could use a tool to track projects, publications and other activities for me, but there’s great value for me in the act of processing what I have done and reflecting on it as I make and update the list.

To conclude, I also want to share one more strategy that I have found particularly useful over the years, which is to engage in conversational blogging, or co-leadership conversations. There are a range of conversational approaches that I have used to create the space needed to reflect together and blogging can be a great tool for that, too.

Thanks for reading my contribution to Reclaim Open 🙂

More to read and listen to:
04/11/2025
Co-Leadership: Fruits of Collaboration

At the moment, there are a lot of senior leaders moving jobs, either switching to new organisations, moving to a new sector or setting up their own businesses. Many of the clients and communities I work and connect with are thus having to navigate change at the most senior level, and get through transitions in leadership and out on the other side again.

Whilst these types of transitions are never easy, they also bring opportunities to re-imagine what leadership might look like and I am excited to see more organisations exploring less traditional models of leadership, including co-leadership models. Sharing the responsibility of leadership has many advantages, such as two individuals combining their strengths and skills to lead an organisation, resulting in better decision-making and accountability. It’s also a wise strategy for small organisations, especially non-profits, who need to create a more resilient leadership model, and manage risk.

From a personal perspective, having served in my first CEO role for over a decade in a solo capacity, I think one of the great advantages of co-leadership is that it can make it much less lonely, offering support and trust for each co-leader, and hopefully leading to less burnout and more collaborative decision making.

One of the areas in which this can be more challenging however is building relationships with staff and members of the board. Especially when times are as uncertain as they are just now, leading change and bringing people with you requires a lot of personal investment, it requires trust and close communication, which means that you need to spend more time on how you get the job done, not only on getting it done. There are a range of conversational approaches that I have used to create the space needed to do just that, including senior team days (in person and virtual), walking conversations and joint blogging.

If you’re exploring co-leadership approaches, get in touch. I’d love to hear about your experiences. If you are just getting started or looking for fresh inspiration, you might be interested in the podcast episodes below.

Listen to co-leadership conversations

One of my favourite interviews to record was this conversation with Marcela Morales and Igor Lesko, Co-Directors of Open Education Global:

I loved learning more about a co-leadership model they use to run their organisation and how they approach open leadership. It was especially interesting to hear about sharing documents and folders, as an example of very practical ways of embedding openness in their operations. This seemingly small gesture is transformative and symbolises the way they set an example as leaders.

There are a number of episodes from the past two years that focus on co-leadership and collaborative approaches, including the episode that kicked off the trend, with long term collaborator and colleague, Martin Hawksey, in which we revisit our long term project blogging about leading virtual teams.

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29/10/2025
#ReclaimOpen25 Here we come!
It’s nearly time for Reclaim Open, and it’ll be my first time taking part in this special conference. You can read all about the conference on the Reclaim Blog, or take a look at the documentary that premiered at the last Reclaim Open. Taylor Jadin shared this with me recently and I LOVED watching it.

About the video: As Reclaim Hosting welcomes its 10th year, we’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the principles that got us here. Namely, the open web. The Reclaim Open conference is all about that concept, and we want to capture it in as many meaningful and lasting ways as possible. We don’t want this documentary to only capture Reclaim’s thoughts on the open web, but to invite and include the amazing community joining us here to document their own perspectives and stories about this topic.

What I’m most looking forward to (many things)

There is A LOT to look forward to… so in no particular order:
- I’m excited to see the student showcase of the winners of the Reclaim Student Competition
- There’s the opening keynote by Bonnie Stewart, with the theme “Rewilding voice in a time of enclosure”
- Also on the plenary schedule is a panel hosted by Jim Groom “On Writing” and as an avid listener/viewer of this series I am especially looking forward to that
- Not to forget is the amazing artwork created by Bryan Mathers (including the images in this post) and seeing those come to live
- There are a host of social sessions around the DS106 Daily Create, an Open Education board game and the intriguing sounding “An Archivist goes to the Playground – Exploring and Describing Chicago Park Playgrounds” as well as “Improvising the future of digital storytelling”
- I am excited to read “My website is a junk drawer” and also “Lessons from Rewilding Landscapes… in the Wild”
In short, there is not much of the three days I am not looking forward to. And of course there’s also the people to connect with, to chat and share inspiration.

My session (is a blog post)

As I am mainly working with the team delivering the conference I didn’t want to present live as well. Luckily the first day of the conference is in a new format, a blog-a-thon, and so I made a submission in the form of a blog post for that instead. If you are wondering what’s involved, here is an explainer to get you started – but one of the joys of working with the team and trying out new things is that whilst we do have a plan, we don’t exactly know all the details up front and there’s a certain level of winging it involved 😉

I decided to submit a blog post about blogging (of course), specifically about blogging as a superpower in professional practice. My session will be on 4 November and you should check out the full schedule to explore keynote speakers, as well as other presenters and bloggers.

Join in!

Register now to join in, November 4-6, as this wonderful community comes together on the open web, via federated social networks, on the radio and on a blog near you. This is one event you don’t want to miss.
22/10/2025
Year 3. BOOM.

This month marks the anniversary of my business, and there is much to celebrate, and to be grateful for!

Patterns new and old

Once of the things I’ve noticed a lot this year is different patterns: first in terms of how I work, and how my activity is distributed across the year, and also in terms of what I like to do and how my curiosity shapes the work I do. One of the ongoing tasks this year has been to record my work and update my CV more regularly, and that’s given me an interesting perspective on how I return to similar interests, and also how a narrative emerges over the years. My career doesn’t follow a typical arc and like many people who work in education and technology I trained in different disciplines and bring that with me to the digital context. Although it’s only been a couple of years since I started to work as a consultant and coach full-time, it’s been 15 years since I first started working as a free-lancer on projects, and I’ve been revisiting some of these as I’ve charted my skills and experience. It’s interesting to re-examine how some of the things I’ve worked on over the past twenty years fit together in retrospect, with new patterns emerging.

Innovation

I’ve been able to work on a lot of new, innovative things this year and that’s been a joy. I love not knowing what the end product will look like, and I love the exhilarating process of creating something new, something that’s a first! It’s not always easy, and it certainly brings a lot of risk with it, but I’m good at navigating unknown unknowns.

One of the projects I’ve particularly enjoyed working on is Reclaim Open, a “one of a kind” conference that’s evolved each time it happens, and this time is no different. I’ve also loved developing my own new offering, Long Distance Leadership Postcards, for which I have nearly completed the first year and which has been a joy to work on.

Doing something completely new, whether its a talk, workshop, a new coaching client or a project, has been a huge part of my year and has stretched my thinking and my abilities in new, exciting (and sometimes scary) ways.

Anthropology

Up until this year I’ve had little opportunity to use my Anthropological training in my work, at least explicitly. But more recently I have become more and more interested in the rich and exciting work happening in digital heritage, digital humanities and cultural institutions, giving me a new area to learn about and work in.

I’ve also found that the research for my PhD feels both timely and relevant again especially during the current social and economic upheaval and I’ll be sharing a post soon on that topic. I’ve been writing more again recently, and found ideas emerging as I was preparing for an AI-related workshop, so prepare for an “AI in the cemetery” Halloween.

People

Free-lance life can be a little lonely at times, but I am lucky (and work hard at) being able to connect with colleagues old and new very regularly. I have a wonderful group of fellow coaches who I meet up with regularly, alongside my mentoring sessions for 1 Million Mentors. And there are some much valued coffee mornings, often virtual, with fellow free-lancers, swapping tales of projects, and collaborating on new ideas. I’ve loved all the wonderful conversations I’ve had on my podcast, too!

This year I’ve also travelled more, to attend conferences and to deliver in person workshops and leadership days, which has been invigorating and joyful, and a nice balance to the days and weeks working solo from home. Although of course my trusty dog Posey is always by my side.

I am super grateful for all the stimulating, inspiring days, the work life balance being my own boss has brought me and the exciting firsts I have been part of over the past year. Here is to Year 3! Boom!

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20/10/2025
Coaching moment: Focusing energy
This time of year always feels busy, with so much going on, and yet it’s also a season when there’s less daylight time, and colder months are starting here in the Northern Hemisphere. Whether at work, in leadership practice or in relation to personal goals I often have conversations with my coaching clients about wanting to accomplish more whilst feeling that there is less energy.

One of the tools I find really helpful to think through these kinds of moments is a remix of the Wheel of Life (a popular coaching tool used to reflect on different priorities). I find this tool very versatile, and have adapted it for example in the context of hybrid working. In my work coaching leaders and managers, we use this for quick self-assessment that always offers some new insights. If you’d like to give the hybrid working version a go, there is a dedicated episode of my podcast complete with resources you can check out.

Identifying priorities and focusing energy

Typically however the focus of this exercise is on assigning a score reflecting how things are currently going, and then reflecting on these, e.g. what was easy to score or hard; what scores feel satisfactory, and which don’t and so forth. It’s designed to help identify priorities, and to check in with how things are going. What I find especially helpful at this time of year, however, is to focus more on what energy I have and how I want to spend it between now and the end of the year. This small shift in emphasis opens up a different reflective frame and I use a basic template of the resource to help do that.

In the example below, I have used general categories to reflect, using darker shading to indicate in each area how much energy to spend. It can be hard at first to recognise that there isn’t enough energy to spend maximal effort on everything, all of the time. Often what happens during this exercise is that we can identify several areas which can be maintained fairly easily, and find one or two areas which require more energy. That helps giving a sense of not being as thinly stretched and instead focus energy where is really matters. I have used the terms “little” or “medium” but you could also use a number scale, i.e. energy out of a max of 10 for example.

Reflective prompts

If you’d like to give this a go yourself, here are some reflective prompts to get you started. There are not listen in any particular order, but simply designed to help get you thinking.
- What areas can be maintained with minimal energy?
- Where do I spend most energy?
- Where does my effort have the biggest impact?
- What can I do less or pause?
- When do I next have time to replenish my energy?
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15/10/2025