Maren Deepwell

Category: Blogging

  • 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 🙂

  • My home on the open web.

    My home on the open web.

    Blogging about blogging. Again.

    Hello again. As you might have noticed, the blog has had a revamp. It’s a new theme (WordPress 2025) and a streamlined presence. It’s part of my summer project on digital sustainability (I’ve blogged about this in two separate posts, linked below) and part mid-year revamp.

    It’s also been a good time for some blog maintenance as it’s felt a little quiet on the blogs I follow and read regularly as even bloggers need a summer holiday once in a while (not all of them, I hasten to add). Even as I write this, I can hear the (mostly) cheery chatter and laughs of the kids of my neighbourhood playing outside, running from one house to the other, making the most of their summer break.

    Anyway, the other day I was talking about things that are characteristic of who I am, and “I blog” was the first thing I said.

    Blogging has been part of my life since art school, through my postgrad and PhD years, into the early years of my career, into my tenure as a CEO and now my business owner era (already 3 years going on 4! How time flies 🙂 ).

    And I still love it. Quite often I wake up in the morning and think about what I’d like to blog about today. Or I compose blog posts in my head when I am out running. Or first thing in the morning when I sit down at my desk to start work.

    If that sounds a little odd or too idyllic, then rest assured that I have plenty of mornings when my focus is drawn by something far more pragmatic than blogging… and yet, blogging is an extremely pragmatic activity for me.

    Yes, yes, I know, I have already written about my love for blogging, for reflective writing, journalling and so forth at length, but as time (and technology) move on, I think it’s a point worth making afresh. Not only because our attention is now more valuable than ever before, but also because there are now countless ways to automate any kind of reflective activity. Just follow a prompt, or enter one, and it’s done.

    I am fully aware that publishing anything on the open web nowadays is not without risks or pitfalls, and not without environmental impact either. I certainly am very intentional about what I publish nowadays. And I have always tried to be.

    That said, having a blog, and more specifically, the process of blogging, remain important enough to me so that I intend to keep at it. I continue to blog, as often as I feel like it, and I have no intention of stopping.

    Because for me blogging is…

    • making my home on the open web.
    • getting my thoughts in order.
    • building an archive of my work that I own.
    • weaving a narrative of my work and career.
    • a way of expressing myself.
    • leading by example.
    • sharing what I love.
    • advocating for what I stand for.
    • making a small corner of the web how I like it.
    • celebrating what inspires me.
    • charting my experiences, both good and bad.
    • a strategy to help me articulate my thoughts.
    • engaging in dialogue.
    • sharing my practice.
    • giving back to the communities I am part of.
    • paying tribute and thanks.
    • documenting my professional practice and development.
    • reflecting on just about everything.
    • building a network.
    • connecting with like minded people.

    Thank you for reading. I would keep blogging even if no one read my blog, and indeed there are many posts that only me and maybe a family member have read (“Hallo, Mami! Danke, daß Du hier immer mit dabei bist!”).

    I hope whatever prompts you to read blogs and (hopefully) motivates you to keep blogging yourself is still going strong. Long may we keep blogging. #4life.

    Previous posts in Digital Sustainability

    • From wildfires to websites

    • Digital Sustainability Part 2

  • Reclaim’s Women’s Showcase

    Reclaim’s Women’s Showcase

    I’m super excited for this blog to be featured in the Reclaim Hosting’s Women’s Showcase! The showcase was organised by Alexis Block, in celebration of Women’s History Month, and features a whole host of inspiring examples of projects and initiatives. I was particularly taken by the Feminist Digital Center, co-curated by Dr. Julie Shayne and Denise Hattwig (University of Washington Bothell) and The Hub Blog, created by Autumm Caines, Belen Garcia, Carla Veccholia, Chen Wang, and Jessica Riviere (University of Michigan–Dearborn) and… I also discovered a new project I had never come across before: SNC Kid Books – A Collection of Stories, created by Krissy Lukens (St. Norbert College).

    I made my submission more to show my support for this initiative than expecting to be included, so it was particularly nice to have my blog featured alongside these amazing projects. Thanks, Alexis!

    Here’s my shout-out from the showcase:

    About the Project: Last but not least, we couldn’t not include our very own Maren Deepwell in this showcase. Maren has been blogging for nearly 20 years, and her site is a beautiful example of what it means to truly own your space on the web (something she’s been championing alongside us for years).

    Her blog is more than just a collection of posts, it’s a record of her thinking, her leadership, and her journey over time. We love this one not just because it’s part of our community, but because it reflects the heart of what we’re all about: showing up, sharing your work, and building something that’s entirely your own. Maren writes, “My blog is my domain on the open web and its an important part of my identity, my practice and my leadership approach… I started blogging as a student… Little did I know that less than 10 years later I would become the CEO of the leading professional body for Learning Technologists in the UK, and that blogging would become a key component of my leadership in service of that community of thousands of members. Now that I run my own small business, my blog has become even more important in sharing my work, archiving my experiences and celebrating milestones – I’m blogging #4life”.

    As our fearless leader Jim Groom likes to say, “Blog or Die!”. We’ll soften that just a bit, but the spirit holds: having a space to write, think out loud, and share your experiences is at the core of what we hope everyone builds here at Reclaim.

    Maren’s Blog is built on Reclaim’s Shared Hosting service using WordPress.

  • Blogging about keeping a blog (or revisiting the Neon Flaneuse).

    Blogging about keeping a blog (or revisiting the Neon Flaneuse).

    It the end of the UK tax year, and I have spent most of this week on end of year paperwork. Fortunately, this blog post is not about that. Instead, I am returning to my favourite topic: blogging about blogging, or more precisely, blogging about keeping a blog. (The two are tangentially related, as my quarterly Director’s Report for my own business has a section about talks and events in it, which I was trying to complete when I noticed that, to my horror, I had yet to start the 2026 section of my archive page. So I fixed that as quickly as I could. Phew.)

    I’ve previously written about why I think keeping an archive of my activities is so very helpful, not just for report writing, or compiling my newsletter, but in the longer term, to help me set goals, find strategies and reflect on my career journey. I’ve been working on a post about professional journalling, which I am hoping to publish next week as a follow up to this one, but this one isn’t really about writing, but more about having a domain, a home on the web, that I’ve kept and that I have added to for nearly twenty years. It really helps put things in perspective.

    It also helps me sift and focus on what matters and what I am happy to leave where it is. For my purposes I don’t just want to have a record of everything I do or rely on automated processes or bookmarks. Instead I find great utility in the process of finding, evaluating and sifting the information. It’s like panning for gold. You sift through the water and find flecks of gold, gold dust that is then added to the vault and over time it compresses into bars (maybe that is overstretching the metaphor, plus my metal work memories remind me that gold bars are cast not compressed). You get my drift.

    Often I learn things or see things I didn’t at the time of an event I spoke at or an article I wrote, and the process of finding the details, adding them manually to a page on my blog and then seeing the list grow each year is valuable to me (even though many of the links to things may break over time). What I gleam from the process increases my strategic and executive capabilities greatly and yet when I describe the process it sounds rather quaint. As if I haven’t discovered tools or services that could do all of this for me. I guess my sense is that I need to be doing it, to engage in the practice of sifting, recording and reflecting, otherwise there is no value in it for me.

    There is a children’s book I am very fond of, it’s called Momo and it was written by Michael Ende (who also wrote The Neverending Story), in which a tortoise saves a girl from ‘grey men’ trying to take over the world with machines, and it’s the slow, meandering pace of the tortoise that renders them inconsequential (and thus invisible) to the ever rushing crowds around them. It feels like a very timely story to revisit. The process of keeping a blog, of adding to my own archive, is, metaphorically speaking, my version of the meandering pace of the tortoise, that which keeps me safe from the destructive rush of digital productivity and gives me time and space to think and imagine. Maybe it is time to revisit the Neon Flaneuse.

  • The year in blog posts… 2025

    The year in blog posts… 2025

    It is nearly time to wrap up blogging for another year, and I’m feeling all festive. Shout out to Jim Groom, who is blogging at all hours in the run up to celebrating 20 years of his bavatuesdays blog. Over here on my own domain, things are progressing at a more leisurely pace, and it’s time to look at what’s been happening on the blog over the course of the year.

    In 2023 I posted 72 posts on here, and last year I made it to 65, and this year has been another excellent year with 61 posts. Although this era of tracking everything makes one feel that all progress curves should be going up, not down, I am delighted that I have kept up my blogging practice for another year.

    It’s becoming harder to make ones voice heard across federated, fragmented social spaces, and I don’t use this site to bring everything together, so every post I share elsewhere isn’t counted (and that’s OK).

    Instead, I am excited to look back at my year in blogging here, sharing what’s interesting to me, what I am working on and whatever else I come across that makes me curious.

    January (6 posts)

    February (6 posts)

    March (7 posts)

    April (4 posts)

    May (6 posts)

    June (4 posts)

    July (5 posts)

    August (4 posts)

    September (3 posts)

    October (6 posts)

    November (5 posts)

    December (5 posts)

    • Choose your own adventure
    • This post
    • Office Party for One (unpublished)
    • The year in review (unpublished)
    • Last post of the year (unpublished)

    As always, thank you for reading. And commenting. Here’s to the last three posts of the year. Coming soon.

    Share, like & subscribe 😉

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  • Conference post #ReclaimOpen25

    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 🙂

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