Earlier this month the open knowledge community celebrated a big milestone as Wikipedia turned 25! I blogged about it on the Reclaim Blog, and had the pleasure of joining a lovely line up to celebrate:
Recording of Reclaim’s “Wikipedia @ 25 stream, with Autumm Caines, Lorna Campbell, Jim Groom and Taylor Jadin.
It was inspiring to have a conversation about open knowledge, particularly in an age of information abundance (read Dave Cormier’s book on that subject in case you haven’t yet!) . Incidentally, the book’s subtitle, “The Community is the Curriculum” would have made an excellent theme for the live stream, as we mainly talked about people and community.
Communities that support the creation, sharing and storing of open knowledge. Communities that add, edit, and provide governance for open knowledge (“Wikipedia contains over 65 million articles across over 300 languages”). Communities that are underrepresented, or don’t have a voice in open knowledge projects, and communities that build open knowledge creation on the kind of open source software and infrastructure that Reclaim has long championed.
We also shared our personal experiences of how we encountered Wikipedia and its sister projects in our own education, at work, for research, as parents and professionals. It was surprising to me, someone who has had little formal involvement with Wikipedia itself, how much each of is had to contribute, from using it day to day for looking things up, hobbies or research, to using it as a tool in the classroom, to teach digital skills and literacy or for institutional initiatives.
Our stories, our activities, form only a very small part of the overall engagement and use with this incredible platform: “Wikipedia is viewed more than 15 billion times every month.”.
These statistics shared by Wikipedia as part of the celebration are all incredible. The one that made me pause most however is this one: “Wikipedia is edited 342 times per minute.”.
That means that whilst I was writing this blog post, over 4,000 edits have been made. And whilst you have been reading this, hundreds more have been added. There’s another one. And another 10. And another 100.
Our conversation on the stream, and I hope you’ll watch the recording if you missed it live, was an opportunities to tell stories and share perspectives about our journeys from a world in which Wikipedia didn’t exist, to one in which we can’t really imagine life without it. It made me reflect on how it became what it is today: a project in which thousands of editors participate in every minute of the day, producing this source of open knowledge.
Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! Here’s to the next 25 years of human knowledge in the open!
I love writing these end of year posts and I have been doing it for quite a few years: 2024 focused on gratitude, 2023 on my (then new) business venture, 2022 I looked back at 10 milestones, 2021 – the year of the PUPPY – had a lot packed into it and 2020, well, you will remember your own 2020. I wrote two posts in December that year: 2020 #altc – the year forged in fire and 2020 – My year in blog posts, on radio and in drawings .
So what about this year?
I’ve used these close up photos of paintings I’ve been working on this year as a theme for my post, a triptych of a post if you like, to capture the three themes of my year: Joy. Creativity. Focus.
HorizonSeascapeBeach at sunset
Joy
When I think back to January 2025… I probably wouldn’t have guessed that joy would be one of the themes to come out of my review post at the end of a year filled with unhinged politics, unfettered use of AI and so much upheaval everywhere you look. And still, the joy is undeniable. I’ve done much this year that has been so rewarding, from regular beach trips and travel abroad to getting married again and spending time with family and friends. My year as a pen pal has been prolific and one of the greatest joys of the year was the house filled with postcards and letters from friends all across the world wishing us well on our wedding day.
I’ve accomplished a long-term goal to get back into running, and managed to complete several 10k races over the last 12 months. This in turn brought about a spontaneous decision to fulfil a big dream of mine next year: running the Vancouver Half Marathon. Come May 2026, my husband and I will both be standing on the starting line, hopefully with quite a few friends joining us, too. I’ve been meaning to return to Vancouver ever since my first visit in 2019, and I can’t wait to be in BC once again.
These moments of joy have been so precious, and I am grateful indeed for the friends, family and four-legged creatures that have shared those moments with me (even very early in the morning).
Creativity
As you have no doubt gathered already from my posts this year, I have been having an exceptionally creative year, from analogue adventures in painting, drawing, crafting, embroidery and model building to digital creation, writing, making and designing. I have flexed the skills I gained in art school, and put the DIY tools my dad gave me to good use. I also commandeered a second desk (my so called “weekend desk”) so that I (finally) have a space to be messy again, to leave things to be picked up and continued later. I can’t tell you how good it feels.
To give you a sense of what these projects have been, here is a summary of some of the things I have made this year: a book nook, a flower shop model, a garden shed model, hand embroidered Christmas stockings, acrylic paintings on canvas, watercolour drawings on paper, several dozen digital artworks, an illustrated digital story, started a new book (non-fiction), wrote several short stories, a year long (12 module) postcard based coaching subscription complete with custom made postcards that I sent all across the world, many talks, presentations, workshops, blog posts, podcasts, radio shows, playlists, a vinyl yoga practice, lots of new recipes and even more DIY in the form of newly painted rooms, garden furniture and… well, I think you get the idea.
Suffice to say that I have poured a lot of creative energy into the world, in an effort, to “let creativity eat the darkness“. I have done much to shape the world with my imagination and to populate my world with things that are made by me. Which is why the title of the post refers to the handmade year of 2025.
Focus
The year has been filled with joyful moments and with a lot of time devoted to creativity. It has also been a year of clear focus and much progress. Focus on my business and my professional practice. Now in its third year of being my full-time job, my business has evolved and become more robust and tangible.
Like everyone else I’ve found the uncertainty level in Higher Education and every other sector I work in rather dampening, making it harder to find work and putting everyone under pressure. That said, my efforts in developing my offering and my company of one have paid dividend and building in more focus and flexibility has proven very effective, too.
I’ve had many professional highlights this year, including an unexpected but most welcome award of Honorary Life Membership from ALT, a community which means so much to me. Being part of the ALT Wales Member Group and continuing my work as a Senior CMALT Assessor enables me to keep up with current practice in Learning Technology and Open Education, and connect with this wonderful network.
Also, I am excited to have become a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts this year (and can how add “FRSA” to my list of post-nominal letters on LinkedIn ;)). It’s such a rewarding and interesting community to be part of, and I am looking forward to getting stuck in as a mentor in the mentoring network and start to connect with more fellows in the new year both here in Cardiff and elsewhere. If you are also a member, look me up on the Circle platform 🙂 .
My work continues to be varied, which is a joy for someone like me with many interests and aptitudes. Teaching, training and coaching continues at the University of Oxford, and Sereniti as well as internal cohorts at organisations. Whilst I continue to do some executive coaching with individuals, the bulk of my work has been with leadership teams and groups.
Consultancy projects with Reclaim Hosting, especially the innovative Reclaim Open conference, have been an inspiring part of my year and I deeply appreciate working with such a wonderful team of people.
I’ve also continued work in the digital heritage sector, building on a number of projects I worked on in 2021-2023 as part of the Towards a National Collection and Digital Heritage initiatives. Digital heritage and digital humanities is becoming more of a focus for my consultancy work, and I am looking forward to working more in that space in 2026.
One of the things I reflected and focused on this year was how I work, not only what I do. The values that inform my work have shaped my practice, what I bid for, and what I strive for. So to close this post I wanted to share a the notes I scribbled below, which helped me articulate how I embody the values of my business and why.
Here’s to a more open and blended, ethical and meticulous 2026, continuing to give back in gratitude to the amazing communities I am part of.
It’s the season for office parties, and I am in a festive mood. In this holiday-themed post (and on the podcast, too), I want to share a few of the ways in which I reflect on, celebrate and end the year. If you are a fellow freelancer or small business owner, you might find inspiration for your own celebration here.
Like you, I’ve been to a lot of office parties and work do’s, and most of them weren’t all that festive and bright, but some years it all came together and we had a lot of fun together. So in my “Office Party for One” I’ve tried to keep the best bits of what I enjoy and add my own twist of reflective spirit to come up with a end of year celebration that brings me joy and is highly practical, too.
Party hat optional.
Reflect
All of my rituals for the end of the year start with reflection, either on the blog, or in conversation or written down in my progress reports. If you’d like to play along, here are some of my favourite reflective prompts for the end of the year:
What do you remember most?
When did things not go as planned?
How have things shifted over the past year?
What do you want to take into the new year?
What can be left behind?
What do you want more of in 2026?
Most of the time, just clearing the decks feels like a win as work starts to compete with preparations for the holidays, so I set aside dedicated time to try and capture and reflect.
One of my favourite activities is to go through my emails and social media and file away any positive feedback or inspiring interactions I’ve had (for which I keep a dedicated folder). Sometimes that includes more formal feedback, from workshops I have run or from coaching clients or project evaluations, and often it also includes personal messages, like a meaningful thank you note or encouraging DM.
I also file away certificates or details about any professional development I’ve done, ready to refer to when I big for new projects or renew a professional certification.
Once the reflection is done, it’s time to celebrate.
Celebrate
One of the biggest joys of being my own boss is that I get to decide what to do for my office party, and whom to invite. Some years, that means it’s just me, a good book and a warm cosy evening in front of the fire. Or even an early night. Some years I venture into the city and enjoy a festive afternoon or even a night out. Often my husband gets an invite, and we join forces for our “office party” and exchange small gifts, Secret Santa style.
Remote working has so many advantages, and I generally love running my business from home. That said, joining in with festive fun, and feeling the buzz of people, the glittering street lights and the enticing smells of Christmas market treats makes an end of year celebration a lot more fun.
End the Year
The end of the year is my quietest time of the year as most of my clients and collaborators down tools. I take advantage of no longer being the one whom everyone calls in case of emergency, and so I take a week or two completely off, to rest, recharge and spend time away from screens.
Sometimes I use the time to make progress on creative projects (my book in progress is looking at me, demanding my attention) and sometimes I just switch off and use the time to get outside, play games and cuddle the dogs.
My OoO auto-reply goes on, my inbox goes quiet and I tidy away work for another year.
I’ll be sharing my end of year reflections in the next post. What will you take away from 2025?
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!
It’s Monday, it’s October 6th, and I am turning over a new leaf. Today is my first proper day back at my desk after a few weeks focusing on happy wedding celebrations with family and friends and a lovely honeymoon trip to Crete. The photo featured at the top of this post shows one of my favourite places we visited, the Minoan Palace at Malia.
So today is the start of a new chapter in more ways than one, and I feel happy that one of the priorities I set myself two years ago, namely focusing more on my life outside of work and finding balance, has been achieved.
There’ll also be some new developments on a professional front in the coming months, but more of that in a future post. For now, I’m focusing on getting my head back in the right mindset for work. As I’m also making the switch from late summer in Crete to autumn in Wales, I’m using the seasonal changeover as a way to help me gain focus. I find it really helps to change some things around to mark a new season or a new chapter, and in this post I share some examples of how I do that.
Exercise and healthy habits
Over the summer, I switched back to journalling in a paper notebook and it’s really helped me to invigorate my morning journalling. I don’t always follow the Morning Pages approach, as some days I feel the need to think and reflect and pause rather than keeping going no matter what, but I do aim for three pages of handwritten reflections each day. Most days it happens, some days I skip or write much less. All together, it’s been a fantastic tool for me over the past few months to navigate some choppy waters. So when my current notebook is full, which is nearly is, I’ll be sticking with this habit and opening a new one to continue my writing.
As an aside, I really enjoyed working on the topic of journalling in a professional context as part of my Long Distance Leadership Postcards. As the September topic I got to think a lot more deeply about how and why journalling can be such a powerful practice, which was really fun!
Alongside reflective habits my exercise and training schedule has been pretty good, and my year of 10k races continues in just over a month with the next race. I much prefer to run outside, but with the weather turning cooler and wetter, and the days growing shorter, I am incorporating more indoor activities into my routine, both in terms of running and strength training. Setting up a dedicated nook to store all my exercise equipment ready to use has been another little change that’s helped me get ready for the new season.
Summer/winter wardrobe
Coming back from a few weeks away means that there is a lot of laundry to catch up on. And that is good timing as I am using it as an opportunity to pack away all the shorts and summer dresses, and bring out my big wooly jumpers, scarves and wooly hats. I started a few years ago packing away and rotating clothes and I’ve come to find this a great habit that helps with more than just freeing up storage.
I use a big storage bag that sits atop my wardrobe and every six months or so I bring it down and swap clothes in and out. It helps we tidy up and sort through things I don’t currently like or have forgotten I have, and it also feels like a nice refresh, as I discover something afresh every time. It feels like getting a new selection of clothes without buying anything new.
It also means that I refresh what I wear day to day, and a welcome prompt to check in with what I feel best in and which items bring a smile to my face. Years ago my mentor Margaret got me into wearing things that make me happy, and I’ve found it a good maxim to shop by.
Plants and pumpkins
One of the most fun things for me each year is to move my plants to their winter places. Some of my houseplants don’t like being near the heating or the wood burner, and so they move to spots that are cooler and less dry. Similarly, with a lot less sun some post are moving closer to windows to catch the precious light. Then I have a couple of plants that hibernate and prefer a cooler room, so they move to the winter quarters, too.
Other than a last tidy to collect seeds for next year and keep things ready for the colder months I don’t have a huge amount to do in the garden when it comes to plants, but I do have a couple of ceramic pumpkins that come out around this time each year, taking their place amidst the pots ready for spooky season.
All these small changes help me adjust mentally and prepare physically for the next few months, and by the time I am done I am ready to get stuck into this new chapter.
Last night I dreamt about AI and roses, and in my dream I was blogging, so here I am, trying to capture the thoughts I had during the night. Thanks to Joe Murphy and Tom Witherspoon, whose inspiring chat at yesterday’s Blogging Community of Practice meeting truly inspired me, I am here pressing publish on a draft, saving the world one half baked idea at a time.
What’s happening in the title of this blog post are mixed metaphors: there is one idiom “Stop and smell the roses” that means “to relax; to take time out of one’s busy schedule to enjoy or appreciate the beauty of life”, and one that says “wake up and smell the coffee” (or the bacon, at least here in the UK), which means “to become aware of the reality of a situation, especially when it’s different from what one believes or expects”. My title means something like… become more aware of the reality of the situation and appreciate the beauty of life. The reality of the situation being the proliferation of AI powered platforms and tools in parts of life where they are completely unnecessary – and the fact that AI can’t smell, or touch or feel and indeed has no senses at all as a disembodied tool.
I recently read a fantastic book, The Power of Not Thinking by Simon Roberts, which very elegantly made the case for embodied knowledge, and how ethnographic approaches can be applied in the workplace. It’s a great read that I really enjoyed, and it reminded me of the research that informed my PhD in Anthropology nearly 20 years ago. One of the things that the book made clear is that the industries, and the companies, that lead innovation, are very interested indeed in embodied knowledge and see the value of such approaches whilst selling tools and services that promote the opposite (just as proponents of EdTech are known to send their own children to tech-free schools where mobile phones are banned and interacting with nature is encouraged instead). I am simplifying here, but I hope you get my meaning.
Yet, this model of embodied thinking feels inspiring to me, as it helps me imagine ways in which to articulate alternatives to the dominant narrative I come across in many workplaces and in education, which feels like it’s moving in the opposite direction. A direction into a future with AI that I feel un-keen and un-curious about. I don’t wish for my day to day to be dominated by tools that speed up productivity or replace human activities (and more advanced applications in sciences or medical research are beyond my direct experience). Because, on some level, it feels like “it is everywhere and everyone is using it”, and everyone is “cheating” with it. Sigh.
Focusing on embodied knowledge, embodied experiences of the world, helps me avoid a dichotomy that doesn’t serve me, with AI on one side and what I want to do on the other. It helps me articulate how and why there is value in things like being there, seeing the world from someone else’s point of view, from being present and embodied. In the case studies featured in the book the value is directly related to the business objectives of the clients the author and his colleagues work with, and he articulates this in a very practical way, rather than in academic jargon (which is hard to do when it comes to talking about things like phenomenology).
Which brings us back to roses. Specifically the roses which are pictured at the top of this post. I am not a huge fan of roses, or indeed pink flowers in general, but I fell in love with these when I was walking through my local garden centre recently and I smelled their strong, fruity, summery scent.
I stopped in my tracks and came closer to drink it in, and immediately decided that this would be the plant for me. They smell like summer, like desserts, like the best sunny day. They have a beautiful colour, from pink to apricot, and their petals are smooth and strong, keeping in all that delicious smell and sheltering the bees that come to visit.
And so, most mornings, in the corner of the garden, I sit mid morning with tea or coffee, and I drink in the smell, and enjoy the beauty of these beautiful blooms. Literally waking up to smell the roses 😉
