Category: open practice

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!

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 😉