Maren Deepwell

Category: podcast

  • Celebrating my 3 year podcast anniversary

    Celebrating my 3 year podcast anniversary

    I can’t quite believe it’s been three years this month since I started my podcast, and a 130 episodes into the experiment, I feel it’s time to celebrate 🙂

    I’ve documented my journey as a podcaster in regular posts over the years, and looking back at these now, I’ve been reflecting on what I love about the show and this platform specifically, and also how I’m hoping to develop the podcast over the next year.

    Audio only

    One of the things that has changed since I first started the podcast is the arrival of video podcasts as a more popular format. Alongside that AI-powered tools have made it easier than before to produce podcasts, transcripts, and related content. Some platforms, like Google, now require shows to be submitted in video format, even if it’s just a holding slide.

    I’ve been experimenting with all sorts of things on the show, and for now, I’ve decided to keep to an audio only format. One of the reasons why I started the podcast is to enable my listeners to engage with my work whilst stepping away from the screen, and I want to continue to do that. The increased environmental impact of producing video content, especially using AI-tools, is another reason why I don’t really want to change.

    Special guests

    When I first started getting requests from agencies and individuals to come on the show I was quite excited and I tried a few episodes with special guests I hoped would be the right fit for the podcast. Over time however, I found that very few of the folk (and bots) who contact me are closely enough aligned to my approach to work as well as I’d like.

    Whilst it’s more work for me to approach, invite and liaise with guests myself, it also helps me ensure that the conversations are really relevant to my work, and hopefully that results in a more coherent and authentic offering for my audience, too.

    I am so grateful that over the past year or two more guests than ever have given up their time to come on the show and talk to me, and I am VERY excited about the line up for 2026 taking shape.

    Work on the next book

    Which brings us neatly to work on the next book, which many of the interviews I record for the show help inform. It’s a wonderful way to do research and supplies me with a huge volume of transcripts I can dig into as I progress with the project.

    Send me your ideas and requests

    I’ve recorded a celebration episode to mark the podcasts 3rd birthday, so enjoy the listen… AND get in touch to let me know what you’d like more of in 2026. If you have a topic request, would like to join me as a special guest or have any other comments or feedback, contact me . I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for listening 🙂

    The podcast is available on different podcast platforms and I hope you enjoy the show.

    Don’t miss new episodes, subscribe to my free monthly newsletter

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]
  • Podcast chat reclaimed!

    Podcast chat reclaimed!

    For the past two months my podcast has been enjoying a well deserved summer break! It’s been good to take a step back from the busy grind of producing the episodes. It’s work I love, but with so much else already going on this summer, it was necessary to pause. Regular listeners look out for the summer special, the first new episode since June, which is out next week!

    Fortunately for me, edtech’s extraordinary (and original) godfather Jim Groom was travelling rather more than usual this month, which left the studio door open for me to sit in the host chair of his prolific “On Writing” series for not one, but two joyful conversations.

    Most people struggle to set up a new podcast, but since the start of this year Jim has been rocking interviews about blogging and writing with a truly stellar line up of voices including Audrey Watters, Kine Lane, Mike Caulfield, Amy Collier, Tom Woodward, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Adam Croom, Bryan Alexander, Chris Long, Kate Bowles, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Tim Klapdor and Martin Weller.

    Catch up with “On Writing”

    When it came to my very special guests, I couldn’t have picked a better line up and I was thrilled to jump into these two conversations:

    Bonnie Stewart “On Writing”: Blogging, Belonging and Bowie

    Ahead of August’s Blogging Community of Practice session, I interviewed Dr. Bonnie Stewart of University of Windsor, Canada, about the belonging project, “a 2024-25 open research project exploring digital and socio-material practices of belonging at the University of Highlands and Islands in Scotland.”

    As a long time fan of Bonnie’s work, I was SO excited to talk about blogging for her sabbatical project, how to find your voice and inevitably we also ended up chatting about David Bowie.

    Bonnie has a way of articulating things that I deeply appreciate and connect with. I always learn something new, and after our conversations anything that may have been muddled in my brain feels clear and straight forward when she explains it. I salute her grace and joy, and her fierceness.

    Tune in: “On Writing” with Alan Levine on Reclaim TV

    The second conversation was with Alan Levine, AKA CogDog, and it will premier this Friday, August 29th. Watch the stream over at Reclaim TV, or catch the recording later on archive.reclaim.tv or on Reclaim’s YouTube channel! Usually Jim broadcasts these live, but thanks to living in very different timezones, my guests graciously agreed to pre-record our chats for these shows.

    Alan and I had awesome fun chatting across all sorts of topics, and he had prepared meticulously, sending me links and notes which provided much inspiration. Alan produces the OE Global Voices podcast, a masterclass in the richness of sharing knowledge and open practice that Alan excels at.

    Both conversations were very different, but what I found common to both was that open practice matters. How we do things and how we honour and reflect the values we hold in how we communicate and connect.

    There’re some fantastic guests lined up for the next few weeks and months and as Jim returns to the hosting chair, I’m excited to tune in for more blogging and open edtech goodness.

  • Podcast gems

    Podcast gems

    The first half of the year has been so busy that it’s taken until now for me to revisit podcast interviews, and I’ve found some real gems along the way.

    One of my favourite interviews to record was this conversation with Marcela and Igor:

    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.

    If you are starting there, I would next listen to the episode in which I interviewed Amanda:

    Another gem of this year’s podcasts and a similarly illuminating glimpse into the inner workings of open leadership. I’ve been reflecting on how much of ourselves we need to share in our professional lives to be authentic and this conversation got at the heart of it for me.

    Holistic approaches to being a leader, not simply in the executive sense, but in every way, prompted me to re-listen to this interview with Lou:

    I was so inspired by our conversation about constellations and agency, all in the aid of empowering leadership and change-making.

    Join me as a Special Guest

    If you’d like to join me as a Special Guest on the podcast in the next few months, get in touch hello[@]marendeepwell.com and let me know what you’d like to talk about.

  • Second Breakfast with Audrey Watters

    Second Breakfast with Audrey Watters

    In this season of interviewing special guests on my podcast (all part of the research for my new book) I get to talk to many amazing and inspiring people and I deeply appreciate their time and input. So it was a special privilege and pleasure to talk to one of my favourite writers and friend Audrey Watters .

    Audrey, Kin and I first met over a decade ago during my time working for ALT and organising events, and over the years we survived a couple of the more ‘interesting’ industry conferences on the edtech circuit together from Berlin to ReykjavĂ­k. As you will hear in the interview, I am a big fan of Audrey’s thinking and writing, although nowadays it’s less about edtech and more about dog walk moments, pancakes and running.

    So join me for a wonderfully rich conversation with Audrey as we talk about the culture of trying to measure everything from workout metrics to workplace productivity, and what it means to resist living life conforming to algorithmic templates.  Along the way, we chat about dog walking, making pancakes for second breakfast, avoiding a world run by Clippy and Audrey’s new writing project about AI in education. 

    Mentioned in this episode:

    P.S. Fierceness, kindness, hope

    Since we recorded the episode I have begun a new run training plan, an endeavour which I have blogged about many times of the past few years and which, for a whole number of reasons, have all ended after only a few weeks. But this time starting to run again feels different. I’ve found a new kind of inspiration as I was listening back to the interview whilst editing the episode. It’s a sense of fierceness, kindness and hope that burns brightly. This I take away from this inspiring conversation with thanks 🙂

  • Analogue into autumn (or fall)

    Analogue into autumn (or fall)

    I was recently in Germany visiting family. As it happens, I was there in the first week of school and I really enjoyed seeing kids with their brand new school cases and backpacks walking and cycling to school with their parents each morning. It was a very picturesque kind of late summer feel. The leaves were just starting to turn and it took me back to the excitement of starting school and later university terms.

    I still remember the really exciting moments of getting my first grown-up school backpack where in Germany we have a tradition of having a kind of a sort of cone-shaped bag to celebrate the first day of school. It’s called a SchultĂĽte, a little bag for school treats, stationary and other treats. Later when I was at university I continued the tradition of celebrating the start of term, buying the university scarf on my first day as I first went to the University of London and signed up for all the libraries. I studied at different institutions across the University in London for a long time and each time I joined a new university I was so excited to get my library card on the first day of term, get to know all the new lecture halls and so on. I love the feeling of starting something fresh, a new learning journey. Now I’m very glad indeed to no longer be in formal education but I still work on in educational and education adjacent spaces and I still lean into that feeling of starting a new term. It’s a great excuse to some new stationary, new pens, new notepads – and a new pencil case 🙂

    As you can probably tell, I absolutely adore this time of year and being more outside and offline always prompts me to spend more time away from the screens. So I returned from this trip (on which I set out with an analogue camera, notebook, pen &, journal) with a book which I seemed to have picked up along the way and I noticed that I had spent a lot of time offline in that week. I often do that when I’ve got time off work and it prompted me to reflect on just how much I use analogue habits and hobbies that I like cultivating to keep being as productive and as creative in my output as I can be when I am online – and that provided the inspiration for the episode.

    Now that I am back in my very busy online world and I’m on social media, doing events and meetings online and working across a number of different organisations remotely whilst I’ve also got my own inbox to contend with. Over the course of days and weeks this adds up to so much digital noise and overwhelm that most of us have to work a bit harder to find a good balance. In this episode I share a couple of things that I find both effective and enjoyable strategies for balancing the demands of my digital ways of working with calm and (for me) fun. I share ideas that work on an individual, personal basis and also some ideas to try with a team or group of people if you are looking to blend a little bit of analogue activity, a little bit of being offline into these busy weeks as the new academic year starts… .

    Listen to the episode

    Never miss a post… subscribe to my free monthly newsletter 🙂

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]
  • Fresh adventures in podcasting

    Fresh adventures in podcasting

    This week I am giving a short talk about podcasting at the University of Oxford. The talk is called 5 ways to get started ​
    with podcasting, and explores 5 ways to develop your own professional practice in podcasting and explore ways of connecting with audiences beyond social media.​

    Slide screenshot

    During the talk I explore:

    • Podcasting basics
    • Podcasting for fun & experimentation
    • Podcasting for reflection
    • Podcast interviews
    • Podcast sharing practice

    If you’d like to listen to the talk then you are in luck, as I’ve recorded a dedicated podcast episode 🙂 and you can also review the slides.

    Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to my free monthly newsletter

    [newsletter_form type=”minimal”]