It’s been a lot of fun to help establish a new blogging community of practice with Jim Groom and the team at Reclaim since that start of the year, and you’ll no doubt hear more about blogging from me as the year goes on 🙂
Alongside that project however I have also had the opportunity to write some case studies based on interview conversations Jim leads, and the first of these has recently been published on the Reclaim blog: Princeton University: Domain of One’s Own . As a Higher Ed case study this piece focuses on a six month’s project of a large scale server migration.
This case study shows how the collaborative effort between the Office of Information Technology, their campus partners and Reclaim Hosting, ensured the desired outcome for stakeholders across campus, resulting in the successful and timely completion of the project [and includes] take aways which will help replicate the success of this project for future initiatives.
It’s a unique opportunity for me to hear how amazing teams at world-leading institutions make educational technology work in the long term, and find out how they find a path through the sometimes messy reality of serving the diverse needs of an academic community in a fast moving technology landscape.
Listening to the interviews it also strikes me how much the technology itself recedes into the background. Although the technology is what we’re talking about, it is the people that draw the focus: the large spectrum of users who bring their individual needs, deadlines and digital literacy to the work at hand, liaising with the teams on campus who navigate their projects within a complex framework of institutional policies and practices alongside a myriad of teams and directorates, and at the other end the expert team at Reclaim who are supporting the work with technical expertise, troubleshooting and their years of experience.
Work on the next case study is already underway, and I am really looking forward to seeing this one published and to add to this body of work that tells a story of open, independent EdTech in Higher Ed right now (and that’s a story I don’t hear all that much about elsewhere just now).
When I came across Kin Lane’s post Having a Career I felt inspired. His post prompted me to think about whether it’s worth having a career, and what that means, and if it matters. These words in particular chimed with me:
However, now I see having a career is about me. It is about owning my own professional narrative as much as I possibly can. I consider a career adjacent to entrepreneurship or running your own business, but it is something that will span multiple businesses, and give you much more control over the work you do and the money you make. A career is about me. It isn’t some category on a college aptitude test. My career isn’t chosen for me.
Thanks to this inspiration, I’ve been trying to create a story about my career, and tried to make a drawing, too. That proved trickier than I had anticipated, because I started to plot my journey along a rough timeline that started in the mid 90s with summer jobs and somehow portrayed the next three decades as a linear progression. Which it wasn’t.
Similar to Kin’s younger self, 17 year old me wanted no career. 17 year old me wanted to live a life which was authentically mine. I felt the world deeply as a young person, and it poured out of me in writing poetry, plays, novels, art, music and a lot of difficult behaviour. That I was academically able and got good grades made early adolescence easier, but eventually I outgrew my ability to fit into a regular school system. It must have been very difficult for my family and friends to make sense of my behaviour. It was very difficult to for me. I had no idea how to navigate life. Thanks for leaving school at an unconventional time, without sitting the traditional exams at 16 or at 18, I never ended up having career’s advice and made up my own instead.
From that point on, my list of jobs started in earnest: I had every bar, cafe and restaurant job London’s service industry would offer a young immigrant with broken English. I graduated to working in bookshops, cinemas, shops, and eventually in bilingual marketing and market research. I had a job once that only paid me in tips (which took me months to realise. Once I did, I left with the whole tip jar after one very good Saturday night never to return).
From 17 to 32 I mostly worked at whatever job I could to fund my education. Having left secondary school I discovered that there was a whole world of learning out there, and London, and later Athens, and even later Oxford, offered me every opportunity. Looking back it now seems implausible that I worked 40 hours and studied full-time as an undergraduate and later as a Masters stundet, but I loved it! Studying first design, then art and then anthropology allowed me to explore my curiousity and challenge my mind, spending days in the libraries and museums. I was lucky that I always managed to get scholarships to fund my fees (this being an era of education in which that was still possible).
In 2004 life changed for 3 glorious years, thanks to a full AHRC PhD scholarship that enabled me to give up work. I recall the moment I found out exactly. I was on my way to work in a cafe in West London and picked up my post in the student hall where I had rented a room in for the summer. Gower Street was hot, noisy and there was no lift between my single room on the top floor (shared bathrooms) and the laundry room in the basement. I opened the letter on my way to the bus stop and right there and then, life changed. I resigned my job that day and that September I started to be a proper full-time student for the first time, with spare time to go to seminars and lectures in the evenings, and student bars, too, of course.
It was during those years that I started working with more intention, finding jobs as a archive admin, then as a teaching assistant and as a Moodle admin at my university. As my funded years came to an end, job hunting to fund the final year of my PhD began again, and I found an admin role in a nearby university in Oxford. The deciding factor that convinced me to take the job was that I could walk to the office. Writing up my PhD in the Radcliffe Camera library sounds romantic, and it was certainly a lovely environment to work in, but it also came with a problem: I didn’t want to be an academic. My interest in my research topic had been genuine, but had been satisfied. It offered no clues as to what might be next, and so my admin summer job gradually turned into a manager role, which turned into a more senior manager role. As a side hustle I started to work as a researcher and consultant on projects. I was hungry to learn and quick to figure things out, which made me a good contractor. A few years later I decided to apply to become the CEO of the organisation I was working for, and for the next 12 years that (mostly part-time) role and my continued work as a consultant turned into a very fulfilling career.
In my early years being a CEO I often struggled to explain to people how I had ended up in the role with a PhD in cemeteries, a degree in art, a penchant for making stuff and evidently little leadership experience. A young immigrant and a women to boot. No one had ever heard of me and my story didn’t really make sense. Working hard and being good at what I did eventually helped establish my place.
Being a CEO of a small not-for-profit that employed fewer than 10 staff and often just 5, and turned over around half a million pounds a year (and sometimes much less) offered me the opportunity to learn a bit of everything, from finance and HR to governance and operations. It also offered me lots of opportunities to get involved in activities and communities, and to work for something that aligned with my values and that made a difference. I developed a much greater appreciation for the ethical dimension of work, of having a career. It let me experience what it’s like to have a (small) platform, and helped me develop my voice.
As my interest in leadership and mentoring developed and I started to train as a coach and write my first book, a new chapter in my career story started. I began to re-invigorate my freelance work, which during the pandemic had dried up, and started a period of transition, letting go of one role and building a new one. I started to plan out more books I want to write, and began to sketch out a new vision for better work life balance and more independence once again.
To many people the move didn’t make sense. It wasn’t a step up, a move to running a bigger organisation, building on what I had achieved in a smaller organisation. My pension provision agreed with them. Depending on my own little venture at this stage was (and is) risky. But it felt and still feels right to me.
Making sense of the story so far sounds something like this in my own head:
I started out looking for things that interested me and would challenge me. I gained some knowledge and skills, and found a lot of interesting things. So I put those capabilities to use and see what else I could do. Then I found that I could make a positive difference to others, and poured my energy into making that happen. Eventually, when I felt I needed more balance, and to spread my energy across more areas of my life, new interests led to new goals and a wish to fulfil some bigger dreams; like writing books and getting a dog and living near the sea.
And so, I started to put together the building blocks for a small, independent business venture that would help me fulfil these and other dreams, whilst doing work that makes a positive difference in the world and aligns with my values. It makes perfect sense to me, even if on a day to day basis it remains equal parts imagination and profitable job.
This summer it’ll be 28 years since a young Maren climbed the steps from the tube station up into the streets of London, carrying a duffel bag, a pillow and a role of The Cure posters (and an open ticket to fly home anytime, because my parents thankfully had more sense than I did).
At the time I felt the urgency of life deeply. I thought time to be my true self would run out when I reached the (what I then thought) calm and boring reaches of adulthood, of middle age. I think my younger self would be relieved (if disbelieving) to learn that existential dread and big questions still float around my head every day, even though I have become a lot better at managing daily life. I like to imagine that 17 year old me would LOVE my dog Posey, and would appreciate that I have managed to publish my first book, and being on my way to the second.
I am not sure what I thought “success” would look like when I was 17. Money or status has never driven me, even though I have always safeguarded my financial independence. Ethics and values are important to me, as is making a difference. The best I way I have to explain it is a metaphor:
For years and years I’ve kept sketchbooks filled with writing, drawing, sketches, pictures and small mementos. The process of keeping the sketchbook is much more important than individual pages, and often I might find a little gem flicking through the pages years later. I still have a lot of my sketchbooks, and I treasure them. They are the best metaphor for how I imagine my career, and what makes it successful in my mind. Having a career, for me, is like a sketchbook. I fill pages and pages, and over the years these amount to a substantive amount of work, of me. Looking back, there are gems and there are duds, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I follow my curiousity in order to create and contribute.
This is a seasonal blog post I am sharing in the spirit of a bit of festive fun. Before you read the story, find out more about Christmas Jumper Day, which in the UK we celebrate on Thursday, 12th December this year, and which raises funds for Save the Children.
The story was inspired by my dog Posey ‘trying on’ a jumper recently, which gave me a welcome excuse to write a story and then create accompanying watercolour illustrations.
Read at your own (festive) peril.
Posey’s Big (Christmas Jumper) Day
The first of December was bitterly cold. The sky was a pale grey, and there was a biting wind from the North. Posey was curled up in her basket, looking out at the world. From here, a small study on the first floor of the house, Posey could survey her whole domain: there was her human, sitting at the desk nearby, typing away on the computer. And in the next room there was Teilo, her big brother, napping in his favourite chair. By the sounds of it, he was chasing a ball in his dreams. Promising smells of cooking wafted up the stairs from the kitchen below. Maybe, Posey thought, there would even be toast!
Posey’s basket in a festive study.
Next to Posey, nuzzled into her soft brown fur, was Gladys, her favourite upstairs toy. Gladys was the most flamboyant of all the toys in the house, her pink and blue flamingo feathers pointing in all directions. Gladys and Posey often had long chats in the afternoons, when everyone else was working. And it was from Gladys that Posey first found out about the Christmas Jumpers. Christmas Jumpers, Gladys explained, were special clothes celebrating the season that only get worn this time of year, and there is one day each year when everybody dresses up and wears theirs. Posey listened eagerly to Gladys telling her tales of tinsel and red noses on reindeer, her eyes getting bigger and bigger and her ears cocked in rapt attention.
As the days went on, Posey started to spot other dogs wearing jumpers and coats on her walks. Teilo was dismissive at first, as he didn’t care for dogs dressing up, proud as he was of his sleek black coat. But Posey was intrigued. She, too, liked her glossy brown coat, especially when it was freshly brushed, but those colourful jumpers the other dogs were wearing did look fun! And even Teilo started to look with interest at a neighbourhood dog in a rainbow coat running past on the field.
Gladys, the pink and teal Flamingo tope toy.
So one night, about a week into December, Posey held a conference with her best friend, Mabel, during one of their cosy nights staying up in the kitchen, when everyone else was asleep. Mabel, a stripy Hippopotamus that shared Posey’s bed basket, and who never came along on walks, being an indoor toy, listened carefully to Posey as she told her all about Christmas Jumpers.
Posey got all excited describing the jolly stripes, cheerful reindeer prints and warm wooly cuffs – and Mabel, knowing her best friend very well indeed, listened patiently to the whole tale. One jumper in particular had caught Posey’s eye: it was red, she told Mabel, and decorated with white snowflakes, a big reindeer with a red nose and little stars, too! As she was describing it, her eyes sparkled and her tail wagged back and forth so fast, that it became all blurry. However, when it was at last time to sleep and Posey curled up with Mabel by her side, she looked wistfully at her friend. How, she wondered, would she ever get a jumper like this?!
That night, long after Posey had fallen asleep, exhausted from all the excitement, Mabel stayed up and had a long think. Only as the first rays of sunlight tinged the horizon in pink the following morning, did she finally close her eyes to sleep. She had made a plan, and first thing in the morning, she would… , well, what precisely Mabel did have planned, Posey wouldn’t find out until the 12th December.
The morning of the big day dawned bright and sparkly. The sky went from pink to gold to blue and all the roofs were covered in a thick layer of frost. It was so cold that even the window panes were covered in ice. Posey woke up excitedly, looking forward to breakfast and to her first walk of the day. As she ran out of the kitchen an unfamiliar sight stopped her in her tracks. She skidded to a complete stop in the hallway, gazing up with big round eyes.
A Hallway filled with Christmas Jumpers.
What she saw was her very own, small Christmas miracle: the whole hallway was filled with Christmas Jumpers!
Hanging on a long, red and white rope, all the way from the bottom of the stairs to the first floor was a colourful row of jumpers! There was a Christmas Jumper for each of the humans, one red and blue jumper with robins and holly, a tiny jumper for Mable, a bright green one with a sparkly purple letter “M” on it, one for Gladys, a sleeveless one with sequins and tassels at the bottom, and also one for Giraffe-y, Teilo’s favourite toy, in a bright sunny yellow to match her tennis ball feet. There was even one for Teilo, a beautiful Christmas tree green with a sporty white trim, to match his sleek black fur.
And at the very top of the stairs, there was one more jumper, the most beautiful of all of them and it was for Posey!
Made of a soft festive red wool, it was trimmed with little white snowflakes and covered in stars of every colour. It had candy-cane stripes and a jolly reindeer with a squashy red nose, and it even had her name, P-O-S-E-Y, embroidered on the side. On the other side it had a little pocket to carry treats and a loop to put a water bottle for long walks! It was, without a doubt, the most wonderful jumper that Posey had ever seen!
Of course, such an outfit needs to be taken out for a walk immediately, and so everyone, even Mabel, got dressed in their Christmas Jumpers, wrapped up warm with scarves and wooly hats, and headed out for a morning walk in the wintery woods.
Posey’s Christmas Jumper
There was coffee for the humans picked up on the way, and much cheer and waving as everyone saw them pass through the village. Posey ran ahead of everyone the whole way, skipping with joy, her ears flying and her tail going faster than a propeller, proudly showing everyone her Christmas Jumper.
Mabel, safely tucked into a big human coat pocket, smiled happily to herself. She had done it! Mabel had saved the (Christmas Jumper) day.
The End.
P.S. The real Posey prefers being covered in mud to wearing jumpers.
Der Weihnachts-Pullover-Tag (deutsche Version)
Inspiriert durch meine Hündin Posey, habe ich diese kleine Geschichte zum „Christmas Jumper Day 2024“ geschrieben. Jedes Jahr im Dezember wird dieser Tage in Großbritannien fur einen guten Zweck gefeiert – und Spass ist natürlich auch dabei..
Posey’s Großer Tag der Weihnachts-Pullover
Der erste Dezember war bitterkalt. Der Himmel grau und ein eiskalter Wind fegte von Norden her. Posey, eingekuschelt in ihrem Körbchen schaute sich die Welt an. Von hier oben, im ersten Stock, im gemütlichen Studierzimmer, konnte sie das ganze Haus überschauen, derweil „ihr Mensch“ am Schreibtisch eifrig am Computer tippte.
Gleich nebenan schlummerte Teilo, Posey’s älterer Hunde-Bruder in seinem Lieblingsstuhl und sie hörte, wie er versucht, Traum-Tennisbälle zu fangen.
Vielversprechende Düfte zogen von unten aus der Küche durch das Haus – Düfte, mit der Aussicht auf eine Scheibe Toast?
Dicht neben Posey’s weichem, braunen Fell saß Gladys, Posey’s Lieblings-Spielzeug vom ersten Stock – dieser Hinweis ist wichtig, denn… Posey’s Lieblings-Spielzeug vom ganzen Haus ist natürlich Mabel. Von Mabel erfahrt ihr später mehr…
Gladys, eine große Flamingo-Dame, immer sehr flamboyant in rosa und hellblau. Oftmals, während der langen Nachmittage die Menschen im Haus schwer arbeiten, haben Gladys und Posey lange, geheime Gespräche. Und so war es auch Gladys, welche zuerst von den Weihnachts-Pullovern erzählte:
„Weihnachts-Pullover sind ganz besondere Pullover, warm, kuschelig, fröhlich, bunt und werden nur im Dezember getragen. Und einmal im Jahr – dieses Jahr am 12. Dezember – trägt jeder seinen Weihnachts-Pullover und feiert die Weihnachtszeit“.
Posey’s Augen wurden groß und rund, aufgeregt hörte sie zu wie Gladys diesen Pullover beschrieb: „warm und weich, mit großen Rentieren mit roten Nasen, glitzernden Sternen und einer Fülle von Schneeflocken“.
An den Dezember -Tagen sieht Posey tatsächlich überall Hunde, die voller Stolz festliche Pullover und Mäntelchen trugen.
Hunde-Bruder Teilo, zuerst kaum interessiert, denn er war zu Recht sehr stolz auf sein glänzendes, schwarzes Fell. Doch Posey, fasziniert durch all diese festlichen Eindrücke, hielt weiterhin eifrig Ausschau. Sie mochte ihr schönes braunes Fell ebenso,vor allem, wenn es frisch gebürstet war, fand jedoch all die bunten Pullover der anderen Hunde lustig und begehrenswert.
Und selbst Teilo, bisher ohne großes Interesse, beobachtete auf dem Feld einen Hund, welcher mit einem kunterbunten Regenbogen-Mantel durch die Landschaft stolzierte.
Eine Woche später, als immer mehr Hunde in der Nachbarschaft mit bunten Weihnachts-Pullis spazieren gingen, hielt Posey zu Mitternacht mit ihrer besten Freundin Mabel eine Küchen-Konferenz ab.
Nun kommen wir zu Mabel, Posey’s Haus-Lieblings-Spielzeug.. Mabel, ein gestreiftes Nilpferd, welches jede Nacht mit Posey in der warmen Küche in Posey’s Körbchen schläft und während alle anderen Hausbewohner längst friedlich schlafen, sind beide oft lange noch am flüstern.
Mabel ging normalerweise nie mit auf die Spaziergänge, denn Matsch und Pfützen, bei Hunden sehr beliebt, sind für Mabel’s weichen Stoff jedoch ungeeignet. Und so wusste Mabel nichts von den herrlichen Weihnachts-Pullovern, welche Posey und Teilo täglich in Wald und Feld gesehen haben. Posey erzählte nun ihrer treuen Freundin Mabel von diesen herrlich bunten Pullovern, Mabel hörte geduldig zu, sie war eine gute Zuhörerin. Posey wurde immer aufgeregter, um Mabel genauestens über diese bunten Pullis zu informieren und auch, was ihr am besten gefallen hat – die fröhlich-bunten Streifen, die lustigen Renntiere, die warmen wolligen Krägen.
Und da gab es einen Pullover, bei welchem Posey gar nicht mehr wegsehen konnte: ein festlich-roter Pulli mit weißen Schneeflocken, ein großes Rentier mit roter Nase und tausend kleine glitzernde Sternchen. Posey’s Entzücken beim Beschreiben dieses wahrhaft himmlischen Pullis brachten ihre Augen zum Strahlen, ihre Ohren wedelten hin und her und ihr Schwanz ging so schnell im Kreis wie ein Propeller. Als es endlich Zeit war zum Schlafen, Posey sich in ihr Körbchen gekuschelt mit einem sehnsüchtigen Ausdruck im Gesicht. Mit großen traurigen Augen schaute sie Mabel an und überlegte, ob sie wohl jemals auch zu so einem wundervollen Weihnachts-Pullover kommen würde?
In dieser Nacht, lange, nachdem Posey endlich vor Erschöpfung eingeschlafen war, war es Mabel, die munter blieb und sich die Sache ernsthaft überlegte. Viele Stunden hat sie sich die müden Augen gerieben, Pläne geschmiedet.
Es war schon fast Morgengrauen, die ersten blassen rosa Wolken zeigten sich am Horizont, als Mabel sich endlich zum wohlverdienten Schlaf zusammen ringeln konnte. Zufrieden mit ihrem geheimnisvollen planen ist Mabel eingeschlummert. Was Mabel genau geplant hatte, konnte Posey am 12. Dezember bestaunen.
Der Morgen des 12.Dezember war klar und sonnig. Der Himmel wurde erst rosa, dann goldfarben, dann hellblau, die Dächer überzogen mit dickem Frost, die Fenster mit filigranen Eisblumen verziert.
Posey wurde wir gewöhnlich früh munter und begann fröhlich ihren Tag. Schließlich war jetzt die Zeit für Frühstück und Spaziergang! Schnell lief sie aus der Küche in den Flur und… was sie dort mit großen Augen sah, ließ ihre Pfoten auf der Stelle verharren.
Ein Weihnachtswunder war geschehen – nur für sie. Die Diele, festlich geschmückt und am weißen Treppengeländer entlang hing eine prachtvolle Parade von Weihnachts-Pullovern.
Von oben bis unten, die ganz Treppe, bestückt mit Pullovern – und was für welche!!
Zuerst die beiden großen für die Menschen im Haus – einer in rot und.. einer in blau mit einem Adventskranz und einem kleinen Rotkehlchen.
Dann kam ein ganz kleiner, tiefgrüner Pullover für Mabel, verziert mit einem großen, glitzernden „M“.
Für Gladys, ein Pulli ohne Ärmel, bestickt mit bunten Pailletten und Schleifen.
Dann gab es da noch einen Pullover, perfekt für Giraffe’y, Teilos Lieblings-Spielzeug, eine kleine Giraffe mit Tennisball-Füßen.
Und nun, ein grüner Pullover, schön wie ein Weihnachtsbaum – für Teilo – bestückt mit einem samtigen, weißen Kragen, welcher herrlich zu seinem schönen schwarzen Fell passt.
Jedoch, ganz oben an der obersten Treppenstufe, hing der allerschönste Weihnachts-Pullover, den Posey je gesehen hatte – und dieser Pullover war speziell nur für sie.
Die tiefrote, warme weiche Wolle sah so festlich aus, kleine Schneeflocken am glitzernden Kragen, bunte Sterne, aufgestickt über den ganzen Pullover und.. in grüner Schrift ihr Name: Posey . Vorne zu sehen ein Rentier mit roter Nase, an der Seite eine kleine Tasche für Leckerlis, sogar eine Schlaufe für eine kleine Wasser-Trinkflasche. (bei langen Spaziergängen sehr hilfreich)
Ganz ohne Zweifel war dies der allerschönste Pullover den Posey je gesehen hatte und natürlich musste dieser ganz wunderbare Pullover sofort mit auf den Spaziergang.
Und so haben wir uns alle winterlich angezogen, warme Schals um den Hals, Mützen auf, Hunde und Spielzeuge mit ihren Weihnachts-Pullovern und los ging es, in den Wald – mit Weihnachtsgefühl.
Auf dem Weg gab es warmen Kaffee für die Menschen, Nachbarn und Dorf-Bewohner winkten uns voller Freude zu beim Anblick der vielen bunten und fröhlichen Weihnachts-Pullover.
Posey, voller Stolz ihren Weihnachts-Pullover allen zu zeigen, lief aufgeregt voraus mit großen Sprüngen, fliegenden Ohren und der Schwanz wedelte wieder wie ein Propeller.
Sogar Mabel war heute mit dabei, eingepackt in einer Manteltasche, schaute sie sich voller Freude die ganze Parade an. Sie war sehr stolz, wie viel Freude ihre geheimen Pläne gebracht hatten.
Es war ein toller Weihnachts-Pullover-Tag und… seitdem feiern wir ihn jedes Jahr!
This week took an unexpected turn: first, I decided at the weekend to (finally) dive into building a book nook. I received the kit (Sunshine Town) to create this a while ago and loved the idea, but until now it didn’t feel like a good moment to get started.
But thanks to my new enormous sit stand desk, I felt in the right place to start unboxing and get building. Plus, I also had amazing inspiration from one of my colleagues at Reclaim, Meredith, who recently completed a similar kit and the result was absolutely amazing. So at the weekend I was happily building away, surrounded by a sea of small pieces, glue and paint. Audiobook on, tea at the ready. It was bliss.
What I didn’t know then was that less than 24 hours later my office would move rooms… in a spontaneous effort to create a better space for the postgrad student in our home. Although shifting things around to make a new study space wouldn’t have necessarily meant moving my office, it was a great opportunity to get things arranged in a way that made the most sense given who is using which space when and how. Also, there was a chance to have a floor in the house on which every room has it’s own record player, and who could pass up such an opportunity 😉
Cue a day of shifting book cases and wardrobes, dogs ‘helping’ and me not so secretly regretting the amount of vinyl records that seem to have accumulated on the first floor. Thankfully we have a lot of practice moving things (me being a fan of re-arranging my office…) and moving things around the same floor mercifully avoids lugging things up and down stairs. Needless to say, it was maybe not the ideal time to have trays of drying, tiny pieces of model kits around.
A day later and a relative calm has descended. Hold my calls… I’m blogging… at my newly cleared desk and in my new office space (which I love). Posey the dog has settled in her new nook, surrounded by cuddly blanket and toys. The plants are gently adjusting to the changes in light and position, settling into their new home, too. My yoga mat is stowed in its new corner, ready for a calmer start to the day tomorrow.
Even though so much of my work happens in the digital realm, with collaborators and clients who are continents away, it’s the books, records and stationary that make up the analogue foundation of my practice. And when that foundation is in disarray, I feel it across the whole spectrum of my work. So here’s to making this new space home, so that I can get back to finishing my book nook 😉
I am super excited that we are now not even two weeks away from THE most highly anticipated event of the summer. Forget Paris, it’s all happening on the airwaves this August (and it definitely won’t be raining during summer camp on the radio!). Camp Leader in Chief, Jim Groom, has been blogging about what’s in store… featuring some very cool remixed artwork from Bryan Mathers (who I recently got chatting with on my podcast) – and so I want to jump in and share a preview of what’s in store come August 12th.
DS106 Radio Summer Camp is designed to free you from your screen and enjoy your summer whilst listening to inspiring stories around our virtual campfire.
You will have an interactive online programme which shows the full schedule for each day, starting Monday, August 12th and ending on Friday, August 16th. For each session you will be able to click on the link to the live stream from the radio. You can listen to the shows live or catch the recordings (and transcripts, too!) and there’ll be links to resources and references in the programme description for each session. To listen, all you need is a web browser.
This is the schedule for the camp as it stands at the moment, but keep in mind that some sessions may still move around as we co-ordinate with speakers and DJs from across different time zones.
Register for free and join us at camp
To take part, simply register and look out for the joining instructions the week before the event. During camp week, tune in to DS106 Radio and enjoy.
Hi, welcome to this blog post which I am not typing but dictating.
It is now mid-morning and I have plans to be getting on with before I have to be at my desk. So I wanted to try and write this blog post as I’m doing things… I’m making some coffee just now and I’ve just come back from walking the dogs. So it is a good time to blog but not a good time to sit at my desk. Hence the dictation.
Recently I had a really interesting conversation with one of my coaching clients around the benefits of not always sitting down to reflect or to write, avoiding being faced with a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor on an empty screen. Instead, we talked about ways to use technology like dictation software for example to try and give yourself some flexibility. Inspired by this conversation, I went back through a couple of blog posts I have written about how to reflect, and I came across one about using dictation for reflection. From there, it was a small jump to try and use it to write a blog post, too.
Now, just as I was recording this, the doorbell rang, and it was a delivery. One of the joys of living and working in a community around many people who still work in an office, is that I get to be the local delivery depot for all deliveries in the neighbourhood. And it’s so practical to be able to just pause, walk to the door, deal with things and then being able to come back to this without having to run up and down, start typing again, start a new document and so on.
Using voice recording also gives me a chance to write a different kind of blog post with a different kind of voice, one where I’m sipping coffee, thinking about things, having a bit more room to explore, which is lovely. Now, the joy of being able to record voice notes and turn them into blog posts is transcription software. Recently I’ve started to use a different software package, whisper transcription, which is easy to get and great, particularly when you’re a Mac user. And I’ve been using this for my podcasts, but also to make some of my audio resources more accessible. I’ve been finding it a real joy to be able to have a very easy and quick transcription that I get to keep rather than something that a platform that I use makes and then they keep it. It’s been fascinating to produce and then use transcripts of podcast episodes and interviews.
The other thing I really like about using voice recording instead of typing on a keyboard is that I can take my blog activity on walks and get out more. At the moment for me it’s summer, although you wouldn’t know it by looking out of the window. It’s grey and dreary and it’s just about to start raining. But this morning, when I would normally spend time sitting at my desk, I really felt like going out with the dogs to have a nice walk to start the day.
I’m going to spend plenty of time later sitting at my desk and staring at a screen. Being able to make a quick voice recording on my phone and then being able to have the transcription of that which I can turn into a blog post is a nice way of giving myself an opportunity to kind of reflect as I walk and talk. I felt inspired as I was walking and I often have my best thoughts in the morning. I had some ideas about the new course I’m working on, specifically the design of the course. And I thought, oh, I really need to write this down when I get back to my desk.This is a really good idea! I was thinking about the ] course design, which is a blended design in a number of different ways, it’s both online and a physical thing. It’s asynchronous and synchronous and so on. And as I was rehearsing in my mind what I was going to say to introduce the course in a short video, I thought, oh, great, I can just record myself now with my phone, make a quick voice memo and record the thoughts that are on my mind. I can note them down now. When I come home, I can just pop them into the transcription software and voila! I’ve got my notes from my inspired dog walk ready to go for when I want to sit down and get back to working on that video.
For me, recording my ideas as I walk feels like a really lovely seasonal way to create more flexibility in my day, particularly as at the moment my meeting time is blissfully low. So now that I’ve got a bit of breathing room in the summer for the first time in many years, it’s just so joyful to be able to have 10 meetings a week rather than 80 meetings a week. And it’s also a relief not having to have every single meeting be a revenue generation must have rand instead have scope for exploratory conversations to see where things are going.
So, yeah, I think his is probably all I want to cover in this post and I’m very curious to see how long this post turns out to be. Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I know what I’m looking for in terms of length, and I very rarely write very long blog posts. Sometimes I get into the rhythm and I’ll write something longer, but most of my blog posts are fairly short. And so it’s interesting to see how that will differ in this format. I shall write a little post script to see how many words this blog post ended up being [this post is 996 words].
