This post from maique h/t Doug Belshaw, struck a chord, Over the past ten years I’ve used and retreated from various online platforms. Starting with Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandals, Twitter after the takeover, etc. Some of their replacements, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. just didn’t stick for me. The most recent abandoned space for me […]
Category: 23 Things Syndicated
Answering the 40 questions (2025)
I came across 40 questions by Steph Ango, CEO of Obsidian via Doug Belshaw. It’s archived now, but you can see more of his work at Dr Doug Belshaw. The idea is to answer them every year, which I’d intended to do back in December when I book marked it. Early 2026 got away from […]
UX debt has to be paid back
UX debt has to be paid back was originally published in UX Collective on Medium. This article from 2022 feels pretty relevant for today. I often refer to the types of debt we accumulate as instructional design teams / units, mostly referring to technical debt, but I like the framing here of UX Debt that […]
The Vanishing Designer
Scrolling through the UX Collective blogs today (2021) I came across this post, The Vanishing Designer, by Chuánqi Sun. Losing the design diversity means falling into a singular narrative of how design must be done, which grants unfair and self-reinforcing advantage to the mainstream while discouraging, stifling, or even punishing the idiosyncratic designers who […]
The One Percent
What will it take to make your day 1% more… of what you need? Working life for is busy and keeping a grip on things takes a lot of energy and focus. So what do you do when you grip on so tightly that you can’t see beyond what’s in front of you? This post is inspired by some recent coaching sessions which prompted me to reflect on how you can make small, incremental changes…
The Power of (the right) Prompts (Part 2)
In my last post I explored how a journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. Whether you are writing by hand, typing away on your laptop, dictating into your phone or sketching with pen and paper, I am a BIG fan of journalling (and after over 30 years of journalling for both work and in my personal life, I have tried every which way to make it work). As a…
More than words (Part 1)
A journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. One of the things I know to be true is that there’s hardly ever a perfect moment when everything is done, your inbox is empty and the ocean of professional life is lies calm and still in front of you; giving you space and time to reset. The closest I ever got to the ideal blank slate day is the start of…
Newsletter, July 2026
Hello! It’s been a busy and highly enjoyable month of travel and conferences for me, and this week I am wrapping up my teaching at Oxford for this academic year and also recording new interviews for the next Reclaim case study. Next week new projects are getting underway for the next few months including work my second book. It was not all work however as I also celebrated my birthday, and went to see The…
OER26: The Future is Open.
In true OER-style the weather in Milton Keynes was super sunny. Walking across the campus of the Open University, with its green laws, shady trees and sun drenched buildings felt like joining a particularly educational summer holiday camp. Regular readers will know that the OER Conference holds a special place in my heart, and the beautiful weather and setting only added to a sense of joyful anticipation. I am deeply sensible of the privilege to…
25 years of ILTA: a salute to #EdTech26
This week has been such a joy. I had high expectations and was looking forward to returning to ILTA’s annual conference AND giving my paper on inspiring open edtech case studies I’ve been working on wit Jim Groom and Reclaim Hosting. It’s been 10 years since Jim and I first met at the OER Conference in Edinburgh, and it means a lot to me that our continued work together has resulted in us attending this…