I'm a huge fan of distributed, & open ways of working, but it is not without its challenges. Monitoring the vibe when facilitating a workshop via video conferencing is particularly tricky.
 
In person, we can easily read people's body language.  Those who are not speaking are still contributing their time, their attention and their energy. We can easily see if people have become bored, or are distracted.  Online it's hard to sense if lurkers are learning, listening, thinking, multi-tasking, or just completely tuned out.
 

John Findlay, RIP, thank you so much for teaching me such great etiquette for computer mediated communication.

Who knew it would become so mainstream? You knew!

I shared the Zing Technologies "Talk Type Read Review" meeting method on the Open Practice Library, and was then invited to talk about T2R2 on the Open Practice Podcast last year - and just found I can share that with you here too!

In 2019, Leslie Hawthorn introduced me to the Open Practice Library

It was a revelation.

Non disclosure agreements, closely held ownership, and elusive secrets to success are almost cliched hallmarks of the start up world of innovation and entrepreneurship. But it is the "in the open" accessible world of open source software that has driven the new reality we find ourselves living in.  Many people started working remotely last year due to the pandemic. Enabled by readily accessible technology, most people may not be aware how much of that tech is built upon foundations powered by open source software.
 

Can you remember when you first heard about communities of practice? I wish I could. I know I've had Etienne Wenger & Co's book "Cultivating Communities of Practice" on my shelf for a long time.  I may have "borrowed" it from my Mum. (Thanks Mum).

I'm currently (finally) reading Accelerate. So when I stumbled on this McKinsey report about Developer Velocity, I thought "Snap!", just as one does when playing that childhood card game when you see a match.

So what's the match?

It's still Ada Lovelace Day somewhere, so it's not too late for me to pause to honour a few extraordinary women who tech.

Farewell friend.

Marcus & Claire

I can't quite recall the last time we met. Was it at the Auction Rooms in North Melbourne, just before you joined RMIT? No - it was after that, you were at RMIT and we were talking about some Drupal sites you'd inherited. Or perhaps we just spoke on the phone? I wish I could remember that moment, now that you are gone.

I keep thinking about the opening lines of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.

So I grabbed it from Project Gutenberg (yay for the public domain) and read it out loud and recorded it.

Linked below if you want to hear it too.