Weeknote 05/2019

Open Thinkering Weeknotes, weeknote, work

This week I’ve been:

  • Sending out Issue #330 of my Thought Shrapnel newsletter. It was entitled, ‘You’d BETT-er believe it, people’ and was, as ever, made possible via those who support me on Patreon.
  • Recording, editing and releasing Episode 115 of the Today In Digital Education (TIDE) podcast with my co-host Dai Barnes. We entitled this episode ‘Art, milk and parties’ and discussed our experiences at BETT, the history of art, veganism, criticism of Facebook, MoodleNet testing, smartphone-based party games, and more!

  • Working on the MoodleNet project:

  • Feverishly getting things ready for the 100-person initial testing period. We delayed it a bit and then finally went live on Thursday.

  • Publishing a new page at new.moodle.net
  • Rolling back our plans to take over the moodle.net domain after some HQ discussion.
  • Launching the test version of MoodleNet to HQ testers and then the rest of the testing community.
  • Scrambling after deploying an update caused something to fail that only an engineer (at that point asleep in Canada!) could fix.
  • Simultaneously high-fiving one another with one hand and biting our fists with the other.
  • Replying to testers who have been, on the whole, positive.
  • Going through suggestions from testers on Changemap.
  • Smiling at some of the collections that users have created.
  • Filing a bunch of UI issues in GitLab.
  • Getting ready surveys and emails to go to out to testers.
  • Creating a short overview video of what MoodleNet currently looks like – and what we’re looking to quickly improve.

  • Booking travel and accommodation to meet Gry Stene, Moodle’s Chief Product Officer, in Barcelona in late February

  • Telling the world about an idea I’ve got to run weekly surgery appointment slots. They’re free, and I’m happy to discuss pretty much anything!

  • Commenting on Laura’s draft of a post (subsequently published) about We Are Open Co-op raising our sights and being a bit more holistic in our thinking.

  • Putting together things for Thought Shrapnel:

  • TOTGA: January 2019 (Patreon supporters only!)

  • At the end of the day, everything in life is a ‘group project’

  •  Make art, tell a story

  • Microcast #058 – Product launch (testing) (Patreon supporters only!)

  • Fun smartphone-based party games

  •  Cal Newport on the dangers of ‘techno-maximalism’

  •  Staying for nothing and shrinking from nothing (quote)

  • Trudging through the snow. It’s been deep and crisp and even in Northumberland over the last couple of days! We’ve had some fun sledging and having snowball fights.

  • Helping my wife migrate from an iPhone (6S) to an Android smartphone (Google Pixel 3). The biggest hassle? WhatsApp chat history 🙄

Next week, I’m working on MoodleNet four days (Mon/Tues & Thurs/Fri) and diving into consultancy stuff on Wednesday. Remember, you can book a slot to have a chat if you think I can help with anything!