Category: #gathering

Piece of Cake

At the recent Creative Commons Summit in Lisbon, I tuned in to all sorts of insight from all sorts of people. But one of my favourite morsels of wisdom was this off-the-cuff comment by Dr. Doug Belshaw, which should serve as hearty wisdom for all future conference organisation teams. But maybe these words were simply…
Ama-Zine Prompts

Amy Burvall and myself thoroughly enjoyed delivering a hands-on Zine-making workshop at OER19 in Galway earlier this month. It was so good to be back in the motherland. But the trouble with a workshop of this nature is that most people are a little uncomfortable when faced with a blank piece of paper. So, in our…
Demonising the binaries

When I was growing up, eggs were good for you. Then they weren’t. Then they were good again. Then just the egg white was good. Binaries are so often unhelpful – especially when they are just a shortcut for not having to use your own brain. This is also the case in environmental activism, as…
Privacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

Business behaviour around use and exploitation of people’s data, is dictated by the local privacy law (or lack thereof). Julie Owono was speaking at Mozfest on research into sub-saharan subsidiaries of European telecoms companies. It’s no surprise really – capitalism is about capital, so everything is a possible resource waiting to be exploited.
Data in Oppressive Regimes

At Mozfest, I participated in a discussion on the use (monitoring / controlling / blocking) of data in oppressive regimes. Hearing the issues first hand from those who live there was horrifying. I realised how much I was completely unaware of. One clear call was the need for financially supporting homegrown communication platforms, as opposed…
Equity Unbound

It was great to be back at Mozfest this weekend. And whaddayaknow, I got the chance to catch the #unboundeq (equity unbound) team explain what their project is all about. I’d seen the hashtag floating around on Twitter – but when engaging with a think, it’s dialogue that gets me going – and listening. So I…
OER19 revisited…

I’m already looking forward to OER19, and I’m delighted that it will take place in the motherland. Aye. Of course, I couldn’t resist this little remix of the flyer when I first saw it. This is a product of Mathers third principle of Visual Thinkery – Curiosity must not come back empty-handed…
It’s not the only way…

If you look around the tech sector, it would be easy to think that this was the only model of generating wealth. And generating wealth for whom? A Co-operative is a business that exists for the benefit of its members (as opposed to its shareholders), and is built around a set of co-operative principles. As I’ve found…
Pedagogies of Disruption as Resistance

Listening to Momodou Sallah’s keynote at OER18 instantly transported me back to my days living and working in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I found myself deeply resonating with his desire for change and his willingness to be a part of it. Social Entrepreneurship; Confronting the poverty of imagination; The Empire narrative; The missing Southern voices. I found…
Continually becoming…

My sketchnote from Catherine Cronin’s talk at #OER18. I was reflecting to another attendee afterwards that I find some talks lend themselves more towards a sketchnote than others. Someone who knows what they are talking about, and cares deeply about it, is a must. But another key ingredient for me are the speaker’s homemade philosophies…
Digital Alchemy

One of the Digital-Alchemists-in-Residence at #OER18 has to Alan Levine – so when this phrase was used in their session, I couldn’t let it just disappear into the ether…
Open willy-nilly

Here’s a quote from an excellent session by Mia Zamora and Alan Levine at OER18 that stuck in my head…