Category: #innovation

We shape our tools

“How do you find a good name for your start-up?” someone asked. “Hold it lightly – don’t overthink it. In the beginning you don’t even know what it is. As it starts to take shape it will start telling you what it wants to be called”, I said, almost sounding like I knew what I…
Culture of Innovation

In my humble experience, Innovation is often highlighted as a value, but rarely embedded in a culture. What does a culture of innovation look like? A culture where everyone’s perspective is valued and anyone can be involved in an idea. This thought emerged from a conversation with Louise Jones.
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…
Our tools shape us

A library of code, a palette of brushes, a diary of thoughts, a schedule of plans, a smorgasbord of apps, a myriad of processes… Quote: John Culkin – “A schoolman’s guide to Marshall McLuhan” – via Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel.
Distribution of Innovation

Together with Doug Belshaw and WeAreOpen Co-op I’ve been working a micro-credentialing project with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C. On the second day of workshops we put together, we organised a succession of badge project “surgeries”. I captured some of the dialogue using live drawing – which we then evolved into the Credential Project Blueprint. Here’s one of the many doodles…
The Innov-A-team

In 1972 a team of open workers was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. This team promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the global underground. Today, still wanted by the bad guys, they survive as members of a worker’s co-operative. If you have a problem, if no one else can…
ZeroNet – the rabbit hole…

Doug Belshaw has been experimenting recently with ZeroNet, a way of hosting a website, distributed amongst peers (using BitTorrent and BitCoin technologies). Essentially, such a website would become decentralised, with no single point of hosting, should someone want to target it in order to shut it down, or deny others access by overloading the server. Resilient…
Machine Learning

I often listen to podcasts when I’m drawing something. However, recently I tuned into Audrey Watters and Kin Lane‘s Contrafabulists podcast – and as their conversation progressed, I found my mind wandering from what I was supposed to be drawing and thinking about an image of the conversation, which explored what Machine Learning is and of course,…
The Elephant in the Classroom…

I have to say – I hadn’t even thought about this. As an adult I’m very aware of what light (and indeed soul-destroying fluorescent light) can do to creativity and productivity. I hadn’t thought about CO2. I saw a prototype of the Learnometer by Stephen Heppell at the BETT show last year – worth bearing in…
Future kinds of work

How I work has changed massively over the past ten years. Okay, so now I draw pictures, whereas I used to write programs – or lead others to write programs. Probably the biggest change I’ve had is being exposed to Mozilla’s way of working. They corale creative communities using some very clever practices and technologies. And…
Meeting around a document

What’s the agenda of your meeting? Is it to say clever things – or to build clever things. If you’re serious of collaboratively building something, and want to give everyone an equitable voice, consider meeting around a document instead of a table – it’s a completely different (and more productive) experience…
Innovation

“I don’t know if I even believe in innovation”. The words escaped my mouth at an event I was speaking at. We were talking about innovative uses of technology in Further Education. It seems to me that innovation is only innovation in hindsight: “Wow! That thing we made was really innovative.” Even though, at the…