Thinkery - Open Visual Thinkery

Here is the archive of open visual thinkery in chronological order.

Curiosity

What if I just tweak it a little? Change the colours slightly, or make it into a repeating pattern? Or a character? If it could speak, what would it say? Curiosity is creativity’s playful little cousin (Tinker?) – always getting up to mischief… I came across this quote on curiosity doing some work for Ada College, the UK’s…
Eye

It’s a two way deal. Once you’ve seen something, you can’t unsee it. Equally, the interpretation of what you see is a product of things you’ve seen and experiences you’ve had so far. Eye. Even the english word is a palindrome; it’s a two way deal.
Self Portrait

If self expression affords you a sideways glimpse at your own self, then a self portrait allows you to briefly hold its gaze. Deface your face. Go on; I give you full permission…
Artificial Intelligence…

So I’ve been meeting with Kin Lane recently (aka API Evangelist) trying to get a deeper hold on all things API (or Application Programming Interface for what it’s worth). As an ex-programmer, I’m interested to understand the evolution of how APIs are being used. A number of insights emerged from our conversation, including this aligned view…
Being a leader

There are a grazillion lists of leadership qualities compiled by those who seem to be able to exactly define what it takes to be a leader. Yet, in my experience, the ability to lead is a shape-shifting un-bottle-able mist. Nevertheless, here are four very general qualities that I reckon a good leader does indeed require, which…
The future of testing

I read this guardian article recently where a woman asked Tinder for all her personal information. They sent her 800 pages worth of data. Apply this to the world of testing, which is increasingly data rich, and it doesn’t take much to make a pessimistic prediction. This thought was originally from a town hall discussion at the E-ATP…
Academic failures – got any previous?

We carry around our academic failures like previous convictions. If pressed, we might even blame something: but I’d never even been to France so it just didn’t make sense… Whether or not the excuse is fair, we accept what the piece of paper tells us. I’m not very good at that. Sadly, what we really believe is…
Student Debt

I find this insight from Noam Chomsky about student debt utterly profound – and equally depressing. How can we have let this happen?
New Project? Every time…

The biggest waste of time is the time spent not getting started. Why do I allow myself to be held captive by irrational worries? Once I start a project, I begin to see it for what it is. And sure enough, the ideas come and I don’t need to fear it anymore. I start to enjoy the process of…
iPhone X

I am supposed to care about this stuff right? That’s the deal with the big reveal…
Reinvent

Everyone deserves to be able to re-invent themselves; to decide the person they want to be, and become it; to transition from one life chapter to another. No wonder artists in the past have spent so much time creating self-portraits, for how can you reinvent something that you can’t see, or don’t understand?
Beyond the Islands of Innovation

I managed to catch the first day of the ALT conference in Liverpool, and thoroughly enjoyed catching up with some of the open crew, and meeting some new faces. Some of my earliest thinkery dates back to altc conferences, like this and this. Good people…