Err…hello?
I work to visually make sense of tricky topics, moments in time, gathering of minds – mostly for other people. I also try to make sense of my own world. This site contains barrel-loads of visual thinkery I’ve created – some of which you can use freely under a Creative Common licence.
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Potatoes Grown in Ireland
This tasty little visual story is about the types of potato grown in Ireland in the last couple of centuries. And like most things in Ireland, some are very political…
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Montaigne and the Open Web
Here’s another little visual absorption from the Reclaim Open blog-a-thon, relating to a blog post by Doug Belshaw. At the top of his post, he outrageously includes an illustration by me from many years ago that I’d completely forgotten about. So add that one to the synthesis pile – oh look it’s in the trees!
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My website is a junk drawer
This week I’m tuning into Reclaim Open to try and make some visual sense of it. I really resonate with the metaphor used by Laura Hilliger in her blog post My website is a junk drawer. Maybe it’s because I’m organisationally challenged, but attach meaning to everything…
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Curious Intelligence
Prepping for a Visual Thinking workshop at DCU in Dublin last month (part of a conference entitled “Education after the Algorithm”) had me pondering my current interactions with Generative AI. I recognise that magical feeling of speaking a sentence into the void and being presented with an instant revelation – a conjuring trick. But if…
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Eh? Aye!
I’m as curious about AI as the next guy. Coding? Oh my goodness, I wish that had been around when I was learning how to program. Imagery? Meh. Seems like a waste of electricity to me… This mathematical cartoon about Artificial Intelligence was created using the Remixer Machine. So you can remix it here.
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Open Education at a Crossroads
I’ve really enjoyed capturing keynotes and conversations live. It involves being playfully curious about what’s being communicated, and wondering how the pieces of the puzzle could fit together in a visual landscape. I’ve always prioritised the capturing of messy insight over the creation of beautiful art. Somehow the ideas start to tell me where to…
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Art vs. Idea
I met Grayson Perry at an event once. When he was asked what is art? He responded by saying that Art is stuff made to hang on rich people’s walls… Personally, I think I’ve had to unlearn the classroom concept of art that I picked up at school. Whatever I created had to be a…
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A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition
Back in the old days of social media, h/t was a thing. (I remember having to ask what it meant…) Being restricted for characters as was the trend then, hat tip became h/t. I often posted half-baked drawings inspired by hearing someone speak at a meeting or event and used these precious 3 characters to…
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The Meaning of Recognition
I think in the early days of thinking about open credentialing, I got fixated on the credential part. The proof you might receive from an authoritative body, qualified to judge, rather than a human nod or tip-of-the-hat from someone in my community. Recognition – we all need it. By the way, it’s a long time…
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How you made them feel
I was listening to a politics podcast at the beginning of last week (weren’t we all?) and a cursory reference was made to this quote by Maya Angelou. It nibbled at the back of my head until I was prepping for a workshop mid-week. I drew it up and used it as the focal point…