Hi! I’m writing to you again as you subscribed to my Quinlearning newsletter. Feel free to unsubscribe if you are no longer interested. If you are then stay tuned for new writing from me.
Back in 2015 I started a newsletter as I was preparing to leave my job at the innovation foundation Nesta. I ended up going full time at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and continuing the newsletter for quite some time. Each week I shared links to things I had read and learned from, reviews of books, gadgets I was into, quotes and all sorts of things I found interesting. It got a bit much for me, I must admit, and I ended up fizzling out with it as my job got more busy.
Fast forward to this week and I am leaving the Raspberry Pi Foundation and finding myself doing lots of both reflecting on the past and optimistically looking to the future.
I had a get together this week to say goodbye to many of my colleagues. Lots of stories, reflections, discussions. It’s always interesting how candid you can find yourself being when you are leaving a job, and how candid others are in return. I’ve experienced this a few times and thought how good it could be if this was the norm.
At one point I found myself in discussion with my colleague Jane about how I saw my time in the role, my intentions at the start and how I had changed as a result. I spent some years before Raspberry Pi in organisations focusing more on policy and sharing. I wrote a lot, spoke at a lot of events, hopefully had plenty of influence. But I was was always talking about how things could be, and never in a position to do them. When I got the opportunity to go to Raspberry Pi Foundation I saw it as a chance to join an organisation that was doing the doing. I was still in a research role, but I could get closely involved in teams delivering digital education experiences for educators and young people and have a more tangible influence.
This shift in focus happened, and it’s been great work on more directly influencing the educational work of an operating organisation. However, I largely stopped sharing my thinking outside of where I worked. I stopped loosely developing my thinking and reflecting in public in the same way. Last week I published this post reflecting on moving on from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and I was blown away with the feedback and reactions I got to my writing. It really seems like the time to hardness this energy I have around reflecting and sharing, and get back to some more regular writing.
tldr; I’ve missed developing thinking in public, sharing thoughts as they are forming, and the conversations that come out of that - so I am back.
I’m looking forward to continuing to share what I am learning here. I don’t want to over structure it, but expect reflections on tech, learning, the way we work, and research. I’ll publish every week or so.
If you’ve read to the end, thanks for sticking with me! Feel free to forward this on to anyone you think might want to subscribe, and see you next time.
All the best,
Oliver