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I have been sharing some work at a Red Cross conference this week, working with good people, trying to transform learning. As they describe their opportunity, resource, and perceptions of constraint, I was struck by a lesson I have learned before: in most Organisations, we already have almost everything we need to achieve transformation. Great people, motivation, understanding of context, and a willingness to learn. We may not have the answers, but that is ok: it is within this mixture of opportunity and community that we will find it.
The challenge is not to ask for more, but to do more with what we already have, and that will require us to leave some things behind.
The other thing it will require is for us to utilise external spaces, and engage in conversations of difference and dissent: you cannot change a monumental system from within, simply by pushing away at it harder. You need to find third spaces, places for conversations that do not engage directly in oppositional power. And within these spaces, have conversations not simply about the things that you agree on, but also those where you differ.
It is easy to agree, but change will likely lie in nobody getting everything that they need. But everyone getting a new context in which to invest themselves, to utilise their Individual Agency, and drive change.
In The News
Forensic Fake News
This piece of coverage around the UK General Election is interesting, taking a forensic look at how a fake news story spreads.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-50160148
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story: it’s not that stories have not been weaponised before (indeed, that is almost the primary way that we use them), but rather that the landscape of stories has changed. It’s the ability for opinion to aggregate around a perspective, and amplify it at such speed which is really different.
These are exactly the same dynamics that we seek to utilise when we build social movements for learning or change, so it’s worth understanding the forces at play.
My Writing
Kindness in Community
As I enjoyed my free biscuit, I revisited the writing on my local popup station coffee shop, reflecting upon where we go when we move beyond transaction. In my writing on Modern Learning we discuss choreography, and artefacts, in relation to engagement, and this is an example of that in action. A biscuit may seem like a small thing, but in terms of social currency, it’s valuable. Largely because the biscuit is authentic.
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/community-and-biscuits/
Four Trends in Organisational Learning
I usually feel that I’m cheating when I write lists: it’s a lazy way of driving engagement, but I did it more as part of a reflective process than cynical traffic strategy. The trends here are not definitive, but a reflection on how ‘new things’ are more shiny than the old ones. This year I have been largely focussed on Learning Science and Social Learning, but next year I will be writing the Big Data Guidebook, and the AI and Machine Learning one, both to sit alongside the Modern Learning course.
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/four-trends-in-organisational-learning/
What I'm Reading
 As anyone who knows me will know, I have it in me to be compulsive, so I’ve fallen into a hole of comic books, and I’m working my way through the new Iron Man series. Several visits to Forbidden Planet later, and a lot of eBay hunting, and I have a stack that I’m burning through.
It’s sat right next to the stack of books on Big Data that I’m supposed to be reading as research, right next to the edited manuscript for the Learning Science Guidebook, which also needs my attention. So that’s all going swimmingly.
Alongside it, I have managed to start the first few pages of ‘Packing my library and ten digressions’ by Alberto Manguel, which I must say is beautifully written. It’s a very short book (which is why I cheated and chose it) about the deconstruction of his 35k strong library, as he moves to the US. I will report back when I have finished it (in my mind, I have a lazy Sunday which includes this).
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300219333/packing-my-library
In related news, I am building a library: I’ve always wanted one, I’m all grown up, so I can have one. More news on this next year.
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