Weeknote 19/2026

Another busy week, but not a bad one at all. My first week flying solo after the closure of WAO, as I discussed in my last weeknote. It's a different rhythm, for sure. I'm thinking about taking Wednesdays off, as I used to when I was at Moodle 🤔

You might think that taking a day off in the middle of the week is odd, and perhaps it is. But it divides the week into two mini working weeks, which is lovely. I might try it this week, as I've only got one meeting in the calendar, which I could move.

Writing & Creating

Here, I published:

April 2026: frameworks, friction, and federation

What appeared on this blog in April 2026.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Literacy-slop

AI is a tool that allows us to create shortcuts, but point is to be able to judge whether the shortcuts take us anywhere useful. Just as humans are the ultimate arbiters of taste, so we are the ultimate arbiters of literacy. And that can’t be sloptimised.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Beyond Elegant Consumption (Again)

What are the conditions under which legitimate taste and real digital literacies are formed?

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Over at Thought Shrapnel, I published:

On originality

100% agree. Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

Time as an instrument?

I’m fascinated by this. Not fascinated enough to pay $21.99 to use it on just one of my devices, but I just think it’s a really interesting example of reducing functionality, working hard on the aesthetic, and making something simple to use. I can, and do, use Toggl which is much more fully-featured, but there’s something to be said for things being nice to use. Perhaps I need to create my own cross-platform version, rather than an Apple-only one, as I did with Stream…

Thought Shrapnel

How power structures and relationships really work

I’m not sure what I enjoyed more, the org chart showing how power structures and relationships really work, or the LinkedIn comment that said: Very interesting how the dealer sells to his coworkers, and yet they’re still sad.A lack of clearly defined KPIs and regular milestone celebrations can make it difficult to maintain alignment and momentum with stakeholders. Would be insightful to create a internal customer feedback loop here.

Thought Shrapnel

Digital literacies involve layers of abstraction

On the one hand, yes I feel this. On the other hand, things change! There are layers of abstraction, especially with computing. I was having a conversation with someone recently who’s senior in an educational computing organisation. We both agreed that the equivalent of Mozilla Webmaker these days wouldn’t be teaching kids HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; we’d be teaching them how to understand and use AI tools to achieve their ends.

Thought Shrapnel

On the gendered nature of (types of) hobbies

This is an interesting look at the gendered nature of hobbies, how they’re coded, and how people treat them as provisional or non-negotiable. I’ve never been a woman, and never been in a long-term relationship with anyone other than my wife, so I don’t know how this works for other people. What I do know is that there’s at least three forces at play here: gender norms and differences, peer pressure (real/imaginary) and expectations of self.

Thought Shrapnel

Wisdom from the Tao Te Ching

It’s the standing back that’s the hard part. Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

The patient as transcription layer

I had a similar experience last year attempting to get a diagnosis for a different cluster of symptons. While I totally get the ethical issues and potential problems with using AI in medicine, the waste (and patient frustration) is incredible. Everyone worries about AI replacing doctors. After 24 hours in the hands of the NHS, I think they’re looking in the wrong direction. GP, A&E, then other parts of the hospital.

Thought Shrapnel

My goal is to encourage people to take action and look at the alternatives that are on the table

An important part of TechFreedom is not just talking about reducing dependency on Big Tech, but getting on and doing it. Tom posted his ‘stack’ this week, which was an update to his post last year. It shows that, like me he’s moving towards more and more Open Source-based workflows. The table above and quotation below comes from a post by Tim Rodenbröker, a designer, hacker and content creator, who in December 2025 outlined his switch from Apple and Adobe to Open Source.

Thought Shrapnel

We live in an economy that has systematically destroyed the conditions for trust, and then charges us for the workarounds

This is from an economics blog, so focuses on money, but I think it’s equally true of the kind of politics we’ve got at the moment. When people don’t trust each other, then they look to so-called “strong men” to save them from a non-existent, manufactured threat. Think about what a low-trust economy actually looks like in practice. Everything gets expensive. Contracts get thicker. Lawyers get richer. Every transaction requires documentation, verification, third-party guarantees.

Thought Shrapnel

Oof

Thought Shrapnel

Reading, Listening, and Watching

I'm having another go at reading No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I've seen the film, of course, but last time I tried to read the book, gave up half way through. I'm taking my time for this re-read.

I'm not listening to podcasts at the moment, which I think must be a combination of there being absolutely fantastic music out at the moment (e.g. FENIAN by KNEECAP) and me trying to limit my information inputs a bit. I've got a lot on.

Working

It was a four-day week due to the Early May Bank Holiday. I'm working on four projects at the moment:

• DCC – I used Claude Design to create a design system for work I'm doing on Wallet Attached Storage. I didn't get much done other than that, though.
• INASP – I put together some options for how they should approach procurement for both their Rising Scholars and main website project. After meeting with their project lead and CEO, I'm going to build out that procurement documentation, based on the Dovetail guidance. I've also removed WAO and added Dynamic Skillset to the Dovetail Partner directory.
• SDS – Nate got the platform ready for the Digital Badges Proof of Concept project, and I ran a workshop for Awards Network members and other stakeholders on Friday. It went well, although I forgot to make everyone admins so they couldn't test issuing.
• TechFreedom – On Wednesday, Tom and I ran the second workshop for members of the pilot cohort. We also sent out the second newsletter.

Other than that, I did some business development, which involved some meetings. I also met with Stephen Lockyer about developing ProjectDial (the sister to TaskDial).

The main thing I'm doing in my 'spare' time, professionally-speaking, is working on Sightlines+ which will be a paid addition to the existing, free Sightlines tools. It's going well: a suite of 10 Systems Thinking tools, which also come with a comparison tool, and the option to switch on AI as well to help (if you want).

I also did something quickly this afternoon (Sunday) after I saw that François Jourde had created a nifty Markdown-to-HTML presentation tool. It reminded me that back in my Mozilla days I used to present using web pages with 3D effects. So, while I was watching the football, I got my little robot friend to fork François' repo and create Markdeck 3D.

Markdeck 3D — preview

Markdeck 3D: a lightweight, accessible single-page Markdown-to-slides app, with an opt-in impress.js 3D mode, local image support, and branded themes. A fork of jourde/markdown-slidedeck.

It needs a bit of tidying up, but it's pretty cool and incorporates the design systems for Dynamic Skillset and TechFreedom 🙂

Personal

My wife, Hannah, and I went away on Friday night. Just to Newcastle, but we ended up staying at the same hotel as the Man Utd first team! We casually walked past Mason Mount on the way back from breakfast, who picked up a yellow card during a 0-0 draw with Sunderland on Saturday afternoon. It's nice to get away, even for one night, as it makes the weekend seem longer.

No football for my daughter Grace this week, but Ben was home and I was around while he filled in the official form to switch from Sport to Geography at Northumbria University. He went on a Geography field trip last week with the first year students to get a feel for it, and liked it. So he's applied to make the switch. It means starting in the first year again, and it's potentially a four year course (with a sandwich year). So that means he could be in his final year when Grace is in her first year...

Ben and I had planned to go for a walk on Saturday, but it was absolutely pouring with rain, so we decided not to make ourselves miserable. Other than that, I've been running up the steps in the park, on the treadmill at the gym, did some Pilates, and some leg weights.

Next week

I've got client meetings, business development meetings, and a call with a potential business coach on Monday. Then on Tuesday I've been invited to an RAi workshop to give feedback on an upcoming Education white paper. Wednesday I might take off, and then on Thursday and Friday, along with meeting up in person with Tom, I need to get work done on all four projects.

I'm still thinking about how and where to share information about the projects I'm working on. It was easy when we had the WAO blog, but now I'm wondering whether I need one for Dynamic Skillset. Or whether just to do case studies. Decisions, decisions.