A girl smiled at me at the crossing this morning and said hello. She’d seen me a few times going in and out of Argyle House and she’d wanted to speak to me.
Last year she came to the Girl Geeks Scotland Leadership event that I ran, and she took part in my workshop. She wanted to let me know that coming to that event changed something for her and things clicked into place. When made redundant shortly afterwards she took what she had worked on in our session and used it to find a job she really wanted to do. She said the structure of the activity and the honesty and openness with which I shared my experiences (good and bad) was helpful. I was speechless. What a way to start a week. All I could do was thank her for her kind words and remind her that she did all the hard work. I wish I’d asked for her name because I’d love it if she could come and help me deliver this workshop at a future event – but I was too thrown to have my senses about me. I will be keeping an eye out for her…
For the last 2 weeks I’ve also been guest curator on the @femedtech Twitter account. I was following in the footsteps of some seriously high calibre women and was a little trepidatious. What could I bring to the plate? and would the kinds of things I’m interested in resonate for others? Seems like a few people are interested in feminist perspectives on online safety, so that’s good. Like other curators before me, I also trawled for and retweeted stuff shared with the #femedtech hashtag. A post each from 2 colleagues at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who are new to blogging got really good reactions.
I've never shared a blogpost on twitter before, so here goes: https://t.co/W2hQ7yVvdV read about my thoughts on online communities, what we can learn from social media and the value of lurkers #learningtechnology #onlinecommunity #femedtech
— Laura Blundell (@laurablundell) July 10, 2018
I'm facing my fears of public speaking and sharing a blog post I have written, it's here: https://t.co/paUWVq93Xn read about my thoughts on discussion boards and crafting approaches to make sure we consider the needs of the many, not the few #learningtechnology #edtech #femedtech
— Rachelle O'Brien (@rachelleeobrien) July 10, 2018
As did a call to follow Professor Lesley Gourlay at UCL (who has written a book I enjoyed).
I have this book – it’s good. And if you don’t follow @lesleygourlay you should. #fridaypoetry #femedtech https://t.co/iVsg6DfjTQ
— femedtech (@femedtech) July 6, 2018
This isn’t a brag.
What ties these two things together is the benefits of giving and sharing, and using our platforms to boost others. So this is a call to do more of this stuff where we can, in whatever way we can; share our practice and our stories generously; use whatever influence we have to support others around us. Raise people up.
(Cairnpapple skies. Photo by me. No rights reserved.)
