 Welcome. The Sethar lounge's first session. Brian Maithers might not know Brian but he's been innovating in the learning space for a very long time and I'm actually looking forward to hear what he's going to say as well. When Marren asked me to speak at the ALT conference I was really pleased, technology innovation is my thing And so I thought I'd look up the website to see, you know, who's speaking and what not. And I noticed the conference was called Riding Giants and I realised then that man really only invited me to be a mascot. This which I'm happy to be really. So, it's with that thought that let me just give you the bloodthirst guide to me originally I saw for Software Engineer where you believe. I started a couple of businesses, or three businesses in my time, the last of which I showed to city and guilds, which is how I find myself inside city and guilds. But I need to sort of tell you that because whenever I'm talking about culture, I'm fascinated between the difference in culture between a small organisation and a large organisation, or a very new organisation and an old organisation. So, that might help for you to know that. I work a couple of days a week for city and guilds now. I do things like this sort of stuff. I don't know if you've come across it, but I think I'd like a club. Where, how do I say this? Just make sure I'm being nice. It's difficult for awarding bodies to be innovative, I think. Is that fair, Joe? It is, because generally they're a bit more of a police force, in terms of making sure that things are followed appropriately. And there's good reasons for that, that's all good. But I think awarding bodies can be real facilitators of conversation, OK? So city and guilds has got about 3,500 centres in the UK and about 6,000 more globally. And that's a lot of innovative people in those centres, right? Because necessity, I think, is the mother of all invention, and just not me that thinks that. But you tend to find that those that are innovating are on the fringe, right? They're where the pain is, they're where the delivery is. And what I think I'd like to try to do whenever we got together in the Science Museum, and we're going to get together again in December, was to look at emerging technologies and to get people talking about them in small groups, but also to mix up those that are already experimenting with those that are, hey, what's this? Open badges? That sounds a bit crazy. So if that's the sort of thing that interests you in FE, and I realise that maybe most of you are more on the HE side, which I forgive you all for, don't worry. But on the FE, if you're interested in looking at emerging technologies and sharing with other people, then please jump on board our Google Plus group, in which, well, that's what we do, and we try to have hangouts every so often to get that conversation going. Because I do not think that learning technology is a bit of a, I don't know, quite to draw parallel with, but you sort of need to know the buzzwords. So if you're going to talk about open badges, you sort of need to know a few things to just be able to throw into conversation, you know, ah, yeah, open badges, I know what you're talking about there. You know, learning technology is very like that, but that means that there's a whole bunch of people who are saying stuff, but don't really know anything about it, right? As much as there's a whole bunch of people who actually do, right, and that's all good, but the conversations need to be had, that's all I'm saying. Very simple point, right. Good. This is one of Bob Harrison's thoughts, because some of the other stuff that I do is on the felt-tag side of things, and not that I did as much work as Maron here, or indeed Bob, or Nick, who's up at the back there, or Diana. Heavy weights off the, if I can call you that, Bob, off the learning technology sphere, but also, I think, you know, originators of quite an important bit of momentum, really. This was a throwaway comment that I drew up that Bob said in a meeting. You know, in terms of where is further education on the digital continuum, and he didn't say it was just about there, but if it is about there, why is that? And what can we do to change it? What can we do to turn up the dial? And that's really what felt-tag, I think, has been trying to address, and to look at, well, what are the recommendations that we can grab, and that we can put to ministers, or even just put out there to the sector, to drive these things forward? And it's great to see that there's a few felt-tag sessions being had, I think, of tomorrow, which is all good. And it's great to see some institutions just grabbing at and getting on with it. That's the way forward, as far as I'm concerned. So, look, felt-tag came up with a whole load of stuff. I don't expect you to be able to read that, but if I was an AT institution, I would be testing you all at the end of the lecture, but I'm not going to do that because I'm friendly, FE. So, but felt-tag said a lot. There's a lot of recommendations in there, but there's just two of the things that sort of kept coming up, which are pretty obvious, right, but that I just want to focus on today, right? And number one is culture, right? And as I said before, I'm fascinated by culture. I'm fascinated that in a small business context, if you add one more person, the culture changes, right? That person brings stuff to your culture and it changes, right? In a big organisation, you add one more person and they conform to the culture that's already there, right? And therefore, changing a culture in an educational institution, in any institution, I think, is really difficult, right? In fact, look at Allstead and how they change a culture successfully in a school. They'll generally knock down the school, you know, build a modern school. All the pupils are pretty much the same, right? But different management and most of the same teachers. And by changing the environment, that can have a real big effect on changing the culture. But I think culture is a bit of an enigma. It's difficult to sort of nail down. And part of the journey I've been on after being acquired by City and Guilds, or after my small business was acquired by City and Guilds, is trying to figure out why that culture, the culture I found myself in, was the way it was. Because I don't know if you can identify with this, but if you find yourself getting frustrated that your ideas aren't being taken seriously, or whatever, inside your organisation, in fact, the way to tell, I suppose, whether you have a culture of innovation inside your institution, is whether you're encouraged to experiment, or whether you're operating beneath the radar, right? So if you just reflect for a minute, if you find yourself sort of going, there's no way I'm going to go and ask for permission to do that. I'm just going to go ahead and do it, right? Sort of subradar experimentation. Versus the sort of hands-off approach of actually, you know, to innovate is to experiment, you know, we all need to be doing some experimentation. And dare I say it, even given permission to experiment, even that in itself, I think, is a very powerful thing. But, yeah, culture fascinates me, but two of the big things that kept coming out of these felt-tag discussions were the importance of leadership and culture, okay? I attended a Google, there's a presentation given by somebody at Google that I was fascinated by, but Google, when you think about it, have an in-built culture of experimentation and innovation, right? And they're a pretty impressive organisation in terms of size, given that they've only been around for a fairly short period of time, right? But if you were to cut Google up and you will find sort of this inside their culture, and it probably started with the first two guys, you know, and that the people that then they added to it, you know, also maintained this culture, and somehow they've managed to hold on to that culture, to the point where, you know, I read yesterday that, you know, Google are planning to use drones to deliver stuff to people in their houses. That's the craziest idea I've ever heard, right? Can you imagine having that idea and going, hey, drones? Yeah, let's get some buy-in from my colleagues on that one. You know, most institutions would sync that idea, and if somebody mentioned it, they'd sync that person, you know what I mean? But yeah, Google, and here's a subtle difference, and you might have already figured this out, but again, this really helped me, that Google, when it comes to success and failure, you know, Google see success in the learns, so that's probably not even English, but you know, if the project produces stuff that the business can learn from, then it's a success, no matter whether the thing that you created actually was a success or a failure, okay? Now, you know, in order to do that, in order to learn proper stuff, right, you actually have to measure properly too, right? Now, I don't know if you've ever been involved in a development project, but usually that's the stuff that gets cut, right? You know, you're trying to build something, it's MVP approach, you know, and you get to a certain point and it's just like, right, well, off goes the help, we're going to have to write that later, and you know, anything that's going to sort of measure is also right, we don't need that now either, we can do that later, but of course, you're not going to get the learns if you don't put in the measurements, and that's a pretty big difference really to my experience of these sort of things, because even if you are operating in a relatively agile frame of mind, if the business wrap around you isn't, you know, budget recycles, you know, sort of project managers with waterfall models and Gant charts, critical paths, then, you know, you're going to go, hey, we just put our product out and we've just measured that, you know, this whole idea, totally wrong, we need to go in that direction. Well, you know, you're going to get shot, you know, rather than, hey, that's great, I'm great, we learned from that, and now we know the direction that we need to go on, okay? So, culturally, I think having that in your core is pretty important, but I think we can learn from organisations like Google. Moving on from that, there's a bit of a, maybe a silly slide, you know, what culture would you prefer for education, you know, a performance culture, an innovation culture, and your response is very brand, come on, don't be so silly, you're going to both, right? Well, it's one of those things about culture, I think, that your top priority sort of dribbles down right throughout your organisation, okay? So, if your top priority as an education institution is performance, then that will have an impact right throughout your organisation, okay? And even though I would suggest that if you had an innovation culture that that might breed performance too, if it were me, I would put innovation as the top priority, and this is why, this is why, because I am an exam passer, you know what I mean? I sort of figured it out around sort of GCSE, I made a few mistakes, but the time I got to A-levels, I sort of, yeah, exam strategy, and the time I got to university, a pretty good player, you know, in the performance stakes, right? And I left my university without a love for learning, right? And I didn't even see it. And now, having just done, in the last year or two, I did a MOOC, which I finished, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The first one I dropped out after two weeks, but anyway, the second one, which was, you know, it was the first time, it was the first time that I can remember that I did a course from an institution because I was interested and because I wanted to learn, and not because I wanted to get a certificate, right? And that was, that was a fundamental, you know, it was a big penny dropping for me, you know, that, and therefore, I love MOOCs as a result, as much as we can debate them all day, but, and it was a very good MOOC, I have to say, it was University of Queensland, the Think101 on the edX platform, which I thought was pretty good as well, but it was the science of everyday thinking, right? And it changed the way I think about stuff. You know, it had an impact, right? It made me question my, in fact, it even made me question my faith, you know, because it was sort of, it was talking about how your brain works and sort of, you know, confirmation bias and all the stuff that's just, I find incredibly interesting, but the bottom line was, you know, I did it, I did it because I was interested in it, it's the first time in a very long time, but I've got kids now, and I want them, I want them coming out of education institutions with a fire in there. If you talk to Johnny Ball, he'll say, you know, the most important thing is teaching kids how to learn, you know what I mean, to learn for themselves, right? Dead Poat Society, one of my favourite films. You know, it's the, look at the battle between the sort of the guy starting the fire, you know, in terms of sucking the marrow out of poetry, and the institution that he fights against, which is, you know, geared towards performance. And as much as that's quite a contrast there, I think we need to be looking at this stuff all the time. And education needs to be focused on starting a fire rather than filling a bucket, I think. Anyway, look, I'm starting to, Meander and I, and there's a very real chance that I will go over my time, so I need to be focused, focused, focused. Right, well, this is the closest drawing I can do to leadership, by the way, it's a bit silly, I know, but obviously culture and leadership go hand in hand. And in talking to different colleges, you see different approaches to their leadership, and it just seems to me that those that are more experiment-oriented, those that are more innovative, in terms of their leadership, are more hands-off, right? They recognize that innovation happens not at the top, but usually, you know, on the fringe, right? They recognize that. And instead they focus on trying to create a belief system, I think, or that's what it seems like to me, right? So instead of trying to do a top-down, let's control everything approach, which is essentially, you know, some sort of dictatorship, where all the good ideas start at the top, that is not my experience of where good ideas come from. But instead, they try to create a belief system that people can own and buy into, right? Which actually, that belief system is as much to the students as it is to do with the staff, right? And therefore, I think that's what good leadership does in the FA space when it comes to technology, okay? And why should it do that? Because small ideas make a big difference, right? You know, going back to the drone idea, you know, it starts with a little thought in a meeting. That's where ideas come from, right? And either the institution is oriented towards growing those little seeds of ideas or they're oriented towards squishing them quickly before anyone gets too embarrassed or before there's too much failure around before we spend too much money, or whatever it is, okay? And I suppose this leads me to my proposal to you, which you can laugh at if you want to. But when I went down from working five days with City Guilds to four days with City Guilds, essentially, it was about a couple of years ago, and I had a few things I needed to think about. A few issues I needed to scratch. So I thought, right, I'll go round four days a week, I'll take one day and I'll spend it in my man shed, right? Now my man shed is a proper space for contemplation, right? Complete with whiteboard and seven-year-old Mac, right? But what I found was that whenever I started to spend one day a week on the stuff that I was interested in outside of City Guilds, that within a couple of months my four-day-a-week job was really benefiting from that one-day-a-week outside, and I started to actually get, started to be resentful, I suppose, because I wasn't getting paid for that one-day-a-week, and yet some of my best thinking was happening there. And indeed, that's where I started to draw. A couple of years ago, if you'd asked me a couple of years ago to draw, I'd gone, no, don't really draw. I'm a software engineer, we're not supposed to draw, you know? And yet it's radically changed how I work, right? Because I'm always trying to think, what does that look like? How could I draw that? How could I get that thing in those people's heads? So I think there's something, again, this is not new, is it? It's the Google principle of 20% of your time, one day out of five, having the space, but also the accountability, and that's the key. It's not the, you know, being bags and reefers, you know? But it's the interest-led, it's the, as I said, accountable, peer-accountable learning that I think is essential, and I think teachers need that space. And I'm increasingly worried, as no doubt you are too, that actually we're going in the opposite direction, right? And we're going more and more towards a performance-oriented education system. And I don't think that's good enough. And as you, you know, masters of this realm, as you are, well, maybe we can do something about that. So what I'm proposing, I suppose, is that actually, whether you're in business, whether you're in university, whether you're in Neffy College, you need space to breathe. If you don't have space to breathe, then she's getting up with the latest learning technology or figuring out what's right for you in your classroom setting or whatever else, that's not going to happen. Or it might happen in your Sunday nights when you should be watching Downton Abbey, or I don't even know what Downton Abbey is on on Sunday night. Anyway, it's all live-streaming these days, isn't it? Anyway, I will move on. So, yeah, a picture says a thousand words. I find that this is one of the most effective ways of saying something, okay? Or of getting an idea off the ground, and I'll get on to that in a little minute. You know, to try to picture what it looks like and to have a good enough representation of that that somebody looks at it and goes, ah ha, I see what you're saying, right? If you've ever tried to get an idea off the ground and you're a bit geeky, right? And you've gone to someone who, and you're like, this is the best idea ever, and they sort of look at you with those eyes, going, I haven't understood a word you're saying. You know, yeah, that's all very well. Thanks for that, yeah. And you know it's never going to go anywhere. Well, you've got to look at three minutes, goodness me, you've got to look at other ways of communicating what it is you're trying to say and communicating your idea. Whether that's telling a story, and this is an animation that we put together in terms of what learning might look like in 2020, you'll notice I'm speaking faster now, or, and this is the non-profit that I've set up in my part time in terms of getting young people into digital jobs, essentially, by taking them on, by boiling stuff down over a period of time and trying to get it on a one page, right? Or whether you are evangelising, you know, open badges, I'm a big fan of open badges, you know, decentralized education, what more do you want, unless you're an institution? Did I say that? But if you're trying to say, you know, trying to communicate what an open badge is to people is actually pretty difficult, right? I, especially when they want to understand when they're nodding their head and you don't know whether it's actually gone in or not. So actually trying to, this is a typical sort of my sort of slide where you're trying to focus in on what will, let me pick four things and let me try to articulate that so I can talk through that and so you can understand maybe a little bit more about open badges. So in terms of evangelising, I think really important. So one minute, goodness me, right? Be prepared, one minute, whistle through here. I was going to tell you about how we get learning technology off the ground, but I've sort of touched on the MVP stuff. This really helped me and you've probably seen this before, but I trailed around UK, you know, talking about e-portfolios it was at the time, which was what my last business was. And I didn't realise this, that actually a lot of people I were talking to were way down the innovation curve here. And I was just going to say that, look, if you are trying to get an idea off the ground, find early adopters and treat them well. And there you go dust, really, okay? Cos you'll always come across people down here who just don't know really why you're building what you're building. Any idea getting off the ground, you probably need twice as much runway as you think you do. You know, in a small business that's cash. Maybe in a larger institution that might be time and also cash. And look, so many people come up to me and say, you know, Brian, I've got such a good idea for an app. And goodness me, I've had so many of those conversations where I'd look at an app idea to a penny. Getting an app off the ground, that's getting a business off the ground. You know, the marketing, you need a loan or the brand that you need for an app a loan. So essentially you need a kit bag full of stuff, not that you can't learn this stuff on the way, but I think it's best to sort of you're going to enter into that, try to get something off the ground that you look at the whole picture, okay? Sorry, I'm rattling through here. I've got the word into them. I'm not looking at you. All right, lastly, I'm actually nearly there. Lastly, I also just wanted to point out that it's all about people, right? It's tempting to think it's all about the product that you're building. But actually, you know, it's about the developers who go further than they should in terms of the time that they spend or their creative juices or being persistent with an idea. It's a, oh goodness me. It's about the people that you need to get up on early on a Sunday and fly to some Godforsaken place in order to sell or have a conversation about your product. It's the people you need on the end of the line that personally hold that responsibility for your product in terms of giving support. It is actually all about people. Democracy, just a little side note. If you're ever running a business, don't run it democratically. I did this in my first business. It was the worst idea I ever had, right? Anytime you want to make one step forward, you've got to get everybody else's permission. It may be good for making laws, right? Because actually, we should probably have less laws than we have, but not good for running a business. I'm not good for running a project, okay? So democracy, bad. You heard it here first. Churchill said practically the same thing. You need a big vision and your vision needs to be flexible enough for all the people to buy into that vision, okay? And as I said before, you need a belief system. And if there's one thing I could encourage you to do if you are trying to get an idea off the ground or you want to get a technology idea off the ground, get yourself a mentor, or even better, get yourself two mentors, I have benefited greatly from objective. From guys that are just weaving it further on down the track who are able to sort of speak into your idea and validate some of your assumptions or give you the right encouragement. And really, it's worth more than gold. So listen, I think that is me. It's been a pleasure talking to you and I hope that all made some sort of sense. And I'll hand back to Joe. I think we're going to do questions, aren't we? Questions. Thank you, Brian. There should be a roving mic there. Any questions for Brian? Okay, it's from there. Great. Woke us all up after lunch. Thanks very much, Shinty. That's great. And a lot in there to chew and you kind of accelerated a bit towards the end. I just wanted to go back to Moor's chasm and the curve there and to speak up actually for the early majority, not just the early adopters. Because you write, you talk about the enthusiasm that comes from early adopters, but what I take from that particular curve is that there's a risk that you don't get beyond the early adopters to the early majority and in some cases, the early adopters are so enthusiastic that they can put off the rest. So I just wanted to kind of speak up for the early majority. I think that's totally valid. I think that's totally valid. No. Okay, go on. Because you are looking around, so it's got a two-stage question. First of all, where's the real innovation happening in English A-F-E? Where are the pockets of it? I've got a second question. Really for this HE audience, how can HE help and support and support that articulation, if you like, that flow for these learners that may be flowing from A-F-E into A-F-E? Are there things that this audience could do to help A-F-E? That's a big question. Let's do the first one first, right? In terms of what are the pockets of innovation? I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer that, but I tell you where I would hope that the pockets of innovation would be, and again, I'd point right back to open badges, right? In terms of... I know that the organisations are tinkering with it. In fact, you told me you're tinkering with it, which is good, which hopefully you'll mention in your talk. I just see so much potential, and obviously because open badges is such an emerging technology, I suppose, it is a long way from its tipping point, you know what I mean? And so it needs institutions of all types to get on board, it needs employers to get on board, but it definitely needs both HE and A-F-E to get involved, but also to start innovating. I think if the world is going to start conjuring up badges left, right and centre, well, I think we need to educate the world in terms of what makes a good badge and what doesn't make a good badge, or what a peer-assessed badge, a solid peer-assessed badge, might look like or the mechanism that might sit behind it that's robust or what makes good evidence that gets attached to a badge, and that's our world, you know what I mean, in terms of HE and A-F-E, and I think we should be leading that, and I wonder whether we will be, really, is a point. I know that you're a great advocate of open badge yourself, too. I'm not just saying that, just to make you feel good. On the second part, the what can HE? I have no idea. I suppose I'm trying to, I'm not good at appealing to institutions per se, but maybe to, in terms of individuals, and even just stepping out there in the space where you're in with the ideas that you have and have a little bit of confidence in yourself being able to do your part, really. So maybe it's not an appeal to an institution or an institution at all. It's to the individuals, because that's where the real help comes from. You know what I mean? The real innovation comes from. A new yourself being an innovator, do you know that? Right? One was up. Two more questions. We'll squeeze them in. Gentleman there, and we'll leave it here. Hi, Brian. I just wanted to sort of say that what you were talking about is very close to my heart as well. I'm very, very interested in organisation culture and also this idea of innovation, both in cultures and in education. And not really a question, but just sort of saying that only very recently we've taken a slightly different approach to a piece of development in our university. And we've completely ignored management and we've just gone and done some secretive stuff. We're currently under the radar at the moment. I'm working on that. Well, no. But it's made... We've only done sort of two days, but the change in the way that the developers were working was just amazing. The motivation was palpable, really. And just that it's so important. And we sort of need to see more evangelists like you, really. We'll listen to that. I think you raised a good point, though, as well, that as much as you can try to just do stuff under the radar, eventually, you know, if you go against the hierarchy, your idea will be shot down. So as much as I'm all for under the radar, you need to have enough momentum and then to have a twin-track approach of making sure that there are people who will think it's their idea whenever you spread it with them, if you know what I mean. I think it's selling the benefits, really. I think the difficult bit is providing that proof of concept to say, look, we can do something really cool here. And then showing them why we need to do more of it. Well, look, most people, I think, are inherently good. You know what I mean? But often can't see. And listen, we spend our time trying to communicate to all sorts of things, all sorts of people. So, you know, focusing on the articulation of the idea and part of that is getting something up and running is a really good way to articulate what it is. So you mentioned whether institutions should be innovators or performance-driven. I think a key part of that is educating our customers because, of course, in the past we haven't had customers, whereas now we do. And I think the natural tendency is to move towards a performance-focused model because, you know, students are paying up to £9,000, £27,000 for a three-year course to come to university. And so, to some extent, to get an innovation-focused institution, you also need to educate the customers and tell them that's what they want. Whereas without it, then the tendency is to focus on performance. I think that's a very solid point, actually, because I use myself as an example where I just thought that's the way it was. You know what I mean? And I was doing a degree to get as high a mark as I possibly could in order to get a job. So I needed to sort of to get back to where Brian was and educate that guy. So it's the system as a whole. You're absolutely quite right. It needs to really realise the value of that starting that fire, the value of loving learning, really. Quite right. Well, can I thank you for being inspirational as ever? Thank you.