 There we are. So, I'm delighted to welcome Matthew and Paul and I think Simon was listed on the – is Paul here? Yeah, Paul is here. Sorry, I'm going mad today. I think Simon that's not here was listed on the list of authors but isn't here with us today. But I'm delighted to welcome them all and thank them for coming this afternoon to share their presentation with us. Open to uncertainty, foresight and strategy for turbulent times. So, I will stop sharing my screen and pass over to you all. Thank you so much Kerry and hopefully everyone can see the first slide here now. Yep, looks brilliant. So, rather than rehash the title of the paper for too long, just showing this mix of light and dark, bright and stormy weather, of course we know the turbulent times are ahead of us and hopefully the three of us are going to help guide you through what's ahead with some useful tools for thinking about strategy and some recent case studies. Before we begin, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that we reach on and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. This is the form of words we use in Australia where I lived and worked for a very long time just to acknowledge the 200 years of colonial history and all the thousands of years of colonial history that go before that. And that's why we have the flags of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia on screen right now. But it's also in a digital space like this to say each one of us comes from a particular territory that has a particular history who has been allowed to say they belong or that the land belongs to them, who has power and privilege, whose identity is caught up in that land and to reflect on how those issues sort of continue with us in digital spaces. I'm going to hand over to Paul now as well who's calling in with us today from Canada. Thank you, Matt. And yes, I really like these land and elder acknowledgments. So thank you for sharing that, Matt. And I'm based in Vancouver, Canada on the lands of the Masqueam, Squamish and Slable tooth. And I'm really grateful to them. And in Canada, we've been doing a lot of work to deepen and acknowledge and reconcile our history with First Nations. And I've kind of invested personally in that effort myself. And I just want to quickly share this little anecdote about about these land acknowledgments and how we can move beyond simply acknowledging that and then kind of think about a deeper engagement. This is a picture of a Coast Salish House poll that was being carved by a First Nation carver named Rick Harry. And I came across him doing his carving in public actually on Granville Island, not far from where I live. And I took some time to actually speak with him a while about the meaning of the poll. And which is actually was commissioned by the United Church of Canada to engage in a kind of conscientious recognition of its role in the Indian residential school system in Canada. And Rick was kind enough to share with me the story about this poll. But even more importantly, showed me how he carves. And then in a most generous act, invited me to help do the carving of one of the eyes of this thunderbird. And that was the first real personal act of reconciliation that I feel like I've engaged in beyond reading books, which was to contribute to the creation of a poll meant to enable and foster reconciliation. And I've now been back to see this poll to see this poll several times, and kind of feel this kind of connection with it because I personally was involved in creating it. So just wanted to share that as a story that goes beyond land recognition, and starts to really engage us in acts of reconciliation. Back to you, Matt. Thank you so much, Paul. So we've taken some time to acknowledge these issues and the question of where we're from. And it's also only right that we introduce you ourselves to you in terms of who we are. And so with this slide before us, I might just get the team to say a few words in the order that we're on the screen about about who we are and where we're from. Thanks, Matt. So I'm Anne Gambles. I'm a senior project manager based in learner and discovery services at the Open University. I'm actually based within the library within learning and discovery services. And I'm Paul Stacey, I'm the executive director of Open Education Global. I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, but our organization is largely virtual with the team distributed around the world and members around the world. And I'm Matt Finch. I'm an associate fellow at the site business school at the University of Oxford, working mainly on strategy and foresight with various institutions. Now, we have just under an hour to address this huge question of how we plan for uncertain times, and not only are we going to get you to carry out a bit of a task, but you can hear two case studies over the next 50 minutes. So it means we've got a lot to cover and it means we also have to be realistic of what you can achieve in that time. What we're not offering you is this a magic and privileged access to the future. We don't have crystal balls that tell us what's coming next, and we can't hand one over to you either. So what we're not about here is predictions, forecasting, certainty where there is no certainty. We can't generate a single data point from events which haven't happened yet. What is interesting about crystal balls is not the answer they give or what you see within the glass. It's the questions that people ask because they tell you everything about what people are concerned about, what they're uncertain about. And so I wondered, if we might just take a moment and in the chat, looking at a crystal ball like this, I wondered what might you ask on behalf of your organisation or your team? What sort of thing would you want a crystal ball to tell you? I might just encourage you to just put something in the chat and Paul or Ann might be kind enough to read them out. What the lottery numbers are, Matt? Nice. Paul is good. Gabby's shared with us, Will Open, ever be mainstream? A great question. There are so many things around open, aren't there? You know, how am I publishing an intellectual property change? How will changing social and economic values affect the education ecosystem? Might there be new areas of learning and research that we could open up in times to come? Will the definition of what is open evolve? Any other questions? Coming through thick and fast. So, Shanali has shared, How do we open up education in the global South country with a shrinking, shrinking tracks brace and therefore less money to spend? Great question. And Jennifer is asking, Will, will she get tenure and promotion next year to continue her research in open? It's these fundamental questions from the personal to the global, aren't there? We've probably got time for just one more. If anyone else has got any other question they want to put in the chat, anything else they'd ask the crystal ball? So there is one more listed from Liz and she, I believe it's a she says, How can a library be more open and also increase its influence in the organization and in learning and teaching? Excellent questions. I can still hear them pinging in, but we must roll on. So you'll have to read the comments in the chat. So while we can't offer you a crystal ball, what we can do is this give you a tool that only requires a pen and paper to help you think through what's going on around you and might be ahead of you. And as we said, this is a pen and paper session. It's in the session description. So you might want to grab something to draw with and draw on. You're not going to have to share what you draw. It's just for you. But even if you've just got some copy paper, I've got it in landscape orientation with the long sides at the top and bottom. If you have two sheets of paper or a notebook or something to draw with, you'll need that momentarily. So I just thought I'd mention that now. And the aim is to give you a tool you can use immediately after this session. That's super practical, doesn't require fancy kit and will actually make a real difference to the decisions you make in times to come. So this work that we're going to share is grounded in the work of the Oxford Scenarios Program, where the definition of what a scenario is is quite specific. Their assessments of the future context developed for a specific purpose that contrast with the way the future context is currently being framed. So what that means is that we look at the future we might have to live in. We do that for a particular reason, not just for blue skies thinking, not just picturing our wildest dreams of what we want to happen, not even thinking about what we predict or expect, because we're looking to contrast with the current framing. So that means we're assessing different ways the future could be for a particular reason in order to challenge our assumptions and expectations about what awaits. And that might be in different threats, but it might mean new opportunities. It might mean seeing the world around us in a whole different way from the perspective of an imagined future, which we hadn't previously considered. So it's a kind of way of engaging with the unknown and uncertainty. And we'll post a PDF link to these slides after the session in the chat so you can follow up on any of the interests to you from this material. But the main thing is best thing to do, as with all these tasks, is roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. And scenario projects can take anything from weeks to months to years. But even in just 10 or 15 minutes, you can actually start to get a sense of the fundamentals of how this work is done. And that's when you're going to need that pen and paper. So what I'm going to ask you to do is we're effectively telling stories of the future. And I just want you to take a moment now to find a sort of protagonist for that story lead character, because that's what's going to ground these future visions in reality. And over the next two minutes, I just want you to think for a moment to yourself, think about a decision that you might be trying to explore or an issue that you face, and then think which entity has to make that decision. It could be an individual, it could be a team, it could be a whole organization. This also works at the level of a national government or a multinational organization like the UN or the WHO, but it also works the individual level. Think about a decision that you're trying to explore. And then think who has to make that decision. And it's a chance to think, you know, is there one decision that's really consequential ahead of you? Is there a decision where there's a lot of uncertainty, where if you get it wrong, play out very differently? So just take a few seconds now and say, what's the decision where I really wouldn't mind looking into that crystal ball? And then who has to make that decision? And then as you start to come to an answer of which decision you want to explore, who has to make that decision? I'm going to get you to just draw an island and you can see here I've got great artistic skills and I've put a huge amount of effort but this isn't an art, we're not being judged on our representation. I want you just to draw an island, it can be like this kidney bean-shaped thing we've got here, takes up about 50% of the page but it's right in the middle. Draw an island and in the middle of that island, just put your protagonist, your decision maker and you can draw them or you can just write their name. It's not necessarily, you know, it doesn't have to be a piece of art or anything like that, but just put your decision maker at the middle of the island and it's even just enough if you write their name. You should have something like this in the middle of your page, I'll give you about 10 more seconds and then once you've got that, just as you want it, what we're going to do, we're going to build out the cast of characters. If we're going to tell a story of the future, we need to think about all the other entities that your decision maker interacts with. So what that means is on your island, you're going to put everyone else, your decision maker interacts with and that could be students, customers, competitors, the people who fund you, the people who supervise you, the people who supply your IT or infrastructure or resources. Every single entity that your decision maker interacts with, get them on the island, whether you write down who they are or just jot them down or draw something. I'm just going to give you about a minute and a half, try and get as many as you can think of on that island and it's always worth thinking, you know, who have I missed, you know, like if I'm doing at the individual level, is there somewhere I go on campus that I haven't thought of because it's not always part of my day-to-day but I do interact with them. Or if you're at the organisational level, you know, sometimes people forget, I did this with small businesses once and they somehow forgot they had landlords. There were no landlords on the island with the small business measures, business in the middle. So just take a few more seconds and think, who else lives on that island? Regulators, administrators, funders, customers, students, publishers. Last few seconds and just get down what you can. And sometimes this moment alone is really enlightening to people. I saw Norwegian school teachers do this and they took 45 minutes to capture everyone who lives on an island with a Norwegian head teacher, from the media to the unions, to the staff, to the students, to the government, to the university. Even mapping your environment can be revelatory. Now we're going to forget about your decision maker who was here in the middle and just think about the other people on the island and we're going to think about their motivations. We're going to think about the forces or the trends or the uncertainties which drive their decisions. We're going to think about their motivating factors. And so this time in the sea around the island, you're just going to put down the forces that drive their decisions and that could be something that affects just one actor on the island or two or three or everyone. It could be something really local and specific or it could be huge like climate change or macroeconomics. But just fill the sea around the island with the forces and the driving forces and trends and uncertainties that shape the decisions of the other actors on your decision maker's island. And this is one of those things you can imagine. It's a bit like how long is a piece of string. There's so many forces you could map. But just see what you can capture in 90 seconds or so. Just about 10, 15 more seconds. What forces drive the decisions of the other people on your decision maker's island? And move on again. So you've got your island. You've got those forces in the sea. And now we're going to start to find some interesting situations to explore, some interesting futures to look at. And we're going to do that by exploring those seas around the island. So now we're not even going to think about who's on the island. We're only going to focus on those forces that you've written in the sea and some new ones might come to you now in this next day. But you're going to think only about the forces that drive those decisions. And I'm going to get you to think, which of the forces are most uncertain or uncomfortable? Which forces do you feel that you're maybe not paying enough attention to? Which ones live in your blind spots? Which of them just can't be known in advance? So which forces are most uncertain or uncomfortable? And now I'm just going to give you again a minute or so to look at that sea and just pick out three or four of those forces where you think, yeah, I really don't know how that's going to play out. That one's really uncertain. It's really mysterious to me. That one could really change things on the island. Just maybe Mark, three or four of those forces that you think is significantly uncertain, really one that you think, yeah, we really need to figure out how that's going to play out. Again, you can imagine this is something one could debate for a whole day if you were doing it in a group. Just now, by instinct, looking at the page you've drawn, which three or four forces do you think are the ones that need exploring? Which ones are mysterious and uncertain? Which ones might really affect life on the island? And once you've got a sense, at least of a few forces with that kind of significance, we're going to really add depth to the story of the future and think about what does that island look like if these forces play out? How would your decision maker's ecosystem be reshaped? So what that means is you're going to take a second piece of paper or turn the page if you have to and just draw a fresh island, but just with those three or four forces and on the island just draw what would have changed if those forces washed ashore and washed over the island and redrew the map, what would have changed? Would there be new actors? Would some actors have gone? Would just the relationships have changed? However you want to, just draw a quick new island and just write down what would have changed if those three or four forces came together and washed ashore and redrew the map of the island. And the interesting thing is working so fast you almost have to work on instinct. But you'd be surprised at just how much you can trust your instincts on these things at least to get a first glimpse of what that future island might look like if those three or four forces washed ashore. So just a few seconds left at this stage just to take a couple of notes how would that island be different if those forces washed ashore and move on one last time. You're going to go back to that original protagonist your decision maker and put them back on that new island and just think about what are the implications for the decision they face if they have to live on that island in times to come. If that decision was going to have to play out on that redrawn map what would be the implications for the choices they face? I'm just going to give you a minute or so to take a look just jot down any thoughts you have about what that changed island would mean for your decision maker. It might be that they have to stop doing something they might have to start doing something new they might have to build new relationships with different people on the island and keep thinking about that I'm going to just start to say of course we're only looking at one island now but you could draw different islands to explore the different ways those forces could play out that's how you get more than one scenario and we've just had time to do one at this point in the session and when you had those multiple islands you could then explore the implications of each of those futures for your actions in the present it's not quite a crystal ball it shows you how the future might be in ways that challenge your expectations I'm just going to give you a last few seconds of thinking time look at that second island and think what if things turn out differently to how I expect what if those choices and their consequences have to exist in that future on that island are they still good choices if that's the future we get and if that future was going to happen what would it mean for our choices today what would the people on that future island think of the decision we're about to make we're just going to take a moment now to share any comments in the chat anything that's come up for you in this process it's been necessarily very brief anything that's occurred to you anything that worked that didn't work anything that surprised you frustrated you enlightened you any thoughts or comments just pop them in the chat and Paul or Anne will read and respond they're a ping you have one question in the chat a selfish question do as I said by Liz do you license your workshop materials for others to reuse or adapt Matt I'll let Anne talk about that at the end of the Q&A any any other comments about what it was like to go through the process before we move on I can hear a couple more pings ah yes we have a few now we just take two if we if we pick a couple out of the chat I think Paul that would be lovely sure well Anna's uh suggesting Matt that people the decision makers and those immediately around them will want some transparency around the choices and decisions being made so that even if they don't agree which choices were made they will recognize and acknowledge the journey which resulted in that decision I think that's interesting thanks Anna and should we take one more Anne is there something good in the chat I'm just having a look um so Gabby says key driving forces that influence my institution's Vice Chancellor are actually related to students Future Island has students much more prominently placed and participating much more in conversations with all other stakeholders this should be a good thing wow yeah and how enlightening the process process actually can be it's a good moment to hand over to to sharing a little bit of what this looks like in action I can see people carrying on the conversation in the chat but Anne shall I hand over to you to talk about what this looks like in practice yeah sure well thank you Matt so um yeah I'm Anne Gambles as I said earlier I'm Senior Project Manager at Baton Library Services at the Open University yeah I've got a real interest actually in ways of working I've been in on a bit of an agile journey over the last few years and looking at how we can use project management methodologies mindsets agile tools and methods to enable us to better deliver on our business as usual so that's a little bit more about me I'm going to talk about how we discovered Island in the Sky and how we're using this strategic full site methodology which is founded in systems thinking to help us explore future ways of working making the most of the opportunity afforded by the pandemic and myself and my colleague Simon Ashby who unfortunately can't be here today we work for Learner and Discovery Services at the Open University and we co-chair the strategic objective one which is People, Culture and Innovation we co-chair that the coordination group for for that strategic objective and Island in the Sky is an objective one innovation project so it sits in our area and if you could just move on to the next slide please Matt thank you so I just thought I'd start with a little bit background to the Open University which was founded in 1969 we're one of Europe's largest universities we're the UK's only university that's dedicated to distance learning most Open University students learn at a distance over half of the OU workforce have always worked remotely and many others have had some form of flexible working arrangement in place particularly in more recent years we have a campus in Milton Keynes where some staff and also postgraduate research students are based and we have offices in each of the UK's nations so what is Learner and Discovery Services or LDS? well in collaboration with faculty and other partners we design and produce world-class learning experiences and we provide access to knowledge and information we deliver high quality services including module design and production library services, open learn that's where Simon's from and we have our warehouse and distribution centre as well next slide please so I'm going to start with a provocation I'm going to end with a provocation as well this is one we're starting with so in short if today were day one in the history of work how would you design how you how you work? this is a really good question but just where should we start? prior to the pandemic the majority of LDS had worked on site either on campus in Milton Keynes or at our Wellingborough work distribution warehouse from March 2020 and into early 2021 LDS was mostly working from home due to the pandemic apart from a small number of colleagues in specific roles who needed to be on site and a small number who had well-being needs who also needed to be on site and we were trying to figure out towards the end of 2020 early 2021 and we're trying to figure out the best way to involve everyone in deciding what we should do next how best to design how and where we work building from two staff pulse surveys in which over 80% of our staff expressed a preference for home to be their primary pace of work but many also said that they wanted to to work on site as well as working from home and a colleague James Richards and I considered how we might experiment with methods and tools to deliver successful future hybrid working models and we looked to find a practitioner who could help us design an intervention and a friend of James Richards recommended Matt Finch Matt we had a discussion with Matt about our ideas and Matt suggested The Island in the Sky methodology and we worked with him to develop a prototype as a test and learn project next slide please so here's an overview of the LDS Island's methodology and yeah first up in LDS and also in other areas of the OU we've been inviting our teams to start with a what's our Y exercise which is outside of Island in the Sky it's kind of a separate thing but we asked them to conduct a what's our Y exercise based on Simon Sinek who you may have come across to enable them to connect with their purpose and help frame their goals and outcomes and if they've been through that process then teams and individuals will then be well positioned to start thinking about their internal and external relationships that are involved in their mission and they'll be in a good position to engage with islands in the sky The OU's future working model made a key distinction between social and functional working so we've been labeling our relationships on our islands between the entities on the islands with functional and social value that's generated to both parties and then after you saw earlier the methodology surfaces insights about uncertainties so future challenges and opportunities and it offers a space for creative discussion regarding future strategy and along the way we realized the need to synthesize outputs from the islands activities to enable us to better understand the opportunities and challenges as we go along and to build a bigger picture Next slide please So this next slide just illustrates some analysis else in the highlights from the analysis from our 2021 pilot workshop I'm not going to read everything out here but I think the key thing to mention is that the team that we workshop with from across our strategic objectives they recognized the need to broaden conversations beyond the original remit so to incorporate not just physical and digital workspaces and resources but broader understandings of the working environment including culture and mindset policies and other structuring factors and we really recognize that mental health and well-being is very important so we have an emphasis on how we design an LDS that works better for everyone Next slide please This slide just illustrates how islands and skies helping shape my thinking and other people's thinking or on planning and there are various kind of interrelated aspects to this The development of our new ways of working is unique our people and teams have never before planned how and where best we work in this current context which is evolving in the pandemic or the level of scale that we're having to do that now acting in the space changes the space traditional planning tools Gantt charts, milestones and so on are not very helpful here and maybe more agile methodologies work better and we're looking at using tests and learn experiments and analysis of collaborative outputs can really help to shape planning and the design of tests and learn experiments and LDS is collaborating with essential OU teams OU ways of working teams on how we evaluate what works and on the stress and tensions issues that can inform our hybrid models and ways of working and we have some tests and learn experiments going on which involve the use of creative spaces spaces that best match the types of activities that are happening in particular areas where people need noisy or quieter environments and you know particular furniture and equipment and we have set up some show homes which is an interesting new initiative so people can test out new environments and then yeah we're developing a flexible tax on the synthesis analysis piece a flexible tax on the need for capturing emergent categories and issues as we go along and then lastly on here I'll just mention that yeah we're using the better values sooner say for happier principle and right over in inflict one size does not fit all islands in the sky is a very visual creative methodology and we recognize that it's perhaps not everybody's cup of tea and next slide please we have a phase two project which started up in around February March this year we're working in collaboration with a consultancy AZA B Selva to develop a self-service mapping and futures thinking tool for use by individuals and teams managers this is taking a broader strategic context it's not just looking at future ways of working from a hybrid perspective it's broader than that and the next slide just illustrates how we've been iterating on the design of our islands in the sky tool or our tool methodology and it's kind of changed over time so the first image there is from an early workshop and the second image on the right is from a later workshop and yeah something to point out is that yeah during these this later set of workshops we've been running the teams we've been workshopping with have really recognised the value of collaborative mapping and futures thinking activities so we've been workshopping with colleagues from learner and discovery services but we've also invited colleagues into our workshops from elsewhere within the university and the participants have really seen great value in that in particular it's helped them see those blind spots and yeah to see things from different perspectives is really helpful and then next slide please I'm going to finish up with a second provocation so this draws it's a new sort of draw on organisational legacy because that can help to energise us for future endeavours so doing that I have to say yeah the OU is an institution with radical roots it was the disruptor of higher education in its early years so how will the OU and other higher education institutions transform to meet a future context of new technologies shifting learner and worker behaviours sustainable development goals and ongoing social and economic change well in my opinion and maybe we can have a little bit of discussion about this later I think we best transform to meet future context through collaboration with other HEIs and other organisations for example by collective mapping our present environments to gain a better understanding and exploring adjacent future together to better inform our decision making in the present and I think it's really important this is something that's come out from our recent workshops the importance of ensuring a wide range of voices are heard and that we pay attention to equality, diversity and inclusion to make sure we have a range of different people in there and in collaboration we can create a people positive environmentally sustainable and complexity conscious environment that enables our people as individuals teams maybe society as a whole to do their best work to be the best that they can be and that's it for me Thank you so much I hope it's a pull Thanks Matt you can just keep going to my slides yeah thanks so well that was really fascinating and thank you for sharing that and I from an open education global perspective our entry into this work was a little bit different but in some way similar during the pandemic while the pandemic was just getting going as the executive director I thought this is a perfect time to do a new strategic plan education's being disrupted why don't we take in some ways advantage of this disruption to kind of rethink the direction we're going in our strategies and how we want to position ourselves both now but also in anticipation of what might emerge on the other side of the pandemic so Matt helped us actually through a strategic planning process that involved engaging staff and the board of directors in a lot of activities over an extended period of time all done asynchronously and that did result in the production of this strategic plan that we can see here which as you can see is a long-term plan not a two-year or five-year but actually going from 2021 to 2030 partly in an effort to align our strategy with the sustainable development goals that UNESCO has you can go ahead Matt we actually took this perspective of first thinking about education in the context of being an ecosystem so adopting a kind of biological language if you will to think about education and so this is a visual that we used to represent that education ecosystem on the right you can see the principal actors or players learners, educators, administrators and government and then on the left you can see the three primary actions or activities that take place in education teaching and learning research and public community service and then there's some infrastructure and sort of suppliers that feed into that but this actually was a very helpful depiction because then we could see how does open because our focus is on the open education side of things air onto or fit onto this ecosystem which is what's shown in the next slide Matt so yeah so so here you can see that what we ended up looking at was in the context of open education it's affecting all three of the activities it's affecting teaching and learning through open education resources open textbooks C degrees massive open online courses and especially open pedagogy but it's also open is affecting research through open access and open data and open science and an area that I think is under kind of attended to but it's really equally important is the way open is contributing to public and community service specifically in in particular the way open pedagogy activities engage learners in generating public goods and so so we were able to kind of identify the ways in which open is affecting the activities of the ecosystem and of course all of the people or the actors are influenced and affected by that activity and we also gave some thought to how we as an organization are situated and we we the kind of diagram in the middle of this is actually representing some of the values and principles that are driving our work and we very much saw ourselves as a connector across the ecosystem that one of our principal roles is connecting learners to these forms of education or learners to educators who are involved in open education or educators to administrators and government in fostering and facilitating that kind of dialogue and network of communication between the various players go ahead Matt out of the strategic planning process we as you often do of course then had to arrive at what are our areas of focus and as a global community based organization we picked these three areas one is around field building building the field of open education and growing it one of the ways in which that happens through a lot of our work is through knowledge exchange not so much us providing knowledge and delivering programs and professional development kinds of things to our members and to the community but rather instead connecting members of the community together so that they can exchange and learn from each other so field building knowledge exchange and then this last one was was really fantastic and this was something that Matt introduced us to in terms of the work of Richard Norman and Menervik and others around thinking about strategic planning and the importance of doing that in a networked world context where you start to explore not just how you will provide value but how you will work collectively to generate value in a co-created way and so this notion of value co-creation became a third area of focus for us and one that we thought of as being really important for our field of open education go ahead Matt and so one of the things that happened was after generating the strategic plan we decided we would we would focus in on that value co-creation component because that's a bit different from what we had been thinking about previously and we engaged in this kind of islands in the sky type idea through an additional four workshops that Matt helped us work with our OE Global staff on over several months long period and that was really a fantastic way of engaging people in this kind of process that Matt shared with you at the beginning and in a similar process to what Ian had shared and so these just quickly show that we kind of took the ecosystem idea that we had and then we identified the actors and the relationships between those actors and then we looked at what factors might affect those relationships and identified some of the uncertainties that could change the way in which the current ecosystem works go ahead Matt and then we looked at when you look at how the actors in the ecosystem connect with one another you can look at well what is the value of exchange how what is the basis of that relationship what is what are each of the actors getting in terms of that connection and begin to consider these systems of value creation which can be both social but also kind of more transactional the way Ann was describing and then we also took some time at the end in the last workshop to think about these ways in which the ecosystem is being affected and identify a potential new offering that's something that we aren't currently providing for our members and for the global open-edged community at large that would be a new offering some kind of invitation to dance that takes into account some of the uncertainties and changes that were anticipating go ahead Matt so this just quickly looks at this sort of here's the typical map of relationships and then down the right are some of the the terms that constitute the value that's flowing between people whether it's dollar value or assessments and accreditation kinds of things there's a whole set of things that emerge that begin to form the basis for well what are those what is the basis of the relationship and what is each actor getting out of the relationship and next one Matt and then we did do these scenarios the islands in the sky scenarios looking at three different pathways if you will or ideas one being if we imagine a future in which wealth is the thing that is given priority and how would that affect the way open education is happening or what if it's a scenario as we see here in the middle that security national security and national interests are the top priority how would that affect our open education and global open education efforts and then the third scenario was around well what if it's about health and well-being and how would if that becomes the priority for the future how would that affect open education so each of those provided a different way of thinking about our islands in the sky if you will need to go to the last spot here Matt we did the kind of wealth first and a set of questions security first and a set of questions and then health first so we did actually waves islands and sky as the kind of way to contextualize these potential futures and think about what effect it would have on our work and how we could adapt our work to to meet the needs that might emerge through each of these scenarios I think that's all I had Matt thank you so much I'm going to return to this title slide for a moment and then we have a little bit of time for Q&A so thank you everyone for bearing with us and there's a little time to hear from you now I see there's some interesting comments in chat well let's have a look at some of them is there anything you'd like to ask Paul go ahead Paul sorry well we're just going to I'm just going to invite Gabby or Anna or Maggie if anyone wants to Shanali if you want to actually share an observation or ask a question feel free to grab the mic or put your comments in chat whatever works for you sorry Matt you go ahead to drop it at you no not at all I was going to say exactly what you say I think for the people in the room it's a chance to to pick the brains particularly of you and Anna of putting this kind of approach into action and and having drawn those islands together is there anything that you'd want to ask about about using this or what was learned or or anything else connects to the method so I'm happy to offer something but I'm very cognizant that it comes from a very different context so I'm based at the University of Cape Town and what is very interesting for me in the last sort of five to eight years a lot of a lot of our sort of our blue skies projects funding comes from the EU and the States that's where a lot of our big project funding comes from and some of the shaping strictures around that in both those contexts puts us in sometimes very difficult positions around do you take the money and accept the the direction or do you or how do you sort of juggle the very interesting politics of the money and the directions that go with it and I think one of the waves that wash up on our shores is what happens in the global north and the particular both the kind of conceptual and social preoccupations of that very often the waves are felt differently but just as strongly in the south yeah so just a comment around how the islands are stuck on a planet together that's incredibly well said and one of the things scenarios do is let you imagine what happens when someone else is the dealer in the card game you know when when someone else has power that you have to choose whether you're going to play that game Paul could you say something work in Latin America sure yeah I mean I really hear you Shanali and I know that there's you know in my field of open education there's this really strong belief in the social justice side of it and in the notions of diversity equity and inclusion being a goal of open education and yet as you observe sometimes those who are funding open education have their own objectives and and they don't always align with the cultural and local objectives or needs where the funding is intended to be used I guess from our organization side I'll just share maybe a few quick things that we've been really exploring and trying to move forward with one is that we have decided we have open education global which looks at open education globally but then we also have these open education local initiatives including what we think of as regional nodes so we have a regional node for Latin America for example that is working to bring together open education practitioners across that entire region and and a lot of that is happening in Spanish as the language as opposed to the default use of English and this interest in multilingualism and enabling more localized nodes has spread to our other activities we do an annual conference and the last couple of years we've supported in that international conference sessions being done in any of the six official UNESCO languages so we've been having sessions at the conference in English but Spanish and French and Arabic and Chinese and so on and so this recognition of the importance of language and culture in the work is really starting to permeate into how we contextualize and think about our offerings so there's a few quick remarks but I agree that it's a really critical need Maggie has a hand up I can't hear Maggie are you having a connection problem you can put your question I think Maggie's having difficulty with her looks like the quality's back so Maggie maybe back if not Maggie do you want to just type it in the chat no worries Maggie if you just type your question in the chat in the meantime I just want to point to something Gabby said was a really important point about not romanticizing this work and the challenge is exactly this the reason to do strategies because we are not all powerful because we can't control those waves and we can't even always control what the other people on the island do and often it's about strategy from a position of constraint so I think it's a really good point we've got about 60 seconds left I wondered Anne if you wanted to offer a final reflection just as we close up I could offer a final comment around something that was mentioned earlier on in the workshop as to whether workshop materials will be being shared which is that the Oak University has received or has managed to secure some funding from the Welsh Higher Education Funding Body to support digital transformation in Wales from a hybrid working and sustainable working perspective and part of that is going to be the development of a toolkit for a plot within which Island in the Sky will fit and so yeah we we plan to make available through that project that initiative and some some very similar materials I'm getting to those that have been shared today thanks from all of us and I suppose we should hand over to Kerry now at the session's end thank you everyone thank you everyone thank you all so much I really enjoyed that session I really enjoyed the opportunity just to sit and reflect and think I really enjoyed that so thank you all ever so much just want to say a big thank you finally to Anne Paul and Matthew for such a brilliant session this late in the afternoon wonderful to have the energy and the opportunity to have a thing and such wonderful conversation going on in the chat as well it's been a really enjoyable session so I shall give you an online clap so I hate the silence of finishing sessions online I'll stop the recording now we've got a 10 minute break now before the final sessions begin at 10 past five so grab yourself a drink stretch your legs make yourself comfortable and we'll get started again so final thank you to you all thank you Anne