So Long and Thanks for all the fish!

December 15, 2017 at 3:31 pm | Posted in waffle | Leave a comment

Back in July I wrote a post ‘30‘ which marked my thirtieth anniversary working at the University of Southampton. At the end of that week I applied for a job as a Teaching Fellow in Technology Enabled Learning at Aston University in Birmingham, and I’m pleased and excited to say that I was successful! So after three decades I’m leaving Southampton to make a fresh start in the Midlands…

I thought I ought to give a farewell lecture, looking back at all the units and projects I’ve worked for, and the colleagues I’ve worked with. I’m an inveterate hoarder, so I also had quite a few objects from those far-off days – from the first user guide I created in 1987 (for the Wordwise word processor on the BBC-B) to the ultra-thin 1.4kg Sony Vaio N505 laptop I bought for a project in 1999 (nearly a decade before the 1.36kg Macbook Air).

After some thought (inconveniently in the middle of the night) I came up with the perfect theme – ALIBABA or A Life in Buzzwords and Bad Acronyms – which pretty much sums up my career. Looking back through my file archives it is amazing how many buzzwords and acronyms I have worked with, so my talk goes from DTP to BYOD, via HTML and a couple of dozen others.

If you have 35 minutes to spare, I made a recording of the talk for posterity. My next post will be in the New Year, from my new job. Merry Yule and best wishes for the coming year.

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish – image by Mathiole – which you can get as a T-Shirt. Cool!