A TV programme in 2011 was a turning point for me. The programme followed a familiar format. There were four participants, all facing similar difficult situations. They were shown struggling on their own; a guru offered advice; they acted on it. When the credits rolled a voiceover updated us on their situations a few months later. This is an account of what happened as I watched the programme, and what I did as a result. First I'll describe the programme itself and how I responded to it. Later I'll write about the action I took, progress so far, and what may happen next. The name of the programme could influence your response to what follows, so I won't name it yet.

We were introduced to four main characters. My heart went out to them. I have struggled with similar situations at various points in my life. I could tell you those stories, but the details are not important here. What matters is that you know I am qualified to comment on this subject, and could give you ample evidence should you so wish. If you are facing redundancy, or have been struggling for some time to reposition yourself in the world of work, or you are supporting someone you love in that situation, or you are seeing relationships crumble under the relentless onslaught of failure to find work, then be assured that we could talk easily and truthfully together from areas of deep shared experience.

I tend to ask questions. When my Dad read us bed-time stories one of my favourites was about the Elephant's Child - who:

"asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and his aunts spanked him. And still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity!" `

Like the Elephants Child I pestered my many uncles and aunts with endless questions. As an adult the Open Univeristy increased my confidence and ability to "ask questions" and find things out. In particular the systems course that I did helped me to see the value of getting the right questions.

Soon after I got involved in the things that became Dadamac one of my friends was questioning why I put so much of my own resources into what I was doing. Like me, he had been an OU student. - and that helped him to understand my explanation.  I explained that, in a way, what I was doing was similar to what I might had done if I'd done a higher degree (not a taught one. but a research one). I had got inolved in things that enabled me to explore various questions on a deep level, and I was hooked on the intellectual challenge - naturally I was putting my time and money into it - as I would have done if I was a "normal, traditional student'

Dadamac as a learning journey

Dadamac reflects my ongoing learning journey - and it is full of wheels within wheels.. I'm  a learner learning about learning, and doing so by teaching and learning, and using the Internet for much of that learning, and learning about learning (and teaching) by using the Internet... doing things in practice, reflecting on them, reading what others have written, discussing.. asking myself questions and exploring the answers. Of course I don't have any accreditation for my knowledge, but I do have a considerable digital footprint. 

My December diary - heading towards the Christmas break and the close of the year. It's a varied collection of diary dates - and I hope during 2012 it may become more obvious how all these things are connected with each other.

Hi David

Time to move on. We've been playing with the idea of exploring the future together through open letters, for three months.

I haven't yet written a reply to the last open letter you posted but our paths have crossed several times since you wrote it. So this post is to tidy up our open letter experiment and bring in some conclusions from our recent meetings and conversations elsewhere.

Setting the scene

Let me set the scene for this post - probably the final post of the first stage of our journey into the future together. This was a three month experiment, which is now drawing to a close. We may choose to restart - and that would be a second experiment, growing out of the first. Or we may draw it to a complete close. Either way is fine.

I'm writing from memory (because I'll get drawn into a different level of detail if I go back and read what we wrote). If we do need to check for mismatches between my recollections and what we actually wrote we can check the archives later.

Archiving our lives

The possibility of checking the archives of our posts - and not normally allowing ourselves any exchange of ideas outside of that space - gives us access to a level of accurate recall usually denied us in other areas of life. The possibility (indeed the reality) of accurate recall is changing as we begin to find our way in this strange reality that is "the way we live our lives now".

Now - and our perceptions of it

What do I mean by "now"? I guess I mean the succession of days that I live in - days like today, December 19th 2011.

If I start to analyse today it is packed with things that used to belong "in the future". Such things arrive repeatedly - and with increasing rapidity. The future becomes the present on a daily basis. This quickly makes the recent past seem historic.

A quick skim through my diary for the second half of November shows:

• Thursday 17th and 18th - SHINE UnConference
• Monday 21st - Globalnet21 Meetup - Crisis In Care and its Impact On All Our Futures
• Thusday 24th - Dadamac Meetup - Stronger together - entrepreneurs and collaboration
• Saturday 26th - TEDx Euston (Nigerian event in London)
• Monday 28th - The Feeling’s Mutual: Is it time for STEPPING OUT of the public sector?
• Tuesday 29th - Globalnet21 Meetup - Making Social Media Work To Achieve a Purpose

November 15th - half way through the month. So what's happened so far?

A quick skim through my diary shows:.

When we started the dadamac.net site our first priorities included:

1. raising the visibility of our work in Nigeria,
2. demonstrating the effectiveness of our UK-Nigeria collaboration,
3. finding out about using Drupal for Dadamac's information (both publicly visible information and also information hidden behind the scenes for internal use)
4. setting up effective administrative structures
5. developing an "online home" for the various activities of the dadamac community.

We're happy (but not complacent) with what we've achieved regarding 1,2 ,3 and 4. We've made good progress and have created a useful body of evidence about our UK-Nigeria work. All kinds of things have emerged along the way, and we've learned many useful lessons.  We've also developed structures and systems that work for us, and that make us confident about increasing our dadamac team as the opportunities and needs arise.

Now we need to give some additional attention to 5 - developing an "online home" for the various activities of the dadamac community i.e. the wider dadamac community, in the UK (with our gorwing face-to-face network) and elsewhere (through ou ronline network), especially in East Africa.

Our focus at dadamac.net so far has tended to be on Nigeria - so the rest of us need to study the example of the UK-Nigeria work, and its visibiliy,  and see what could / should be followed or adapted by the wider community.

Pamela McLean and David Pinto: An Exploration of the future through a mixture of fact and fiction.

Hi David,

I can understand your impatience to be started on our journey. I'm bad at packing. I spread out everything that I might need, and struggle to decide what to leave behind. I've seen advice that you should pack half of the stuff you think you'll need and take double the money. I'm sure it's good advice - assuming you can afford to double the money, and that there will be shops…

I'm never really ready to travel. It just becomes nearly time to go - I have to zip up my bags, check that I have the essential paperwork, and hope I've got it more or less right.

Maybe we should have fixed a time to leave. Maybe you won't wait much longer, so maybe I'd better just zip up my bags and trust I've got what I really need. After all, this is a trip into the future. We aren't going to be there alone. Other people will be there too. Maybe they'll help me to get hold of anything I forgot to bring.

In the future maybe some of the constraints we face now won't be constraints any more. Already we see things that seemed fixed tumbling around us. Much that our parents and grandparents accepted and took as unchangeable is long gone.

Many of our tumbling constraints relate to the death of distance, and time-shifting, and what I think of as “fluid walls”. I mean events where “being there” merges with “being involved at a distance” or through something recorded previously - events that are streamed and recorded, where some people contribute via Skype or other video links, where "being there" can sometimes feel like being a studio audience.

This post is prompted by The University Project and an invitation to share personal experiences

Let's make room for sharing our own experiences of university - as students, academics, parents, people who never went to university - and of the other places in which we've found a home for our curiosity and company in our learning.

It prompted me to think about my own experiences:

When i saw a request for information on the ICT4D Facebook group, I wanted to point to Dadamac and Fantsuam Foundation (FF) - but simply pointing isn't really enough - an explanation is needed.

The request was from Jam Gonzaga - It said "does any of you has a link about how ICT4D is applied in the various sectors associated with development undertakings." 

Regarding "the various sectors associated with development undertakings" Fantsuam Foundation is involved in most sectors of development. This is because it is embedded in its local community - and that is why "it does everything". It's a bit like the difference between being an extended family (which cares about everything) or just being "the school" (with its clear focus on education) or just being  "the clinic" (with its clear focus on health).

FF is like an extremely extended family. A family is a collection of interconnected people who care about everything in each others lives from birth to death, and that includes health, education, housing, earning a living, food, water, phone calls, the power supply and getting from A to B. People who work at FF tend to remain "part of the family" long after they leave. From my first visit there I was invited to think of it as "my second home" - and that is certainly a feeling that is easy to get at FF.