Weeknote 22+23/2026: The Right Room

Hello!

May is supposed to be the quiet time for secondary school teachers. Unsurprisingly, I filled it anyway. This time around: a roadside tyre blowout, my first BCS event, a near-sell-out CPD day, even a crimewriting festival! I really need to start listening to my own advice about saying yes to things.

Family Update

My son finished his Higher exams and had his sights set on a bit of retail therapy in Dundee, en route to visiting his gran in Carnoustie. A front tyre blowout on the A90 had other ideas.

Stuck at the roadside, I watched him problem-solve his way home with his mum. It turned out a school friend lived nearby and could give them a lift to Stonehaven. That left me free to sort the recovery vehicle, which dropped me and the car at Kwik Fit thirty minutes before closing - just enough time for a replacement tyre.

I was glad to be back on the road quickly. Commuting round Aberdeenshire is hard going without a car, but I also genuinely enjoy the odd adventure - my son and I drove all the way to Milan when we moved there in 2015 - so collecting him from an end-of-exam party in Midmar at midnight, tyre freshly replaced, was more of a treat than a chore.

BCS Start Something Aberdeen

This was my first BCS event in Aberdeen, focused on giving budding founders a look at the North East’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. I brought along my friend and colleague Owen, who’s currently working on gaps in existing fundraising platforms.

The evening mixed practical and inspirational: Chris Moule ran the room through Design Thinking, including a quick round of the Crazy Eights ideation technique, and a video message from MIT’s Paul Cheek introduced the Disciplined Entrepreneur framework. The programme side of the event covered RGU’s accelerator, Codebase’s Techscaler delivery, Barclays Eagle Labs’ mentorship and funding routes, and ONE’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship support hubs.

It was great to hear from founders themselves too. I was happy to hear former student Amanda Wallis talk about her startup journey and the support she received from The King’s Trust. Mike Gill reflected on how accelerators, grants, and competitions helped grow his company.

Owen and I left inspired. BCS also provided attendees with a digital information pack detailing the programmes and funding opportunities available, which will no doubt come in handy in the future!

What struck me most, though, was how much of that ecosystem is built simply by people showing up in the same room to swap contacts and hear what others are working on. It’s a model I keep coming back to.

Leading Digital Learning Day

The bulk of my prep this fortnight went into Leading Digital Learning Day, alongside ongoing discussions about a second classroom for Computing Science.

It paid off - the event was a near sell-out, split across Esports, Edpuzzle, and AI policy. Two University of Aberdeen students led strong sessions: Alexander Miles on the Esports curriculum, and Leya Shaju on how universities guide students’ use of AI. Dave Weston walked us through Edpuzzle’s new features, now rolling out across Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire schools, with data protection guidelines the councils have worked through with Dave.

It was also just good to reconnect - catching up with former colleague Lorna, and former student Jack from Portlethen Academy, and Paul, who did his PGDE alongside me before we worked together at Inverurie Academy. Nearly a month on, I’m still proud of what we pulled off. There’s clear appetite for professional development around Esports, Edpuzzle keeps growing, and every school appears to be wrestling with how to turn pages of AI guidance into a policy students and staff can actually use.

What made the day work, though, wasn’t the content on its own - it was getting people with different corners of expertise into the same room to trade ideas directly, in a way no set of slides shared over email ever quite manages.

Heart of Stone Crimewriting Festival

After a fortnight of work events, a crimewriting festival wasn’t exactly rest but it was exactly what I wanted: Food and themed drinks with my partner, then straight into the talks.

Kathryn Thorndycraft-Pope opened with her work as a forensic document examiner, detailing how forgeries and alterations get spotted. Allan Martin followed with a sweep through the history of crime fiction, from the earliest literary mysteries to hardboiled noir, and how each era shaped the next.

A break for another round came with an interactive whodunnit - which we solved about as well as you’d expect after numerous cocktails. The night closed with an interactive murder trial hosted by Mark Bridgeman, where our table heard the evidence, deliberated and then delivered the verdict. It didn’t go so well for the accused, but it was a brilliant way to end the evening.

Lessons Learned

Piecing together the lessons from this fortnight took longer than expected, but a pattern emerged once I did - and it’s a good one. The gaps Owen is trying to fill in fundraising platforms aren’t so different from the gaps I keep hearing about in Esports and AI policy provision: in both cases, the ideas and the appetite exist long before the infrastructure to support them does. Watching founders at BCS turn that gap into an opportunity has changed how I think about building out professional development for Esports and AI policy. It should be less waiting for a finished framework, and more iterating in public the way a startup would.

What I think ties it all together though is the room itself. BCS worked because people showed up and talked to each other. Leading Digital Learning Day worked for the same reason. The crimewriting festival proved the same point from a completely different angle - an interactive whodunnit and a murder trial held a room’s attention for hours by making people participate rather than just listen.

I think I’ve found my next focus: designing more in-person Computing events, not just as one-off training days but as a deliberate piece of community building - creating the kind of room where ideas, gaps, and people find each other, the way they kept doing this fortnight almost by accident. It’s less about saying yes to everything, more about saying yes to the right room.

Take care and have a great week xx

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