A very short history of AI, before it became fashionable
When people talk about artificial intelligence today, it often sounds as though it appeared fully formed in the last few […]
What resilient systems understand, and why firefighting is a warning sign
If you look beyond knowledge work, one thing becomes clear very quickly: well-designed systems do not aim to run at
Where to find UK university data dashboards online
This is a question I see come up a lot, and it is a very reasonable one: Where can I
From awareness to agency: a practical way to think about data fluency
Data fluency is a term that gets used a lot, often interchangeably with data literacy. In practice, this creates confusion.
Wellbeing is not a nice-to-have. It is a system indicator.
When conversations turn to wellbeing, they often drift into the personal. Resilience. Self-care. Better boundaries. While these matter, they can
Extra capacity is not inefficiency. It is risk management.
When organisations talk about risk, they usually focus on the visible and technical. Cyber security. Compliance. Financial controls. System resilience.
The hidden cost of constant firefighting
One of the reasons firefighting persists is that its true cost is hard to see. On the surface, work still
Firefighting feels normal. That’s the problem.
In many organisations, especially in professional services and higher education, firefighting is not an exception. It is the default mode
My predictions for 2026: AI, data, and the gap between ambition and reality
At the start of 2026, it feels like the conversation around AI in higher education is shifting. The early excitement
What do you do when you submit a data return?
When people hear that I submit a data return, they often imagine something fairly contained. A dataset.A deadline.Some validation errors.A