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  • Published on

    August 18th, 2023

    I'm happy to announce that Technology and Society returns as primary sponsor for London Seaward's 2023/24 season in the English Women's National League Division 1 South East. Last season saw the Anchors build a strong foundation for the future, finishing in the top half of the league and taking a cup trophy to their new home at Oakside Stadium. The long-term groundshare agreement offers the stability needed for further growth.

    As a developer of online training courses and technical documentation, Technology and Society provides learners the opportunity to develop new skills and enhance their existing abilities. Much as football players perfect individual techniques and learn to work as part of a team, technical learning benefits from a mix of personal and group work.

    I've listed some of my most popular LinkedIn Learning courses below. You will need a LinkedIn Learning subscription or trial to access them. As the season progresses, I'll announce course updates and plan to release additional resources independently. 

    Supporting an independent women's football club means a great deal to me personally. Providing resources for Seaward to pursue their love of football and build a strong and secure foundation for future players resonates deeply with what I hope to achieve through my work. I hope you'll join us at Oakside Stadium and at the occasional away match to show your support in person.

    ​We are London Seaward.
  • Published on

    Supporting NarraScope 2023

    [This post announces Technology and Society's support for NarraScope 2023, an interactive fiction conference. The conference will be held online and in person June 9-11 at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. For more information or to register, visit https://narrascope.org/.]

    Interactive fiction offers game designers and developers access to the most powerful game engine there is: the human mind. Whether you’re designing for fun, education, or to explore an aspect of society, you can use the power of text adventures to bring your words to life.

    I formed Technology and Society, Inc. to provide a home for my technical writing, speaking, and online course development efforts. My LinkedIn Learning courses focus on business analysis as part of a broader push for effective business storytelling. Unlike the many authors who view storytelling as the domain of executives, I want to bring business analysis and narrative skills deeper into the organization so change can be launched from within. I see interactive fiction as an allied art—one that I value highly.
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    Thank you for supporting and attending NarraScope 2023. If you think that you or a colleague with access to LinkedIn Learning through your company, educational institution, library, or personal subscription would benefit from one or more of my courses, please let them know. I’ve attached a list below…you do need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to click through to them, but I hope you or someone you know could benefit from the skills I teach.
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  • Published on

    supporting white bird dance

    I’m proud to announce that Technology and Society has joined the ranks of sponsors for the 2023-24 White Bird dance season in Portland, Oregon.

    We’re sponsoring Kid Lightning by LED, which runs January 25-27, 2024. Imagine a 1970s-style kids game show where contestants vie to become “Kid Lightning”—as the stakes get raised, the action intensifies!

    LED is based in Boise, Idaho, but has close ties to Portland. My wife and partner Virginia Belt keeps an eye out for likely projects to support. Her background as a professional ballerina and actor is invaluable.

    This is White Bird’s 26th season, a remarkable run for a group that brings in outstanding dance companies from around the world. The 2023-24 season includes performances by world-renowned groups Pilobolus and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

    Kid Lightning is part of the White Bird Uncaged series along with Odeon from Ephrat Asherie Dance and Radioactive Practice by Abby Z and the New Utility. The series is generously underwritten by Ronni Lacroute, a long-time patron of the arts in the Portland area.

    For more information, to subscribe to a series, or to buy individual performance tickets as they come available, visit https://www.whitebird.org/.

    Sponsoring Kid Lightning by LED is part of Technology and Society’s broader program of support for worthwhile endeavors, including works by Many Hats Collaborative and as shirt sponsor for women’s football (soccer) club London Seaward FC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlNArPc7kLg

    I hope you’re able to join us at Kid Lightning and other White Bird performances this season. Visit the White Bird site to learn more about the diverse range of world-class dance coming to Portland over the next twelve months.

    For more information about Technology and Society, visit www.techsoc.com.
  • Published on

    End of Year Recap

    London Seaward’s regular season ended earlier this month with the club solidifying its hold on fifth in a division of twelve teams. With the season done and just one (or two!) cup matches to follow, it’s time to take stock of my year as sponsor.

    Short version: I couldn’t be happier.

    There’s more to the story, of course. Seaward rose as high as third in the standings but came down to earth a bit at the end. The depth of talent throughout the English football pyramid means that most games will be competitive and all three results possible, so some variability is expected.
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    That said, the Anchors did well with the resources at hand. Bigger clubs come with bigger budgets, as I alluded to in this somewhat cheeky graphic:
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    When deciding whether to sponsor the club, I looked at the committee, managers, and players who had seen London Seaward through the traumatic separation from their “name” men’s club and a year of training in parks with portable lights in the fight to avoid relegation. They won my confidence and it turned out to be a terrific decision. It bears noting that two teams from Seaward’s division had to withdraw part way through the campaign, which attests to the difficulty of competing at this level.

    What Seaward have done, beyond finishing in the top half of the table, is establish the club as a great place to play. Players share notes about the teams they’ve played for, whether they’d go back, and whether they’d recommend a club to their friends. Seaward benefitted from players arriving on loan or on a short-term contract—with luck, that reputation as a welcoming and competitive club will continue.

    And now we head into the offseason, which is always times of transition. Open trials will happen in a couple of months and decisions made as to players, managers, and (yes) sponsors. I’ve indicated my interest in continuing on but one of the realities of sport is that everyone is replaceable. I’ll let everyone know what’s up as soon as I can.
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    We are London Seaward. 
  • Published on

    A Solid Win

    I appreciate coverage of the Women’s National League on TheFA.com and elsewhere. While full match reports are best, the weekly FA Women's National League Round-Up offers a quick summary that fleshes out the results tables available on the site.

    London Seaward played an outstanding match against Norwich City on January 29, earning a well-deserved 3-0 victory. The first half was balanced on a knife’s edge, but a solid goal gave the Anchors the momentum going into the second half that they were able to convert into controlling pressure and two more scores. Alicia Garwood absolutely stood on her head in goal to keep a clean sheet and help secure the points.

    And what did FA.com have to say about it? “Norwich City stumbled at London Seaward, losing 3-0, to mean only three points separate second and sixth.”

    That’s it? Yes, the Canaries were second in the South East division at the start of the calendar year, but summarizing the match as a misstep fails to capture the effort and heart Seaward showed after a disappointing loss the weekend before. I appreciate the author was on deadline and had limited space for their summary, but it still seems a bit of a slight.

    Seaward have shown they’re a club to be reckoned with, both on the pitch and in terms of their organization and the support network they’ve developed. Investing in anything from overseas is always a difficult decision, but sponsoring Seaward became much easier when I saw the quality of the individuals they had surrounding them. The players are the heart and soul of the club, but they need help from others so they can concentrate on their training and what happens between the lines on game day.

    Together with their supporters, the Anchors have a bright future in store.

    I sent a draft of this message to my accountant and, the savvy professional she is, she reminded me that for this endeavour to be a deductible marketing expense I actually have to market something. So, as always, if you have a LinkedIn Learning account please visit the site and see what courses I have to offer. I focus on Microsoft Excel and Tableau, so please look me up if you’re running a business or club and need some information on how to manage and analyze your data. 
  • Published on

    Quality Books for Free

    Learning on your own can be confusing and expensive. If you want to learn about a topic but don’t have the experience to judge the value of the resources available to you, you waste time and probably money discovering and evaluating what’s out there.

    Peer-reviewed texts written by trained academics remove a lot of that doubt, but textbooks are notoriously expensive. In recent years, the academic community has pushed to develop books that can be downloaded for free and used without restriction. Two of my favorite sources for these textbooks are Rice University’s OpenStax project and the University of British Columbia’s Textbook Project, which is funded by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education.

    OpenStax offers more than 80 textbooks at the high school and college level on topics including business, social sciences, humanities, chemistry, physics, and math in English and 11 texts in Spanish. The business segment includes books on ethics, law, entrepreneurship, finance, statistics, and intellectual property among other topics. Basically, you have the supporting texts for the core of a solid undergraduate business program available for free. The page for Introductory Business Statistics indicates the book is used in 307 classrooms and has saved students more than $7 million USD. That’s a substantial contribution to learning.

    OpenStax is administered by a U.S. university, so it’s no surprise the texts are written from that perspective. Texts in the University of British Columbia’s Textbook Project are influenced by UBC’s position as a leading Canadian institution as well as the program’s slightly different mission. Where OpenStax focuses on college and, to a lesser extent, high school instruction, UBC’s Textbook Project extends its offerings to cover adult mathematical and English literacy as well as vocational topics such as barbering techniques for hairstylists, food safety, and math for the trades. Other books include coverage of Indigenous perspectives on business ethics and business law in British Columbia as well as Canadian history pre- and post-confederation.

    The adult learning texts and programs would be of particular benefit to recent arrivals to the UK as well as Canada and other nations of the British Commonwealth that use British spelling conventions.
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    OpenStax and the Textbook Project provide significant benefit to academic and individual learners, but numerous other institutions and authors make resources available to the community. I’ll describe some of them in my next post.