Thinking and doing: theory and practice

Welcome and thanks for visiting. This blog is where I write about projects I am working on, capture my research in progress and generally organise my thinking in public. It helps me enormously to have a place to do this – I hope you also find it useful.

Current lines of enquiry include the 9 tribes of digital, designing for democracy and more general thinking about technology driven change and the digital mindset.

If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn . If you are trying to find me online for a more research orientated discussion then you can find me on twitter as @curiousc. If you want to contact to me about speaking at an event then you can contact me via either of these routes.

Dr Catherine Howe

Here are some of the things I am currently working on:

Latest posts

Week notes 21st May

I started writing this on a glorious morning on the Isle of Wight – just taken the dogs out – a perfect bank holiday weekend which makes the apocalyptic weather from the rest of the country another piece of evidence that says that the IOW is actually in another timezone….if ...

Week notes 14th May 2018

Picture above is of a blackbird that is nesting in the rosebush outside the garage. We now have to creep around when extracting anything and also can’t BBQ as its nested just above it but we have fingers crossed we will get hatchlings this year! As the observant will have ...

Week notes 7th May 2018

I started writing this on a sunny afternoon in the garden – its all good as long as you don’t get suntan lotion on the keyboard. I love to be outside and so will be luring people out for their 121s as the weather gets better – especially as we ...

Week notes 20th April

Last week was about trying to work a balance between thinking and doing – trying to ask questions but also starting to get properly involved. The question I find myself asking most often is ‘do I know enough to act?”. But as I get properly wired into the team – ...

Week notes 16th April

I’m a little late with this weeks notes as I was seduced by the weather and spent most of the weekend outside – still not figured out what is digging holes in my raised beds so badger watch is still live…. Last week was about getting some structure around some ...

Week notes 9th April 2018

New job new desk – endorsed by dog. In summary. Week two – still love it. I’m now starting to dig a bit deeper into the organisation and meeting some people outside of the immediate team – they continue to be clever, committed people who want to get stuff done ...

Broken words and why they matter

We are digging ourselves a hole. In a complicated world communication is everything. Much of this complication is caused by our own laziness and carelessness with language – we appropriate and borrow words without ever taking the time to work out what they really mean. In our yearning to make ...

Week notes 3rd April 2017

I’ve fallen out of the habit of regular blogging for lots of reasons but I intend to get back to it. I find it a hugely helpful part of reflective practice and also core to an action research approach to the world which has been pretty embedded in me ever ...

Digital mindset: A whistlestop tour

This post is a companion to the 8 tribes of digital piece I wrote earlier in the year. It describes the qualities which I use to define the digital mindset. I am putting to one side my ambivalence about the word ‘digital’ and will come back to that another day. ...

Emergent ideas: Its a frame-changer

Sociologists use the term framing to describe the way in which your prior experiences – cultural and personal – give context to way in which you approach a problem or issue. Its a central aspect of how the public sphere operates and critical to our decision making process – both ...