Ben Rouse Interview

[00:00:05] Hey, you're listening to the Digitize Fully Charged Podcast. I'm your host, Pam Currie. I'm joined as always by Niall Ridgeway. And today's episode is a conversation with Ben Rouse, where we dig into edtech, to design thinking and to the idea of running creative workshops with schools and businesses. Let's dive in.

[00:00:32] So, super, super excited by today's guest. We have Ben Rouse, as in mouse or house, who runs Evolving Design. We've known Ben for a number of years, done loads of work. I mean, you used to do brilliant stuff on behalf of Google. So, I'm just going to hand over to Ben now to let him tell you all about himself. Ben. Cheers, Pam. Yeah, I'm delighted to be here.

[00:01:01] I was still working on the succinct version, but I've tried my best. I now facilitate strategy workshops, generally for leadership teams who are deciding what they want to do next or to tweak things. So, it involves lots of sticky notes and lots of pens currently. It tends to be more in person than remote, but I don't know particularly why. We can get into that. Maybe give me a coaching session. But yeah, former maths teacher, former edtech trainer, and delighted to be here.

[00:01:30] Yay! So, Ben, you mentioned sticky notes. I remember you sharing like on somewhere, LinkedIn, Twitter, somewhere, you kind of shared either, I don't know if it was a video or a picture of your cupboard. And you had so many sticky notes. Like, I don't know if you just stocked up or, but yeah, they're definitely part of your toolkit. That post got more impressions than anything else. Really?

[00:01:58] Yeah, yeah. I think it triggered a lot of people because I did it twice now. I think actually I may have tried to really ham it up by doing it three times. But the first one, I think I took a picture of, I was taking a picture of a particular part of the cupboard, but it included all the rest that was a real mess. So, I think it kind of, a lot of Marie Kondo advocates, particularly I think Anna from Google came in and was just, she couldn't handle it. Really?

[00:02:26] And I think, yeah, everyone was like, I need to come around and tidy your cupboard because that is unacceptable. That's hilarious. Yeah, I think I just got a stock up. Yeah, I love that. Like, do you know what I mean? You try to be so, like, I don't know, interesting and engaging. You do your best to share quality content and then your cupboard gets the most traction. Yep. And you spend a lot of time on your videos as well. Like, I've been watching, I was obviously in my prep for today. I was going through a couple of your videos that you posted on YouTube.

[00:02:55] They're high quality. Like, there's a wee shot that you do where you've got it to camera and then in post you edit it so that your face goes to, like, the left third instead of the middle. And then you have your text appear and then it comes, like, it switches back to the original. I'm like, that's class. That's brilliant. But it's your sticky notes that get all the impressions and that's the thing that everybody remembers. Always the way. I think this is, well, don't overthink it.

[00:03:21] If anyone's kind of pausing on posting, so something like it's trying to get it right. It just shows you it doesn't matter at all. Yeah. The impressions are my sticky note cupboard. And then I tidied it and posted again and that did quite well. But anything I kind of intentionally post, hoping to get some engagement, doesn't work at all. I know. That's it. Share our vulnerabilities in our untidy cupboards.

[00:03:52] So, Ben, tell us about what you were like when you were a little, Ben. Well, here's the first. I had hair. So, there's the big shocking revelation, first of all. I mean, I was born in the black country. So, for anyone that knows Birmingham, just sort of southwest of Birmingham is the black country. So, around Dudley. And I was born in Hales-Owen. My dad, my dad was a teacher. My mum works in the NHS. So, and both from Stoke-on-Trent. I don't know.

[00:04:22] It gives a little bit of context. We had, I think my dad had like a 16% mortgage at that time. I know. Those days are gone. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it was, I was the first of three that they had. So, we kind of, and when I was, when I was growing up, the reason I mentioned Hales-Owen, go right back to the beginning. I think I was about two, living on the end of a cul-de-sac. So, a big, long sort of cul-de-sac. And we were right at the bottom.

[00:04:51] And when I was two, the other kids in the street came around and called for me. And my mum was like, but he's two. But they kind of just gathered me up and took me out. And therefore, kind of my earliest memories are climbing trees, snowball fights, a kid called Mitchell constantly falling out of trees and breaking bones. I think he broke every bone in his body in the short time that I lived there. So, yeah, it's kind of, that was the kickoff was just, I think I was just out all the time.

[00:05:20] Yeah, I got in a lot of trouble because we used to, it was a big, steep cul-de-sac. We used to ride our bikes down the road. And I don't know if you've ever done this. You know, if you shove your foot in between the forks on the front, it kind of works like an instant break. Yeah. Yep. So, I did that a lot. And then I also, my parents, so the 16% mortgage thing was a reference point to, there wasn't a lot of money going around, both public sector workers from the 70s into the 80s. So, they got me a new pair of trainers.

[00:05:50] And then in one day, I used my feet to brake instead of the brakes on my bike down the hill. So, they sent me out in new shoes and I walked back in and the whole toe had gone. Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben. I remember a certain amount of frustration and anger. Did your dad not teach at the same school that you went to? Yeah, yeah. So, it was around that time.

[00:06:16] So, he was, they'd moved from Norwich, I think, to Halesowen. And then I was born. And my dad was teaching at that point. And my mum had one week of leave after she had me because she just started a new job. So, I was in a child mind role that time. But then we moved into Birmingham. And you weren't, you can't tell from my accent now, but when we moved from the black country into Birmingham.

[00:06:43] So, I did reception in a school in Halesowen and I did what is now, what, in English terms, year one. What, that P1? Right about it, yeah. When I moved. And I got taken the piss out of my accent by kids in Birmingham because I sounded really, really, I'd say, Luke, there's a book. That's how I spoke when I was a little kid. But it obviously sort of had such an effect on me. I've gone for a completely neutral accent now. Switched up. Yeah.

[00:07:13] But we moved really close to my dad's school in Birmingham. And then, yeah, and then that was a secondary school. And then when I went to secondary school, I went to the school he taught at. What did your dad teach? At that time, he was teaching computing. So, he'd previously taught maths. But it was like a computer arrived in the school many years ago. And he was the only one that took an interest in it. Yeah. So, by that point, he was a fully computing teacher.

[00:07:39] So, when he was teaching, did you go, like one side, did you go, I'm going to behave, I'm not going to put a foot out of line. Or did you swing the other way and just rebel? I was chatty. But, you know, not badly behaved. Like, I did my work and stuff like that. I did, there's a good friend of mine who I still see now.

[00:08:02] When he sat next to me, I would try and say words to get him to accidentally put naughty words into his essay. So, that was kind of my approach. That's the worst you did. Yeah, stuff like that. I think I had two detentions in my whole time at secondary school. So, nothing too bad. My dad was a teacher as well. So, but I never went to the same school that he taught at. No.

[00:08:30] He was always at a different school, thankfully. But I did go as a student. So, as a student teacher, I went to my dad's school, which was interesting. I got caught out really badly when he left me in charge of his class one day. And they asked me a question about, I don't know if you're familiar with, like, the part of speech. And the figure of speech, an oxymoron. So, at the time I wasn't.

[00:09:00] And I thought they were taking a piss. So, they were like, Pam, see in line four of the poem, is that an oxymoron? I was like, yeah, very good. As if I'm going to fall for that. And then I realised quickly that actually an oxymoron was a thing. Well, I just didn't know about it. So, yeah, that was probably the, but I can't imagine what it would be like if your dad, actually taught at your school. Yeah. That was all right. And the fact that I don't think anyone really minded.

[00:09:29] My dad was relatively, like, I suppose a bit laid back, as long as you were doing the right thing. There was one incident, though, where he only taught me for one year for computing. Someone called across the classroom to me. And I went, hey, Rousey. And my dad, knowing exactly what they'd done, just went to them, what did you call me? And they were like, oh. And so, yeah, saw it themselves.

[00:09:59] And he was like, only joking. So, that was kind of his style, I suppose. But one thing I discovered, lots of my friends had him for cover lessons over the years. So, I had a few. My dad is fairly straightforward. Like, he speaks if spoken to. You know, a fairly straightforward person. And a few kids would come up to me every so often and go, I didn't know your dad was a pilot. I'm like, what are you talking about?

[00:10:28] And I'm like, yeah, we just had a cover lesson with him. He told us that he had a pilot's license. I'm like, no, he didn't. And I go home and go, dad, someone said you had a pilot's license. He goes, oh, yeah, I do. What are you talking about this for? And then the weirdest one was when someone came up to me and went, oh, my God, I can't believe your dad was a drummer in a strip club. I'm like, no, no, no, not a chance. That's not my dad. And I went home and went, this is surely a lie, Dad.

[00:10:56] Someone said to me that you were a drummer in a strip club. He's like, oh, only a few times. And he was serious. He wasn't, like, having a laugh. He was genuinely dead. Yeah, genuinely dead. So no one had ever asked him. So it'd never come up. Ben, we need to talk about your sweatshirt. Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose some people will be watching, right? So it says, yes, Bab on it.

[00:11:23] So there's a little independent thing called Punks and Chances. Oh, cool. And they make T-shirts and sweatshirts like this one. So Birmingham-based thing. And yes, Bab, or the use of word Bab is just a very Birmingham thing. So you're like, you are Bab. How are you doing, Bab? Yes, Bab. I'll have a pint, please, Bab. That kind of thing. Or a Brummie cup, milk and two sugars. Bab.

[00:11:51] So yeah, they do a great little range. And this is my insecurities about trying to prove I'm from Birmingham, but I don't have the accent. So I have to wear tops like this. I love it. For anyone who's not watching, Ben's wearing, like, a kind of beige-colored sweat. It's almost like a Venn diagram, isn't it? It's got, like, colored circles. I thought it was to do with your company logo at first. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I can just see the top. Yeah. It's very cool.

[00:12:18] It's like a beige-colored, neutral-colored sweatshirt with turquoise and yellow blobs. And yes, Bab written in the middle. It's very cool. What was the name of the company again? Punks and Chancers. Punks and Chancers. Great names. Now, that leads me in perfectly. So I remember we were out getting pizza one time. It was, I think it was Learning Places a couple of years ago, at a place called Strip Joint. Great name. My dad on the drums. Yeah, I was going to say that.

[00:12:47] Big dad on the drums. And we were chatting about music, and I remember you saying that you have a big love for kind of punk and ska. I might be wrong. Did you say your favorite band was Pennywise? I was trying to remember this beforehand. But tell us about your kind of musical background. A million miles away from what we're about to talk about was my first ever CD purchase from Our Price was Snap Rhythm as a Dancer.

[00:13:14] So when I was about 11, a friend of mine was really into his dance music, and I was obviously easily led. So that's kind of where I went first. And then I got into a bit of Green Day when they came around, mainly when Dookie came out and everyone became aware of Green Day. And then a kid at school, so this would have been second or third year of secondary, came up to me and went, I think you'll like this.

[00:13:40] And he handed me No Effects, an album that No Effects did called Ribbed. And that was the turning point. So I kind of went on this journey from there of No Effects, bands like Pennywise, Lagwagon. And then kind of through that, I actually love Propaganda as well, if anyone's a Propaganda fan.

[00:14:04] Yeah, so if I were to pick a walk-on song, it would be Victory Lap by Propaganda. Right, you'll have to listen to that. And then everyone else would walk out, I think would be the case. So is this where the blue hair came from? Is that a Fat Mike reference? It's Billy Joe Armstrong. I wanted to look like Billy Joe.

[00:14:26] So yeah, I had when I was four, I think it was 15, no, 14, I think 14 or 15, I peroxided my hair. So it went white with it. And then I think it was when I was 16, so kind of just after my GCSEs in that summer, after my GCSEs, I got it peroxided and then went blue. Brilliant. Fantastic.

[00:14:55] And yeah, I had a tongue piercing at the time as well. You were rocking it all. What was your fashion look at the time? Was it sort of Czech shirts and grungy? It depends whereabouts you grew up as to what the right word for it is. In some places, it would be referred to as Grebo. Jitter, I think, was another phrase for it.

[00:15:23] But if you ever remember, I'd have, I suppose, quite a skatery look, but I had a big chain on my wallet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally always in a cap with my peroxided hair sort of popping out at both places. So that was kind of, yeah. That was the step. I remember I tried to get the chain look going and my jeans had, you know how they had like the wee clip for it? I had like a space for it.

[00:15:53] And I got my chain from a, it was a pet shop. And it was like an actual dog's collar. Oh, it is. Yep. I thought it looked really cool. Works. Is it the thing that you're like, where do you go and find this stuff? But eventually there was a place in the centre of Birmingham that would do, that had all the right stuff going on where you could get your big, big fat chain. No. And vans. Did you wear vans?

[00:16:22] I had, I had E-mericas, so E-mericas, globes and all that kind of stuff. But ridiculously, I didn't skateboard, but I looked like I should have. Yeah. Which is, I've now in my midlife crisis where I've got a skateboard and I'm. Yes. I'm with you there. You and now both. I even went for a lesson the other day. Yeah. You never. How'd you get on?

[00:16:46] And I, I went on the quarter pipe and I was sort of being helped out by this guy and I slammed into it really, really hard, but not in any cool way, like on my ass. I love that you're doing that now. It's a rite of passage. So, Niall, can you do that? You know what? Can you do all the tricks? No, not really. So, I only took it up in, I was similar where I didn't do it when I was younger.

[00:17:16] I was not coordinated as a kid. So, I took it up during lockdown. And then from there we used to go to, there was a skate park that all the kids would come out at like, I don't know, 10, 11 a.m. So, to beat all the kids getting there, we would go early morning, have a shot and then they'd all turn up and be like, right, okay, we're done. So, just be going like as fast as you could down, there was a couple of like wee tiny ramps, but nothing fancy. I used to always, like mine was snowboarding.

[00:17:46] I always wanted to snowboard and I tried it so many times. And at the end, like I loved the whole day of getting up really early and then going to the slopes. And like, I loved the whole kind of, I don't know, the whole vibe of it. But I just basically spent the whole day getting tired and tired from falling down and getting back up again and falling down and getting back up again. And by the end of it, I was just like, no, I've had enough. I'm going for a hot chocolate.

[00:18:17] That's the thing. There's a nice scene, isn't there? Where you can just have the snowboard next to you. We're like, yeah, I'm loving it. Who's the most famous person you've ever met? Did I put something different on my phone to rub it up? No, you never, no, I don't think it was a question. No, it wasn't a question. It just came to me because I was like, you were talking about Soldier, Soldier and the Game of Thrones cast. And I was like, that's the kind of thing I would do. I don't recognise anyone.

[00:18:43] Like I could walk past someone like super famous on the street, probably wouldn't know them. Well, we were working in one of the hotels nearby here and Karen Dunbar walked past and we were like, oh, there's Karen Dunbar. We'll leave it. Yeah, there's a few like passing ones where from a distance I've gone, oh, I think like I was in an airport lounge and Peter Schmeichel was in it. But again, I didn't say hi or anything. Left him to his own devices.

[00:19:11] The only random references I've got for like now they're famous. But when I knew them, they were just students was I was a maths teacher for a long time. And one of the one of the things that our school picked up was teaching the Chelsea Academy footballers for their GCSEs. So I'd go over to the Chelsea training ground and teach a group of kids maths that were sort of in that process.

[00:19:41] So nowadays I've got quite a lot of footballers that I can reference in different places. So like Mason Mount is probably one of the more famous ones at a tour. It's a big name. Yeah. Connor Gallagher, who's just gone over to Atletico Madrid now. Mark Gehe at Palace and Trevor Chalibur and a few like that. But I taught them maths. I didn't teach them football. No. I don't think they've needed it, to be honest.

[00:20:10] Apart from counting large wads of money. Yeah. Their agent will be doing most of it for them. I tell you what though. The thing that the thing I always talk about with that is of the of all the the young footballers I taught and the ones that have gone on to do particularly well, say Mason, Connor, Trevor, Mark, they were all incredibly good students. And when we spoke to the coaches, there was like, yeah, they'd apply themselves in our lessons

[00:20:38] and they'd really apply themselves on the training pitch with their coaches. So I think there's a kind of misconception about footballers sometimes that they, you know, they're of a certain academic persuasion. Was it was it similar to, you know, you see in all the American films where the student can't play for the team if they don't get a high enough grade. Was that similar or was it just turn up? No, no. No. I mean, we had we had some sway.

[00:21:07] And to be honest, a lot of the parents that we met were sort of on them about managing it. They were aware like your career could end all of a sudden. There are a few players who come through who were lazy as sin. But I don't want to call them that. I'll just mention the ones that are really, really good. We've had a look at your past. Let's take a wee look at where you are just now in your current role.

[00:21:34] So do you want to tell us a wee bit about evolving design and kind of what it is you're doing? Yeah, absolutely. So I started, I suppose, completely off on my own about a year ago was when I really cut all safety nets and went for it. So to go back a little bit, I'd been doing. I was a math teacher. I was head of maths. I'd gone into ed tech training and particularly around the ed tech training, talking to people about tech.

[00:22:03] They don't care at all. And the best bit of feedback I got was I did a kind of training session for all staff on how they could use QR codes. And I went to a colleague of mine at the time, sort of head of languages. She's now a head teacher. So I knew that. And I went and asked her, what did you think? She went, you know, Ben, good for you. You're doing really well. But obviously I've missed the boat. It was like that was her take on it.

[00:22:34] And that was a good sort of lesson in, you know, forget about me. Like, what is it that people want to achieve? So kind of be a bit more user-centric. I was at an event called Practical Pedagogies that was in Toulouse. And Ewan McIntosh was speaking. I am. No Tosh. Yeah, exactly. So he was talking about design thinking. Yeah. And that was when the penny dropped for me. I was like, that's what I've been looking for. Something that is focused on real people and real people's challenges.

[00:23:05] And I took that into the training. And then more and more of that turned into strategy. So see, before we go any further with that, I think there's probably quite a lot of people that still don't know what design thinking is. And what the whole kind of, could you sum it up for us? And just explain to people what design thinking is. I will give it a go. So it's a bit of terminology that came out of Stanford Design School, also a company called IDEO.

[00:23:33] And it's just about being human-centric in the way that you design. So understanding real people. And I suppose getting out of your own head and your own assumptions. And spending a suitable amount of time focused on that before you then go to any solutions or ideas. So that's probably the sort of simple overview of it. Because I think we, as humans, are quite sort of wired to go straight for a solution.

[00:24:03] Like, I've got an idea. Let's go do it. And obviously, there's lots and lots of examples of where you can get, you can spend lots of time and money and effort on doing something that ultimately doesn't work. And therefore, spending a bit more time up front on realizing what people actually want. So that's the design thinking process that I kind of picked up. So what I do now, though, is it's similar to that, but I suppose it's a more streamlined version.

[00:24:29] A proper design thinking organization will spend a long time getting to that point where everyone works in that way and is naturally user human centric in the way that they do things. My engagements are much shorter than that. So I tend to do off sites and retreats with leadership teams. So that will be one day, two days, maybe three. And therefore, I've got, there's aspects of design thinking approaches in it.

[00:24:57] But it will be sort of more streamlined. So there's a book called Sprint by Jake Knapp. So Jake Knapp was at Google in the Gmail team. They were thinking about kind of creating a video calling option, but they never kind of got time to really make progress on it. Yep. So they cleared out a week in their schedule, like five days, like we're going to work on this idea.

[00:25:24] And that process became known as the design sprint. So it's a five-day process. There's now a four-day version. And what I now do is take pieces of that along with other approaches, like there's a thing called liberating structures, which is a load of different techniques for managing meetings and workshops more effectively. So what I now do is take pieces of all of that.

[00:25:54] So like the design sprint from Jake Knapp, liberating structures and other approaches, and custom design workshops for teams. So a recent engagement, for example, was a scale-up mental health AI platform. We're doing a two-day retreat for their whole team. It's the first time they'd all been together in one place. So I designed with their founders a process for the two days,

[00:26:21] and we facilitated their team engaging with the strategy, understanding what that meant for them in their particular roles, and aligning on next steps around some key work streams that they wanted to work on. So in a not quite as big nutshell, but in a nutshell, that's kind of that process of taking a long design thinking process, but trying to apply it in a reasonable way to a short-term engagement,

[00:26:50] like sort of one to three days. Yeah. What's the kind of size of teams that you're working with? Is it teams of 100? Is it best in like small groups? Is it like one-on-one? What's the demographic there that you're working with? In an ideal world, I'd love it to be sort of eight to 12, that kind of region. And obviously the idea would be that that team kind of covers all bits of knowledge

[00:27:18] and expertise and is sort of diverse in their thinking and approach that you're not sort of hitting any blind spots. The reality though, particularly I still work in education, and I think the necessities of education are that those sort of leadership teams in education will hear that design sprint approach, that workshop approach, they'll be very interested. But then the next question tends to be great.

[00:27:47] Can you do it for 200 people in half an hour? So equally there's kind of versions that I've done. So recently with Google for Education, when I went up to Edinburgh for that event, I did a section as part of a larger event. So they're hearing from schools, they're hearing from speakers, like Dr. Fiona Aubrey-Smith, EdTech to PedTech,

[00:28:17] was there delivering. There was a couple of schools delivering as well, like from across Scotland. So what I did at that was I popped up a few times just to get people to kind of actively engage in the sessions by doing a few activities and then a session at the end where we bring it all together. So give them time to work together to go, okay, what has that brought up for you? So it's a bit of that understanding piece.

[00:28:44] Bouncing ideas off each other and then getting to a point at the end of the day where, you know when you have a big event, there's lots of stuff. You're like, wow, there's about 20 things I could have taken away and you end up doing almost none of them. Yep. So it's trying to give people the chance to sort of stop and think, well, what's the one thing that's relevant in my context? Yep. So that's kind of the riff on it that I do with bigger groups where they're not all one organisation.

[00:29:15] Most of these sessions that you deliver, I would imagine, because of the need for sort of post-it notes and discussion and all the rest of it would happen in person. But you're working on an online delivery model, aren't you, for this kind of approach. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. So for some reason, I haven't quite put my finger on most of my engagements over the last year or so have been in person. I've offered hybrid options, but generally people have gone,

[00:29:44] nope, we want everyone in the room. Yep. And maybe that's just a post-COVID. Probably. Yeah. Want to sort of get that human connection. But like yourselves, through COVID, Webinar Central got very used to delivering in that way. Yep. So the course, what I found from the workshops I did was that a lot of people would come up at the end and go, oh, really liked what you did with us.

[00:30:12] I'd like to take pieces of that with the way that I work with my own team. Now, obviously, one option is to go, hire me all of the time to come all of the time to all of your meetings. That's not effective or the way to do it. So it's about building that capacity. So out of that, I created this course, which was how to run productive meetings and workshops. And I did that in person. And I've done it a couple of times in London.

[00:30:41] But generally, I had interest. But people like that date doesn't work for me or distance. I did try to run one in Birmingham. But the place that I hired as a venue got kind of shut down. So that didn't happen. So therefore, 2025 is do an online version. And you say, like, sticky notes and pens. And that's the way I tend to work.

[00:31:05] But with tools like Miro and Figma and others, that all works really, really well. So I also use a lot of those when I can. But just haven't had as many requests for that. So that's the kind of way that will run is the previous course has been sort of kick off with why meetings go wrong. What do we mean when we say meetings or workshops? Like, what's the difference? Before we then look at the techniques for putting them right.

[00:31:36] And then everything's kind of hands-on practical. So at the very minimum, everyone gets about five activities they do that day that they can or do over those days that they can walk away with. You can take four. So that caught, yeah. So just sort of lifting that into a virtual space over three two-hour sessions instead of the full day, which is kind of February, March. February, March launch. And people can sign up on your website. Niall's going to put the URL into the show notes.

[00:32:05] I think also when you go into something like Miro, there's a bit of a step up into using it. Sure. Where you can't just throw people in. This is why we all mourn the loss of Jamboard. Jamboard. I knew you were going to say that. Jamboard had a very low level step up to kind of like, you can either do this, this or this. Everyone's like, oh. And that's it.

[00:32:32] Whereas you take people into FigJam or Miro, there's a lot to learn. Yes. So there's an opportunity at the start to do a nice fun activity. Actually, someone I know called Jenny Martin has this great activity where she's got this outline of you can pick from three sort of body shapes. And then you can design your own you as a superhero. But it just helps everyone get used to using Miro really well. Yeah.

[00:33:01] And also everyone then just shares their superhero with everyone. And you get, you know, so straight away, you just get to know everyone's kind of the way everyone works. It's a really nice activity. I've now said that out loud. So thank you, Jenny. I'll be borrowing that. I've got similar for polypad, which is, I mean, it's a fantastic tool, particularly for maths.

[00:33:25] But the first thing that I do for the students is get them to create robots because although they know what shapes they're all using, it's that clicking and dragging. How do you adjust the size? How do you change colors? How do you draw? That kind of thing. It's nice and simple. But then actually, now they've seen all the different tools that are available to them, they can go and create something much more fancier. Is there a tool you recommend that people get started with, like a new tool that you've been trying out recently? I've been using Notebook LM quite a bit. So I don't know if anyone's familiar with that.

[00:33:55] That's from Google. And sort of AI tool that rather than taking everything in the whole world as it's training data, that's unfair on a lot of AI. I take that back. But large, large sort of models. And Notebook LM is where you can just specifically pick a few key sources. So one of the bits that comes with the strategy work I do is how do you then go on and implement the strategy? You know, as much as the two-day retreat was amazing, you then got the hard work to do.

[00:34:25] So an approach called objectives and key results, OKRs, is something that tends to come up a lot as the next step. So taking all of the OKR-related videos, resources, books, and putting those into Notebook LM is really interesting to use that to ask questions like, what are the differences for different companies? How would you implement it?

[00:34:49] And sort of having a bit of a back and forth with Notebook LM about the best fit for different organizations that you work with. So I found that really useful. You've been using Gemini quite a bit. Yeah, I've got a few Gemini gems. Yeah, Gemini gems. I've got like a facilitator. Uh-huh. Yeah. Who knows all the books I've read. I mean, we find that like in every discussion we have, we inevitably end up talking about AI.

[00:35:16] Yeah, you kind of, there's that balance of like, you can't ignore it. But do you want to get, are we getting too distracted by it? But it's just changing everything. So one of the big things that I'm seeing come up a little bit, people talking about for 2025 is AI agents. Yes, agent of AI. And therefore I'm trying to, as a facilitator who works with a variety of teams, it's trying to understand what does that mean for the companies that I might be working with?

[00:35:45] Because as a facilitator, I don't currently have a niche sector. I've had a good run with scale-ups recently. Sort of companies that are growing quite quickly and therefore strategy needs to be a bit more adaptable. But what does it mean for them? Yeah. And that's something I've been, you know, trying to keep ahead of is, and I don't really have an answer to it yet. But I'm still learning.

[00:36:14] Yeah, I guess, where do we think we'll be in the next couple of years? Like, even the next five years, I guess, is going to massively change. Even just all the, I guess, the government's goals for, like, cleaning electricity and energy and where everything's going to be by 2030 seems to be a big goal for a lot of the countries that are out there. Where are we going to be in the education side of things as well? And let's be open about this.

[00:36:42] You're obviously talking from a Scottish context, which is entirely different to my situation in England. And so I've always said when I've been up in Scotland that Scotland makes more sense to look over to the Scandinavian countries. Like, the way education works, the approach to innovation feels much more aligned to the Nordics and Scotland rather than anything south and broad in England. Where, and you take sort of what Wales has done with a new curriculum.

[00:37:13] I think Northern Ireland is doing something similar. Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania have also taken a sort of more radical approach to their curriculum because that kind of, there's an opportunity for that to be your economic driver. If you are a country of that size, you can say, well, actually, we could do it differently. And our export can be really, really future-proof, talented young people. Is it Estonia? I'll need fact-checking Santa as well for me.

[00:37:44] Is it Estonia that's gone down the Google route and the whole, is it something like the whole country is using Google Workspace? That was the interesting bit. Just as I was leaving the Google work a little bit more, with the conversations that we were having with Google for Education were around, yeah, more systematic change. You know, the US reached a certain point. Like, obviously, I think it's like in the 90% one-to-one devices. Yep. Lots of Chrome.

[00:38:11] Similar in Sweden as well, like really mature market for using Google Workspace and Chrome in New Zealand. So it was conversations about places like India, Pakistan, Mongolia. Mongolia was having a conversation about rolling out Workspace and possibly Chromebooks. But again, as a country, rather than in England, it's like one primary school here and there. There, then maybe a trust.

[00:38:40] Then maybe, I mean, like you take Liverpool. Liverpool's still local authorities mainly because Liverpool's like, no, we're not doing what you tell us. So yeah, there's like pockets of everything. So kind of coming up with any consistent approach across England is really difficult. Whereas, you know, there are a certain number of local authorities in Scotland. And therefore, you know, there's an easier conversation to have about some kind of alignment. There's so much disparity between them, no bit.

[00:39:09] And it's unbelievable. True. Like, unbelievable. We've still got some that are blocking YouTube for everyone. Do you know what I mean? And it's like, yeah, there's a long way to go. One of the funny things, one of the things I used to think was hilarious when I was working in secondary schools more in Scotland is that curriculum for excellence, the curriculum for excellence when it came out, I actually still think it's a really innovative piece of work.

[00:39:37] Like when you actually look at what it's trying to achieve, it still stands up as being quite forward thinking. But what secondary schools used to do is they used to have a curriculum for excellence day. And so I don't think that was really the intention. It was like, you know, we should be doing this all the time, that whole kind of project based focus, IDL, you know, let's take it like that. But what they would do is they'd be like, oh, we should do curriculum for excellence.

[00:40:07] So there would be a day and I did it in my own school. I remember being part of it when we took the whole of first and second year into the assembly hall and all the subject teachers came to the assembly hall and they did something like, I don't know, design a pizza box or something. And it was like, that's the day. Curriculum for excellence done. Now let's go. Let's go back into our subjects and just do the same thing we've always done.

[00:40:33] And so, yeah, that always made me laugh. And I think it's probably still, I mean, the conversations have shifted a wee bit. And we're talking to schools who are, you know, talking about IDL as a strategy for their younger years. But yeah, there's a long way to go still. Take a while. I'm just going to, just getting everyone on board with, you take, so when I talked about design thinking, the challenge of design thinking is you need everybody every day to think in that way.

[00:41:02] So you've got to build that culture in. So again, you take the curriculum for excellence that designed with a certain way of approaching it, but then trying to disseminate that down to every local authority, to every school, so that every head teacher, every leadership team is understanding what that means in the same way that it was envisaged. I mean, Chinese whispers tells you it's going to be interpreted a million different ways.

[00:41:26] And then, you know, you go and I imagine that anyone that was working on it initially goes to look at what was happening on the ground and went, oh no. Oh no, no. This wasn't what we meant. And you see that in all organizations. And therefore, two-day workshop that I do, as good as they are. What does that look like a week, a month down the line is very much down to the culture and repeating it. And that's the okay of it as well.

[00:41:55] But whatever the version is for schools, some of the best, though, sort of design thinking experiences I've done is where on the last day when the teachers or the leaders are creating ideas is you get the students to come in as testers at the end. We did one of those. Amazing. A big one in Amsterdam. Actually, not blowing smoke up your ass, but the best table in the room was probably the Scottish contingent.

[00:42:25] But anyway, yeah, they did a really good job. But we had students come in at the end and test out their ideas. And it's that moment when they're kind of like, oh, I never thought about it that way. But that's the moment that you want to get. And that's what the design sprint is kind of perfect at, because at the end of it, you always got to do a user test. So my answer to that, does every education idea get put in front of a learner?

[00:42:54] And if not, that's the bit that could really help kind of get that insight. But we often don't want to hear it, do we? And that's the big problem. You put in lots and lots of time and effort into refining something. And you get to that point where you don't want someone to come and tell you the truth. You just want them to say nice things about it. Yeah, that's a really fair point. So true.

[00:43:17] Do you know, we worked with a group of young people and got them to kind of tell us what learning experiences people would like as part of our digitised approach. And the one that came up more often than not was Taylor Swift. And actually, it's a birthday today. Happy birthday, Taylor Swift. And see, when you dig into that as a learning experience, though, it's brilliant. Like looking at the eras to our data and like the impact of like so much you can do.

[00:43:46] And it's actually a brilliant learning experience. What is that innovation that you wish you had invented? Is there one thing that you wish I wish I'd put my name on this? The fun thing about these questions is I know that you've got an answer that I put in a form before in front of you. And I'm pretty sure I keep on saying a different one. That's all right. It just means we can have you back and you can give a second load of answers.

[00:44:15] I mean, amongst all that, you know, I love a bit of Google technology, but I find myself coming back to Google Docs all the time. So wouldn't you love to have invented Google Docs? That first chance to go, what if everyone's in there? Yeah. So there's a guy called Jonathan Rochelle who used to work for Google. He's now at LinkedIn, but he was involved. I think he invented Google Sheets and was kind of acquired by Google to do that. So I met him a couple of times.

[00:44:43] So maybe that's the most famous person I've ever met in our world. And then also kind of always wish I'd kind of been back in the early days of inventing a skateboard. Do you know what I love about the stories like that?

[00:45:05] You take skateboarding and climbing as two kind of subcultures where it was just waifs and strays who basically just opted out of doing anything anyone else was doing. So the skateboarding was surfers. In the afternoon, the surf isn't as good. And there was a heat wave in LA.

[00:45:28] So if you ever watched Dogtown and the Zed Boys, it was just a bunch of kids who they found some empty pools that had dried out. They were bored. I think it was also to do with a bit of an innovation in the material wheels were made from. They didn't kind of catch on stuff. But they were just bored, started skating pools for no other reason than it was fun. And it's turned into like a multi-billion industry.

[00:45:52] And then the same is true of like climbing with the people who just bivouacked at the bottom of El Capitan. And again, just because they didn't fancy the rat race. And then it was a Patagonia guy, Eve. I forget his surname. He just started making equipment because the other equipment wasn't as good. But he just did it so they could climb more effectively. And that turned into Patagonia.

[00:46:21] So where is that subculture right now that we're all dismissing and ignoring as just like wasters? We're going to create the next one. I mean, people often say esports kind of is the one that no one talks about that's massive. But that's pretty big already. But yeah, what is it? Who are they? Where are they? And I want to invest in them. Absolutely. Absolutely. I thought you were going to say the post-it note. I should have.

[00:46:50] And I probably did in my phone, didn't I? That was in your notes here, yeah. Oh, brilliant. On that note, I think we'll wrap up. Thank you so, so much, Ben. That was awesome. I enjoyed that. That was fantastic. That was good. Well, that about wraps up another episode. Thanks very much for joining us on a digitised, fully charged podcast. Remember to subscribe wherever you're listening to your podcasts.

[00:47:18] It really helps us if you would subscribe to our episodes. It just means you get them in your inbox every week. You can also check out our website at wearedigitised.com. And we'd love to have you reach out on socials. On most social medias, we are at digitisedcrew. Thanks very much for tuning in. Once again, we really do appreciate every single one of you listening to us. Catch you again soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.