Welcome to my personal website. Here you can find a little information about what I do and the projects I'm currently involved in. If you want more, the best place to start is my blog - Changing the World (and other excuses for not getting a proper job). You can also get in contact by emailing writetodougald@gmail.com.
I work with ideas - exploring and developing them, and collaborating to put them into practice. This involves writing, speaking, bringing people together from different worlds to find common narratives, then helping to steer the ideas that come out of those conversations into reality.
In 2006, I co-founded School of Everything: a Web 2.0 startup that makes it really easy to find people near you to teach or learn with in your local area. The site won a New Statesman New Media Award and a Prime Minister's Catalyst Award in 2008, and was an Official Honoree in the 2009 Webby Awards.
I'm still involved in School of Everything, but now spend most of my time on other projects. These currently include:
Space Makers - an online and offline network, connecting people involved in creating collaborative spaces, including co-working, hack labs, arts spaces, social centres and temporary use of empty shops
The Dark Mountain Project - a new literary movement for an age of global disruption
GlueSniffers - a monthly meetup in London exploring the overlap between ICT and appropriate development
The Institute for Collapsonomics - a collection of outlandish thinkers exploring strategies for mitigating and adapting to instability in key systems
Signpostr.com - a site aimed at anyone not in secure employment, and especially those leaving education into the current job market, inspired by Social Media vs the Recession, a blog post I wrote in January 2009
All the projects I get involved in connect to a set of underlying interests. How do we understand and work with long-term social changes? How do we distinguish between ground-level needs and the structures or institutions which currently meet those needs, so that we know when to let go of those structures? How do we build and maintain the formal and informal social infrastructure that makes a society a good place to live? How do we create sociable spaces in which to spend our time, whether working, playing, learning or just hanging out?
Exploring these questions takes me from helping people learn to use the internet as a social tool, to rethinking the need for the university as an institution, to working with organisations to broaden the range of futures they are prepared for and enable them to adapt quickly to a changing world. In all this, I rely on two sets of resources: a long-standing interest in the ways people have lived in other times and places, and on the margins of our own society; and a network of friends and collaborators whose knowledge and skills fill in the gaps where mine runs out.
I am always interested in new opportunities to share ideas, collaborate, advise and consult on my areas of interest. If you are interested in exploring possibilities for working together, please get in touch.