The future of the Digital Aquarium

As we near the start of a new year it is time to reflect on the future of the digital aquarium and its current operations. I have been running a series of optional workshops open to all since 2016 in one form or another writing learning materials, creating assets for these workshops and spending time and personal resources outside of contracted work hours to deliver seminars and workshops that are up to date and based on current industry use cases. These sessions are run completely off my own back and attendance, and feedback has been great averaging around 24 optional workshops a year however over the past 12 months the average attendance numbers have dropped which has been demoralising but also meant a need to re-evaluate the future of these optional workshops and how they are delivered.

The digital aquarium is all about exploration, experimentation and evaluation and its ethos is learning through practice driven. It is becoming increasingly impractical to deliver the number of sessions I have delivered in the past and due to the nature of some of these practices and tools being experimental in nature a time-consuming learning curve for myself to deconstruct, create easy to follow learning materials from and deliver whilst working in a technical capacity.

The planned sessions for 2026 semester 2 will continue however future sessions in 2026 and 2027 onwards are currently under review alongside how these sessions are delivered and supported. This may mean that the website may disappear in future alongside some of these optional workshops no longer being offered in the manner they have been so far.

Please note this is all subject to change and currently I am simply reviewing how the digital aquarium operates longer term and whether it becomes more course and request specific over open to all which poses its own challenges with material curation / creation which has meant some topics don’t go as far as they could due to uncertainty on who and how many would attend these sessions.

So, the questions are simple: Who are these sessions for longer term? What is covered and what is not? Are these offered internally or externally and how can it validate time and resource allocation beyond contract hours and expectations.

Please feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions.