A big fish in a small bowl looking out
The Fishbowl and the Ocean
A few years ago, I ran a fascinating workshop with Joyce Seitzinger and Kim Tairi about being a networked professional. Each of us took turns running different activities, exploring how we thought about ourselves and our networks. It was the kind of workshop where we didn't just facilitate it, but we participated in it.
What stuck in my head from that workshop was the map I made. It wasn't geographic but symbolic. For myself, I drew a picture of a glass fishbowl with a large goldfish in it. The bowl sat atop the ocean. Inside that ocean were all the other things going on in the world.
That's how I felt — a big fish in a small bowl, looking out at the ocean.
There are many reasons for that analogy. One was simply geographic. I lived in a regional city of about 60,000 people in rural Australia. I worked at a University in learning technologies, and my position was unique within the organisation. Over time, I connected with a few others in Australia who were doing similar roles, but it still felt like I was in a very small fishbowl. Through blogging and Twitter, I discovered the ocean—seeing bigger things out there and engaging more broadly.
The thing is, I never ventured into the ocean. I stayed within my fishbowl and looked out. Little snippets of what I said occasionally made it into the ocean; it might attract a little flurry of attention, but it passed.
Moving the Bowl
I haven’t grown out of that analogy. Five years ago, we moved to Adelaide. The move held promise—working at a more prominent and prestigious university—but it’s still a fishbowl. My work has been internally focused, with little external engagement beyond our partners. There was no culture of sharing or publishing our work. At the same time, it didn't sit on a shelf — the work was practical, and my team used it to create our course development process. We were too focused on getting things done and never promoted the broader impact of our work.
This year, I've taken a few of opportunities to start to build that external component out. To put a few things out into the ocean again and see what happens. I started to lob things back out into the ocean and try to work outside of my bowl. I revisited a project I began years ago and built out sites for the learning framework we'd developed using learning types and patterns. It started as something quick and easy for my team, but something I could do with my skillset. Two weeks ago, I presented at the OE Global conference, discussing how these elements fit into a broader learning design system.
The project where we developed and implemented this system has ended. The university is now consumed with the merger between the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. Despite the marketing promises of co-creation and collaboration, my experience has been hierarchical and exclusionary. The system we built aligns perfectly with merger goals — it isn’t being used. Decision-making remains centralised and opaque, driven by personalities or committees to hide behind. It’s deeply frustrating to see good work sidelined.
Despite my efforts, I’m still in the fishbowl.
The Social Fishbowl
So, I’ve been reflecting on how to make 2025 different. Part of that reflection involves breaking the bowl and moving into the ocean. That prospect is terrifying — the ocean is full of unknowns, predators, and challenges. But it’s also where things thrive and grow. I'm thinking of turtles, salmon, and eels that head out to grow and develop in the sea (and where most of the little ones get eaten!).
Over the past weeks, the mass exodus from X and the hype around platforms like Bluesky have dominated discussions in my social spaces. Mastodon has provided me with a more intimate, algorithm-free space where I and others feel safe to be vulnerable. It feels like a fishbowl in its own way, in that it's not the ocean. It feels safe, calm and small. But the ocean represents a bigger audience and broader connections. The appeal of platforms like BlueSky or the old Twitter was the ability for ideas to make a splash and create waves of engagement. In contrast, fishbowl spaces foster smaller, more personal interactions. While valuable, they lack the reach needed to broaden opportunities — opportunities that are increasingly linked to careers and livelihoods. They also come with dangers — lock-ins, spam, trolls and another Elon.
With Bluesky, I can see the draw of visibility, audience, and connection. Social media in these ocean spaces create moments of frenzy — drops in the ocean that sometimes spark meaningful interactions. Conferences and platforms provide similar opportunities for connection. I see the attraction and why, like moths to a flame, people are drawn. The ocean is as amazing and full of life as it is dangerous.
The Organisational Fishbowl
At the same time, I feel I’ve outgrown the fishbowl of the university and the inertia of deeply hierarchical organisational structures. The politics, hierarchy, and a lack of autonomy have become stifling. I don’t feel in control of myself or my work for the first time in over a decade. The absolute grind of turning up for that every day is demoralising, and it conflicts with my core values of independence and understanding. I've tried to advocate for change and proposed changes to what's going on and contribute to making real change.
Universities have become organisations that seem incapable of meaningful change. They change regularly, but it's never meaningful - just another cycle of centralising or decentralising, restructures that look like the old ones, and unnecessary workforce turnover because the organisation cannot recognise the difference between labour and knowledge. The "change management" process has become a pseudoscience—an empty ritual that justifies pre-made decisions. Universities are institutions of learning that fail to learn themselves. They repeat mistakes, default to hierarchy, and rely on consultants to rationalise their choices. It’s maddening.
Breaking the Bowl
I need to break the glass of my fishbowl and explore the ocean. I can feel the pull of the waves. That’s where I need to be.