4th January 2024 - Volunteering
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If you have a job which needs doing, give it to a busy person. 

A simple saying which hints at busy people being busy as they get 
stuff done. No, it is as people realise they don't want to do a job so 
they ask someone they know to do it. Bonus points if they already 
volunteer to do lots of things! Less likely to say no. 

I have been asked to help run an activity area or zone at a district 
Scout camp in the summer. It is to do with the digital maker badge and 
I am sort of an obvious choice. I am currently the county team lead 
for digital stuff, a role which mostly involves being admin for the 
Google Workspace we use and being someone to ask questions. However, I 
have already discussed how I couldn't sort an agreement between my 
Explorer unit and a Scout group due to being too busy with things. 
This was specifically with the person who asked me to run the activity 
area on camp. 

I thought it was madness as to why I was being asked. Then I 
realised... When this person thinks of things relating to computers, 
they think of me. Thats all it is. I often wondered why the district 
didn't ask around for who wanted to do specific jobs. Turns out it is 
just easier to ask those who they know. I see it happening with my 
county role although new roles are more likely to be advertised for 
people to apply. I am guessing this is something to do with human 
nature but it baffles me. I see it at work too. I often find my boss 
giving me weird jobs as he knows me. I have tried to bounce them back 
to find someone else but then he just asks me who. Sometimes I am 
pretty good at deflecting but occasionally I look blankly at him. The 
problem is that I keep coming up with the same names. His team is 9 
direct reports and 50 or so indirect reports so there isn't a shortage  
of people. 

I have ended up coming up with a plan far quicker than I thought. 
Thankfully, the Raspberry Pi Foundation have produced some great 
resources and activities. The only down side is they are aimed at the 
Microbit. Well, it is only a downside as I don't have them. For those 
who have not heard of them, the Microbit is a micro-controller dev 
board designed for use with those learning programming. There are 
currently 2 versions with version 2 having 2 buttons, 20 or so LEDs, a 
speaker, radio, LDR and accelerometers. There is also a Microsoft 
based no code development environment and a Python environment which 
are HTML5 browser apps. These are surprisingly good and help make life 
simpler. I ended up buying one to play with and spent an hour or so 
mucking around. 

It seems I am going to get a whole load of 8 to 18 year olds to muck 
around with noise generators and making reaction games. Time to go try 
this out on my Explorers and see where I need to be careful! It should 
be a good laugh and hopefully some young people have their interest 
sparked.