Stuart was the first to offer feedback & it was quite comprehensive. This was very helpful though & exactly what I needed to get moving forward.

I guess for the sake of this project I will tighten my focus to graduates as they are really the primary group that I’m interested in helping and as Stuart says, they will have different needs to students. Whilst a lot of the ideas that I’m considering right now might in practice have an overlap in terms of uptake between students and graduates I’ll focus on graduates for the time being. Perhaps I can allude to a desire to open out the project later on to other groups as I develop a business growth plan.

With regards to the second point on targeting a more focused discipline area – that’s not something that I want to do actually. The point of this project is not to focus too narrowly. I’m interested in creating a space for all graduates from a whole range of different backgrounds to be able to learn skills to boost their interdisciplinary competence and to find interdisciplinary projects that they can get involved with. The interdisciplinary focus loses something by limiting the potential user base in this way I think. Graduates are a targeted enough group without also limiting it by subject area.

Finally with regard to the ‘technology’ terminology – this one I found a little frustrating, I’d narrowed the scope to ‘technology’ in this question in order to essentially narrow the focus of the project in much the same way Stuart is trying to help me do with his advice. In reality, for the kind of project that I want to create technology IS going to inevitably play a central role. Even in a more hands-on model with face-to-face teaching like I was originally postured in Mindhive, there was a strong digital element in the form of a website. With the advent of Covid-19 and the changing ways in which we’re able to work in groups I figured that focusing on technological solutions would be a safe bet. I kind of understand where Stuart is coming from with his criticism on this point, Covid-19 won’t be a problem forever, however the reason that I chose to narrow it that way was not arbitrary, it was actually considered. I believe that the legacy and effects of Covid on our wider trends and habits will last longer than the threat of the virus itself and so I’m focusing on a technological solution for that reason.