Other than the same name (although he uses the much cooler moniker ‘Jack’) my father and I share many things in common. We both love biking, technology, reading, science fiction, fish, and… our partners.

On that latter one, dad had some sage stuff to share with me this weekend about the place of communication within relationships. And whilst claiming not to be an expert (a first for him), as he approaches 40 years in the same relationship I was fascinated to hear his thoughts.

We hear all the time that communication is important in a healthy relationship. You share your needs, I share mine, and either there is natural allignment, negotiated compromise, or stale mate. But, there is also a need to communicate beyond the daily tussle around needs and wants. There is also the need to check in with each other and find out where your partner is at now. The wisdom of Jack noted that the person with whom you’re in a relationship now is different to the person you dated, different to the person you moved in with, and they’re even different to the person they were 6 months ago.

This means that communication is also important to revisit the stuff that you ‘thought’ you knew about them:

*What you thought their position was on things.
*What you thought their preferences were.
*What you thought they wanted.

Of course, failing wholesale turn-arounds in position, most things slowly shift over time, so there’s not often huge massive changes but steady shifts. Kind of like continental drift I suppose. The challenge then is to continue communicating so you know where you’re going and can both negotiate the new environment and put in strategies to straddle the continents.

After an amazing time at the ULearn conference, I think we’ve recongised that for many people in relationship with NetSafe, communication about where we’re at, and where they’re at now is demonstrating that we probably haven’t maintained some of this much needed communication.

It became clear that for some (though by all means not all) of our partners – educators – in this instance, that there is a lack of knowledge on NetSafe’s current position, preference and desires. Some conversations demonstrated that NetSafe was assumed to be:

*protectionist,
*quite ambivilant (or even negative) about the benefits of the internet,
*reliant on fear-mongering and administrative policy intervention as cybersafety strategies,
*about locking things down and promoting the now dirty word ‘e-safety’.

Our blogs, your feedback and comments and our continued activity are now a key strategy of how we can communicate with our NetSafe partners (i.e., YOU!) about our current position, which as far as I see it, is about:

*recognising the need to promote the opportunities of the internet to schools, parents, and industry,
*the need to highlight that the safety challenges the internet produces are, on the whole (and with support) easily managable by young people, families, schools, and businesses,
*that the digital citizenship we are committed to producing and supporting cannot be produced in a ‘lock-down’ risk-aversive (therefore opportunity and experience-aversive) environment.

Anyway, the important thing to know is that we’re here and we want to know what you think, what you believe, and what your position is too. Bring on the virtual candle-lit dinners because we’re here, hungry and committed!

Cheers Jack!

Image Credit – Candlelit Dinner: