Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.
I once struck up a conversation with a stranger that stayed with me because, in a quiet way, it confirmed I was on the right path.
In 2011, I was working at the Open University Business School while studying for an MA in Distance and Online Learning. Around that time, a newly appointed Digital Director joined The Ou – someone who had come from a high-flying career at BMW and had been brought in to help steer a long-established institution into the digital age.
We got talking—initially just in passing, then more deliberately. What struck me was how quickly the conversation moved beyond small talk. We found ourselves speculating about where online learning, and the internet more broadly, were heading. We both sensed a shift underway: from printed materials to text and images online, and then—inevitably—to video becoming the dominant medium.
At the time, this wasn’t yet obvious. YouTube existed, but it hadn’t fully transformed how people consumed information. Still, we talked about the idea of something like “WikiTVia”—a future where platforms like Wikipedia would evolve into primarily video-based knowledge systems. It felt slightly speculative, but also strangely inevitable.
For me, this mattered. I had spent years working in video production, and here I was, in a new academic and digital environment, trying to work out where I fitted. That conversation gave me a sense of alignment. It wasn’t just that we agreed—it was that someone operating at a much higher level saw the same trajectory.
We only spoke a handful of times, but I documented some of those thoughts in a student blog I was keeping then. Looking back now, more than a decade later—with YouTube, TikTok, and video-first learning platforms everywhere—the direction we discussed feels less like prediction and more like early recognition.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the accuracy of the idea, but the feeling of being momentarily in sync with someone else who could see it too. That brief encounter gave me confidence in my instincts at a time when I was still finding my footing.
“We weren’t predicting the future so much as noticing it early”
What stayed with me wasn’t just the idea, but the sense of alignment. Here was someone operating at a much more senior level who saw the same trajectory I did. At that point in my career, that mattered.
I went on to write about these conversations in a student blog in 2011–12, arguing that we were moving from 500 years of print, through a brief era of online text, into a world where video would dominate how we communicate and learn.
Looking back now—at YouTube, TikTok, webinars, and video-first learning platforms—that shift feels obvious. At the time, it wasn’t.
It was a brief encounter, but it gave me confidence in my instincts—and a sense that I was already moving in the right direction.
The OU tool the right move by investing in FutureLearn.
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