I have found an online source for some articles I looked at in journals a few months ago. Paper copies as was. Mostly on the drupa and IPEX blogs I am looking at the move to e-books and digital publishing. Academic journals have mostly moved online but one consequence is that they are even harder to find for non-academics. You used to be able to visit a library and read journals. now they are often only behind an id and password.

Anyway, Elsevier have a current offer of a free look at a copy of The Leadership Quarterly with a special issue on "Leadership and Organizational Learning" edited by Leadership and Organizational Learning edited by David A. Waldman, Yair Berson, and Robert T. Keller. It is interesting for me that they are still looking at Leadership while going back to Organizational Learning. I put it this way after the changes at Lancaster where the concentration on Learning Organisations was dropped in favour of Leadership. I found this quite confusing and it made it much harder to relate learning to anything to do with quality. Quality systems were pretty much out of the discussion as far as I could tell. So this new direction, at least new to me, not sure what else is going on, is interesting. The editors write in an introduction-

In sum, as advanced economies become more knowledge based, the importance of leadership for learning and innovation will increase, and the ability to create a climate for learning will likely become a valuable leader asset. This special issue of The Leadership Quarterly will help provide new knowledge and ideas in this direction.

I came across this through an article in Management Learning by Daina Mazutis and Natalie Slawinski - Leading Organizational Learning Through Authentic Dialogue.

We develop propositions that integrate the leadership and organizational learning literatures and offer suggestions for future research

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It strikes me that none of this is from the UK though there is a link to Management Learning. I don't know what else is being written so link suggestions are welcome. If in a journal please suggest where to find the paper.

I have done a post on ReadG about two scenarios for the Guardian, following Jeff Jarvis and Buzzmachine or trying to carry on as before. I think most newspapers will fail to make the transition that Jarvis is trying to conjure up. Victor Keegan writes about the problems of the music industry where the web energy comes from new companies. The same could happen with news.

academics sometimes query why quality books usually give the impression that there is a route to success, that companies do not usually fail. this may be because the quality books are written for working managers and there is no need to be too depressing. However there could be academic studies of how companies fail for quality reasons. Quality being the bundle of attributes that the users experience.

For example the print Guardian seems to me to be failing to report publishing technology through companies such as Stanza and Scribd while allowing far too much knocking copy about bloggers. Hey this is only a blog. Proper paper may follow when there is a bit more evidence.

The Espresso is staying in my mind after the London Book Fair. There could be collections of readings in very small runs to work out what makes sense to different groups of people. I think I will start with the papers I have done for conferences at Lancaster and try to find other ones that are ok to include. Starting just with online links, but trying for a "book" sometime later. The book is now spun off from the Web, at least some of the time.

This cropped screenshot just to show how bad the Critical Management site design is. No wonder there are so few posts. A lot of the ideas I don't mind. Quite happy to support the take on what is taught at business schools. Except that there is still a blindspot on quality. HR is accepted as part of the landscape as it has enough scale in practice. The Quality Department is still not on the radar or something like that, only turns up as rhetoric to be exposed.

Anyway, back on topic, the Critical Management dialogue has taken on Web 2 as it appears so tech news could relate. Sony Reader and EPUB offer a new authority for HTML as XHTML duly considered to be loaded to a device. More or less a book but much quicker. Search on epub@lbf on YouTube for more links on this. What is "peer review" ? Is it something that takes a couple of years so you can be sure of what was said some time ago? Some terrible rubbish leaps up the blog charts it is true, but new forms of publishing are possible.

Jeff Jarvis is repeating himself on newspapers ( without much thanks from the journalists losing their jobs ) and has extended his scope to universities. See Reboot the University on Buzzmachine. Includes link to extended extract from What would Google Do?

I think that quality ideas could assist newspapers or news organisations to adjust to the Web. So these topics may cohere. The impact on universities is just starting. Academic websites are one indication.

Recently visited Lancaster and the campus was quiet enough to find somewhere to park. More Flickr photos. Concentrating on the InfoLab21 end as the Spicy Hut has closed. There is a lot of building happening and there may not be many places left just for hanging out. Parking very difficult so I have included a photo of the Bowling green near Booths car park. could be useful, free WiFi.

Waterstones is still not stocking the Sony reader at the campus branch. So the imagined route is via bus to the shopping centre. Consumer electronics now has a lead on the bookshops, maybe the libraries also as far as I can tell. What sorts of knowledge can be distinguished? More on this after the London Book Fair.

Also new video on YouTube

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Sony and others will present a seminar about ePUB etc during the London Book Fair.

I have sent in a question

There is a problem in that ePUB files are being viewd on Stanza and other software for computer and phone screens.

Have people been warned about staring at such screens too long?

This is a question for Stanza obviously but also about the prices for dedicated devices. Can they be afforded? When will the prices become more suitable for a larger audience?

The numbers I have seen suggest that there are more Stanza downloads than sales of Readers. Is there any evidence that this will not continue?

Maybe trhere will be an answer before the 20th April.

The Cromwell room was also used by the LCC Futures Conference so this will be a good test of my theory that access will be easier when the entire ground floor is one space.

The idea of a blended space could apply to Earl's Court. Like blended learning the Web aspect includes travel in time and space. I think it is time to realise that trade shows only take place in UK time, at least for most of the ones I attend. drupa is every four years but even for the printing industry time is not standing still.

Somewhere on the planet another trade show or event covers most things as they happen online anyway. On the blogs for IPEX and drupa I have recently looked at ePUB and the Total Print Expo where I will suggest some slides for the LCC Futures Conference.

LCC Futures 2009

View more presentations from will789.

It could yet happen that the Print show would happen at the same time as for Publishing. It makes sense to me. Print in Earl's Court 2, all software on the upstairs floor. Apart from anything else there could be a direct escalator from the print equipment to the LCC Futures Conference. walking all the way to the front of the building then usually back again is just not sensible.

The book discussion is linked to print. Digital may be catching up with litho. The eBook production technology relates to workflow for prepress and Web2Print.

But why stop there? Online Information has Oxford University Press and several others who could usefully explain their digital publishing strategy. They could be at Earl's Court also, along with BETT to supply some energy and fill the upstairs with software. Learning Technology could be run alongside BETT at Olympia for a few years till this idea takes off.

Meanwhile I have an apartment on Twinity but they have yet to reach London and may start closer to Soho, moving out slowly.

Oh dear my stats for slideshow downloads are back to normal. It was an April fool joke.

Still, the Scribd numbers for the associated papers are still ok, a lot more people than were there at the time.

So I have done another presentation as draft for the LCC Futures Conference. See blog about drupa.

The Guardian has a report on Business Schools, corporate responsibility, sustainability and the MBA culture that may have contributed to current financial problems.

There are quotes from Hugh Wilmott and Alessia Contu but the word "critique" is hardly mentioned. The impression you might get is of of a fairly mild social responsibility stream within a free market business school. This is a major problem I think. Managers who do go on a critique course could easily be confused by Habermas and Foucault etc. if completely unexpected.

Some clarity would be helpful.

Sage have an offer on journals at the moment, including Management Learning. It seems to be about practice but it is not easy to understand. Might there be an introduction or guide somewhere for managers who might want to relate to this sort of writing?

I am trying to imagine the Lancaster Learning Zone as a blended space. A blended space is a location for learning as remembered or imagined as well as being real if you have the attention span to notice.

I took some photos last year and here are some more from Flickr. Sidelong has made them Creative Commons so it is ok to lift them for this blog. Comment on Flickr is that the "virtual world is strangely grey", looking at the back view of the students on the hoarding. The thing is that official photos have to be unidentified to avoid legal problems. This is especially the case in schools. I think it is likely to represent young people as threatening if you never see their faces.

So a learning zone more Web 2 would have more informal photos, as I guess it.

Still, this learning zone is something towards informal Web access so is well worth thinking about. It is located near the library the bookshop and the newsagent, not to mention the post office. Comparison with a city centre could follow. In Exeter meanwhile LifeBytes has folded but there is still some Web access on desktops. Wireless devices seem to be the growth area.

Blended spaces abound.