I think learning is part of normal life, not always too hard to follow.

Couple of links for this. Informal Learning is covered in a recent publication -

Formal vs. Informal Learning
Educators—whether in K12, higher education, or corporate spaces—tend to focus on formal learning that involves such things as content delivery, practice, feedback, assessment, and evaluation. However, learning is a natural human cognitive process that is constantly occurring whether someone is in a formal learning setting or not. A simple example of this is how toddlers learn to speak their native tongue. They may be “coached” by parents and family members but barring physical deficits there are no formal classes necessary to learn to speak. This type of learning has been defined as informal learning.

Make, Share, Find: Web 2.0 and Informal Learning
Phil Antonelli

2009 CU Online, University of Colorado Denver
e-book version, available at http://cuonline.ucdenver.edu/handbook/

also there has been nocomment on my post from awhile ago on the Orkut group about Quality Management-

Learning with quality systems, is this obvious?

I have just found this group so the topic may have come up previously.

Is it obvious that learning is a large part of what happens through people in a quality system?

I have tried to get interest in quality theory from people who study management learning. In the UK the people who know about learning tend to have a critical opinion about quality. Perhaps their experience in UK universities has not been pleasant. See "Making Quality Critical" by Wilkinson and Wilmott for example.

So far there has not been much UK academic interest in relating quality theory to researching learning organisations. Peter Senge recognises the connections, see his mentions for Dr Deming in the update for The Fifth Discipline.

My guess is that for most practitioners the links between learning and quality are obvious. Maybe academics just have to be organised in disciplines. Maybe it is just an issue in the UK.

So I think learning can be considered as part of quality practice. I have been looking at previous writing and a lot of it is on how to pass go where the connection is accepted. Still a lot could follow if the learning organisation and quality were considered together more often.

More later on recording music, jazz as experiment. Examples during Experimentality included Miles Davis My Funny Valentine. Not sure what to make of it but kept thinking of this-

Still thinking about the Experimentality events. Not sure how to relate this to plan-do-etc. There was reference to the "dark side of mode 2" so this is something to work with. Have found this link to a Gryzedale blog. Apparently the forest is quite hard to find so online may work better.

Tipping a wink and a nod to Derrida's book 'Spectres of Marx' (in my hazy left-wing mind his finest work), Mr Gere asserts that Big JR haunts us still, like a spectre of the undead, reminding us that ethics is at the heart of any re-assessment of what art actually is and can do.

Posted by John Byrne on 09/11/09 at 06:25

One interesting aspect is the evidence that video interview is possible in apparently normalspace for academics. Not sure if there was special lighting. I did a lot of videoduring the two days somore on this later.

Found through Cloudworks, this Prezi makes a lot of sense. Trying out embed code



Good to find that academics behave as residents nowadays. Frankly I used to think that some of them had a brief to study the web but were not all that engaged with it.

This post could become a story for OhmyNews about the recent LCC Futures conference and the e-book. Last year there were reservations about the e-book but it was seen as inevitable. This year the e-book has definitely arrived. James Fraser spoke about book design, mostly for print, but pointed out that e-books are widely used in publishing for storing the text of several titles at once. Chris Linford claimed it was the illustrations and graphic aspects of books that gives them value and encourages sharing. Ian Lacey suggested that new e-book readers should have a screen for the cover graphic so that people knew what was being read.

There will be more about the conference in the story for Ohmynews. I am working through a video record and hope to put something on YouTube before the story is publshed. Critques of the e-book included that it when web connected it allowed too many chances to link to something else so lacked the structure of a printed book but also that the early devices are like the early web, without the social networking and the associated potential for learning.

Most of this post is about some theory that seems to relate, found through following Cloudworks and Grainne Conole on Twitter. I am beginning to understand why Cloudworks is effective and how it has been designed. Extract slightly edited from

Conole, G., & Culver, J. The design of Cloudworks: Applying social networking practice to foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs. Computers & Education (2009),

Cloudworks has been developed building on two theoretical perspectives: the notion of social objects and the concept of ‘design for sociality’. There is not space in this paper to go into detail, Conole and Culver (in press) provide a more detailed description on the theoretical underpinnings for the Cloudworks site; key aspects of this are summarised here. Engeström (2005, 2007), drawing on the work of Knorr-Cetina (see for example Knorr-Cetina in Schatzki, 2001), argues for the need to adopt an approach to social networking based on ‘object orientated sociality’ and defines the notion of social objects : The term ’social networking’ makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. . .

He contends that the definition of a social network as ‘a map of the relationships between people’ is inadequate.
The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re not; social networks consist of people who are connected
by a shared object.
He argues that this distinction can be used as a basis for understanding why some social networks are successful whilst others fail. Successful social networking sites built around social objects include Flickr (photos), del.icio.us (bookmarks/urls), YouTube (video clips) and Slideshare (presentations). He puts forward object-orientated sociality as a mechanism for helping us to identify new objects that might be used as the basis for developing new social networking services. He argues that in education the primary social object is content and that
the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction that occurs around the content.

Knorr-Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. Schatzki (Ed.), The practice turn in contemporary theory. London: Routledge.

Something similar could happen with books or documents through sites such a Scribd or Mendeley. Books are not as advanced as music or video but this idea of "object orientated sociality" is helpful in thinking about how books can develop online. some of the problems from the LCC conference may seem to have been addressed in a year or so.

I think the Experimentality year is launched about now but nothing yet on Twitter for #experimentality . Maybe there is another tag.

Google blogsearch finds my own querying and a blog from Sweden -
Pernilla Severson's Blog (Just another WordPress.com weblog)

I have tried a rough Google translation of another post

Now we have concerns about moving pictures in digital media
August 21, 2009 by pernillaseverson

Moving image and digital media = true in Malmo and the surrounding area. Media Meeting Malmö has long stimulated the development. Moving Media Southern Sweden is a powerful weapon in the cluster shape and Moving Media City is a future center for media development.

In the middle of all this was created MEDEA

http://www.mah.se/Forskning/varforskning/Program/MEDEA-Collaborative-Media-Initiative/

with a base at Malmo University, targeting new media and co-production - and - user-driven innovation.

I will be over two and a half years grub around in this context by exploring the knowledge of university-industry relations. A highly interesting question to trim about what happens when the manufacture innovation meets user innovation in the Moving Image in Digital Media

see http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

How do the various actors in the user-driven innovation? Crash or synergy? If users can develop a better product than the corporate product developer, where do we do? And what do the academics in the game for? Users can operate without the relationship with one than others? And how do we view the phenomenon as the weekend's Canada Social Web Camp?

http://www.swedensocialwebcamp.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is the interaction that I will not just ask or read about, but also staging and testing. See you.

If this is so #experimentality should find something else soon.

I have done a Scribd version of the reference list on Mendeley

learn9 references from Mendeley October 2009

Not sure who is using Scribd. The Mendeley audience has more academics I guess. But the Scribd approach has more access to PDF.

Getting more involved in Cloudworks



more on this later. The video explains what a cloud is so I am thinking more about the Deming cycle as something to offer.

The Book is Going , now part of the learn9 blog.

I am losing track of how often I am repeating myself. Could be confusion, may be some integration between the different blogs I write on. Mostly on the blogs for drupa and IPEX I have speculated that Adobe Classic is coming to an end and that Adobe(FLSH) is the best way to think about where they are heading. This week is even more so, so much so that I think I should have concluded something a while ago.

Adobe MAX is just in California, with web links. They have reduced most real space appearances outside the USA. I don't think they were at Print09 in Chicago, not with much of a spend anyway. The announcements so far are about using the same version of Flash on a desktop or mobile device, improved video streaming and adding more Flash to Livecycle as well as PDF. No announcements at all about PDF or EPUB and e-books. So I think the classic Adobe products around Postscript and PDF are no longer considered to be worth promoting. Hard copy books are not that interesting but a Portfolio in Acrobat now uses Flash to add video and animation to PDF.

Meanwhile I have been following the online discussion on the Networked Learning Conference website. This is the first time i have had the sense of real content being exchanged. Previous online discussion has been quite limited. There will be a series of "hot seats", weeks in which someone will undertake to respond to most questions. Last week Caroline Haythornthwaite covered "Learning in Social Networks and Networked Learning" to start things off. Chris Jones raised a question about resources such as books and how they should be shown as part of a network. They do not have the interactive features of individuals in a group. I realised this is a way to explain the changes in publishing methods through use of sites such as Scribd and Mendeley. More on this later. I need to find out more about the theory of networks. Most of the people on this site assume some prior knowledge so I am not crashing in as much as I might. I do try to push the use of graphics and YouTube links. There is now a sandpit to try this out. So far I think the site is designed mostly for text and mostly the academics are quite happy with this.

So plenty of disruption to come if Adobe have any sense at all in where they concentrate promotion. I do not think the book will vanish, just be part of a wider form of communication that is mostly based online. Later in October there will be a Futures Conference at the London College of Communication. More on this later.

By the way, if the PDF scene is not worth promoting it could mean that the margins will start to drop. There has not yet been an Elements take on Acrobat similar to the Photoshop and Premiere. Why not forget about the Flash elements and just do an affordable software for working with PDF. There are various alternatives but an Adobe approach to this could be interesting.

"Organizational Learning" is doing well as a topic on Mendeley. Hope this continues. "Learning Organizations" turned out to be quite rare and hard to evidence.

Click for slightly larger version.

The public listing looks a lot better now. I had got confused between online and desktop. moving between folders seems easier on desktop.

So the URL is

http://www.mendeley.com/collections/39798/learn9/

Future paper to combine my previous ones and other finds.

Testing out Mendeley. I have found that logging on takes me to the recent papers that other people look at.



Reasonable overlap with my interests in learning / quality. Also leads to some content, enough to think about.

Nonaka paper is linked to a file on Drive D wherever that is. Book widely available though I can't get past the section on western knowledge. Eisenhardt no link but presumably connects with paractice. "Organizational learning" from Jstor has a first page online and it seems Exeter College is connected to Jstor so I will check this out. may need to sign on for a course. Exeter UK that is. Knowledge of the Firm has a fair bit of text. Could be economics I think. Theory of the firm as I remember. Deming book is called the New Economics but this is rarely explained.

So far this is working well. From a science base to management science there is plenty of scope to relate to learning. I have added these papers to my own library but am not sure how to put them in the learn9 list.

OhmyNews has my unedited story on Mendeley. Something else may work just as well but the trend is there for references and some content to be shared online in a similar way to what is happening with music.

Assuming Mendeley continues to do well there could be interesting discussion at Online Information in December. I will try for another story in November. Academics will have to think about something that effects them so directly. Previously from journal articles there appears not to be so much disruption.

focus on the absence of demonstrable disruptive effects tends to obscure the fact that more or less unobtrusive changes occurring over time do add up to an effect that eventually may well lead beyond simple augmentation of conventional practices.

However there was atwo year gap between the conference and the publication.

Victor Keegan is writing in the Guardian (17 Sept, Opinion on page 4 of the Technology section) and adding sound interviews on AudioBoo. So the question is also what happens with journalism? not just academic research.



So far I have found it quite hard to add data that can be shared. My test so far

---

Citations collected using Mendeley

Experimentality and "study/check"

This post is to explain my interest in the Experimentality Research Programmes at Lancaster IAS so relates back to previously. Preparing for the Protection Science conference last year I realised that most of the references I found for Plan - Do - Check - Act came from Ishikawa. Available online is this from Cambridge Department of Engineering.

PDCA relates to experimentality and also to learning. Deming promoted "study" rather than "check". This may be a translation issue or because Shewart used "check" earlier.

The current ISO management standards all use PDCA. I think there is some resistance from UK management. Not sure about this. Deming ideas seem better implemented in Asia than in USA or UK. Quality Circles have continued in Asia though regarded as a passing fad in UK. There could be a cultural environment that allows PDCA to function. I could try to write more about this but mostly this is a question for the next few months. Link suggestions welcome.

I am still trying to find out more about the project. The website used to have a paragraph on "command and control" management. Can't find this in the new version but I have found a page from CSEC. This asks " whether a kind of continuous experimentality is coming to characterise the logic of late, 'reflexive', or 'knowing' modernity " and suggests "the experiment" is a trope that contains within itself "the ambiguous ethico-political promise - of both control and creativity - of both Weber's iron cage and Nietzsche's 'galaxies of joy'."

My concern is that the project may end up with the conclusion that there are some issues with Weber's iron cage and "experimentality" is another example of this. In the Protection Science discussion I tried to suggest that there are real problems with information security. There is some sales talk as well, but not just neo-liberal rhetoric. I mention this as a bit of time countering critique may be needed to create space. One limited aim is to understand PDCA better so it can be more useful.

Couple of links found already

Yahoo Answers on modernity

Wikipedia on Max Weber

On the IPEX 2002 blog I have listed some dates and draft stories, mostly technical, up to IPEX in 2010. Most topics can be tested in chicago next week. My guess is that digital communication will be well established and discussed during IPEX. The EPUB format for e-books could be part of pre-media workflows. XML will be a focus for Online Information / IMS in December. Printing will need the Job Definition Format (also XML) to compete on speed and integration.

Thinking about previous Online information occasions I came across David Weinberger on Youtube. His keynote "Everything is Miscellaneous" became a book though not reviewed in the UK. He is continuing to talk about the lost authority of print though video keynotes are an alternative. He welcomes online debate as if nothing much is ever final.

I am thinking of doing a paper for an academic conference. Lancaster IAS are looking at "experimentality". This is my way reintroduce ideas about quality and learning. The IAS is not restricted by disciplines. Somehow "learning" is associated with HR and quality with systems. So a fit withing the Management school is problematic.

At previous IAS conferences there have been some supporters of a critique take on quality, seeing it as neo-liberal rhetoric, an attack on academic liberty etc. etc. but this can be a creative tension.

One experiment could be to drop the attempt to find ways of working with quality theory and concentrate on using it for explanation. Introducing 'Making Quality Critical', Wilkinson and Wilmott describe the quality literature as "distinguished by a normative thrust". It is true that most books about quality are written for a management audience. But quality theory can explain why organisations fail, cease to exist. Printing and publishing could offer examples to observe over the next year. The Guardian is concerned that online income will not grow quickly enoughto replace lost sales of print. there is also an editorial problem of how to benefit from user contributions while the professional journalists continue knocking copy on the "bilious blogs". Haymarket are dealing with related issues as some magazine titles move online. Printweek will continue in print presumably, but balanced by the website. A recent story about Twitter was followed by extended online comments.

Also of interest are websites such as the Networked Learning conference and the webiste for Critical Management. Both sometimes mention Web2 but have less commenting etc. than the Printweek site for example. My impression is that the conference paper and eventual journal publication is still a priority. Other sites have a lot more draft content or versions for revison. Jeff Jarvis on Buzzmachine sometimes posts what looks like a book proposal. The versions of blog posts that are published in the print Guardian show the gain from comments and editing.

The description of the Experimentality project now includes a move away from "command and control" in organisations. I think this relates to Deming ideas and Plan-Do-Check/Study Act. (scroll to bottom of ISO page for a diagram). "Check2 as used by Ishikawa changed to "study2 for the USA. More detail on how words are used could emerge over the next year. Also to study, the cultural background. As if this can be easily understood.

David Hutchins repeats a quote in the September 2009 Quality World from an Ishikawa package in the '70s.

We regard each individual as the expert in his or her own job and our system is based on the idea of using collective thinking power and job knowledge of all our people to work towards making the best of our business.

Hutchins comments on this as a contrast with UK industrial relations.

More recently the ISO Survey shows Japanese support for ISO 27001, a standard on information security featuring the PDCA cycle. Some people at the IAS conference on protection regarded talk about information security as another example of neo-liberal rhetoric. But the new Learning Zone on alexanderplatz has a full section on information security. It will be interesting to see how the Learning Zone is regarded. Chris Grey has written "Against Learning", regarding the word as part of a trend with negative consequences, including changes for the position of universities. Still the Learning Zone exists and connects so some views may change.

Checking out Management Learningg I find there is an offer of free access till the end of September. Connections with practice will be reported in future posts.

IPEX blog updated with draft stories for OhmyNews. check with Print 09 in Chicago soon. similar stories in Ohmynews over the previous three years or so. Round about now the digital developments in communication will be fairly clear. So the "learning organisation" aspect covers how the changes are implemented.

The Deming SIG meets this week and also early December when I will be at the Online Information event. Maybe there can be an online connection.

The IAS in Lancaster is starting a project on Experimentality. No dates known as yet for workshops etc but I will try to link to this.

So as a diary this is not too well defined. Could be more online than the IPEX aspect.

Here is a current flier for the MA course at Lancaster on Management Learning and Leadership

MA Management Learning and Leadership leaflet

One interesting thing is that Network Learning can include Online Communication. Previously i thought Network Learning was mostly about Online Communication but maybe "blended learning" ideas are now associated with more emphasis on other forms of network.

Next course starts in October.

Twitter still seems the way to go. will789gb by the way. The main learn9.net site has been dormant for a while as i have done more blogging, got lost on Facebook etc. But the summer drift is fading away and a redesign is in order. The site changes through the Swicki in response to searches, at least the size of the words can alter over time. Recent screen shot-



This blog is still about quality but clearly ISO 27000 is a topic of interest. "Enterprise Social Software" may sound more legitimate than checking out Twitter. "Learning Organisations" still in there, quite strong if you include both spellings.

No response I can find from Lancaster Management of marketing theory or moving beyond brochureware. Maybe there are limits to Twitter. Some questions cannot be asked, but if stored away somewhere the next development may connect. My current question would be how the critique thread links in with social software. I cannot find much about this from recently. The research end of the universities has a concern with dialogue and there was a sort of design aim for where online learning could go. But the current activity online is not connected somehow. Maybe i am just missing it. I will keep checking Twitter to see what turns up.

Already I notice that trade shows have a Twitter presence so the actual dates cease to matter so much. Total Print Expo has been canceled anyway but there is a point in time mid October when I think some damage checks should happen. The Frankfurt Book Fair is about the same time and the e-book technology is relevant for print and learning. In Lancaster there is a project around experiments about to start. I hope to do something around check/study as a phase in plan - do - something - act. It may be a translation problem. In Japan, check may include study. In Exeter there are classes in conversation so I may find out more before next July. The Deming group of the CQI continues with a project on a model of sustainability. Another meeting next week. There is still a view that content has to be solid before publication. Just putting up something and waiting for suggestions is not the current style. My efforts to combine bits of blog through Twitter messages may or may not be convincing.

Some Twitter checks. BETT2010 not posting too often. Links to stuff from last year. @atwossybookclub invited to a new Graphic Novel pavilion. Sounds interesting. This feed will continue through Frankfurt presumably. Tools of Change have a Facebook page for fans. Online Information / IMS has links to downloads from previously.

Meanwhile the Critical Management website seems to be mostly about real time events. I cannot find much content or discussion online. The MEHEM event is invitation only, can't find any published stuff so far. Yes there is pressure on universities around issues of relevance. Is this really so surprising? Online Information is just a trade show but similar issues may come up. The content in journals has got less easy to access not more connected as it moves away from paper to password protected academic sites. So the discussion around learning organisations or whatever you want to call it is getting more divided into academic disciplines and what most practitioners access. Just my take, comment welcome.

The Networked Learning conference has a Facebook aspect but just to make it easier to log in. Real event in May but maybe more will happen in the meantime.

Trying out Twitter as will789gb . Mostly using too many words. Lancaster Management is there but it mostly seems like a corporate announcement style. Couple of years ago I wanted to make my own video of a day of lead/learning. this was not allowed but there was an official video, some nor on YouTube that again seems to me to be much like a brochure. Interactivity and dialogue, that sort of thing. Can it be found through Twitter?

BBC Today on Radio 4 Monday had a short piece about UK universities and concern from MPs about standards. Scroll to about ten to eight.

Dr Wendy Platt starts by reference to the Quality Assurance Agency. So possibly quality theory is of more interest for Russell Group universities than I have found previously. Then she suggests the record of graduates from "the top twenty" unis in finding jobs is evidence of something. I find it rather disturbing that she seems to suggest this could include the dodgy value of attending any other UK university. My guess is that creative industries, tech stuff around the web, engineering base for quality, several other things practical or vocational would be quite likely to be studied somewhere else than the "top 20". Worth checking out some time. The Today approach seemed to be not to question this idea of the "top 20". What was the RAE about if there is just a static ceiling?

Last night I heard a BBC World Service program about technology and learning organisations. I wonder if they are open to a mash-up? Peter Day mentions he finds half an hour of BBC training just close to his limit sometimes. I wonder if I could take some sound clips out of his half hour programs and do some samples for YouTube?

The "Learning Organisation" is near the front of the half hour but not much explained. Maybe this is because Leadership is now promoted. Most academic links to the USA. Not surprising as their stuff is usually possible to understand.

This text is from a couple of days ago as drafted on a piece of paper. I am still in part holiday mode till Sidmouth Folk Week is over, well maybe for much of August. I don't really have mobile computing, still rely on a desktop such as now.

This draft is to explain a line of questioning for video around learning technology starting with Lancaster campus as a set. Clips for context now include the Sony Reader in the Waterstones on Alexanderplatz. the Learning Zone is under construction, a resource for web connections.

There was work on the idea of Learning Organisations but also critique of some aspects and related quality ideas. Networked Learning described technology applied in organisations. Similar issues were discussed around Networked Learning as around Learning Organisations.

Recently social networking online has demonstrated possibilities. Possibly some of the aims discussed for Learning Organisations are now easier to realise. Policy discussion for Further Education now often considers what students already expect from web design.

What is now possible? Could it meet some of the requirements identified in previous critiques?

A couple of sites could illustrate the issues. Critical Management includes content on Web 2.0 but could have more involvement online. Is it just about announcements for realtime conferences? Networked Learning conference has a Facebook aspect that seems currently to be about ease of logging in. What other connections are possible?

More notes from the fortnight in Lancaster. Actually still on holiday in a sort of way. Sidmouth Folk Week is about to start so Exeter is close to a world class event. Too much to miss out on so daily bus trips are possible. Not sure which blog to put this in but more on this later.

For some time I have been thinking about a book called The Going of "The Book" - my life and times. Never quite sure when there is enough material to make an effective case or what the time scope should be. Most of the Verso book The Coming of the Book is online so what happened next could be the Going. Not that the book will vanish completely. The idea of "the book" as an authority is challenged as there are other media and as a new book can be created quite quickly.

Now i think there are three time periods, maybe the basis for different books. "Hello Spiders" is a way to describe a set of web text and/or pages that have been more or less stuck. For a long time the positive links around quality and print have been difficult to demonstrate. So Hello Spiders is mostly about a set of tensions.

In the future there could be forms of communication in which the book is included. The London college of Printing is now the London College of Communication but it is still unclear what this means. Many people I meet just think it is a mistake.

I have some more jottings but these are groups of words that could be slides. So more later.

I am thinking more outside normal time. Maybe these three phases overlap or exist simultaneously for different people.

The hard copy Bookseller also has a section on digital news including a link to Tools of Change blog about how Scribd informs publishers of what is happening on the store. At the London Book Fair there was some worry about Scribd and copyright from journal publishers. Will this change by next year? My hard copy of Information World Review has arrived with a conference report linking to a website about university rankings through visibility of content.

After a bit more checking of links I went to the Exeter Central Library to look at hard copy. The Bookseller now emails me a daily sumnmary of news including a guess that a Kindle will reach the UK before Christmas. The hard copy has an editorial including an opinion that epub support on Kindle is something US publishers should have insisted on. Clearly the bookseller will push for this in the UK. Quite right too. Also saw an FT with a guess that Apple will launch a new iPod some time soon, mostly for movies but also with a guess that book publishers have been in touch. More detail than the references on the web. So once the summer break is over the ebook scene will move on. I am quite happy with the Sony Reader. Some delay while a memory card is moved from a desktop but at least something of a book is associated with delay and consideration. Just pumping a stream into a mobile device is not quite the same, whatever it is. But the world of education will just get used to it, ready or not.

Some web searching to add links

http://www.dius.gov.uk

but the name seems to be BIS, Business Innovation and Skills

The Twitter policy on Scribd

Henry Porter previously

Back in Exeter from a fortnight near Lancaster. More later on photos and video from the campus. I did sort of have web access but used only briefly so as not to test the patience of neighbors lending wifi. I took to blogging on paper so this is from Friday 24th-

The DTI has a Twitter policy. This I discovered through a search on the word "Scribd" where a document has been posted. Not called the DTI, someting else, but the building is still in Victoria Street. Over the weekend I will be back in Exeter so can check such things later.

I was prompted to search on "Scribd" by an article in the Guardian Tech pages (Page 6, 23 July). Bobbie Johnson interviewed Trip Adlert in San Francisco. Surely the store will be extended to the UK some time soon. Why else would this turn up? Previously Scribd has been mentioned only negatively by professional writers such as Henry Porter. the literary bit of the Guardian is on a different timescale to the Tech pages on a Thursday. Adler explains that the idea for Scribd started with his father, a neurosurgeon who wanted to publish faster than the normal eighteen months for a journal. "He just wanted to get things up there." So later versions may be more refined, better informed etc. but someting happens quickly. Will the people in Victoria Street think about this and UK universities? My impression is that most acadamic journal publishing is now digital but also more closed off to public space than when there was hard copy in libraries. Scribd has material around trade, industry, whatever but maybe not much of an overlap with journals. not sure about this, just a guess from memory. to be checked later this year. anyway, the education scope on a Guardian Tuesday could include Scribd as well.

I used to think there was a Guardian editorial policy to control the dissonance of various attitudes to the Web. the policy seemed to be to encourage association for a technical audience or online ; to offer maximum resistance in print or for a n audience associated with education or literature. Now i am not so sure there is a policy, just different people with different views. There may be a shift towards the Web eventually. the Readers Editor reports complaints about the reduction in printed pages. Once the defence for this includes the benefit of the website there may be less insistance on a special role for print, though print will continue as an aspect of news organisations.

Meanwhile I think I must have another look at my Twitter feed. It may be a way of linking blogs together.

Also at Lancaster I hope to look at the new Learning Zone alongside Alexanderplatz as I think of it. Moving images around in time and space is making more sense as online sets the pace, often through things I have just found though they were posted long ago.

Architecture for universities is a sign of relevance. The Infolab 21 building can be seen from the motorway and looks very technical. The Learning Zone I can only guess at from the images on the fence while it is being built. It strated out as fairly casula but then went a bit corporate. Maybe there is still a fence but I hope to post a photo later.

Quick check shows that InfoLab 21 is connected with similar topics to those discussed in Bristol. Wired Preston coming up on Tuesday.

So far I have only loaded to YouTube the presentation on Betavine. Steve Wolak has a blog where the slides may turn up.



Meanwhile Slideshare has two other presentations

Some thoughts about mobile innovation (OpenMIC July 2009)

View more presentations from Paul Golding.

App Stores Global Opportunities

View more documents from kgutteridge.

I went to the openMIC event last Thursday, intended for developers for mobile software. Ning site link here.

This has jumped me into a future with some kind of base. There is an energy about linking cloud content and mobile devices. Living in Exeter we sometimes find this more online than through people we meet. So there is a reason to visit Bristol once in a while. I think we might be better working out how to use the technology with original content than trying to compete on technology as such.

But anyway the main point seems to me to be that the debates about e-books and "technology enhanced learning" if that is still the approved academic term could be some way behind what is going on. The developers are using available technology. I now realise how much the Twitter interest follows on from earlier mobile messaging. there was almost no mention of the Kindle or e-book devices. Books are just a small part of a larger shift. There were references to knowledge and learning but just in the context of something already happening.

Not sure what is happening with "Networked Learning" and related projects. Design seems to wait on sorting out some critical issues. Later this month I will visit Lancaster and hope to find some journals in the library.

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.

Scribd praise post now on Scribd-

In Praise of Scribd

Publish at Scribd or explore others: scribdpraise

In Praise of Scribd

The new week starts in lean forward mode. The weekend is for leaning back and just accepting what the Sunday Newspaper has to tell us. Digesting food may take longer than usual and there is time for a walk in the sunshine. But then you realise that some things in the papers make no sense at all.

Henry Porter writes a normal sort of opinion for a known writer about the dangers of Google for copyright. "Google is just an amoral menace". Then he turns on Scridb as apparently another one of the "worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people's rights, their property and the past."

It is true that Scribd offers free downloads of documents for 55 million readers. Whether publishers are taking more action than usual to remove texts from the list is disputed. The main news development that Porter fails to mention is that book publishers including Random House and Simon & Schuster have agreed with Scribd to post promotional extracts from their titles as part of the Scribd resource.

Scribd Partners with Major Publishers to Bring Books, Exclusive Content to Community of 50 Million+

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Law & Government Business & Law publishing partnership

My guess, and this is obviously speculation, is that UK publishers are less keen on the global potential of the Web. they may prefer the protection of regional copyright deals. Look out for announcements of Scribd deals with publishers mainly based in London.

I have been posting documents to Scribd for about a year and welcome the response.




I have done some papers for academic conferences from a practitioner point of view. One about ISO 9000 has had almost 1,500 views and one about Dr Deming is approaching 5,000. Most of the comments are positive.

The design of the website is easy to use. They use Flash for display from any source such as Word or PDF. It loads very quickly compared to launching Word or Acrobat from a browser. The design is not Flash as in Adobe however. The Adobe websites now always feature something animated or load a video whether requested or not. Flash is forced on you all the time. The Scribd site seems to be designed by people who like text documents and classic page layout.

Scribd claims to be the "largest social publishing website". This social aspect allows for groups and collaboration as on a music site. My paper on ISO 9000 has been added to a couple of MBA study groups where I can find other material.

The Guardian today has a story about Cambridge University Press. My guess is that there is more of a Web strategy than appears from this report of the difficulties for litho printing. Problems include the development that "academics who used to rely on hardback books to help climb the career ladder have more recently been turning to the kind of self-publishing and free distribution offered by the internet."

The report has no more detail on open access models but my impression is that only Science Medicine and Technology journals have really engaged with the issues around public access to knowledge. Humanities and Social Science journal publishing is still closed down to university libraries by prohibitive subscriptions. So the leaks of papers in draft and alternate versions that may turn up on the Web are entirely to be welcomed, in my honest opinion.

Open access publishing is often discussed in Information World Review, a recent editorial for example. "What is clear is that open access publishing isn’t going to go away, and discussions to overcome the substantial differences between the different stakeholders must go on." It was recently reported that journal contracts allow more rights than is often supposed to publish draft or alternate versions of papers. My suggestion is that they should be posted to Scribd where they would be easily found. Department archives or personal websites may be as obvious for the spiders.

Previously Oxford University Press has made arrangements with Stanford for digital journal publishing. It may seem too simple to give up on a long tradition of printing and subcontract a new method of publishing. But it may be effective. At Online Information 2008 Highwire Press showed they were extending their platform for other content.

These issues will come up during the London Bookfair. Sony have sponsored a digital space with several presentations. It is possible that the 2009 London bookfair will be remembered as an occasion for progress in digital publishing. At the moment it seems more likely that the noise in the print media will be a continuation of misinformation and self-serving nonsense.

As far as I know there has not been a print review from London of the book "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger although he has been a keynote speaker at Online Information with similar content. What is the connection between publishing as technology and the world of book reviews? Not very clear. Here is the result for a search on Scribd - reasonable guide to the issues, might persuade someone to read the book.

Everything is miscellaneous Weinberger

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Spre information order

Following the London Bookfair some of this text may be recycled for an OhmyNews story so comment and link suggestions are welcome.

Sustainability and ISO 9004 relate more than I thought. I have not been paying enough attention. Possibly the words are not meaning the same as for academics in Lancaster. still there is enough overlap for some sort of conversation.

A new version of ISO 9004 2009 will be issued later this year. Can't find a draft online but the title is

ISO 9004:2009 - Managing for Sustainability – A Quality Management System Approach

Apparently it is not related to ISO 9001 clause by clause so may just add to confusion. It is intended to show management how the standards could be useful. I have found a couple of PDF slideshows that offer some idea, but not details of the standard. Suggest right click and save as, these may not load as PDFs.

Inlac

ASQ Windsor

Some academics will doubtless just write this off as more neoliberal rhetoric etc. but some people have to work with these standards so my preference is for some study before reaching a conclusion. Much will depend on how the standards are reported and considered when actually published.

How do organisations survive? Could be getting harder for those associated with print. Disruption is gaining pace. ISO 9004 looks interesting but changes could be too rapid in some cases. Individuals still benefit from understanding and can transfer to another situation. Problems in the UK printing industry (see BPIF survey) may be followed by problems for libraries and book intensive universities. What would a sustainable business school be like? This sort of question widens the discussion for a general web audience.

Coming back to "Sustainability" it may be relevant to look at ISO 14000 on the environment. Also the guidance on ISO 9000 uses the same word or is heading that way. See ISO website as a starting point.

The Deming SIG is not yet ready to launch the documents on a sustainability model but meetings continue. Next one probably in June, details will be on the website.

There could be more dialogue with academics. Plan - Do - Check/Study - Act is arguably a learning cycle.

Slideshare Team rate me as a Rockstar! Do they send these emails to everyone?

We've noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job ... you must be doing something right. ;-)

Why don't you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

There are various sites I have tried over the years and a slideshow presentation is quite rare for me. So they must mean the ones about ISO 9000 and whether it is worth another look following the 2000 revisions. (The recent revisions may have prompted some interest but not as extensive as several people see it) When I check it out the views on both sets of slides are over 10 thousand. Maybe most of this is recent.

The paper has had 1,400 views on Scribd so it is clear that people prefer slideshows...

Is ISO 9000 worth another look?

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business learning ISO9000

The first slideshow includes graphics of various kinds that flipped through to meet the moment. M@nagement web site had various problems and redesigns. I claim quality theory could relate to this. Hugh Wilmott views on quality are the blocking condition number one for any constructive dialogue in this area in my honest opinion.

Miscpdf

View more presentations from will789.

The second slideshow follows the paper pretty much

Look9 Screen

View more presentations from will789.

At the time there was not much interest in this. The first Management Theory at Work took a turn when Chris Grey spoke about relevance. Maybe universities stand a better chance without claiming to be relevant. Something like that. Anyway, interest in ISO 9000 at a "research" level has remained low as far as I can tell.

Meanwhile I have written stories for OhmyNews, a citizen journalism site in Korea. The ISO Surveys have shown rapid relative decline for the UK on the ISO management standards scene. China is clearly in the lead and both the USA and UK have now started to show lower numbers, not just as a proportion of global certification.

China Leads Continued Growth in ISO 9000

Quality Certification Declines in Mature Countries

An email from Lancaster university suggests i would be interested in a new course on Leadership for Sustainability. Previously I have tried to link in ideas about quality systems but I don't think i have time for more study at the moment. More like blog and twitter level seems to be the case. But sustainability is definitely an issue. I attend meetings of the Deming SIG of the CQI where work is advanced on a document about a model of a sustainable organisation. "Sustainable" for the Chartered Quality Institute includes the idea that the organisation in question survives itself. My guess is that for academics the environment would be more of a priority. not sure about this but something to look out for as the course continues.

I have loaded the flier PDF to Scribd.

Leadership for Sustainability MA at Lancaster

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work leadership sustainab

It turns out that Lancaster is using social media much more than I realised. The code for the video at the bottom of the course page is dodgy and a Google search only finds Twitter to lead straight back to it.

However Google Video finds probably the video intended.



Over half an hour, no wonder it is not on YouTube. Attention span test before starting the study.

Later, more on learning organisations and ISO standards.