I need to make a note of these links

Article in Quality World about the HMRC case

Guidance on ISO 27000 from a newsletter. "Read the FAQ" a good place to start.

My intention is to concentrate on PDCA, but the 27000 content should be there. Security is definitely an issue for the way people think about the Web and some reality to the assurance claims need to be in there alongside the counterhype.

Reading "What is Total Quality Control" again to find out more about Plan-Do-Check-Act. It seems a lot depends on translation. "Control" is not meant to be restrictive, just another word for forms of management.

This is the only book I know of in which the translator takes up space to disagree with the original author. David J. Lu's introduction includes-

Dr Ishikawa's comment on the nature of Western civilization...is off the mark. The Old Testament view of man is that he is created in the image of God and is good. Sin entered the world because of God's disobedience, but it does not follow that man remains in a state of depravity. The act of redemption through Christ allows man to be regenerated and become a "new man".

The context for this is

Quality control functions best where there is a sense of mutual trust. If a man is by nature good, then that trust can always be cultivated. Dr. Ishikawa believes that Eastern civilisation has always sided with the idea that man is by nature good. He speculates that it is because Christianity has always sided with the view that man is by nature evil, that QC has not succeeded in the West. (p. viii paperback 1985)

Well at the moment I am reading the main book to check out what Ishikawa is saying himself. This is worth studying further I think. There must be some explanation why quality circles work in Asia but not in the UK.

Here are some diagrams on PDSA etc. I am contributing to a topic on the CQI website forum. In the Deming SIG section though there may be messages in other places later. Not sure how to cope with images at the moment so am putting them here. What interests me is how the PDSA has changed with more emphasis on the Act, consideration of aims. More on this later.



From Shewart- Statistical Method 1939. Dover 1986



From Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty
MIT - Deborah G. Ancona



From slides explaining ISO 27000. Here I think Check instead of Study is just the first problem. Unless Act is at the top it may not be easy for management to follow.

The ISO 27000 standard is very well written around PDSA. I have started to study it. There is a related list of controls as a check list but the standard for certification audit is just about the management process as far as I can tell. It is much clearer than ISO 9000 in this respect as there is too much old code that needs a rewrite (joke).

Some problem exists with the conference timetable spreadsheet. My recent post has some strange symbols in it, following an attempt to copy and paste from the PDF. Here is another example, assumed to be the dates-

 




Is this dangerous? Not so far although it could lead to confusion.

Some explanation would be interesting. Suggest others download the PDF and investigate.

The quote is from a slide by Nana Rodaki for

Re-thinking and Re-contextualizing the Competitiveness Discourse: Branding Rome as a “Competitive Community”

This was part of a recent seminar on Changing Cultures of Competitiveness.

This idea of "common sense" may be a way to describe what I was thinking of as reality. From the previous IAS conference I went to the assumption may well be that language is the concern. So what I am interested in as "assurance" could be seen by some as "common sense" and the discourse aspect be covered by specialists.

It is still interesting how "common sense" changes. When was print seen as just part of communication? Or has this not happened yet? Is quality part of management? This could vary depending on the location.

I realise I am going further off topic for the conference -
 Designing Safe Living - by the way the conference program is now published as a PDF from the spreadsheet.

What strikes me is the way a topic can be selected although the academic approach and concerns seem to remain the same. So I think "assurance" in general is a good word for me. Although this conference is about safety and the previous one was about the knowledge economy, quality management is still in there somewhere. Also the IAS has an apparently genuine concern not to be limited by disciplines. Previously I was finding it difficult to introduce quality into the Management School approach to learning and leadership. So here again is a proposal for a paper from 2005, conference title - Re-Thinking Leadership.

"How learning centres adapt to work with the technologies around e-learning"

"Learning centres" can include any organisation concerned with learning. Leadership is one aspect of this, in the context of organisations and technology change.

The question is how leadership recognises the issues and influences the development of learning resources. These resources could take different forms over time. I would like there to be a workshop on this so these notes could be one contribution. There will be material online as background. e-learning can contribute to leadership training but probably as part of a blend.

My own experience is through working on quality so I tend to look at organisations as systems.

At previous conferences on 'Management Theory in Action' I contributed papers on ISO 9000 and on Deming. The work context has been in the printing industry and in web design, mostly with PDF. There has been rapid technical change in both areas. There will be related changes for libraries and educational organisations.

For most of the first 'Management Theory in Action' conference it was possible to talk about a 'learning organisation'. This is now mentioned less, but is still useful. Ideas such as 'followership' and 'distributed leadership' indicate that the wider context is still relevant.. Burgoyne and Jackson (1997) link 'the learning organisation' with 'total quality management' and 'business process re-engineering' as part of a 'rapid succession of...'fads',,'magic bullets'. The same sort of thing might happen in universities with 'critique' or 'leadership' as topics with their own timeline. The 'learning organisation' has been recently mentioned by Prolearn, an EU project looking at e-learning.

I think Deming emphasised the need for management involvement in a quality project because he did not want projects to be blocked once momentum had started.

The research that is most relevant for me is the area of Networked Management Learning

"Networked Management Learning takes a somewhat more circumspect view of learning than currently popular ideas of communities of practice. It is a view of learning in which dialogical construction of meaning is a basic characteristic within all communication. Collaboration and interaction supported by communications technology is probably the key-defining feature of networked management learning as a management learning and development approach."

Arguably 'dialogical construction of meaning' is only one part of management learning on the web. 'Networked Management Learning' seems to have been defined to limit it to a particular 'subjective' area. Exetreme has developed websites for the Centre for Evidence Based Social Services. Mostly this is fast access to advice documents with summaries of research. The forum aspect is little used, with almost no questioning of the advice offered.

However, it is the ‘collaboration’ features of software that are developing most quickly. Acrobat 7 makes some functions available for certain PDFs within the free Reader. I find ‘critique’ more interesting as a way of thinking about how learning happens when these sort of tools are used.

I bring this up again partly because there is a new organisation on the way in the UK that seems a bit of a mystery so far. The Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) is a combination of the Quality Improvement Agency and the Centre for Excellence in Leadership. So how this will work out is unclear but somewhere someone can see a link between quality and leadership.

My impression is that leadership followed learning as a topic for academics and that quality is not seen as an academic topic as most of the theory comes from organisations. So it will be interesting to see what sort of theory and research is associated with the new project, strapline- "dedicated to development". Source for strapline, DIUS.

But there is so far no unique website for LSIS. Both previous organisations still have websites and these make a case for previous activity.

Publications on the CEL website include research papers available as PDF downloads.

Learning in the age of digital networks
Dr Chris Jones, Dr Debra Ferreday and Professor Vivien Hodgson
PDF

Why networked management learning is a useful leadership development approach in the learning and skills sector
Dr Chris Jones, Dr Debra Ferreday and Professor Vivien Hodgson
PDF

Since 2005 when these were published, digital networks are seen to include social networking sites. My take is that Web learning has a wide scope, possibly wider than some Further Education policy in the UK. So it would be interesting to look again at these papers, including quality within the scope.

I have now revised the draft paper for the Safety conference. I think there is about the right amount of content for half an hour. It may connect in with the other papers in the session. Christopher May will talk about openness and the control of information. I have found a page about the knowledge commons online. So this might support my claims about other knowledge resources found on the Web. Melissa Sedmak is from a School of Risk and Safety Sciences so my hope is that at least some of the time, danger is regarded as real at a place like this. She will decribe some new technology for clearner energy from Australian SMEs.

Looking at the IAS website I have found some PDFs from a seminar series on Changing Cultures of Competitiveness. This seems to follow on from the research on the Knowledge Based Economy (KBE)and confirms my impression is that the interest is in the political consequences of the language rather than the KBE as such.

Ngai-Ling Sum quotes South China Morning Post (12th December 2000)

It is important to have computer knowledge, as the Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in our life. We write e-mail instead of letters, chat with friends on ICQ instead of on the telephone and get our news from Web sites instead of newspapers.
We use computers to do paperwork, keep our accounts and even order goods.

This may be supportive of neo-liberal rhetoric, but it may also be seen as a resonably accurate statement in itself.

"Education's Role in Econimic Competitiveness" is covered by Jane Mulderrig with a contrast between "audit" and "autonomy". I think the lack of engagement by academics with quality ideas as theory has a lot to do with the experince of audit as it has happened in the UK. The aim of quality assurance was to move away from inspection but this is not always realised. I will come back to this in another post later.

By the way, I don't have a problem with the political views that are generally accepted in this discussion. I am starting to read more from the website on "Global Competitiveness" where PDFs are available. It is reasonable for linguists to be interested in language. My problems start when people in business schools turn out to be more concerned with critique than forms of practice. It seems to me that some form of quality management is a part of any form of organisation. So there is something to it as well as language. I will do another post later about "network learning" and web design. there is some sort of gap between the two though I can't understand what it is.

"Knowledge Brands" include cities, especially design cities as described by Guy Julier. There could be a similar study on the design of a university campus. Lancaster is not that old but Info 21 seems to be a break with hiding it all behind trees as seen from the motorway. My guess is that the computer hardware inside the building is not in need of unusual cooling systems. I may be wrong about this but this is a blog so can be changed in a lter post. So the design is there mostly for effect. I am still working on a script for a walk along the campus starting from Info21 as it implies acceptance of technology. I started out looking at quality systems as a way to cope with change in the printing industry. This is still a project though since drupa 2008 my impression is that significant change has already happened in terms of what technology is available. Anyway, the conference will include an evening meal at Info21 so it will be interesting what people make of it.

There is now a timetable for the Safe Living conference. Emailed as a spreadsheet. I have loaded this into Google Docs and find you can add comments and links but only with extra rows.

The session I am in clashes with others I would like to be at but this is normal. Chris May will talk about "Replacing Property with Openness" , seems to be about Creative Commons and similar (found this available for free) so I could connect this with the validity of knowledge resources outside the official journals. Melissa Sedmak is from a Risk and Safety School in New South Wales so this could be support for the idea that danger can be real as well as language.

Bailrigg script updated on Flickr.

Previously there have been links to YouTube samples of the Lancaster campus. It could still be a suitable spot for interviews / chat show variations. World TV channels are working well. I have started one for drupa called web2drupa. Combining taliking heads with bits of background is possible. An edit would be better if there was permission.

---------------------------
Bailrigg

Outline script for a drama documentary based on a walk on the Lancaster campus from Info 21 to the Spicy Hut. The edited version will assume a day starting with brunch at Info 21 and a small group of people from an internet cafe. They are preparing to meet potential clients in the evening at the Spicy Hut. The group seek information and guidance at Info 21 on background ideas about the knowledge economy, quality assurance as a framework for change, social networking software for web collaboration, security assurance for wireless communications and anything else suggested. The intention is to present this to to the client with specifics for their situation, a conference about meditation and counselling.

The dramatic tension is that everyone they then meet along the campus challenges motivation. The group may get there but possibly without any confidence in the value of the project.






At the first seat after Info 21 things seem ok as they had some useful advice.



At the George Fox Building they stumble upon a meeting about Critical Management Studies with speakers from the journal Management Learning. Assumptions about quality systems are challenged as neo-liberal rhetoric and an attack on academic freedom. There is support for Chris Grey's paper "Against Learning" , though it is not then easy to follow.



The group pauses to reflect under a tree, then continues to the Management School.



At the Management School cafe they happen to meet Hugh Wilmott who expands on "Making Quality Critical" and presents a further challenge to motivation. Discussion on Network Learning suggests that there is no basis for web design that meets the criteria for dialogue.



Pause for further reflection and some more coffee.

Visit to bookshop and library. More sources, more discussion.



Group continues to the Institute for Advanced Studies. In the cafe they are told that the ideas around the knowledge economy can be seen as neo-liberal rhetoric. It is also suggested that security around wireless communications is not really a problem as the sense of danger has been created by marketing departments.



A visit to the School of Lifelong Learning restores some sense of direction. Tutor experience is that most possible aspects of Web learning are in use anyway to some extent.



This note / script has no fixed ending in mind. The shape of the plot is linear. The group will get there, but their conclusions depend on the rest of the day. Possible twist, the clients have decided that website creation is now obvious and no longer need any assistance as there is enough resource in "the cloud".

Now back in Exeter after a trip to drupa and short stay in Brussels on the way. My impression is that the web and print are now well connected so much has happened along the lines that were discussed previously. I first went to Brussels when working for a co-op organisation funded by the Greater London council at the time of the IBM PC. Quite a long time ago.

Anyway, trying to stay on immediate topics-

Adobe were at drupa but I think that quite quickly they will be seen to be concentrating on Flash and the web. See my story for OhmyNews.

This will have a major implication for print, publishing and quality documents where the scope of quality documents includes most corporate content. I complain about the Adobe rush towards video and the lack of explanation for longterm flat page fans, but they probably have their timing about right for what is happening online. Video is widely used whatever university librarians think about it.

So one project fairly soon is to talk to the Chartered Quality Institute and the Institute of Printing, Paper and Publishing and find out how they respond to the new factors. Developments could be seen through theory about media or quality systems or both. There is a meeting of the CQI Deming SIG later this week where this will be off topic but I will try to get some guidance.

Another concern is to find out about data security - ISO 27000. I am fairly confident in talking about the PDSA cycle but need to know more about it. See previous posts. The conference in Lancaster is getting closer.

What I hope to do is relate PDSA to the MIT Framework for Distributed Leadership. There is a PDF about this. Leadership as Visioning-Relating-Inventing-Sensemaking may be related to PDSA but starts in a different place. Any guidance welcome.

I am feeling ok about going off topic as far as the conference is concerned. Critical Discourse Analysis seems to be about critique so most of the conference may not start from the idea that danger is real. A claim that assurance sometimes reduces variation and that leadership is part of this may seem simple but could be interesting if only as balance.

Since I started looking at the Lancaster Management videos on YouTube I have been thinking of how a sequence could be put together. The Lancaster campus is a suitable site for a sequence as it is linear and reaches a conclusion. Maybe that is just what makes sense for me. I like a walk in central Exeter as it is a loop and there need not be a conclusion. anyway, back on topic.

I have already done one post about this and a sequence on a Bailrigg channel for WorldTV. My current idea is to concentrate on the knowledge economy and the implications for organisation and leadership. There is enough material from events at the Work Foundation, Exeter and Lancaster. People may be prepared to contribute who remember what was said or repeat sections on camera.

The story tension is about maintaining motivation for a group offering a web service between sensing an outline possibility at Info21 and meeting a client at the Spicy Hut. The hurdles are the forms of critique offered by the shapeshifters known as management academics. Episode 2 could be more detail about security for mobile devices ( could relate to current IAS project) but this proposal is about the Knowledge Economy as material exists.

A device could be a DVD player or similar to show existing video. Otherwise the sets are coffee places. At Info21 Will Hutton or virtual equivalent to talk about ‘Contemporary Trends in Work and Organisation’ as at the Inter Logics website. Moving to the George Fox Building for Steve Ackroyd to talk about "Network Organisation". This building is where I heard Chris Grey talk about "relevance" so I associate it with "critique". The take on "Network Organisation" accepts that something is happening but questions the claims on benefits.

Mike Pedlar was not recorded talking about "New Organisations?" but he could be invited to repeat this at the Management School. Alternatively others could remember what was said or comment on it. Discussion here could be more detailed, the George Fox Building is a site for shocks.

Through the Wikipedia description for "critical discourse" I have found an online free text from Norman Fairclough. I have loadedthis into Google docs with a highlight around the approach to the Knowledge Economy. This would be enough for a talk at the IAS cafe and possibly there could be recording at the Summer School.

So what will the final scene be at the Spicy Hut. will the group manage to make any positive claims for the technology in general or the economic benefits of knowledge? Will they come back next time for the detailed discussion on mobile security? Who knows? Let us just shoot loads of stuff and present it to an editor. The advantage of YouTube and components is that there can be many versions so a script stays in draft indefinitely.

By the way, in Exeter we have Adobe video editing at Life Bytes on Sidwell Street and a couple of reasonable cameras. Some of the buildings on the Exeter campus could be much the same as at Lancaster so we may shoot some tests or bits to edit in.

Looking on Google blogsearch for any links to the Safe Living conference found this blog on mobility. More on this later.

It is not my imagination, Eurekster and the swicki universe have both returned. Here it is confirmed in a blog.

I think there could have been more information about this. Maybe it is a high level of PR theory at work, when there is a problem say nothing, just be upbeat about something else.

the last week has made me realise what an excellent thing a Swicki is. I managed to find quite a lot on the wayback machine but from a few years ago. There is nothing from this year yet, normally a reasonable policy but not in an emergency.

So I am now busy with the Swicki Disaster Recovery Procedure, archiving results pages to PDF. More later when this is completed.

I am working on the drupa2008 blog for the next week or so and plan to be there on Tuesday and Wednesday. What strikes me so far is that Apple are not there and Adobe are only just engaged with it. They hace a press release out about the PDF Print Engine but the website is still about Flash, AIR, the Web. Thing is, they could have a point. iTunes and mobile devices, that is the way to go. Meanwhile print is not that soundly based.

It has taken a while for me to come to terms with this. I still think Adobe should do more to explain what is possible with PDF. There could be a file format rewrite in XML but almost nothing is known about this compared to the developer buzz investment around AIR.

Other than trying to link my blogs together when possible, there are a couple of points relating to learning. Education and printing industry have been linked for a few hundred years. Gradually the authority of print is fading away, at least in comparison to other media. There will still be a range of media in use but there is something to consider here. Also there are few models as yet about how the new software affordances can be used. Adobe and others are making things possible but there is no fixed approach as yet. Most of what exists is a form of entertainment so far. It needs to be interpreted for organisations and education.

First YouTube result for "leadership learning organization"



maybe "organisation" would get closer to the UK. To be tested later.

Eurekster is still not working so I can't do a screen shot of the ITC swicki or explore dotcoop. Also none of the Swickis are working. Maybe it has to do with "coming out of beta" as reported here.

I am not alone. Others are complaining. Maybe we should just wait a while. The Swicki idea is excellent if it can go just a bit further.

But then again maybe beta is actually safer. Not sure why.

More browsing to find out what else could be happening in Koln. The Digital Culture site seems a bit dormant. Maybe the demoscene has moved somewhere else.

Collective working and co-operation used to be topics but "evaluation" is also a concern. Univation shows some links to conferences. Not sure how much time there will be but I hope to follow this up later. Studying quality and the PDSA cycle, I think the plan or design phase will be of most interest at the IAS conference. But evaluation is significant also.

The papers from the Networked Learning conference are now online. Chris Jones presents a "social practice" perspective and links this to "Web 2", including a selection from YouTube.



There are many different approaches to what should be available online rather than only at an academic conference or in a journal. I have found different sorts of response to requests to photograph or video. Similar range for cultural performance. Musicians during Sidmouth folk week do not mind video at all. Discussion during Animated Exeter is carefully managed. The Apple store in Exeter may turn up on YouTube but not in an approved manner. Anyway back to conferences and academic content.

The Work Foundation hosted a meeting in September last year looking at Changing Forms of Organisation and the Implications for Leadership & Leadership Development. Will Hutton seemed to me to be suggesting that new styles of leadership are required because organisations have already changed in a knowledge economy. The slides are available as PDF. From the homepage you can find video and mp3 also. Stephen Ackroyd was more critical of what he called a "Network Organisation" but the slides include some evidence of significant changes in the UK economy.

In Exeter I took some photos of the day on the Changing Leadership Agenda and asked permission after the event. As nobody else had taken any this was welcomed and a couple from Flickr have been copied for the official site. There are PDFs for download from the official homepage.

In Lancaster for a day about the MA in Management Learning I found that photography was not given permission as there was a video production complete with an external microphone and boom.



My guess is that links to content would work just as well in devekloping interest in MAML. Lancaster Leadership joined YouTube on May 15th, there I learned something while writing this post. Not many comments yet or video responses. The style may change to be more like a conversation, a strong trend as identified by blogger Jeff Jarvis.

Meanwhile my own low quality guide to a route from the Info21 cafe, past the critique zone and connecting to civilian society, has gathered one comment.

fifthdoor99 wrote:

noise from this evil establishment is quite disruptive when trying to listen at academic events in the rooms right below it

Well, some of us just drop by to enjoy the coffee and the design of the building and the general sense that technology can offer something. Whether it works as a real building is not the point.

Meanwhile my impression is that there is some real basis to claims for the existence of a knowledge economy. YouTube is one example of related changes in open content.

Couple of graphics saved from yesterday. The drupa event will be about print in the context of the internet. I have done a couple of stories for OhmyNews about the change in name for the London College of Communications, Print as was. I don't think I can do another one later this year. Something has changed. I have put a topic on Guardian Talk as well as the drupa2008 blog about the apparent lack of an Apple stand at drupa. That was yesterday but so far nobody has commented that this is incorrect. So I am assuming it is so and that Apple research shows that tunes are the future.




Passing through Brussels on the way is a chance to catch up on what is happening with policy ideas. Previously there was a proposal for eTEN, around the possibilities with PDF. At the moment there is still mystery about MARS, the probable future of PDF as "XML friendly", even more friendly than currently. As Apple and Adobe move on to video and animation, the technology around text and flat documents could become commoditised. "Critique" could include reassembling documents from many sources. This ideas is worth returning to but probably won't meet project criteria.

Co-ops relate to participation. Web browsing shows that the dotcoop promotion seems to be at Co-operatives Europe. I intend to update the ITC swicki to include dotcoop but as it appears Eurekster is offline at the moment. So more on this later.

I have started to travel more as the climate improves. Slightly warmer in May is not too worrying. I have been to Lancaster recently for a meeting about the MA in Management Learning. More on this later. I will be there again in July for the conference on Designing Safety. I am more convinced about data security as a topic. It makes sense as part of the move to a mobile web but mostly as an antidote to other streams of argument. I will get back on topic early in July but meanwhile things come up in various connections. I have been browsing today and found a few images to drop in, remind me of text to include.



This is the logo for the current annual research program at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Lancaster. The conference is on July 10 -12.

There is a summer school about discourse analysis 30 June - 5 July. Hope someone blogs about this. I sometimes think the IAS is more interested in discourse than forms of reality. After three projects it could be time to look at trends. I have yet to find any firm conclusions about the knowledge economy as if some policy is required. Meanwhile in mainland Europe, the Commission is still on the case. Lots of rhetoric of course but worth following.





I am a fan of Psand and Bristol Wireless. They have demonstrated satellite and wifi over a few years. Not sure what will happen over this summer but there is enough of an archive to make a case for how real cultural events can be enhanced. This van is from a set of photos from Extremadura, a region where Open Source is supported. The links are no longer that reliable but here are one, two and three. The EU website has a relevant story. The Riga Document had something to do with the Global Cities project but I cannot remember the detail. The point is that as I remember it there was a discussion about regional identity in terms of aligning with technology, especially open source. Regional identity was the second project, after the knowledge economy and before the new sciences of protection.





My next trip is to the drupa, small "d" but enormous space, the largest print show on the planet. I think that disruption may be obvious this time. As far as I know there is no Apple stand, a bad sign for the future of the printing industry. Maybe everyone is supposed to have a phone with podcasts rather than flat pages. Have you noticed that all the universities on iTunes are in the USA? Swizz or what?