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

.
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

one

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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.

Not much happening, too little notice to encourage people to join Twinity online. LifeBytes is slowly winding down. More next week.

Also Twinity has been a bit wobbly today. You can now teleport direct to Humboldt University but it may not all be there.



Couple of short videos

more vanishing

finding Humboldt