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

.
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

two

three

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.