This is a draft for a story around Learning Technologies for OhmyNews.
Comment welcome

--------------------

Adobe presents a case study in e-learning
"We always had confidence in the leadership" says researcher


draft story for OhmyNews around Learning Technologies -28/9 Jan


Next Generation Learning @ Work - driving business benefits

probably this will cover leadership, change managements, organisations.

Adobe have a stand. Last year the word Acrobat was visible but the messages were all about Flash, almost nothing on PDF or Postscript.

So a possible story could look at Adobe as an example of an organisation. How has it learnt over time? What is going on at the moment?

My guess is that the "towards maturity" research will not show top management as a major pressure for e-learning. Mostly it seems to be something that slips in through HR or somewhere over time and eventually is accepted. To be checked in conversation on the day.

Adobe is different. They are interested in software. Started in Xerox Parc a long time ago. Warnock and Geschke still seem to share being Chair. What is the influence of this?

Geschke to Knowledge at Wharton-

[running a company] can feel pretty lonely. Who do you talk to? That's one thing John and I have always tried to do for Bruce and Shantanu. We don't keep an office at Adobe. I don't want to be perceived as looking over their shoulders. [But] we make ourselves available anytime that they want to sit down. We usually have breakfast once a month with Shantanu to chat and see how things are going. If he wants to call, we'll be there immediately.

Around the time of buying Macromedia there seems to have been a shift in Adobe as if the entire Postscript / PDF project had been traded in. How would Warnock or Geschke think about this?

from same interview-

Knowledge@Wharton: What do you think is the biggest challenge Adobe is facing going forward?

Geschke: Inventing the future. We'll never succeed unless we continue to open up new vistas.

I honestly believe that our technology and what's happening in the market -- where essentially all visual communication is going to the web -- is the sweetheart point in our whole envelope of products and technologies. Shame on us if we can't figure out a way to take advantage of that shift in the way the world is moving with the distribution of information.

A lot of what are there today -- the limitations of browsers and of the web imaging standards -- are things that we think we have a solution for. As they become the primary delivery mechanism, that value is going to differentiate.


So "all visual communication is moving to the web". Is print just part of visual communication?

YouTube link to Warnock on newspapers in 2007

The Chief Technology Officer is now Kevin Lynch. I cannot find through Google that he ever mentions PDF.

So there could be a major shift here. I am still interested in print and PDF and find it quite hard to communicate with Adobe. The description "paranoid" sometimes makes sense but in a formal technical sense as described by Andrew S. Grove in his book - Only the Paranoid Survive

Look out for the inflection points. Move out of declining products fast.

Adobe may be right about this but I find it hard to keep up. Academic journals for example. What will happen? There is still a lot of text there but maybe future students will just not be very interested.

Am I making this up? Recent Adobe blog entry

many of you may have heard about Acrobat.com and simply dismissed it as some kind of PDF-Mecca

so being interested in PDF as such is not very cool.

I think about the change as Adobe Classic and Adobe(FLSH). Thsi Adobe(FLSH) comes from a blog after Max that I can no longer find.

Another sign is the lack of promotion for MARS or PDFXML. No blog updates since September and there is no other promotion.

Back to organisation theory.

At BETT I found a stand for the LSIS hidden away on a balcony. They merge quality and learning, though this ssems a slow process. I have worked on quality systems but find it hard to get people who study learning to be much interested. Maybe the academic theory relating to NSIS will be written down later once the practice is sorted out. There is a model here that includes leadership but I still have doubts about how many case studies it would fit.

In my story for OhmyNews about BETT I did not go into much detail about Adobe or Microsoft. I think both are looking too far into the future. Silverlight may serve a purpose later, but currently there is still interest in text and flat graphics. I did get some email response to earlier drafts so this may be included in a story about Learning Technologies. See below.

I think the ePUB format is interesting. There may be signs of devices at the show. However Adobe are not doing much to promote the Digital Editions Reader. Can't remember any sign of it last year. It turns everything into Flash.

Story will be based on what is actually displayed on the Adobe stand. The implication could be stark for how comprehensive an organisational change can be.

Questions

Will the price of Postscript and PDF products be reduced? Acrobat Elements any time soon?

Is there a business plan for Adobe Cloud?


Below, from replies to previous draft ahead of BETT

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while EPUB is fast on its way to becoming the standard for reflow-centric eBooks, I think it's a bit mixing apples and oranges (ok, chalk and cheese to you) to compare with PDFXML (Mars) or XML Paper. EPUB is designed to represent in a single file the structure of a publication, but not a particular final-form paginated appearance. Speaking only for myself, I think the reason that these other formats are not taking off (in the case of Mars, I will add "yet") is that PDF has ably occupied the fixed-format document standard, and now is a fully open ISO-level standard, which does not leave a compelling reason for another format standard to be broadly adopted to do the same job. While there's some advantages to XML-friendiness over the binary PDF format, and a more modular approach to packaging (ZIP vs. COS), on the flip side there's 1000s of software programs and libraries that grok today's PDF. EPUB is not a competitor since it is at a different level of abstraction (with with the addition of page-templates over time there will be EPUB publications with a reasonably polished preferred presentation, the intention is that different devices may still render quite differently, and I doubt that print/prepress workflows will ever work with EPUB, otherr than as an input format a la MS Word, RTF, etc.).

Our Digital Publishing team has a blog at: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleditions, and there's an Adobe DevNet digital publishing technology center that focused on EPUB best practices etc. at: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/digitalpublishing/ . My own rather non-technical blog is at http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoy.

Cheers,

--Bill

Bill McCoy
General Manager, Digital Publishing Business
Adobe Systems Incorporated
bmccoy@adobe.com

-------------------------------

Will: I do not think that Adobe views the business of communicating information broken into two distinct camps as you have portrayed. I think we view it as a spectrum with "old" printing at one end and "new" rich internet applications at the other.

Most of our Creative Suite (CS) component products are used throughout the information communication industry. We estimate that 85% of all web pages have had some of the content processed in Photoshop. And Photoshop, well even the complete CS, is the primary tool for traditional publishing/printing.

Although in enterprise there was a split at first between the web team and the traditional print marketing materials team, nearly all companies have realized that there is so much in common that they have brought those teams back into one management structure. Companies are interested in getting their message out using whatever means is the most effective. And the most effective way for them to do that is to have people responsible for the objective and free to use whatever technology and tools work the best. Adobe serves that more general audience.

Just my thoughts,
Jim King
PDF Platform Architect

OhmyNews have now published my story on BETT.

More on this later.

I have sent in a story about BETT for OhmyNews. Not edited yet.

BETT has changed shape I think. The Grand Hall Entrance is still the main way in but the immediate space has lost a lot of buzz without the BBC or Apple. BBC is still there on the Pearson stand but nothing like the scale of previously. Jam was cancelled after pressure from competition. Maybe this is the reason for the absence. Apple have cut back on shows as the mobile devices are aimed at a consumer level. They are more likley to open another shop than turn up at Olympia. A group of Apple dealers are in the smaller National Hall so the Mac fans head there.

The Netbook or whatever you want to call it is getting a lot of interest but some of the new companies cannot book into the smae area as Dell and Microsoft so some are right at the back behind the cafe- Asus, Acer, Sony and Intel.

So the overall effect is that most of the sp[acehas the same sort of attention. Open Source is hidden away though on the balconies - Moodle N2 near the Leadership Lounge and the Open Source Precinct SW104 in the software area.

The UK print journalists still have enough influence to prevent BBC projects such as local video and educational resources. It remains to be seen what happens next. Long ago Greg Dyke spoke of an open archive of video for the public. What happened?

Another item on open source. If Portugal, why not UK?

I'm at the easyInternetcafe on Kensingtom High Street, checking Google News ahead of BETT. Top link is about netbooks. I think that is still the right word.

Eugene Hsu is the director of the education ecosystem enabling team at Intel. So far I did not realise Intel was there.

It seems to me that Linux has a chance for this kind of situation. Yesterday the Guardian had an insert from Dell with one offer with Ubuntu. The price was only just a bit more than a Sony Reader. Sony is at BETT but no news yeton the Reader being displayed. If book publishing is goind digital there could be more evidence in school books.

Generation Zed approaches autonomy
Educational institutions respond to learner choice


draft notes for a possible take on BETT

depends on finding enough quotes and evidence to convince OhmyNews editors that there is a genuine story here

Z comes after X and Y, at least that bit is ok with the fact checkers

from the Wikipedia

Net Generation

In his book Growing Up Digital, business strategist and psychologist Don Tapscott coined the term "Net Generation" for the group, pointing at the significance of being the first to grow up immersed in a digital--and Internet--driven world. Accordingly, some say the final year of Gen Y is between 1993 and 2000 because they would be the youngest people to appreciate the changes of the Digital Revolution

(citation needed, adds the Wikipedia)

So if z starts in 1993, some of these people could be aged 15.
Sometimes students make choices about the courses they sign up for. This gets attention from the people who plan budgets. So some of the interest at BETT ( and in how universities are presented to potential students) follows the views of generations y,z.


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"autonomy" was a central concept in research by Taylor Nelson for the IT Economic Development Council in 1987. They predicted that the "Inner Directed Group" could reach 55% of the UK population by 2010. So what happened?

----------------


Learning Zone, Alexanderplatz, Lancaster

---------------------------------

Theory on Networked Learning. Has it changed since 2002? Can it be related to practice? Has it been explained in language that is easy to understand? Where could anyone find out more about it?

Some of these ideas are from the 1960s or earlier. May still relate to conversation at BETT.

BETT background

Long ago there used to be general purpose computer shows. In the UK these were often at Olympia. Part of the attraction of BETT is to recover some memories of Olympia at capacity with computer conversation. My friend Gary may remember the names of the previous events so more on this later, after Thursday or Friday, possible days to meet up.

In the USA the show was called COMDEX but is now about Consumer Electronics or else only one survived. From the UK we only get the search results anyway but it seems that consumer electronics set the pace.

Slightly off topic- Last time I was at Lancaster University I had hoped to check out Waterstones and ask about the Sony Reader, implications for literary culture, resource planning for teaching and learning etc. But it turned out that the Sony Reader was only in stock at the Waterstones in central Lancaster. The traditional university has deep links with the print industry so it is slightly surprising that the latest publishing technology is not launched from campus. But maybe the reasoning around this will become clearer.

Heading back on topic but cannot find the blog from around the time of Adobe MAX when there was discussion about Adobe changing their stock symbol to "FLSH" in the same way Sun changed to "JAVA". I like this idea as it clarifies a change and leaves Adobe Classic as a way to describe what I am more familiar with. Relevant to BETT Adobe(FLSH) covers video on mobiles, animated websites and other stuff that students use at home or when moving about while Adobe Classic covers books, academic journals, basic word processing as most schools require.

I don't mind watching video but it is the Adobe Classic area where I think there could be some immediate progress. As Adobe have lost interest in this sort of thing there may be lower prices for software quite soon. Open source alternatives are pretty good for document creation. Open Office has the features most people use. Also I think the people who write open source code are as likley as anyone to make the connections between open document formats, XML, and ePUB or other formats for e-books and mobile devices. Vista is still not established despite the large Microsoft stand at BETT. So the XML paper spec is not really doing that well. Adobe do almost nothing to promote PDFXML so my impression is that the current PDF format is likely to continue. It turns out that the PDFXML Inspector works just as well with ePUB so ePUB has potential as a way to publish from XML-friendly sources.

The ePUB format has some wide support. The Sony Reader and the Digital Editions Reader from Adobe. However it is not that easy to create. Should be possible from InDesign but it is hard to find much about this. Will Microsoft offer "export as ePUB" in Word? More likely they are worried about Silverlight and video. A couple of years ago they announced Grava and the news link is still from 2007. Probably they will concentrate in this area, not just text.

I have discovered the eCub EPUB creator by doing some searches between paragraphs. See the blog from Julian Smart. Not tested yet. On the TeleRead blog David Rothman has invited the open source community to develop an ePubWriter as part of Open Office. At the moment I am not sure how this will work out but open source and XML have grown together so far.

XML is also the basis for JDF, a way to describe print requirements. the printing industry has yet to find a way of promoting this to print buyers. But it may be that a combination of PDF and JDF is the only way for print media to respond to e-books for speed and cost.

BETT is not advertised as a show about publishing and e-books. But the issues will turn up somewhere.

Open source promotion at BETT will be in the gallery. Moodle for knowledge management or document storage or whatever term fits best is at N2 with Synergy Learning. Open Forum Europe is at SW104 with links to most open source software.

I will be at Online Information this week.

Posts mostly to the Exetreme blog as this is on my card.

Cards by Moo by the way. Last year this is mostly what I was asked about.

The ISO Survey for 2007 shows decline in the USA and UK for ISO 9000 certificates. I have done a story on this for OhmyNews.

My impression is that quality theory is moving with manufacturing outside where the business schools have been. There will be another story for OhmyNews next year but meanwhile there is plenty of scope for speculation and anecdotes. The survey is based on info from a year ago so things may be different already.

Financial Times at Online Information

So far as I can tell the Financial Times will not be at Online Information as they were last year.

All will become clear at the real event but meanwhile please add a comment if I have looked in the wrong place or they will appear with another name.

My impression is that the Web is getting more viable but particular information offers may not be. No other newspaper appears at Online Information. Would they gain much in cover price sales? Is advertising the main prospect for newsprint?

Last year I had a discussion about the Chinese version of the FT, almost entirely a Web operation. Limited print but mostly to promote the Web. Hope to find out more about this.

ePUB at Online Information

At the publishing panel on Thursday I hope to find out more about the ePUB format. There is more interest in e-books this year with a conference at the start. The ePUB format is supported in both the Adobe Digital Editions Reader and the Sony Reader. there could be more announcements from publishers with new titles.

So far there has not been much publicity for the open source aspect. There could be more public domain or creative commons content. Creating an ePUB file is not impossible but could be easier. Maybe the bookselling industry is unlikley to promote the fact that there is so much free stuff available but the cost of a Sony Reader is a bit of a block for many people so the whole cost structure needs to be explained.

Adobe seem to prefer ePUB to PDF for reflow on small screens. Also Stanza have a reader for the iPhone. Some numbers suggest that the downloads of Stanza compare with sales for e-reader hardware. So do people read texts on an iPhone for any length of time?

Feedbooks can create ePUB from a blog or RSS feed. So is this a book?

There will be probably be more on this in a story for OhmyNews after Online Information. Any text, links etc. welcome.

Thinking about things cloud. The Microsoft move gives it some momentum. Strated to look for cloud managemnt but can only find this blog.

I added a commentInformation show I will try to find out other ways to assess how much knowledge is available for management practitioners outside of paid journals.

I have been checking out some social networking sites. Started with Linked In as I am getting more messages there recently. Found the Deming Forum India though it has moved to Multiply as far as I can tell or at least has more content there.

Then I found a link to Orkut where the QUALITY MANAGEMENT group has a large number of members. There is a Deming group as well. The discussion seems to me to be based in practice.

I have started a topic as I have recently started to think that the connection between learning and quality is obvious. Still not sure how to present this to academics however. Text as below. Comment welcome here or on Orkut.

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.

Following previous post about how topics are studied by academics, here is a list to run through on rotation

Knowledge Economy

Leadership and Further Education

Learning Organisations

Technology Enhanced Learning

Protection Science

Competitiveness

Each one is the sort of thing that should be studied.
The end state often seems to be revealed as rhetoric from the dark side.

The next one could be the Creative Economy. My hope is that the study includes something that practitioners could relate to.

Notes for a future chat show.

Background for discussion in a space moving from technology through academic to public

This started as a route from Infolab 21 across the campus. Assume some technology innovation is possible, through a method linked to quality theory. Will motivation survive "critique" past Lancaster Management? The Spicy Hut is the destination for connection with a wider public.

The recent UK launch of the Sony reader is an example of technology that could disrupt the print basis of university libraries and is also in stock at Watersones at the centre of the route.

I find points of view around e-books that are similar to those on other topics. Universities claim resources to make a study of something practical, implying there will be some contribution to a project. Then the academic status is reinforced by a distance from practice and forms of "critique". I have found a particular problem with quality ideas that could relate to "learning organisations".

A blog found through Critical Management explains a view that universities now relate to "excellence" while they used to represent "culture", often national. Many academics do not like the "excellence" approach so reverting to culture has an attraction.

It would be helpful to be clear about the purpose of Business Schools. Sometimes research status seems to depend on distance from practice.

There is a problem in getting permission to video and also many people are reluctant to talk on camera. In principle a similar sequence to the move across Lancaster campus could happen on other sites or there could be various edits. Another possibility is to use a virtual set such as Twinity Berlin. The Sony Center would be a technology launch and there is a courtyard in front of Humboldt University. also many cafes and open spaces. Experiments continue on how to add sound.



Meanwhile this is the start of a sort of script or starting point.

I have started to study Twinity Berlin in some detail. More later on how this might help learning. The main problem is still that the people who designed it know Berlin very well. There are no signposts or street names. I have bought a map but still need Google maps as well.



This is a bustop, but where? No timetable I can find.



Sometimes there is a clue, such as the name of the hotel on the side. Maybe this is only for a select few, but more of this would be helpful. with a map it gives some idea where you are.



So if you find the Unter den Linden from the Brandenburg Gate (one of the places you can teleport to) then keep going ahead thill the trees come to an end. Humboldt University is on the left. There is a large square that would be suitable for lots of avatars to meet up for discussion.

Today I returned to Twinity Berlin via Life Bytes opposite the Odeon on sidwell Street, Exeter. I have managed to rent an apartment at Auguste-Hauschner-Straße 4 but am not sure how to find it from the street level. I got to the Brandenburg Gate, turned left but then fell off an edge. So far as I can tell the address is near the Sony Centre and a film museum.Maybe this has yet to be built in Twinity.

Meanwhile I have been posting to Guardian Talk about quality etc. Will I find work as a quality manager online?

Technische Universität BERLIN is on the Times list on universities

Not sure how to find the site on Twinity

The Twinity Berlin is so complicated I have bought an actual map. So Waterstones need not fear about the consequences of online worlds.

I still cannot get it to work at home. But at Life Bytes all is well. They must look after the equipment more carefully. My PC is full of clutter and there is almost no spare disc space. Still, I am finding real photos to cut and paste so exploring Berlin can continue.

The idea at Lancaster campus is to start from a techno base such as InfoLab 21, take the ideas through critique, and try to reach city society. Something similar could happen in most cities or campuses and as my friend Jo says, it could all be edited together subject to budget. So far in Berlin a chatshow walking journey could start at the railway station Alexanderplatz, (see previous post for teleport to Alexander Square). Then to the Sony Centre for inspiration and Humoldt for critique or whatever would be said. Back to catch a train unless an apartment can be afforded.

The avatar this time is Stephen Ingram, previously found in Second Life near the Apple Store in Exeter. He is the most experimental shopping orientated avatar on the staff of Rougemont Global Broadcasting. Others may travel to Twinity Berlin later.




Uncropped versions of these photos are on Flick- Sony Centre Humboldt

Originals from Wikimedia Sony Humboldt

Meanwhile exchange of text could be the way to develop content. I am still collecting backgrounds and photos of chairs for conversations. The TV prog can be created later.



My avatar near the Twinity reception. Could meet you there sometime but need notice so i can get to Life Bytes first.

Another download for the Sony reader before leaving InfoLab 21

see previous post for the script outline

Demos report on a "Video Republic"

The ideas are interesting though limited to Europe. I have put a comment on the blog about OhmyNews in Korea. Broadband came early and citizen journalism is not only about a youth involvement. Don't think so anyway. They invited me to their conference a couple of years ago and I now have a bus pass. Look for video through the menu. I have not studied "Video Republic" yet but there seem to be related themes.

Another attempt at a script outline along the campus of Lancaster University. There may eventually be an edited sequence as a broadcast but so far the online versions just have their own audience. The bits on youTube have had some views but whether they were watched in sequence I don't know.

Recent developments include the Sony Reader and more online worlds such as Twinity. More on this as we reach Alexanderplatz. The Sony Reader is getting closer to the form of a book. So an actual card could exist with several journal articles and downloads of various kinds, to be viewed and commented on along the route.

Start with InfoLab21. Recently from the website, an agenda for a meeting about Spectrum.



photo, Avatar at InfoLab 21

Also worth downloading, a pdf about "The Next Phase of Broadband UK: Action now for long term competitiveness"

And it is possible to create a PDF of the Cluetrain Manifesto or find other material about what the Web may be about.

-----
Another phase in the George Fox Building.
Critique part one
On the Sony Reader, Against Learning by Chris Grey


-------

LancasterManagement ( user name on YouTube )

Permission to video is unlikely, they have their own plan for Youtube presentation. But I think there is a possible benefit in more commenting and linking.

Recent Deming related download explains the pragmatism as philosophy. However most academics who study learning still have little interest in quality.

A PDF has been created from the website now at the Deming Electronic Network

----

Alexander Square / Alexanderplatz

Video may be easier in Second Life or Twinity. Alexanderplatz seems the obvious place to go. Topics to include the effect on a library and bookshop of Web technology. Sony Reader stocked in all UK Waterstones so they may talk to camera or link to someone authorised to comment.



Relevant downloads

The book Everything is Miscellanmeous is not easy to find as an e-book. However there is a blog that could be sent to Feedbooks and also an mp3 of an interview. The Sony Reader has a headphone socket. (Feedbooks can work from any newspaper or blog feed. You may need to register for this option to appear.)

==========

The IAS has a current theme on "competitveness".

UK Education and Everyday Life:
Campaigns for ‘employability’ after the globalised turn1

Dr Phoebe Moore, University of Salford

Topics for discussion to include what a university is about as well as the Web and what to do with it.

-------

Adult / continuing education

Recent publication on Creative Economy could relate to what people learn informally. Most innovation in personal computers / browser extensions happens at home. I have added comment to Guardian Talk. this blog format and future video or text exchange may be just as constructive.

Two PDF files one two

End destination the Spicy Hut and/or cut to city centre. Assumes permission to video at some point. Possibly we left for virtual Berlin at an earlier stage.

This blog may be lacking in balance, so here is something else

I have put another comment on the Guardian Talk pages about quality in education. This week the education section had a comment about the "million+" group of UK universities promoting the case for creative industries. It strikes me as refreshing that they actually wantr to become involved in something. I find the "research" universities are usually distanced by critique conventions.

I plan to look at the Sony Reader and ePub format for similar devices. I don't see why this should not be a project supported by academics who want to reach a wider audience for whatever reason, but including public advocacy and comment. Not much response so far on the Critical Management site on the issues areound Web 2. I think this may be partly a result of the design. Guardian Talk has not got much clutter so maybe there will be more there.

The video on the Millions+ site is not very engaging. Sort of brochureware like a very early website. Much of what is on youTube invites response and has a place for comment. So far a lot of university marketing through online video seems to have missed out this aspect. Still at least the Millions+ take includes web design as something to discuss.

Charles Geschke has been interviewed for Knowledge at Wharton. He concludes-

We'll never succeed unless we continue to open up new vistas.

I honestly believe that our technology and what's happening in the market -- where essentially all visual communication is going to the web -- is the sweetheart point in our whole envelope of products and technologies. Shame on us if we can't figure out a way to take advantage of that shift in the way the world is moving with the distribution of information.

A lot of what are there today -- the limitations of browsers and of the web imaging standards -- are things that we think we have a solution for. As they become the primary delivery mechanism, that value is going to differentiate

.

So I guess the web is going to be the main emphasis next week when more is announced around Creative Suite. My impression is that a lot of people, including those who work in education and most organisations, are still used to documents as in flat pages of text. So most of the new direction will pass them by. I am still interested in the classic Adobe topics of XML and PDF.

Geschke is a case study in leadership. At the Learning Technology discussions in the Uk I find few examples of pressure from senior management as a driver for e-learning. Adobe seems to have been designed around learning and innovation, beyond the original research. The Macromedia concerns seem to be upfront in the current phase. Geschke and Warnock are not often in the public view recently so this interview is worth a look from business students.

Leadership and Learning Technologies

This post may become a story for OhmyNews after the Learning Technologies show in Jan 2009. Comments will link to other posts.

When I first looked at the "Towards Maturity" model I got the impression that pressure from senior management was not a very significant driver for e-learning projects. Now that the Web is better accepted as part of most organisations there could be more evidence of formal policy and other support. I could not arrive at any definite conclusion from conversation at the event in 2008. So maybe other sources will give some clues.

BETT showtime for Silverlight

This is another draft for a future story. Nowadays fewer computer companies attend trade events. Apple was not at drupa for example. Schools seem significant enough that Apple may well be at BETT. Adobe and Microsoft are also probable, a rare chance to compare progress on Silverlight and Flash/ AIR. My impression was that Microsoft had less of a profile for Grava in 2008 than in 2007 but this is likely to change.

Comments welcome. More posts on this later.

Byron, is the panic over?

There was a lot more to the Byron Review than was reported in most UK media. It included material that could be argued to leave open the possibility that the Web offers benefits for education. At least some of the research could be followed up during the rest of 2008.

From the conclusion section, Usha Goswami (PDF)

Of course, humans can use language (“inner speech”) and cognitive
self-regulation to inhibit the impact of learning that is not useful, and to quarantine what is imaginary from what is real. As younger children tend to have poorer language skills and poorer quarantining abilities, learning from new media could be speculated to have stronger effects on younger children.
Alternatively, as older children are more responsive to the peer group and
have the skills required to seek out certain kinds of input from new media, it could be speculated that new media that is endorsed by the peer group will have stronger effects during the adolescent years. Hormonal and other brainrelated changes during adolescence make this a time when all children question their identities and their “autobiographical selves”. New media can offer learning experiences relevant to resolving some of these questions, just like any other form of experience. A priori, new media do not seem likely to be less influential as a source of information, however, there is no relevant research that I am aware of..

UK bandwidth, draft damage check for BETT

This post is the start of a draft story for Ohmynews around Jan 2009. There really is a policy within UK education to make the most of broadband. However it is not going to work in my honest opinion because there is not much of a policy from the bit that used to be the DTI and is now harder to make out than what used to be education.

Slightly off topic I think publishing as in text and fairly small graphics is still an option for the UK. Video etc, both production and distribution, depends on somewhere with lots of fibre.

Back on topic, this post will be followed by others, links in comments.

I have added a comment to the Critical Management site. I had almost given up on it but have been told there will be an update sometime soon that will reflect the content from the Web 2 meeting.

My comment

publishing technology
new
Submitted by willpollard on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 09:37.

oh dear, all the formatting seems to have vanished, should use full stops and capital letters. So far I have also found that downloading documents is a bit hit and miss. some don't work as i find it. What is XML, bibTEX, tabbed? Is this explained anywhere? Have you looked at Scribd? Simply put, they take care of all the hosting for you. How their business model works is a mystery. Lots of networking and comment possible as well. Not much on critique as yet but easy enough to load stuff up. Also, EPUB is worth a look as a format. Sony Reader will support this in the UK from next month. Not sure how to create EPUB but it looks possible. blog http://learn9log.blogspot.com

My take is that this is a quality issue. There is content on the site, a system to publish. It could work better, so how could it change?

Scribd still seems to be working well. distribution of documents with comments and networking etc. I have just joined two MBA groups where people have linked to my docs.

however I can't find much on Critical Management. Zaidlearn writes about how to teach critical thinking, or thinking creatively, and one remark is that some other way of describing it could be useful. "critical" can be a block.

Still, maybe more critical papers will turn up on Scribd and establish more of a base.

I don't think there is much on the web yet following the criticalmanagement.org worshop on Web 2 at the Academy of Management. Tried Technorati and Google blogsearch. Nothing yet I can find. Meanwhile the editors of OhmyNews have accepted most of my story about Sidmouth Folk Week and the term "blended networking", combining online and normal space. I guess there will be more content on the criticalmanagement site at some point as combining events and online is part of Web 2 as far as I understand it.

I have also done a blog about folk for wifiExeter that works ok as a YouTube set of links around an actual place. I have been trying to do this with central Exeter as retail and Lancaster campus as academic. The Sidmouth one works better as the content is just music. The others need statements of opinion or interviews.

Content I have found from the criticalmanagement site includes a thesis from Todd Bridgeman about UK Research Led Business Schools. I have not read all of it but there is some interesting material here. My impression is that the articulations of a business school can coexist as they are projected for different audiences. "Vocational / professional school" and "Commercial enterprise" for potential students and funding sources ; "Academic department" for other academics. Critique is intended mostly for other academics apparently, the public role still faces issues around access and finding language that can be widely understood. Hey, this is just a blog. Could be wrong here and comment is welcome.

Maybe something will turn up on YouTube. Searching on "Lancaster University" the first result from Lancaster Management is about employment and careers. Nothing wrong with that but I hope to find somewhere a statement of a critique point of view about quality so I could add a comment and disagree. Maybe such content would be regarded as a potential publication so too valuable to put on YouTube. My guess is this may change soon for all sorts of academic output.



Meanwhile I will probably do more with text. Video is more difficult than first appears.

Can't find anything about the Critical Management take on Web 2. Maybe something will turn up later but it seems to me that this is one topic that should not wait on a printed journal timescale.

Last week was about Sidmouth Folk but now I am starting to think about the autumn and getting sorted. Still time for summer mode if the rain stops.



New attempt at a "hello spiders" diagram. Not based on any stats at all. Just my take at the moment. My hope is that the Sony Reader will turn out to be an "event" and move on from a stuck situation. "Standardisation" and "co-operation" are both processes but the dynamics are yet to be expanded in later slides. Original was in Google Docs but there is nothing more there yet.

I have put a comment on the Critical Management site about their workshop on Web 2. I have found that they rarely look at quality ideas as having much to offer. Human Resource Management is also critiqued but is part of the scope. So as a website changes, what technique is used? Or if it just changes anyway, can theory be considered later?

I have been catching up on Critical Management Studies and found this about a workshop next month-

Web 2.0 is associated with technology such as blogs, wikis and podcasts and with environments such as You Tube, Myspace and Facebook. Our PDW would be an interactive workshop where we use these technologies to explore our experiences, insights and ideas of teaching in the age of Web 2.0. The implications of Web 2.0, which include a radical decentralization of knowledge and rich user experiences via interactive forms of participation, present opportunities and threats for the way we teach. In the workshop, delegates will bring their laptops to a room with wireless internet access. Using the interactive space of the critical management studies portal www.criticalmanagement.org, we will share ideas and debate and discuss the relevance and importance of Web 2.0 to management educators. After a brief introduction by presenters describing our experiences of Web 2.0, the bulk of the workshop will involve developing on-line content around the subject of teaching in the age of Web 2.0. This might include a contribution to an on-line discussion, creation of a blog entry etc.

This is for a conference organised by the Academy of Management at the Anaheim Hilton.

Previously I have found that Critical Management is more or less hostile to ideas about quality. See 'Making Quality Critical' for example. Hugh Wilmott is one of the people involved in this workshop so I will try to find out online if it could be related to a quality approach in any way. My opinion is that looking at a website as a process can be useful. I don't see why quality and learning should be distinct disciplines for academics. In practice there is an overlap, as I find it.

Maybe this workshop will reveal what could follow from Foucault studies by way of web design. I am still trying to think about "heterochronies" following web links from Networked Learning, see previous blog post.

It turns out that data security and the knowledge economy are linked. At least this seems clear from the IWR Blog. Some large companies think that looking after data is important and should be reported through some sort of metric on the balance sheet.

The Institute for Advanced Studies at Lancaster keeps changing the subject for research but there are enough connections to follow.

Reading the Guardian I found a report from the Work Foundation on UK cities, explained in relation to the knowledge economy. Thinking back to the meetings about leadership I am even more convinced that there is a case that the knowledge economy already exists and that leadership is adjusting to this. There can still be critique of the associated rhetoric but there also seems to be a reality around something that has happened. Same sort of thing with "safety", at least as far as the Web is concerned. Info security is an issue.

YouTube has other videos following the "I am an American" theme. So far the main point for me from the Safety conference is that the Web is accepted as part of what else happens for academics. One evening meal was at Info 21, the technobabble centre of the campus. Not that there cannot be a critique of this sort of thing but it is also true that something has already happened.

Now on holiday so updates next week. The official blog has more news.

Found this through Google blogsearch - Design with Intent by Dan Lockton. So there could well be more links as the conference continues.

He writes

I’m not sure what my position on the idea of ‘designing safe living’ is, really - whether that’s the right question to ask, or whether ‘we’ should be trying to protect ‘them’, whoever they are. But it strikes me that any behaviour, accidental or deliberate, however it’s classified, can be treated/defined as an ‘error’ by someone, and design can be used to respond accordingly, whether viewed through an explicit mistake-proofing lens or simply designing choice architecture to suggest the ‘right’ actions over the ‘wrong’ ones.

It also seems to that soemeone could describe any words as "discourse" so I hope to find out more about this aspect as well.

Mostly borrowed slides for context

Latest version of paper on Scribd

More slides

ISO 27000 and PDCA

direct link

On Scribd



Screenshots from Swickis, showing connections

direct link

embed

I am still using the words "hype" and "counter-hype" but hope to understand "discourse" better before too long. The publicity around the Byron Review in March this year seemed to me to be largely aimed at people who were already disturbed by the apparent dangers of the Web, in particular social networking. One aspect was the scale of the use by young people, almost everyone as it appears. Part of the threat is that parents do not understand the technology being used. Perhaps this was a final round of concern before the Web is accepted as normal. With VHS it took a BBC Shakespeare collection to finalise things. Maybe the next BETT will be a suitable occasion. The Byron Review includes a lot of balanced material on the educational potential of social networks. This was mostly ignored by newspapers at the time of publication.

Doing a Google News search I find there was an Action Plan published recently but I don't remember any publicity for this in June. The only newspaper link I can find is to a Guardian games blog. I guess this means the stream of panic is coming to an end.

Quality and learning again.

This could be way off topic for the Safety conference but I think it is still about assurance. I am still trying to make a connection to look at learning as an aspect of a quality system. Looking back at "The Learning Company" McGraw Hill 1991, I find

The history of management is littered with the remains of yesterday's right answers - scientific management......Quality Circles, the search for excellence and so on. So where are they now and what did we learn from these experiments?

My information is that Quality Circles have continued in Asia and there has not been a break. Recently I have had another look at PDCA as described by Ishikawa and the quality circles are a large part of the context. The litter is only in the UK and some other places. So the experience could have been seen as more positive as a contribution to the Learning Company. I wrote a story for OhmyNews in 2005.

Recently Steve Fleetwood has written "A Note on HRM and Performance" arguing against trying to make such a link. What if there was a scope that included quality? There has to be learning for quality to be assured and HRM contributes to this. Quality is about outputs so is easier to relate to performance.

Possibly the fundamental point being made is against any performance judgement at all. Universities should exist to critique society so this is their only relevance.

Yet for some reason it is the HR department that is well represented in learning studies. QA is not part of the scene. Why is this?

Trying out Google presentations with another version of the video script. Seems to work ok. Now loaded to Adobe Share as a PDF. This was quick at Life Bytes where the bandwidth is better anyway than what I have at home. The Google PDF created online is not Flash or Shockwave. It seems more familiar somehow. Maybe i am just not used to the new ways of Acrobat 9. The YouTube link works ok in another window. A PDF that includes video may take some time to load. Anyway, back on topic

As an Acrobat.com share- direct link

embed below



as a Google presentation

direct link

Now getting the hang of the Google presentations.

So the rest of the slides links here and the embed should be below. The Extreme Green Guerillas is an example from the documentation workshop where the aims were clear and accepted. From the blog it seems still likely that "post-9/11 paranoia" will be a major theme so claims about danger could be seen as dangerous in themselves. So getting much interest in document control could be challenging. Especially fairly early on a Saturday.

The slides for the paper are taken from other sources and have ended up in a Google doc presentation style. This is the first one I have tried so may need revision. I think this is a direct link. These slides are just about PCDA/PCSA. More later on establishing a context.

I think this will embed a view-

I can't find any news about the summer school on Discourse Analysis that has just ended, but there is some info about a conference coming up soon. The "Book of Abstracts" is on Scribd for the 2008 conference on "Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines". It offers some idea what they are talking about. Maybe more will turn up in blogs.

Also not easy to find something online about Learning Organisations as presented at Lancaster. The first Google result on "Burgoyne learning organisation" is from the USA and there is not much on the UK. Maybe there could be more free content somewhere to assist visibility?

I have done an A4 sheet for the safety conference. It will do as a handout for people who don't make the actual occasion. Now loaded to Scribd.

Also I have updated the film script on the "Centre for Performativity Studies".

The film is set during a conference introducing the Centre for Performativity Studies. In the opening scene the police turn up suddenly and the organisers are arrested. It turns out that all the credit cards used to book for the event have had unauthorised charges and £137,000 has gone through an identified account, in the name of one of the organisers. A claim about "identity theft" through a wifi network is made but there is disputed evidence. Apparently there was a lunch visit to Info 21 though regulations prohibited work on accounts information outside the office. The police are reluctant to accept that the crime could only have involved outsiders as the description of security policy is unlike what they would expect.

Sergeant "From what we are told, there just is no system at all"
Inspector "Still could be true though"

On day three the Alumni Association send a rep who has found a source to repay the £137,000 and the police announce that there would be no benefit from further enquiries. An official claims that nothing like this will ever happen again but the audience is left to wonder.

This is in a Google doc. Let me know if you would like to edit. The aim is to try to get attention for something as well as language.

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.