In Praise of Scribd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything is miscellaneous Weinberger

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inlac

ASQ Windsor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is ISO 9000 worth another look?

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business learning ISO9000

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

Miscpdf

View more presentations from will789.

The second slideshow follows the paper pretty much

Look9 Screen

View more presentations from will789.

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

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

China Leads Continued Growth in ISO 9000

Quality Certification Declines in Mature Countries

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

I have loaded the flier PDF to Scribd.

Leadership for Sustainability MA at Lancaster

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work leadership sustainab

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

However Google Video finds probably the video intended.



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

Later, more on learning organisations and ISO standards.

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

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



Couple of short videos

more vanishing

finding Humboldt

This is the last weekend for LifeBytes, web resource in Exeter. There are places to eat that also have web access but it seems the era of the dedicated web retailer is coming to an end. Maybe it means that mobile devices are now good enough.

For me the downside includes probably not visiting Twinity for a while. At home my PC is full of junk and Twinity fails to install. Also the bandwidth is not that good. At LifeBytes they delete almost everything quite often and a new download of Twinity usually works ok.

So here are some stills with the essential point for the moment. I may have time to save some more in the next few days. If it was a video the plot outline would be to start with some tech vision in the Sony Centre



Then teleport to Brandenburger Tor, then follow Unter den Linden to the square near entrance to Humboldt. Discussion around the learning claims of the technology. Whatever energy survives spreads to cafes and apartments at the end of the day.







Basic structure of conversation much the same in other locations. The characters from Second Life are gradually getting spaces on Twinity.

Video from the spaces-

Kings Cross

Morecombe

Earl's Court

The various blogs could fit together better. I am trying to do another version of "Hello Spiders" and the "The Going of the Book" as if there is some sequence of events. The theory comes mostly from attempts to study at Lancaster. The problem is how to pass go. I still get the impression that "quality" is not part of the Management Learning scope. Maybe it is an HR thing as if operations are something else. Not sure at all. Maybe "critique" has to be part of the academic mix and quality is an easy target. They have to be polite about HR some of the time. Anyway I may be wrong in my memory and this impression could be tested again.

The current situation is that ePUB is doing well. I got into this looking at the print tradition and how it could morph. Today it is announced that the Google scan archive will be in ePUB format for the Sony Reader. When will Chris Argyris turn up? Some of his stuff was written a long time ago. Anyway back on topic, this is consumer electronics and the global cloud. Whether or not the ePUB design intention meets the criteria for conditions for dialogue, it exists and is widely available. It may be easier to look back on how learning has happened within a quality system. That is if you look at the history so far on e-books as a series of problems in production and customer objections. Starting out to ask academics who know about management learning to comment on a quality related design would have been more of a problem.

I still think ISO 9000 is a part of the quality scene and should be considered. In the UK the number of certificates continues to decline but on the planet, growth continues. So the explanation that people in the UK are now more sophisticated and do not need to bother may be only partial. It could be part of a decline in manufacturing or management.

So here are a couple of statements that could be checked out during study and also help to pass go.

1a ISO 9000 can be part of an effective quality system

1b Learning is part of what happens while people engage with ideas about quality

On the drupa2008 and IPEX2002 blogs I am obviously out of time sequence. Issues just keep repeating. The Job Definition Format is getting less attention over time. "Web-to-Print" turns up more often in Printweek. So JDF and XML is in the background. Meanwhile ePUB offers an XML friendly route from author to reader fairly quickly so XML will continue as a publishing topic. The discussion around PDF and portable job tickets is urgent or else an explanation of why the hard copy aspect of publishing may decline as a proportion. I still find Adobe confusing in their insistence of Flash as a direction but this could be because they do not have confidence in the classic Adobe products to offer much margin.

2. The project around Postscript and PDF has reached a stage when the technology is widely understood and available. Because of standardisation and a range of current suppliers, developers look at other areas for innovation opportunities.

Jeff Jarvis on Buzzmachine is moving on ahead. He seems to assume that print is on the way out, though I think it will continue for some time.

Then he links to Hacking Education. This is still a bit sketchy at the moment.

Adult Education

Over the weekend I realised that e-books are making progress. there is enough momentum for a definite culture around them. What I wrote in blogs for IPEX and drupa is still making sense so I am starting to think about the ways this could influence approaches to knowlwdge and content. The Kindle format is carefully controlled and Amazon will try to keep pricing close to print books as requested by publishers. The ePUB format is based on open standards and seems better suited to open content. Adobe can arrange Digital Rights Management but anything on the web could be moved to XHTML fairly readily and the method for creating ePUB is better understood over time. InfoGrid Pacific have a route from Open Office though the business model is a bit vague at the moment. They are open to offers as to how they could be paid.

Previously I thought about knowledge as "official" and "grassroots" as in "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger. So the collective view from people on the web is one sort of knowledge, the book suggested by a librarian is another. There are modes of knowledge production described by Gibbons and others. Some conferences distinguish academics and practitioners. I don't fully understand the "critique" theory, but part of the reason Chris Grey is "Against Learning" seems to be the positioning of official education.

There may be a new meaning for "adult education" around knowledge available through Amazon and/or as ePUB. Not sure how this will work out. The academic journals are now mostly digital but this has made public access more difficult. Texts appear online as drafts or leaks for humanities and social science but this is still in flux, like much else.

Sorting out photos from Learning Technologies. Story for OhmyNews should be ready over the weekend.

Found this link from Google blogsearch. Seems that "informal learning" is part of the main conference.

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

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

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.


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

"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.