June 2006 Archives

Am in the midst of writing about 4 papers at the moment and am struggling to represent the distinction between economic and humanistic evaluation techniques applied to the process of collaboration. Does the following paragraph make sense to everyone out there?

"If ‘value’ can be considered as the difference (in a mathematical sense) between costs and benefits, and should be distinguished from ‘utility’ as an indicator of the capacity of a system or network in facilitating productive connections, then consideration of the significance and overall worth of collaboration should be expressed by means of inductive reasoning; analysis of costs of collaboration (absolute as well as historical, opportunity and comparative advantage) should be interpreted in light of alignment with organisational objectives and the capacity of the technologies to fulfil specific functions required by the business. Once the worth of collaboration has been ascertained, it is simpler to determine incentives for using collaborative technologies and motivations for participation in a technology-mediated collaborative network."

Congratulate me. I have just experienced 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

(Yes, this is extremely unusual for me.)

Because of my work schedule I was unable to watch the game... and it ended up being the game that put us out of the contest :-( But I wanted to say here that I'm proud of my country's team in this campaign, and glad that the sport of soccer has enjoyed a huge revival, after years of being (at best) the fourth football code of the country, behind Aussie rules, rugby league and rugby union. Soccer is indeed, a beautiful game, and the remaining matches of the series will hopefully prove that.

My best to our boys. We still love you, fellas.

It has been very accurately pointed out by several of my readers that my blog is sorely missing appropriate references to the FIFA World Cup which I assure you, I have been watching avidly these past two weeks. Indeed the day after the Brazil game I suffered from complete melt down at work, after only getting about 2 hours of sleep (where "meltdown" involves "inability to put two words together", and a fairly constant stream of yawns from around 12-3pm where I finally gave up and went home).

But in the interest of correcting this egregious error, I would like to offer the following for tonight's game:

GO SOCCEROOS! GO YOU GOOD THING!

:)

The Nando Fix. Funniest advertisement I've seen in a LONG time. For those who haven't seen it, imagine an advert for nicorette patches, and instead of a nicotine cravings, the victims are suffering from lack of peri peri sauce. The situations are increasingly absurd, and the solution to the problem is described at the end of the advertisement as "not available now, at any Nando's outlet".

Congrats, Nandos. Funny stuff :)

I think I need to go do another ballet class. Every now and then my body just aches to be lost to the lyricism and bittersweet pang of my old career aspiration, and something deep inside me reaches back to the mists of my past and sends me recurrent dreams of my old dancing days. For the past few nights I've woken up cold, the bed covers strewn in every direction, clearly the result of tossing and turning as my physical body responds to vivid images of stages and steps, adage and allegro. And each time I wake I'm weary with the frustration occasioned by my steadily ossifying frame.

I just need to find a class that's going to be challenging enough for a relatively advanced classical ballet dancer, but simple enough so that I won't injure myself. Oh and I need to find the time to actually attend. Hmm. This last may be the most difficult challenge of all.....

Again another long period with no blogging. What's come over me? I'm afraid it's just work, folks!

I did want to remind people though, that the BrisScience event is on again tonight. Free entry, free drink and Terry Dartnell will be speaking on the rise of the cyborg, so it looks like being an entertaining event. It's been profiled on ABC's Articulate site, too, so feel free to read up on the lecture if you're not a local!

Thanks also to Christine for a fab day at the LATT Children's theatre show, the Shadow Thief, at QPAC's Out of the Box childrens theatre festival. Was lovely to catch up with you hon!

Links of interest in the past week include:
- O'Reilly radar discussion about whether Flickr would give out the flickr API key as a means of exporting content to a competitor service
- Analysis taken in to account in preparation of the European Parliament's Software Patent Directive Project (Thanks Pete, Slashdot!)
- TechCrunch assessment of Yahoo Hack Day (last Friday)
- Interesting article in the Guardian last Thursday on Net Neutrality
- I've been hitting the trend watching sites lately, trying to get across the recent big issues as a means of strategically planning and focusing market research, so Sense WorldWide, The Future Laboratory and Trendwatching.com have all been my regular reading in the last week (Thanks Pat!)
- In that vein, Google Analytics is getting awfully sophisticated as a advertising trend watching tool
- The EFF has just released a legal guide for bloggers
- In spite of the fact that Bill Gates is leaving his technology directorship role and Robert Scoble has left Microsoft as a corporate blogger, I think it may still be too early to use the rats leaving a sinking ship analogy.

There's a whole heap more, but I need to get back to the daily grind. And thank you to all those who have sent healing vibes for my arthritis discomfort these past several weeks. It's been a slwo road to recovery but I'm getting there. *hugs to you all!*

It's been more than a week since I updated this blog and I am sorely sorry. However, I assure you all my time has not been misspent. In the past week I have:
- picked up a new consultancy project
- agreed to be interviewed for a business podcast
- accepted another book chapter invitation
- begun writing said chapter
- framed two other papers for separate conferences
- advised on the development of a new public interest festival
- participated at a federal government Digital Content action forum
- accepted an invitation to participate in a training forum arising from the Digital Content forum
- accepted another speaking gig
- unhappily had to refuse 3 other speaking gig invitations
- accepted an invitation to join a new research group
- presented strategic plans on research projects
- taught
- marked digital assignments, uploaded assignments, then realised my block upload was completely useless as I had to release each file individually
- attended an Arabian nights party in a harem costume (thanks to Shan for a fabulous night!)
- attended a housewarming (thanks to Axel and Ann for having me and a relaxing afternoon!)
- caught up with, and had an old friend who is now based in London stay for a couple of nights (great to see you again Robin!)
- cleaned house
- continued to recover from a still rather painful bout of arthritis, now localised around my left knee and right hip.

Oh and I managed to catch up with a few other people, including my wonderful muse.

So it's been busy. Will blog more interesting stuff later tonight after dinner with former student and dear ballet friend, Christine, who is in town, performing with the cast of the South Korea-based LATT Children's Theatre in The Shadow Thief. It's also Christine's birthday today, so Happy Birthday sweetheart!!!

Thanks to Pete and Slashdot for the link to the recent Bryan Alexander article, 'Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning'. Alexander contends that the social software applications implicit in Web 2.0 are an opportunity for augmented teaching and learning opportunities. Rather than focussing on a single technology such as blogging or wiki, Alexander notes that it is the collective concepts of Web 2.0 that change the way we make, share and consume digital documents. The emergence of collaborative information discovery through blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, and negotiated discussion (social writing) are the key value propositions for educators. Whilst this article is focused on teaching and learning, the same value propositions of Web 2.0 applications apply to business and industrial contexts; it is the collective development and ongoing filtration systems that both increase effectiveness of business activities and sustain an innovation culture. Additionally, the tracking systems embedded in the architecture create a natural corporate governance framework, enhancing business transparency.

And just quickly there's also a series of rather interesting blogging issues that have turned up recently. See my Blog on Blogging for details.

One of the greatest aspects of blogs is that you have an instant archive of your writings and theory development for later access. Thus when I checked my search engine and couldn't find my previous writing on value and utility, I panicked. Then I realised that instead of actually posting these thoughts, I had emailed them. Relief! I could access them. But the problem with email is that it is highly unrelaible as a sustainable source of information. Therefore, I have decided to copy a recent conversation I had on the distinction between value and utility in networked environments as a means of ensuring I do not lose these thought processes again.

Feel free to add your thoughts to the discussion in the extended entry; my own have been further clarified since creating this post about a month ago, but I'd appreciate any input from interested parties!