october 2008

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Well support any of the guys or gals who are participating really. But @Warlach is going that extra mile and will do a photo essay of his mo (alleged to be an Adolf you-know-who style one) with added LOLness.Details of the photo essay will be shared soon ...Donations can be made hereBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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more animalsBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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Below is an excerpt from a piece by Suzanne Tindal over at ZDNet where an Optus claims that their recent 3G outages are normal.  Aide-mémoire

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"First law of Bad Management: If something isn't working, do more of it." -- Tom DeMarcoBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." -- Anne LamottBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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"The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting schedules is forgotten." -- Kathleen Byle, Sandia National LaboratoriesBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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"Action should culminate in wisdom." -- Bhagavad GitaBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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Just wanted to let people know about the 6th International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2008) which will be held in Sydney Australia 1-5 December 2008. This has been described as the "top-tier academic conference in the area of service-oriented computing, an area of ICT focused on enabling that different businesses can collaborate and achieve common business goals despite the fact that their software systems might be distributed over the Internet, run on different platforms, and implemented in different programming languages".ICSOC 2008 in Sydney offers a diverse program with presentations of peer-reviewed papers, 4 keynotes from leading researchers and industry experts, demo sessions, 5 workshops, a PhD student symposium, and several tutorials by world-renowned experts. This is a great opportunity to learn about the recent advances in service oriented computing and the benefits that they offer to businesses.  It's also a good excuse to come to Sydney, which is pretty nice this time of year.You can still get 'early bird' registration rates until 31 October 2008, and there's more info about the conference at http://www.icsoc.org/. By Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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Social computing has exploded and is changing the world we knew in a number of ways that impact on education. But social computing is not so much changing the world as it is changing student’s expectations of what kind of technology they should use in their everyday life and how they should interact with other people using that technology. This is a revolution akin to the telegraph and radio in its capacity to change the world we live in. For our learners technology is just part of the furniture for them, they are truly digital natives who have different beliefs and expectations.A great example of this was at a friend’s place recently and her 3 year old brought over the TV remote and said it was broken. We finally worked out that she thought it was broken because she was unable to interact with the TV in the same way is with the PC.This change gives rise to a number of interesting questions about learning and by implication about teaching.Mark Pesce said recently that we are now connected, not by 6 degrees of separation, but by as little as one. Hyperconnectivity is being experienced by participants in the social media and social networked worlds.Realtime, all the time, people are connected with their social networks and via mobile devices (not just phones anymore). This is not just a western phenomenon, as Mark has mentioned, even fishermen in remote villages are using mobile phones to help them to run their businesses better.Thus there is a generation gap, but it is not based on age any more. Instead it is based on our relationship with technology. This gap is in relation to technology use and expectations. We have on the one side people like some of my friends who have only recently become comfortable with using email, and who only the use their mobile phones to make phone calls and who can’t imagine why you’d do anything else with a mobile phone. These people watch TV when the shows are broadcast and would probably be surprised and/or uninterested to hear of a different way. On the other side we have people I tend to call the digital folk – they use a plethora of digital devices, PCs, iPods, mobile devices, etc. They use these devices to do their work and to manage their social lives. One group is still living in the traditional world and the other inhabits a highly connected digitally connected world.The interesting thing about all this social media is that users are starting to mix and match – consume it on their own terms. The digital folk, and this includes many of our young people, are mixing and matching platforms and devices to form a web of connections. They are interconnecting their activities on different media and platforms, for example, Facebook takes Twitter feeds which feed into SMS and are sent to mobile devices. And now ...

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In fact, I've always been uncomfortable with the term Aide-mémoire

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"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." -- C. G. Jung, Psychological ReflectionsBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." -- Sir Winston ChurchillBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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Anyone who has some time to spare on 27 Oct should check out this seminar by an eminent woman in engineering Aide-mémoire

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The indefatigable Nick Holmes a Court over at Shifted Pixels has updated his Australia's Top 50 Twitter Influencers (aka The Twitterati Top 50)Using the power of web 2.0 goodness his list now updates automatically and can be embedded - guaranteed to keep people tweeting madly! I notice that it has also upgraded to the top 100 twitterers, follow them at your peril ... By Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do." -- Helen KellerBy Carruthers via Aide-mémoire

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Let me preface these remarks with some facts - I get banks and what they do and believe we are pretty lucky in Australia with our banking system; I've even worked for several banks; I don't hate banks (except in that normal way when there is some administrative stuff-up with one of my accounts).I feel sorry for the brave folks at NAB who tried to get a conservative bank to experiment with social media.  But my advice to them would have been along the lines of Sir Humphrey Appleby in saying "... yes Minister, a VERY courageous decision" for a number of reasons.This adventure had the potential to be train wreck from the start.  We are talking about the kind of organisation that does not dialogue with any stakeholders at all in the consumer space. NAB is not different to any of the other Australian banks in this orientation.  It is not even a bad thing in itself.  But it is problematic when embarking upon a social media campaign.One of the ground rules of social media is authentic dialogue and NAB did not appear to understand this.  Also instead of engaging in dialogue with the bank staff got a bit defensive and there was the whole sockpuppet issue. Moderation of user generated content is one thing but rejection of negative comments is another that does not fit well into the social media milieu.NAB staff really should have understood the social compact they were entering into by setting up My Future Bank. They said: "What is the bank of the future? What will it look like? How will it work? How will it meet your needs? Imagine your ideas realized. That’s the plan of the My Future Bank project.We need your help. Please share with us and our visitors what frustrates you about your bank, and more importantly, what you would do differently to improve your banking experience.Regardless of the issue:  rates, fees & charges, customer service, transparency & integrity or touch points (e.g. ATMs, branches, phone or internet banking), we want to hear from you!"And then they got upset when people told them answers to those questions, or questioned the way that NAB was interacting online.  Then NAB's final response via Corporate Affairs spokesperson Luisa Ford was to just pull the site down with the comment that:“It was an experiment to gather data, and we’ve gathered all the data we need,” said Ford. “It was always scheduled to run for a few weeks.”Well that was an experiment that worked! It got a whole lot of negative press; a lot of negative blog, social media and social network chatter; and made people feel like an opportunity for genuine dialogue with a key consumer institution was lost.  If NAB had been able to pull this off it would have differentiated them significantly for web savvy consumers.The sad thing is that if the well meaning NAB folk had understood ideas like those in Who are you? And why should I trust you? they might have known that dialogue ...