The penny’s just dropped, I’m not going to be able to make it to Online Information 2006. Oh well, next year perhaps.
Monthly Archives: October 2006
J-curve of self-empowerment
Interesting article in the Health Service Journal analysing the change in the NHS in terms of the so-called j-curve. That the NHS is having to pass through the instability phase to get to a fitter state to meet future needs. Kind of similar to what happens with self-empowerment, a neat sounding phrase which disguises the instability you have to go through – anything else just ain’t real.
New internal communciation benchmark data
This internal communciation benchmark data report from Melcrum looks of interest, especially for me having just today launched a website in China – medicexchange:
“The number of internal communicators reporting staff increases in the last year varied across all regions, with the smallest percentage increase being 29% (Rest of World). However, it was respondents in Asia Pacific who reported the highest rate of growth, with 43% of departments reporting an increase in headcount.”
Apparently based on a survey of over 1,100 professional communicators, the report presents detailed information on budgets, salaries, structures and trends in internal communication. The data is also broken down so that you can benchmark with other functions in your industry and region.
PS: The report’s called ‘The Pulse’.
Forgotten?
I was going to blog something today but I forgot – then remembered mid-way through writing – the coincidence that I’m working for a guy who comes from Gandhi’s home town in India. Dr Martin Luther King would have appreciated that one as a student of Gandhi. Personally, anyone who can turf out the Brits without a bloody revolution has my undying admiration! (And I studied revolution at Cambridge).
Why History Matters
The first question on the National Trust blog day form, is ‘Why History Matters To You’? Kind of a difficult question, which I like. So let me try an answer that in my own style.
Firstly, history gives a sense that whatever people are going nuts about now is probably something people have gone nuts about some other time and place.
Secondly, that each age has a different view of what makes history.
Thirdly, people get worked up about history. Currently in the graveyard of St Margaret’s Church in Barking (where Captain and Elizabeth Cook were married incidentally) someone has inked in the fading words of an 18th century grave. The church has responded with hanging a notice over the grave to say essentially that this is a serious matter which has been referred back to the Bishop of Chelmsford.
Ever refused a beer?
Ever refused a beer at a restaurant? Can’t say it happens very often to me, but it happened tonight at the very nice looking Restaurant Bar & Grill on City Square in Leeds. I ordered the first beer, a Peroni in sympathy with Chelsea’s match experience on the weekend. And was happily chomping through my risotto of smoked haddock and soft poached egg when the nice waitress asked if I wanted a second beer. I gracefully declined, feeling I was too tired to appreciate it – only for a second waitress to turn up straight after with the beer all innocent and sweet asking if I wanted a fresh glass. Well, tired though I was the least charming thing to have done was to nerdily point out I didn’t order a 2nd beer. So I took the bottle, declined the fresh glass, and put it down. I then finished my food, blew out the tabletop candle and paid up. Leaving the beer untouched. A note to the restaurant management – I didn’t want a second beer, comprendo?!
Hanging on the wall of the restaurant are some very nice b&w photos including one of my hero David Niven.
No thanks, thank you
Missing the boat
Apparently Harold Pinter’s performing at the Royal Court Upstairs, so I rang the box office, and they’re all sold out. Always nice to save money! I’ve had the chance to hang out in the nobel prize winning author’s kitchen so that will have to do for now, from where I cheekily rang my mother to say hi from the kitchen. I reminded her about it a while back - but for her the status of this is way below her having to take me for three walks a day when I was knee high to a grasshopper..
What I did manage to see was a film adaptation of an Alan Bennett play, ‘The History Boys’. Very funny to see all that “we must get into Oxbridge” stuff, back in the 1980s. It’s the closest film I have ever seen which has an autobiographical air about it I guess. Wonder if my former college mate Simon Hall got to see it? Which reminds me, talking about Christ’s, sad to hear the current master Professor Malcolm Bowie has cancer of the bone marrow and is having to resign.
Shift logs and beamtests
I like it when a good coincidence comes together. Peeforming a Google search for shift logs I came across a Confluence-based example of shift log design, for the Stanford Beam test. Funny, as I spoke to the guys at the Diamond synchrotron, the largest UK-funded scientific facility to be built for over 30 years, not so long ago. Don’t suppose they’ll be using any social software for a while though from what I gathered from their approach, but you never know.
Marijuana Forests
“Taleban fighters using giant Afghan marijuana forests for cover are proving a tough foe to smoke out, the head of Canada’s armed forces has revealed.”
Marijuana forests? Cover for Taliban? Don’t you just hate how reality is soo strange? One day the head of the UK armed forces is complaining about Iraq, then the Canadians go one better and complain about marijuana. I think someone’s pulling our collective leg here..
National blogging day’s coming
Yes, working away in the British Library for my sins on a Saturday. I didn’t read the do’s and don’ts properly and was told off for using a pen! Though luckily these days you can use headphones, so enjoying a bit of music to keep me smiling while I’m working on the notes.
Talked to Diane earlier (today’s her 66th birthday) and apparently the National Trust are planning to have some kind of national blogging day. And it’s taking place on the 17th October, I kid you not. Who thinks up these things – not me..I mean it’s one way to capture a slice of history, but won’t making it an official ‘day’ influence the material? (Just being picky, actually sounds great fun.)
“We want as many people as possible to record a ‘blog’ diary of this one day which will eventually be stored by the British Library as a permanent historical record of our national life.” Ah, back to the British Library again.