Steve Hooker: bis

Foaf groups and Governmental quangos

Tue, 29 Jul 2003 11:35:00 GMT

Perhaps this may help me understand the power relationships in UK Governmental quangos.

Bill Kearney: "Here I'm making several statements. I'm saying that the 'wkearney99' node is a member of this group. I'm then going on to say that the wkearney99 node is known to the group via an SHA1 hash of it's e-mail address and that it has a FOAF file of it's own at the seeAlso URL. It's also saying the group has it's own URL. This helps if something else using the group wants to confirm things about the group"

Dan Brickley: "...We could come up with properties like 'chair' that relate groups to people"

I'm trying to understand the relationships and positions of all the people involved in the West Midlands (UK) Regional Innovation Strategy. There's two A4 pages in the back of the report full of names and contact details. They should mean something to me, but don't, and as I trawl through more brochures like this, I'm going to see both repeated and new names, new organisatons, new titles for the same people.

Wouldn't it be lovely for me to be able to study the relationships, as if in a organisational chart, or family tree, one that uses my icons, colours etc., Which mixes in this group of quango boffins with this board of civil servants and so on. Then I could see who were likely to be the people I need to approach, possibly.

For sure, these people aren't going to be interested in doing this for themselves, not any time soon, at least. I suppose if I had the time I could make the FOAF files myself. But, alas the app that would make the visual sense for me is not yet written.

I can see the day when these quangos HAVE to produce their FOAF files, so that we, the ordinary geezers, can see who the hell is writing this stuff. Long time off though.

Regional Innovation Fund

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:52:19 GMT

"...Will provide support for... new projects aimed at promoting innovation and developing sectors within 10 market facing clusters. These will include projects identified by the Regional Innovation Steering Group, Business Growth Task Groups and others involved with the implementation of actions identified within the Regional Agenda for Action."

Promoting innovation? Blogs promote innovation, don't they? Market facing clusters? Which are those? Can't find much info about these (shadowy) steering/task groups.

These websites are so light on real help and heavy with the acronyms, and jargon.

Knowledge Management in West Mids' (UK) cranky quangos

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:19:34 GMT

Bloody useless
I'm trying to discover the point of some of these new UK Government quangos. This one seems interesting but I'm not clear on what the hell it's for. Hardly any information within the site, out of date events pages, with wrong dates, anyway. Crap, 'quango' speak, that means everything and nothing.

I believe they are a way to get money out of European and UK coffers, but where and what the money does after that is not clear, far from it. Walk with me through the site as I try and figure it's purpose:
"...a two year initiative offering regional individuals and organisations a unique opportunity to experiment with the development and delivery of public support promoting economic development. "
What's public support?

"...the programme has been designed by an extensive local partnership to help identify untapped regional knowledge, encourage innovative new ICT use and embed leading edge innovation practices in the public, private and 3rd sectors."
What sort of regional knowledge? Peas and ham? Heavy metal bashing? What's a 3rd Sector? Google digging: apparently, it means the voluntary sector.

"It will provide funding - on a competitive basis - to support innovative, different and imaginative projects. Projects will need to deliver significant advances in innovation or knowledge, have the potential to be influential in regional economic development or provide important lessons in partnership development."
"Different" is a weasel word. But, this does seem to be the right project aims for a 'million Midlanders blogging.' Blogging with a more studious approach, rather than the teenagers angst squealing about boyfriends, can be deeply knowledgeable, and certainly a learning environment for all concerned.

Sat, 09 Feb 2002 12:24:46 GMT

B2BMarketingBiz: Top 5 Corporate Communication Mistakes the Fortune 500 Make Online - Mistake #4: Timely PR updates

Corporate communications also needs to have access to easy-to-use content management tools for the site (i.e. don't set up a system where site change requests get routed through your IT department and take weeks to appear online.) Obvious examples of sites where PR wasn't able to change the site's message when it was necessary include Enron's site, which contains many now-laughable statements, Wendy's site which made no note of founder Dave Thomas' demise for at least 24 hours

Thu, 07 Feb 2002 23:00:34 GMT

So this is how my interface looks these days. I'm adding more links to functionality, as I go, as this is going to be the command and control, for all I survey. Looks better in MSIE but that just crashed, and nice too in Mozila. Opera screws a bit with it, but not bad.

Thu, 07 Feb 2002 00:41:06 GMT

The Blog Phenomenon

Ego gratification. Some people need to be the center of attention. It makes them feel good about themselves to tell the world what important things they've been doing and what profound thoughts they've been having. Curiously, while this looks like the most obvious reason for a Web log, I think it's probably the least likely reason, since it's too trite and shallow.

Antidepersonalization. When people begin to think that they are nothing more than a cog in the wheel of society, they look for any way to differentiate themselves. The Web log proves they are different. Just read it. You'll see.

Elimination of frustration. Day-to-day life, especially in the city, is wrought with frustration, and the Web log gives people the ability to complain to the world. You get to read a lot of complaining in these logs. If you think I'm a complainer, oh boy!

Societal need to share. As a cynic who gets paid to write, I have a hard time with this explanation. But it seems some people genuinely like to "share," and this is one way.

Wanna-be writers. A lot of people want to be published writers. Blogs make it happen without the hassle of getting someone else to do it or having to write well—although there is good writing to be found. Some is shockingly good. Most of it is miserable. I expect to see those Open Learning classes around the country offering courses in Blog writing.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 15:35:01 GMT

Giants forging Web services consortium - Tech News - CNET.com - Web services allow software to be made available over the Internet to run identically on multiple devices, such as PCs and cell phones.

Early Web services have allowed people to access stock quotes from cell phones, for instance. But companies envision a much grander future. For example, scheduling a plane flight could trigger a cascade of actions that would assemble different options that tie in with hotels, frequent-flyer programs and other related services.

Mon, 04 Feb 2002 23:27:37 GMT

BBC: I blog, therefore I am - Ever read a weblog? Perhaps you are one of the growing numbers who keep one. Or maybe you haven't got a clue what they are.

Mon, 04 Feb 2002 21:06:44 GMT

Radio Userland 8 - Blogging is fun, and it can also be competitive: Bloggers, like open-source hackers, are motivated by public recognition. Savvy CIOs who can make KM feel like a game may be the ones to finally surmount the high activation threshold that has forever plagued the KM world.

Tue, 29 Jan 2002 16:48:08 GMT

That's a Whole Lot of Power, Mac - ""There's a book called How to Build a Better Beowulf that's 230 pages long and tells you how to set up clusters with Linux," Dauger said. "We have a one-page manual (PDF) that shows you how to do it on PowerMacs. We've had high school students do it.""
Just going to download that link. I wonder what I could do with a super computer cluster. ";->"