Micro entrepreneurship and 2pointfive_age_of_man

Started Thursday 30th December 2010:  6.20 pm.     Word count: 357

Micro Coral Reef - the artificial aquarium

 Since I last blogged today I have spent time linking up  a few parts of my own coral reef.   You may remember I commented on the interdependence of business activities being analogous to the life of a coral reef. 

As you will notice I have made links to websites that promote my interests in micro entrepreneurship.  I like the story about Kenyan farmers using mobile phone technology to find the best paid market to take their produce to.  This demonstrates the utilisation of 21st Century technology to move goods and services.  For which you can charge added value.

There is a danger that I spend a lot of time on the sites that I have, evangelising about the new way of working.  That is what we employ Professors in Public bodies such as Business schools to do.  The continuum between cutting edge and hard cash does take a long time.  My experiences with the Telecottage Association (tuesday-and-2pointfiveageofman)  demonstrates that a  17 years cycle has had to take place before the technology is able to deliver what it claimed.

So how am I going to move forward along the continuum of innovation to sustainable income?  An approach is to develop the websites as independent areas focusiing either on more social entrepreneurial activities or micro-entrepreneurship.  The personal blog,  should be almost a reflective diary of what I feel interests me.  They say everybody has a book inside them  However, you  have got to be interested in what you are writing about. 

So being a life scientist/chemist I will write about food on a Sunday.  Monday up and coming trends that interest me for the next week.  Tuesday cloud computing and Web 2.0.  Wednesday job markets and trends I am interested in.  Thursday those work-life balance issues.  Friday what has worked well  that week for me.  Saturday the day of leisure and reading all the Saturday supplements, Sunday supplements don't really do it for me.  After all Rome wasn't built in a day, slowly slowly catchee Monkey.   

   

Death of the Middle Manager?

Minoan Bull jumping a career that
became redundant

 Minoan bull jumping must have been an activity that people occupied their time doing.  we only know that it took place because somebody thought it was important enough to record.

Having worked in education for a number of years I noticed about five years ago the term middle management start to become very prevalent.  This has latterly also coincided with the removal of single heads of departments and super groups becoming established across many subjects in schools.

The upshot of this was that many people who had previously enjoyed a management remuneration ceased to do so as new posts were conceived.  These new posts  had the much more "beneficial" TLRs which were directly related to childrens' learning but did not actually balance financially the equivalent posts and work load that had been rolled into one.  The creation of further senior management posts of Assistant Heads also seemed to further skew the management structure.  There were more people  monitoring than had previously been there.  Fewer people were in effect Middle managers  creating almost two pyramids, one inverted and resting on the apex of the other.

In my Kindle experiences  of today I came across the article "The End of the Middle Manager" by Lynda Gratton in the Harvard Business Review (28th December Edition).  A number of points struck me in their relevance to my own management of career change or modification in relation to the present economic climate.

The points made in the article of the use of technology for data gathering and analysis is one of the  factors  I have noticed in my ten plus years in education delivery.  We have a way in the UK on predicting where children should be in their achievement levels many years in advance based on certain way points.  These are used by managers to monitor pupil progress via different tools of which SIMS is the prevalent system.

The underlying data is not generated in school but by a national foundation.  Simplistically this is then used to judge pupils' progress across the whole country and ultimately rank schools and measure effectiveness.

The key point is that middle managers within a single organisation are irrelevant to this process.  The unit of delivery is the individual teacher.  A general manager is therefore irrelevant in the responsibility chain as to what is being measured.  The previously remunerated activities of the process of managing resources, drafting policy and reporting information is not needed at middle management level.  What is focused on is the end product.

The technological revolution has in the words of the article, changed the very nature of how people work.  ike the Minoan bull jumper we will have evidence that middle managers existed, mainly in the form of certificates for courses designed for middle managers,  but did not ultimately provide skills that were useful outside that institution.  Technology is the general manager.

The article suggests more of a master manager role of mentor and coaching from someone that is respected and I suggest more to the point trusted.  Which for a lot of teachers in the present climate of monitoring is very difficult to achieve as motives are not trusted.  The pursuit of perfection in house (not satisfactory or good but outstanding) has come at a high price in terms of  disaffected teachers.  Hence the rise of consultants and coaches in the last few years?

So if you are a middle manager what is the prognosis?

Change our perceptions of what work actually is.


Development of signature skills is suggested as one must do task.

Join an institute to increase visibility,  to allow increases in skills and independently accredit skills.  Probably for educationalists in the UK a possibility with the demise of the GTC.  The GTC was supposed to have some sort of role like this but was set up with the premise that all teachers were bad teachers.

Develop new areas of proficiency or moving into adjacencies (might need translation here  or a skills psychometric profiling test) are also must do recommendations.

The areas to look  to develop competency in are suggested as:

advocacy - I suppose we always need lawyers, champions  and  arbitrators

Social and micro entrepreneurship -    This is elements of Big Society  I suppose. There is now an Institute of Entrepreneurs they have a website front door  but the lights do not yet seem to be on.  There is also an Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs   which seems to be a site of enterprising entrepreneurs offering training to entrepreneurs (is this run by former Buinesslink advisors).  Federation of Small Businesses may be a good starting point also.

Life and health sciences -  as physics research projects  gets more expensive and theoretically less applicable to mass market sales, physics of the wheel although is  long running market ..... choose life there are over 6.5 billion potential users of life and health sciences and still growing

Energy conservation -  can this really be done in small enterprises .......... needs investigating.  Public sector (governments) still really dominating with education and legislation issues.  Although I did see that someone related to the Bathstore has had a Eureka moment and come up with a freestanding insulated bath, which links into the next area ....

Creativity and innovation -  the Daedalus factor (he allegedly did his best work on Crete so probably witnessed the bull jumpers)

Coaching - I have already mentioned why this may be a goer for some educationalists, maybe career planning    without it being linked to a recruitment agency cost centre

Lynda Gratton is optimistic that these are areas that will remain needed for the coming decades.  A potential  business plan  spanning a generation rather than a five year plan?

Points to ponder and maybe add to my personal career change strategy.

Monday and 2pointfive_age_of_man is reading the digital ocean - via Kindle

Started Monday 27th December 2010: 7.00 am GMT.  All URL mentioned accessed on this day.  There would be a picture but the Picasa service I praised yesterday is currently unavailable.

Bloggin' could become a habit.  There is a bit of Old St Paul's (pre- Great Fire of London) atmosphere pervading the experience.  Old St.Paul's at that time was where the intelligentsia of the 1600s, namely anybody that could read, went to buy books.   An agglomeration (wonderful word) of small printers, would the turn out pamphlets and news sheets for anybody and everybody to hawk on the steps of the old cathedral.   These were the bloggers of their day   This is almost a diarists type experience.

I have looked up the diarist Samuel Pepys, for the day 26th December 1667 .  The temperature for that day in London was given as the monthly average of 3 °C.  The temperature for the present day is predicted to between 1°C and 3°C in Greater London.   Little change in the experience for the average Londoner over the span of 343 years, which leads to question of  climate change or just weather.  This links nicely with the today's activities so far.  There is talk of floods in the UK (now where did I hear that yesterday or the day before?) 

I have been awake since about 545 am catching up with the news bulletins on how England are progressing in the latest cricket test.  Geoffrey Boycott is probably being made to listen repeatedly to his expert commentary made 12 minutes into the BBCs coverage yesterday of where he could not see the England team having a hope of defeating the Aussies.   Maybe he should stick to just calling himself a commentator (If you had the chance to hear the banter glasshouses and stones come to mind.  Anyway he was a successful batsman despite the Boycott and Botham story related by Dickie Bird on the Wit of Cricket.)  As I was listening and fiddling with the Kindle the newspaper arrived.  I have only been re-connected to the Internet since last Tuesday (14 days of absence) but now have the benefit of super fast Broadband to my wireless router.  I have been busily exploring the Kindle library of free-trail subscriptions, free books and occasionally buying a paid copy.  Kid in a sweetshop resemblance here.  


Now I used to be a Telegraph subscriber because it was conveniently a lot cheaper than the cover price on the news stand.  I did my bit for the local economy by paying for delivery.  I cancelled  the subscription a number of years ago as I did not really have enough time to read everything.  The fortnightly blue bin recycling collection was never rapid enough to cope with the newspaper and all the paper I seemed to acquire as part of my job (see yesterday's blog , I can self-reference !).  Plus all those lower backs of paperboys that might have been problematical in later life were prevented.

I had caught up with the Sunday Edition of the Telegraph late last night.  I have experienced a few problems with Kindle wireless delivery when the Kindle has gone to into what appeared terminal sleep.  After much fiddling, charging  and finally resurrection  I received the wireless delivery  I was intrigued by the Web 2.0 phenomena of  Thom Coststello and UK Uncut.  (I hope I have the right character as I have only just clicked on that part of the line on the Kindle screen that allowed me to keep today's edition).  The PhD student acting as his own case study appears to be attracting a lot of media attention for the facilitation of attacks "on the establishment".  (Orchestration is too strong a word as people choose to turn up to sit on shop floors or slow queue, although didn't Norman Cook do this for a pop video. An  I was there aside, I saw him live, I did, when I was a student when he was part of the Housemartins, who'd have thought he had all that creativity in him )   Unlike other media grabbing  anti-establishment trends such a Punk Music the focus of the disruption is that socially moral crusade against tax avoidance.  We can't say it's tax evasion as it is legal.  He has probably made it onto a  watch list as a danger to society, much like Mick Jagger did at his age.  But now look at Sir Mick's privileged position sitting next to the great and the good at England football matches. 


The raised eyebrows that could be sensed in linking UK Uncut and the fact that the PhD research at Royal Holloway was being funded by a grant was amusing.  It is probably the best piece of state research investment ever.  With Mr Costello's marketing skills we should be thankful that his talents are fully occupied on what he claims is also part of an academic exercises.  What would happen if he followed his role models that have also had dealings with "labour leaning Demos"  and cashed in on the commercial world?  Would his viral marketing skills, if  snapped up by an Arcadia type organisation, result in a greater amount of money flowing to a company making tax efficient decisions (another euphemism)?.  Let's give Thom Costello a chair at  a prestigious University and save the national wealth for future generations.  It should be an anthropology chair as he certainly seems to be the foremost expert in understanding the way to manage human behaviour (no disrespect to Desmond Morris).    

Back to today's stories that fall within my sphere of interest and curiosity.  I have taken up the trials for the Telegraph and the the Mail.  So far only these in this country, although I have garnered everything  from the New York Times, Harvard Business Review (useful for the end user of exponents of the "do as I say but not as I do school of Emotionally Intelligent Managers") , Shanghai Daily, etc.   I will get round to assessing their relevance in the next few days.   I probably need to also find out how to change my Amazon affiliate recommendation so that Amazon.co.uk is the featured site and not the American site.  There seem to be fewer references to the relevant products I am seeing in the UK. So stories that are interesting me at the moment on the Kindle editions.

Telegraph -  Students face entry tests.... by Graeme Paton.  I remember as a Sixth Former in the mid-eighties taking 4 A-levels (Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology not an Art in sight)  at a newly opened Upper School universities did have their own exams (not just the ones they administered as Local Examinations Syndicates before the rights were sold to people like Edexel).  Even then there was still a potential for US state pupils to sit the local University (Cambridge) entrance exam.  The traditional time to sit this if I remember correctly was in term 7 ie after the end of traditional state sixth form.  Gap years had not been invented at time, they just existed if you did the Oxbridge entrance.  Is this change?  The same light seems to be focused on GCSEs in "it's time to scrap GSCEs" by a staff reporter.    I have blogged already a little on this  http://2pointfiveageofman.blogspot.com/2010/12/1603-and-all-that-ever-after.html, I would have blogged even further if I had not lost connectivity owing to BT (see previous blogs) under which I now draw a lie until the next attack of the Big company syndrome 

Just had a minor electricity outage that caused the interruption of the flow and the computer to restart. Everybody must have started to cook breakfast and the local factories switched on the oven to roast peanuts for the next seasonal occasion.  Which brings me to another story  "Power cut risk from ageing networks" ...... by Rowena Mason .   We have been warned or is it so long since the last warniing everybody has forgotten and nobody has done anything about it    


Telegraph -  Wildlife flourishes in good old British weather  .... by Richard Saville.  Good for farmers too. Cold winters remove aphids so cuts down on pest and viral loss to crops, so here's to a hopefully smaller chemical inputs in the British countryside. 

Telegraph -  Record day at sales .... by Tim Ross.  Apparently Amazon have had an e-book frenzy, I am not surprised I am one of the frenzied.




Telegraph -  Health Wealth and Happiness .   by  a Staff Reporter....... a good toast but does everybody have to come and live in the South for these, surely not in the 21st Century.

Telegraph -  Airports face fines for failing to cope in winter .... by Steven Sainford.  who gets the fine and how will this make sure that that money could have been spent on infrastructure and prevention ..... actually is.  Sounds like a dastardly conspiracy of legal advisers (what does LLB stand for Lying Little B******** or is it something else) or is this another way to stop the bonus culture?

Telegraph -  You pay five times for PFI schemes ....... by Rosa Prince.  Enough said, career wish list for average 6th former to be CEO of a PFI?

Telegraph -  Calls to scrap inheritance tax ........ Fully agree


Just  a few of the stories that I think will become quite important this year.  Especially the infrastructure issue,  a story I recall about CBI wanting fewer taxes but more investment in infrastructure spring to mind.

To end the blog before another Power Outage strikes didn't  mention any Mail stories as they seem to have much the same thread as the subject areas mentioned in the above articles.

Looking at Pepys' diary for the 26th December 1667 again he would appear to be spending his day doing not dissimilar activities to myself.  He visits a pub and possibly indulges in  a little preparation for some tax evasion  (it wasn't illegal then) by talking to somebody from the Exchequer, although I seem to recall he was a government official himself as quartermaster to the Navy and may also have been a tax official.  I will be visiting a pub called the Royal Exchange for a quick pint a little later but doubt I will have the opportunity to discuss tax or want to.   He visited his bookseller, which I have done with Amazon today.

A visit to the theatre is remarked upon where Nell Gwynne was playing. I shall probably watch a little TV the modern day theatre in my home.    A conversation with the father of William Penn founder of the colony that became Pennsylvania was had by Pepys.  I doubt I shall meet  a father of a  nation builder unless I bump into one of the Zimbabwe law students we have in the town at the moment.  Cosmopolitan little place this part of West Suffolk.  Pepys indulges in a little society gossip which I have received second hand from the newspaper.  Apparently the forces are good for Old Etonian future Monarchs as they have an independence that even runs to doing the dishes.  Which reminds me....

And finally winter fluxes struck Pepys' family and the subsequent funeral he was unable to attend.  Swine flu and slippery roads of modern times?

  Does anything really change?

Unto us a ............... Kindfle

I couldn't affird the Chinese Lions

In the beginning there was the cave wall. Today the Kindle.  I have just taken delivery of a new generation Kindle.  I discovered the post man had visited in my absence yesterday and left  a card asking me to pick it up.  The card informed me  that the delivery office would be open in the run up to Christmas from 6.30 am.  So at 6.45 am I collected the package.  At 6.53 I plugged it in to charge.  By 7.15 the LED had turned green.

Frankly ... I was quite impressed.  I have owned and used a number of portable devices over the years from Psion 5s to palm top computers on which I have read documents and ebooks.  I even at  one point experimented with writing ebooks to be read using Microsoft's e-reader.  (This was or appeared to be quietly dropped for some reason by Microsoft).  I have the ebook reader on my Bblackberry and have already read a few ebooks on this but the screen is not really large enough.So I was really pleasantly surprised how simple the Kindle was in operation. Almost as simple as cracking the spine on a paperback book.

I haven't yet had a chance to get past downloading a book.   That is due to BT who still have not restored my Internet Broadband (   midnight tonight Wednesday apparently I go live again).  I have already downloaded the Kindle desktop application a few weeks ago so have had a little experience of navigating the amazon site.  As an education specialist until recently I can see a great number of uses for this device.  Not least the possibility of writing my own ebooks for Kindle.  In my time as a head of science rarely was I ever able to buy the latest texts, they often retailed at £20 a copy.  A class set of 30 then becomes expensive, that is before you by copy masters for worksheets that support the diversified learning requirements of individual pupils.  They also become out of date very quickly.  As English schools start to develop their own curriculum,  if they are lucky enough not be subject to Ofsted scrutiny this may be a good tool to keep up with changing fashions in education.  Rarely has a piece of technology been simple  (ie no distractionn of other programmes as computers have) and  cheap enough (less than a games console) and compact.

I am waiting for the digital ocean to wash back in and have the chance to experiment with this potentially very useful device.   

2point5_age_of man and Monday morning

Things aren't always as they appear

2point5_age_of man and Monday morning

I have been experimenting with the Web 2.0 environment now for about 16 days. Time for a little reflection and deciding on how the experience has been. BT still has not delivered service, it is 08:49 on Monday morning the card to which I am connected along with 64 other customers fried on Tuesday morning last week, so a week without my own digital ocean. The digital tide is still being waited upon to come back into the beach. Life can be a beach.

However......, English speaking trait to qualify a positive with a negative. We did not invent Blue Sky thinking, possibly because of our weather turns up clouds. There is that fatal word cloud, even more deadly when linked to computing. I am listening to BBC Radio 4 a smooth American is evangelising the Internet as the panacea for all ills Snake oil salesman, possibly? Internet is only as good as the cables through which it runs.

 As a former scientist (still am actually) I am always tuned into new discoveries. Extremophiles, this I life that does not follow the normal rules, continually turn up. The titanic has microbes that "feed" on Iron, sulphur vents have bacteria that reduce sulphur rather than carbon. The gulf oil spill (who was to blame?) was not as great as billed due to oil digesting bacteria. Copper digesting bacteria must exist, maybe in the underground network of the BT copper mine. Did a little monster eat my internet. Or was it bad planning by Big Business? Bad planning.

As a participant in career change I set myself a number of mission statements related to Web 2.0 and social networking (basically the same thing from what I can see). It is amazing what actually is encompassed by Web 2.0 especially when educationalists start to make lists. The ultimate mission was to familiarize and self teach myself about this new frontier. Bill Gates has been quoted as saying the Internet is (will become?) the biggest University I am starting to agree. When universities first started they were a community of thinkers that coalesced around a teacher. When they started to own buildings they became a moving target that could be identified. Paris' University with teachers such as Abelard were the gurus of their day has had a history of revolting students  (see book Seven Ages of Paris). Students often challenged authority, and by banding together  also often enjoyed privileges other members of society did not enjoy. England realised the danger to the status quo of having such a group in its main cities hence why they gravitated to Oxford and Cambridge. A sort of intellectual penal colony without the participants realising it.

I appreciate Bill Gates' statement more for the fact that he left academic study to create or re-engineer something new. Degrees are by their nature historical documents. They are not necessarily cutting edge, more a series of tick boxes to show that you understand the dictionary and can read the map to see how we as society have reached that particular collection of bath water.... Then somebody comes along and throws both baby and bath water out. So the Web 2.0 misison statement for me, is to understand how the soap scum came to ring the bath and still realise that there is a baby in the bath when the plug is pulled. Mixed metaphors but hopefully there will be a flash (not an advert) of understanding that will lead to a working plan.

2pointfiveman plays Robinson Crusoe in a Digital ocean

Shot of andvanced technology
 site circa. 3000 B.C.   Grimes Graves modern
addition of ladder for tourists 

Swimming or drowning in the digital ocean

Saturday morning: This is being written offline. As a Broadband customer I have used BT in England for the past 12 and a half years. At every new innovation I have taken early upgrade and  have taken the leap of faith and curiosity as the web has developed in the UK.

There have been teething problems over the years involving upgrades. It used to be don't try to do anything sensible in August as major system and software "updates" were being implemented. The internet services of banks were also prime sources of annoyance and frustration. Bank staff were to a person often very unhelpful where technical problems were encountered, especially in August. The banks saved and will continue to save millions as we have become our own DIY banker employees. So why the visitation to old sores?

Well I have been cut off from my own personal digital ocean since Tuesday morning owing to a technical fault at the exchange (along with 64 other customers).   I won't call it a personal digital cloud because clouds have a nasty habit of turning up in the wrong place and raining on you, sometimes heavily. The appearance of the term “to the cloud” in a certain software manufacturers advert emphasises the comic book nature of digital change that discourages me from using this term. (Grumpy mid-age man syndrome. Possibly?)

The service I am using is a domestic service. It is equally as important as a Business service since I engage in e-commerce when I buy from Amazon or check my local supermarkets for the availability of bargains. So why is the service desk for technical problems only open from 8.00 am in the morning? A lot of us are early risers and work during the week. I certainly would have been driving the hamster wheel of the British economy if I could only have accessed those stores. Quite important if you are twenty miles from anywhere with major high street multiples (no small independent shops any more down you high street) or happen to be a silver surfer.

I will continue to use BT though as the problem as described by the remote call centre, not Inverness this time but Chennai, would not have been any different with another ISP. The main exchange card was not working according to the local visit Engineer. It took 72 hours to establish this fact. The nature of services that use the unbundled exchanges means all ISPs are using the exchange.

This is one of the disadvantages of the “competitive market” that has evolved in this country. Providers are still basically playing with the toys provided by the British Tax payer pre-BT privatisation and still owned by BT. All that is different is the front end changes of who you pay your bill to and what add-ons you achieve in your service. Cable has not reached West Suffolk, operates in Cambridge very well although the original provider did go bust. Pity since we have a cable manufacturer in the town.

Suffolk is the home to BT's Research Institute. Just visited by the Indian Telecoms industry as reported in the East Anglian Daily Times. They appear to have an important role in the digital express to world class service promised by the coalition government. A plea to BT, please could you try to get it right in your own backyard of Suffolk a relatively unpopulated county that is surprising close to major sites of population where Suffolk residents practise innovation. Impressions now can influence future business choices. The relationship of public opinion and this coalition is a good example of influence so far as making noises and then changing their mind as negative opinion rise. Good to see this government doesn't use pollsters as much as the last. Spaniels, vicars and Brussels Sprouts spring to mind. I would be happy to explain this last comment for anybody not familiar with spaniels.

Final thoughts for this blog as I wait for the digital tide to come back in. Did we the British tax payer sell the Goose that apparently is and is going to, lay the Golden Egg? Still this was before the term sovereign wealth funds became the elephant in the room that could be the way forward for UK PLC. Norway used their oil revenue to set up a form of sovereign wealth fund. Chinese banks are effectively in the same league, the long sightedness of the deal to buy Pireaus harbour in Greece for the next 35 years shows an understanding of relatively long cycles. Most of the big construction projects in London, Middle East and Singapore seem to be underpinned by Sovereign wealth funds . In my adult earning life I have experienced at least two major recession, I might have been unaware of a couple. These on average seem to have a fifteen year cycle so 35 years would appear to be a long enough business plan. Words of chairman Mao to Nixon about longevity of civilisations driving this?. Athens could return to the centre of the world again, or is it beware of Chinese bearing gifts? That will get the conspiracy theorists going.

We are potentially in another bonanza time as the World is Turned Upside Down, yet again. It has to be remembered we didn't “abolish Boom and Bust” in the last parliamentary session of the “socialists”. We could even start a fund off with that great piece of service economy business of borrowing money as a government and then lending it to another government at a higher rate. Sorry Ireland, this isn't BandAid. As we get paid back to pay Peter, a 1% diversion of the profits into a sovereign wealth fund would start the ball rolling. Social Enterprise potentially at a national level. We could even have the big players donate their time for free. Could this be Big Society. A bit feudal but if transparent worth considering as it could actually line the British tax payers pockets rather than that of the PFI partners'.

8.00 still a little time away. I have listened to the Farming programme on Radio 4 and the tales of Fat Ducks (not the restaurant) or lack of. Apparently in the cold snap we have the wrong type of ducks. Shooting of ducks has been banned for the next weeks and the RSPB has asked walkers and dog owners not to disturb the birds. Don't make the ducks quackers! Hopefully, I won't be driven crackers with my dealing with BT.