Tuesday and 2pointfive_age_of_man contemplates the New Year

Aiming to be looking over this view by mid June 2011,
Crete, Hersonissoss

Started Tuesday 28th December 2010.  Evening about 7.30 pm

Today has been a quick thaw outside.  The diary of Samuel Pepys' for the 27th December 1667, hints at the economic crisis of his day.  The government unable to carry out the King';s wishes.  Defence budget arguments between Pepys and the Guards supporters echo defence review stories of today.  Bankers are broke and everybody is keeping their money, no different to bail out and non-lending of today.  

Another day looking through the past year's plus and minuses.  The year 2010 for me as for a lot of people has been one of change.  A desire for work-life balance is still one of those goals.  Two major realisations are wanting to work smarter and the fact I might have outgrown certain ways of working.  So how am I going to move forward in personal affluence or should I aiming for that happiness that the King of Bhutan has been on about ?  I'd like to be greedy and have both.

So, economic outlook around  me reference to Kindle.  I am encouraged by Harvard Business Review (HBR 28/12/10) article "Investing in the Post-Recession World" that the recession is officially over, but agree with the sentiment it's difficult to see the wood for the trees and the way forward.  I am also in agreement with article "Learning how the economy really works" (HBR  28/12/10).

I have a fundamental problem with economic theory and policy.  I can't understand how growth can be used as a measure of the health of an economy which relies on finite markets and resources.  The premise ultimately drives boom and bust since ultimately I cannot see sustainable infinite growth.   As a life scientist, complex ecological relationships I find relatively easy to understand.

The analogy of a Coral reef to economies in that it produces a stable ecosystem based on the available resources and inputs.   It has  internal economy based on carbon exchange  ie simplistically big fish eat little fish, little fish eat big fish when the big  fish dies and become big fish and so on.  When the requirements of life are satisfied the organisms involved reproduce and crucially survive.  If there is not enough resources in the coral reef it remains static in size at best. The coral's plankton are constantly being released another site and another colony starts in isolation.

The ancient Greeks  practiced something similar.  The understanding of the finite limitation of resources sprouted colonies across the Mediterranean.   Modern day Marseilles (Masillia) the largest port in modern France. Syracuse the home of Archimedes the greatest ancient technologist, who was killed by a Roman soldier unaware of his asset value. How lucky Werner Von Braun was and how much the American economy has benefited from NASA's direction.  My favourite colony name, Emporium is in  Spain.  Literary meaning trading place and also echoed in the Victorian Emporiums.  Woe betide anybody that attempted to return and upset the mother colony.  They were greeted with slingers-out whose job was literally to sling stones at anybody that attempted to return .  They also had a very non-Roman aversion to "luxuria".

Globalisation resulting in the interdependence of all markets I find a very worrying factor for my personal wealth.  President Obama has already stated his belief that the American economy is so important that it drives the world and the world needs to work to make America successful.  We seem to have created the equivalent of a super-organism in our economies.  There will always be the potential that the super-organism deadly plague or virus, real or .  The economic effects of an actual plague in the middle ages restricted "growth" for centuries.  The Gaea hypothesis does not necessarily give humans any greater value than other organisms.  It all depends which direction your looking, where your chair happens to be placed in the universe in order and when you choose to  blink.  Unfortunately I may have opened my eyes at the wrong time.

The British Empire had it's own problems with a globalisation as a concept.  The Dundee was essentially a one trick pony with it's reliance on the Jute Industry in the 19th Century.  Outsourcing to India virtually put economic development into a slump and on hold until it re-discovered it's civic pride and confidence and called itself the City of Discovery.

Britain has itself on a macro level been hit by a similar bout of outsourcing. The decision to turn ourselves into a service economy by Mrs Thatcher's advisers was fundamentally flawed as it did not take into account historical examples and cycles.  I can speak from personal experience as my father was one of the small business men who became entrepreneurs more through necessity than choice as companies rationalised and made redundancies.  He finally retired a few years ago after 25 years of working for the bank's profits as they "helped" small businesses.

So my mission and trick for the next year is to try and decouple myself from the super organism.  I like the coral reef analogy for business.  It is one that  I pondered two years ago when I was holidaying in Crete.  when I arrived back I ran out paper trying to come up with a A4 plan of action.  I ended up painting the dining room wall white (12 foot by 12 foot) and then proceeded to produce my largest "food" web of ideas to  date.  I went as far as investigating the costs of setting up a limited company.  I purchased some web-domains with a view to e-commerce.  However, I could not at that time see a viable business idea,  although I could write a business model.

In the 90's when again there was a crisis in the economy.  I was finishing a period of research in agriculture sponsored initially by ICI then Norsk Hydro into the use of foliar fertilisers and their potential to reduce nitrates in  groundwater.  This was perceived to be a big problem as Nitrate Sensitive Areas were being designated and farmers potentially could be fined if the groundwater limits were exceeded.  The cost fertiliser was a major input and should have been enough encouragement to modify farming practice.  This was an interesting time as  water companies were starting to be privatised.  The legislation stipulated that they owned every form of water that fell out the sky or was fossilised in the ground.  Private boreholes were no longer private.  If,  however, the water turned up in the wrong place (ie flooded your house) it was not the fault of the water company.  Environment consultancy was in it infancy since there was no legislative or company morality/citizenship imperative to do this.

I stopped after a few months as it was personally not sustainable at the time, although I did have the benefit of a Business-link training day from a "retired"/resting businessman.  I found I could write a business plan and spreadsheet just as easily as the business guru, turning it into hard cash was the hurdle.  Now it is dominated by very large consultancies. That was in the days when sustainable and development were not bedfellows.

I even became a founder member of the Telecottage association.    After a journey across country to the National Agricultural Centre at Stoneleigh I met my fellow new frontiers people. After a morning of listening to the group founders I felt a sense of depression.  This was in the days of dial up modems, the Internet hadn't been officially invented.  This was essentially a Business club/Breakfast network.  You agreed to buy your office supplies from A who sold you the computer that you dialled up C, with who spoke and  then used the  envelopes to send you the invoice for the time spent talking to you.  The money did not seem  to be be coming from outside the closed group and the circle seemed to rely on pyramid principles.

this was supposed to give a route to resuscitate dying rural economies.  A Google search now turns up an address in Devon with no website.

Is this time to try the teleworking route again? Are the costs involved now cheap enough to make IT  just a business tool and not an end in itself?  Is the hammer cheap enough to bang the nail in to stop the house falling down?  Maybe.

The Portfolio career (multiple job or income stream) may finally come of age.  In order to make this work for the small business person who may have to work also part time, radical tax arrangements may be needed.

The idea of a monthly personal PAYE account for small businesses has been considered.  Tax credits banked in  a virtual account that could be drawn to smooth earnings streams throughout the year would be useful.

If you are going to fine banks, fine them on the length of the trading cycle over which they judge small businesses' cashflow.  They need  to take some of the risk rather than have their cake and eat it when they bankrupt a business.  After all there are 300,000 bank account holders who will need employment over the next five years.

Remove the disclaimer to any blame from the front of accounts prepared by qualified accountants and make them liable for any sins of omission and policing sharp practice especially by large companies who pay small ones on 90 days or when they choose or never.

This would be very simple if ..... we have a Tax IT system fit for purpose.  Oh to be a manager of a PFI!    

So back to the picture at the head of the blog.  If I am sitting in that cafe on the beach front the momentum of two years planning and thinking may have come to some workable conclusion.

Yes, I will be sitting in that cafe!  I already have the logo and philosophy!

I sketched this as I  sat in a Taverna
I had gone to Crete to
recharge my batteries.  However, I
seemed to be rushing
about when I should have let
the wind blow
and recharge my batteries
Simple? 

          

Boxing Day prompts memories of a decade of digital imagery

Looking forward again to views
 that aren't ice tinged

Boxing Day.  A day for reflection and contemplation.  The BBC iPlayer is playing a few comedy sketches from Radio 7.  The next tab is keeping me informed of the latest Boxing Day football.  We do not have a Premier League team convenient to my part of Suffolk, even if felt like spending an exorbitant amount to see a game.  ESPN has shown some very unseasonal Beach Football featuring a  Brazil team versus the rest of the World.  So with these distractions in the background I thought I would use this afternoon to organise my thoughts on Web 2.0 and find some of those very old photographs that have been sitting on a hard drive.

I was put in mind of doing this by the gift of a photo frame that my father received for Christmas.  My sister had preloaded a set of family photographs onto the flash USB card (also XD card) can be used so starting to be quite use able. I bought one myself several years ago when they first started to appear. I have to admit to admit the novelty had worn off a little with the frame now gathering dust.  As I was watching the slide show I started thinking of how many images I must have taken over the years or used personally or as part of  my role as a head of science and also ICT in a school.

The number of ways of capturing images that were cheap and to greater or lesser effective has been interesting to chart over the years.  I have used scanners that started off as almost the size of a couple of  reams of A4 down to what is now a almost a thin A4 book in size.  The usability of these scanners was normally determined by the sophistication of the software.  I was using Paperport  in the late  1990s and early 2000s as a means of trying to keep my house paper free from the avalanche of documents that were produced as part of the National Curriculum.  I certainly didn't have time to read everything as the department I started managing at the time was in a school on the dreaded special measures.  This was was also before the widespread use of PDF format that appeared with the Literacy and Numeracy initiatives.  At the time I was using Epsom scanners, but was rapidly converted to Canon 660 (later LiDE range)  and Canoscan software technology as their portable scanners appeared.  PDF technology made life easier and I rapidly started to become  paper-free.

The ability to show and record a piece of work produced by a pupil at the time it was produced via a scanner and projector was a favourite of pupils as they could share their work with the rest of the class.  The digital classroom in action rather than endless multimedia productions that seemed to be the norm when computers invaded the classroom.  The use of digital tablets also enhanced the experience.  Needless to say these were not provided by my bosses at the time but I took the view that these were tools that fitted in with the drive to a 21st Century classroom so I purchased them myself.  I took the view this was no different to what countless other colleagues were doing when they bought pens, pencils etc to lend out.  Plus I was educating myself in the new technology often ahead of the ideas that county advisors were advocating.  It does make me feel a little bewildered that ICT is still only used for endless searches and often as pointless typing up of written work.

Sport and drama certainly should have been leading the use of computing time with the use of video technology.  I purchased 8 years ago as an ICT department expense for our PE department a video analysis (Dartfish) package.  We were the only the school for a quite a few years that had this in the East England.  A great piece of software akin to the type golf professionals now use to coach people o their swing.  We did not use this effectively because of the demands placed on the time slots in ICT where core subjects had to demonstrate use of ICT as part of the National Curriculum.

The top down development nature of the national curriculum missed a great opportunity of embedding ICT not as subject but a tool.  Teaching people ICT skills is not an end in itself but a means to enhance the basic communication skills of what you already do.  The literacy skills of many pupils might have undergone greater development if the rush to provide very expensive ICT equipment with a short lifespan had been resisted.   Often the equipment was overpriced as it was being supplied to a local authority body by preferred tenderer.  But, we will be asking the question for many years to come of what advantage ICT give the under nines in the acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills.  Here endeth the whinge about National Curriculum and missed ICT opportunities.

I am waiting to see an application of the sports coaching potential of the new Xbox kinetic.  I can see great potential for the coaching of squash and also fencing as the variables involved compared a team a team sport would be less complicated as these sports are usually played in fewer axes of movement.  As a former qualified fencing coach I can see the potential for the spatial recognition technology to be applied to these sports.  The techie approach might also keep the interest of beginners as they acquire the discipline and skill to have an effective bout.  Virtual coaching and opponents not a great step away?  How good would it be to knock the French off the premier spot in fencing in the next European championships?


Returning back to the subject of digital photography. My father has become quite a digital photography buff.  Since his retirement he has been snapping anything and everything of interest.  As he is a very active member of the University of the Third Age (u3a) history and art/painting groups he has accumulated thousands of images.  I have spent many a Sunday morning instructing him in the arts of folders and photo-editing software.  Just before my nephew and niece arrived I downloaded Picasa.  I have previously used of and on over the last 8 years or so the yahoo owned photo storage facility that has become Flickr, primarily as a I am a BT customer.  As I am now using Blogger I decided to give Picasa a try. The Picasa technology downloaded quickly and began scanning the pictures. It was surprising how many pictures in the relatively short time of a few years my father has taken. I have been using a digital camera for the past 10 years so I dread to think how many images I might hae on various different drives and older computers languishing in dark cupboards.  What intrigued me was the facial recognition software.  Family resemblances even seemed to be recognised as I started naming the various faces that my father had snapped.  The tagging and indexing will allow a huge reduction in the time spent looking for that elusive photograph.

I just now have to teach my father to use the programme!!

I have blogged enough for this post I will have to save a few ideas for other post of what is now becoming habit forming.  My own computers are staring to mine the folders of images with Picasa and I am already finding nearly 10000 images from the last few years of holidays, air displays, cricket, plants and walking clubs.  Many years ago I used organise a social rambling club on a Sunday that met at one pub and then walked to another couple in a circuitous route.  Our post-Boxing Day walk involved over thirty people dressed in Santa hats with assorted dogs in tow.  I have yet to find the photographs but there could be a few for the Blog.  

Well I am now going to listen to the highlights of yesterdays Cricket and then maybe find my Wisden to compare a few performances

Monday morning in Suffolk

View across the snowy rooftops to the Church, the bells are still rung in this
 church on a Sunday , practise on a Monday night.  The Church clock
still chimes the hour. 

Monday morning and the skate to work for some has begun.  I have been out today already Turkey hunting.  the frozen variety.  As the roads are frozen it was my job today to walk down to the supermarket (benefiting of 1 in 7 pounds of retail spend, alright we'll dare to mention that name Tesco).   This is actually a new store on a town site right next to the main streets.  A far better arrangement than a remote out of town centre that has no proximity to smaller retail outlets such as independent shops.  I bagged my Turkey, very few finest bronzes left about 7 and no more for delivery.  The Bernard Matthews standard large were also in very short supply  after I Iifted my bird.    So if you have a large gathering to feed you may have to settle for smaller and less calorific consumption.

Any way  not  a lot of time today as I am still waiting for BT to re-connect me so I can start to blog and social network.  This could be the most important Christmas yet for job or social networking. The prolonged holiday time with Christmas and New Year falling on a Saturday gives plenty of downtime to be creative with self-marketing and planning for next year.  I have already had invites to twitter from various recruitment agencies so it could be the embracing of this for more business related activities by the general public may take place.  If we are all honest a lot of tweeting that has happened so far is from the technologically precocious.  When it becomes a habit because time invested can lead to productive opportunities it will have reached maturity.   So here's to acquiring a healthy habit for  the new year.  Having been cast upon a digital ocean island with only the occasional message in a  bottle received and thrown  I have started to think more of the whys of social networking rather than the I will because I can aspects.   So I will be recording some of my experiences over the next few weeks.  Ther is only so many re-runs of classic films you can watch!!

The Audacity of Hope

Waiting for the train to go past outside Newmarket 

Tuesday morning Day seven without Internet access. This is starting to be really inconvenient. I was not aware of how much I had become reliant on the Internet. I receive upward of 30 emails a day ranging from job site updates information about career change, market information, news, and personal banking business, not including the marketing email. I have located a few places in the town which appear to offer free Internet access.

There were a quite few BTOpenzone sites available last week up to Tuesday morning. As you may be aware from previous blogs I am little dis chuffed with BT as the rapidity of town's expansion in the last 15 years ( I will blog on this at another time) has finally seen the infrastructure start to groan. I have personally had my own BTHub live as an Openzone since the service became available 5 or 6 years ago. I live relatively close to the town centre literally 2 minutes walk, so it would be interesting to see how much traffic over the years I have enabled

The advert of 2 million sites by BT is all very well but it does rely a lot on switching your hub to be a BTOpenzone and being aware of this. The placing of your hub in your property along with the type of walls also influences how far the Hub's wireless signal will go. The latest Hubs from BT claim a 1000 m radius. A couple of places where I have paused and used my Blackberry wirelessly on BTOpenzone are the cafe De Ja Vu and the Royal Exchange public house to name but a few. There are a number of wireless sites about but obviously most are secure. The free Internet community used to leave a graffiti mark on buildings that had open network access, even some universities persuaded companies top provide their students with access points by simply having an open port. Maybe a sticker in the window for local businesses would be useful in BT's many inserts that drop out of the phone book. The phonebook is still being produced surprisingly. I must admit I have not broken the cellophane on the last few that have been delivered.

Anyway, it is a great idea that BTFON network and Broadband out of the house allow users to be connected.

I do find myself now checking when I sit in a public place whether there is a wireless signal. The expense of data packets through your mobile phone network is a fact that I would rather avoid. I do have mobile broadband on pre-Pay BT SIM but I do not regularly carry my Netbook around with me. However the mobile broadband does not seem to be very reliable. I wonder how much the service will be affected as more people switch to android phones. Android is reported to have a very healthy appetite for mobile network capacity. Slow service again or huts no connection when standing within network cell with an android? Am I allowed to mention the word android or is it now a trademark.

So to the main thoughts for the day. I have been watching the developments on the news today. Suffolk that county like Shropshire that most people either cannot place on a map or haven't heard of has been in the national news for pat few days. The high profile chief executive of Suffolk County Council has been in front select committees and lollipop persons have been highlighted as cuts victims. The council direct grants from central government has been cut. In a rural county such as Suffolk I do understand the fact that services per head of population are relatively expensive compared to an Inner City. For example 10 community minibuses do cost the same to buy in town as in country but because of the geography of the county the operating costs are higher per person carried. In Haverhill we are 45 miles from the County Town and quite often we feel extremely remote and uncared for. Potentially the threshold of break even of actual cost and social benefit of many services will change to the point where they disappear. This has already happened it would appear.

Suffolk apparently is in the vanguard of outsourcing services. Instead of having one back office handling paperwork we are in danger of having to create many smaller entities who will also need a back office. Back offices do not actually generate income and are a fixed cost of operating. I am a little sceptical from this point of view.

Following the East Anglian Daily Times over the last few days I noticed a free school is to be set up in Thetford to cater for 80 pupils with special educational needs. It would appear to have the support of local parents. This does seem to fly in the face of the campaigns from parents a number of years ago for inclusion in main stream schooling. Is this true social entrepreneurship or accessing a pot of money that has been denied to this group of individuals in a more traditional setting of Local Authority run school by another route?

The Localisation Bill seemed to slip through unnoticed. Potentially great from the point of view of allowing identification local assets such as shops and pubs for acquisition by interested groups. Greene King may have a very large spring sale of it's estate before it becomes law. This will from even the “nuisance value” point of view be a fiscal worrying point as assets could be tied up while feasibility groups come up with a business plan. If there is a rolling series of applications this could tie up a property for years and prevent them being turned into town houses or large village mansions. Anybody from Camra listening? A positive aspect is that it may lead to something that small business would welcome. A reduction in the extortionate rents charged for high street shop space. Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers, now we are managers of property portfolios but do we have any tenants.

So I am looking and waiting for the muddy waters to clear to look at the potential opportunities for small businesses that I might want to participate in myself. I would like to say it would be something that I would feel secure in seizing with both hands. The Audacity of Hope expressed by Chief Council Executives, they hope other providers will step in, is the title of this Blog. I did buy the book written by Barak Obama when he was “swept” to power as it did appear to be a era of hope coming in. I have since in the last few weeks become aware of reports of statements he has made that the world needs the American economy to drive the world economy. In other words America is Too Big To Fail. Hopefully, the change being ushered in  the UK are Too Big To Fail because I get the impression we might be in the last chance saloon where government thinking is concerned at this present cycle of the economic rollercoaster of our civilisation.

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.