Web 2.0 for business and Educators

Started Wednesday 30th March 2011
Words 423
S.I.= 85%
Digital Revolution hiccups and Digital leaps
Have not really had as much time as I thought this last week.  I have stepped back into the Worlds of teaching at a School in Ely and been progressing my own business and a project for AN Other.

Last week saw the fifth Birthday of Twitter.  Yesterday saw a major glitch in the BBC Website which apparently was due to a faulty, mechanical, optical or software controlled it certainly revealed the problems for business continuity.  More on this later.

 Another special event happening is that Freeview Digital TV is starting for some people today on the Suffolk/Essex Border if their transmitter is turned towards Sandy Heath.  If your analogue signal (ordinary BBC 1, 2, ITV 1, Channel 4 and Five)  works now try scanning with Freeview box or Freeview TV.  Best position for aerial 12 m above ground apparently with no obstruction (does work with roof aerials if close to transmitter)

Friday sees the upgrade  of the Business functionality on Facebook.  This will give same types of activities you can do with a personal profile.  Business pages are still within your Facebook registration, you are not supposed top have more than one account.  In fact you can be deFacebooked if you are in this state of duplicity.  Recently there have been groups removed from Facebook for extreme political views reported in the press so they are monitoring.

The Business continuity issue highlighted by both recent natural disasters and the outage of the BBC Website. The e-commerce end was affected as well as the News feeds.  The BBC was no longer the most up to date news source at that time.  The possibility exists that further outages may happen since the components, if it was a switch, may all have been put in at the same time.  Buy a brand new house and you will usually most of the light bulbs fail at roughly the same time.  The local Business Continuity Network to West Suffolk and South Cambridgeshire has gone live with its' website Business Continuity Network .  Time to integrate my own survey of my practices if the worst comes to the worst and I loose my main desktop.

I attended a meeting last week in Ipswich where the focus was sustainable workplaces.  I am developing my areas of Business interest to enhance the skills to go with this and also the Web 2.0 and cloud implications that go with this.  I will be blogging on my WordPress sites about this over the next few days. 

Monday Morning Week 3 of Chinese Lunar Year

Started Monday 21st February 2011 0054 GMT
Words 381
S.I. =  76.2%

Training around Suffolk


A busy week ahead starting with meetings and continual professional training tomorrow.  A dilemma with increasing fuel prices is the attendance on time at places without having a large carbon footprint.
I am attending an event in Marks Tey.  I do not have to take any "tools of the trade" other than myself and a few pieces of paper.  How do I get there?

I could drive but the event would not be cost effective in time and working opportunities since it is at strange time of the day.  So the two criteria for transport selection are cost effectiveness and time effectiveness.

I am going to take the opportunity to go by train as it fits in with the general constraints of being relaxed enough to perform fully in the meetings and the ability to arrive with plenty of time to have lunch. I will leave Haverhill about 8 am and seek to get back by 9pm if all goes to plan.   I will then have first hand experience of the potential problems when arranging travelling to meetings where it may be more of a social enterprise function and therefore income stream limited or a microenterprise function where time as opposed to cost may be more important, while maintaining an eye on the overall carbon neutrality of the activity.

I may sound as though I am being pedantic but I can see a trend "green" certificated much as we are British Standard compliant for COSHH and other activities.  In other words the audit culture will not die, the systems will just become automated.  Rather than have to spend a lot of time later when the business cycle is more cluttered and it will cost more in time spent planning the audit trail and finding the records when I do go for the appropriate accreditation, I will start along the path now.

The week ahead should see more moving on the blogging front.  A former pupil of mine is due to start blogging about podcasting and his experience of digital recording   and web radio on .http://www.2pointfiveageofman.net/blog/?p=28, the social enterprise site .  He is graduate of the University College Suffolk where he was the first to graduate in his particular course. So some social networking opportunities to look forward to!   

The Friday Analysis

Started Friday 11th February 2011 0521 GMT
Words 379
S.I. = 75.8%

Going beyond the Seventh Wave

The Seventh Wave is a concept that some may be aware of from the natural world and mythology.  The seventh wave hitting a beach is supposedly the strongest, a phenomenon familiar to some surfers but debunked by scientists. Some Irish traditional stories talk about beyond the seventh year or  going beyond the seventh wave.  Today is day seven of the new adventure into self-employment.

An interesting journey this week has been and for the most part coped with.  The fragility of the net as a virtual factory and office space has been underlined by trojan horse and connectivity issues this week.  The need for backups and alternative workspaces be they internet cafes or a teleworking centre becomes critical  for small businesses as they attempt to maintain their own sustainability.

Change is a constant theme that has been apparent through out the week in the news and talking to retired people in the local pub. A sense of reductionism listening to older members of society suggests that a lot of the change we are seeing has been experienced before often called by a different name.  The repetition of certain events suggests at best a disregard or lack of comprehension for historical cycles at worst cynicism towards the majority of the population that some leaders choose to show ( a bit woolly and sitting on the fence here but I am sure you will identify many stories that fit your own internet surfing).

So more of the same to follow next week.  Continuity planning has already kicked in for Monday.  My Victorian cottage will be taken back to 1896 when it was biult.  The local electricity supply company is servcing or replacing the local transformer between 10 and 4 pm.  Finding non-scented candles just in case they do not replace or repair the fault before dark  has been quite a challenge.  My local Cooperative store was the only place  I could find them. Which brings me to the final thought for this blog today.  I found a very good BBC Wales (probably therefore not available outside the UK) programme on BBC iPlayer about the founding of the Cooperative movement.  Thought provoking as we move further into the Silicon Age and the era of the social networker.

Web 2.0 for Educators - Part 3

Started Tuesday 18th January 2011 8.28 am
Words 337
S.I. Index =  66.8%


The return of the Agora?

If you are reading this you were not too affected by yesterday.  The return to the time of being a  nation of shopkeepers may appear to be a hard step.  We have all been convinced by the idea that if it is delivered to your home it is of better service quality than  queuing to buy it with everybody else.  This is the real life outcome of  the attitudes  portrayed in the John Cleese and (later) Two Ronnies sketch.

The idea of greater prosperity driven by technological advances was supposed to release us from work to have more leisure time.  A premise was enshrined in law that you had to retire at certain age whether you could afford to or not.  This was  taken as a right and was  supported by the National Insurance scheme.  However these expectations no longer apply.  The reasons  are political opinions and I choose not to work in that area.

So how does this relate to Web 2.0.  Well we have  realised the musing from one of my favourite books Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  The Babel fish is alive and well in the form of an Android phone.  The skills needed to operate a Web 2.0 driven lifestyle will have to be gained rapidly if you are going to compete over the next few new years and retain all your assets (home as opposed to investment property).   The scenarios announced yesterday that included the NHS revamp and the transfer of maternity leave to become paternity leave makes the idea of Teleworking a necessity for most businesses.

For more on Web 2.0  visit the Blogs 2pointfiveageofman.net  and kritirecharge.co.uk.

Hopefully we will then all be able to reclaim our own village green before the council sells it for redevelopment.

PS Look out for the FSB's Keep it local campaign.  Events for social and micro-entrepreneurship will be appearing on the Dipity timeline via the link above.