I’m in a dream place -Val d’Isere – attending the first IS Workshop on Global Sourcing.
Val d’Isere is advertised as the best ski resort in the whole world. After what I saw today, I might agree;-)
The workshop is extremely interesting – the proceedings are already online!, and there’s another day to go!
March 14 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
After a sort of hibernation, with lots of paper writing, revising and nights without sleep, I’ve got a phone call from John Breslin, inviting me to Galway for a WebCamp on Social Networking taking place at DERI on Wednesday, the 7th of March.
My first reaction was: too bad! I won’t be able to go, I’m teaching on Wednesdays. But then I sat down and thought: this is something I’ve be longing for all these long winter months, and as they say: “where there’s a will, there‘s a way …”
I really want to attend, and the way was found;-) Now I must start thinking of my talk. What I had in mind was “Social Networking in corporate environments” – giving an account of my observations, maybe focusing on one story only… will see!
Valdis Krebs is the special guest, and he will give a talk on “Social networking and emergent communities”. Can’t wait!
February 28 2007 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
As I said in a previous post, I started teaching a module this semester. This morning, I got a phone call from my colleague Jurgen Simpson, telling me about a seminar and a performance taking place at the Daghdha space this afternoon. Great stuff for our students, who had the opportunity to get an idea (maybe for the first time) what’s the use of what they are learning.
I went there myself for the evening concert. I didn’t get any name while I was there, but I asked my friend Google when I got back home, and he told me everything:
Soundings: KK.Null
Tuesday, October 31. At Daghdha Space, Limerick, Ireland. Soundings presents KK.Null, escalation 746, and Tony Higgins. More information is available on the web.
I had the place and the date – what else did I need?! A bit more googling, and I found out who’s who:
The easy way out would be to say: I’m getting old, this is not my music, it’s for who enjoys it, leave me alone! But I don’t feel like this – I am curious, I’m ready to try , to learn … I believe it’s fantastic that sciences and arts can converge, marvelous things could come out of this… And I usually like loud music, I enjoy that tickling in my solar plexus, the only problem I have is with music hitting directly some sensitive points on my body and causing real pain…
At the end of the performance, one of my MMPT students came to me and told me full of pride that they went digital: they created a MySpace for their course and they plan to use it as a notice board! We talked about MySpace a few weeks ago, I’m glad they’re experimenting!
November 01 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Last week I attended the CASCON Dublin Symposium at the Dublin Software Laboratory of IBM. The event was organised in association with its bigger “sister”, the Toronto CASCON, already at its 16th edition. This year’s edition had a suggestive name: “Meeting of minds”.
The keynote speaker here in Dublin was Prof.Mark Keane, the director of Science Foundation Ireland. For me, it was an excellent opportunity for getting a broad picture of research being done in Ireland: research centres, groups, topics, funding perspectives, and so on.
There were 3 papers presented in the morning, and 3 in the afternoon (very little compared to the Toronto CASCON, who went on for 4 days and included several tracks and workshops and a technology showcase). Two guests, one from Egypt and one from Sweden, gave an international dimension to the local event.
During the lunch break, a poster session gave us the chance to network with IBMers, colleagues from other universities and other participants. My team presented two posters, and we got some very interesting feedback on them. We all voted for choosing the “best poster”, and Benoit Gaudin(and his colleagues) from University College Dublin got the award for a poster titled From Migrations to Population Concentration, based on some very interesting visualizations.
The video link with IBM Toronto worked (almost) without fault, and we were able to watch the keynote speech and the panel discussion going on there, and even to ask questions… It was such a nice feeling, to be part of that global research community and to participate in the Toronto event while sitting here in an auditorium at IBM in Dublin. I was happy to discover that someone blogged that event – here’s the link.
The CASCON blog is aggregating posts from several participants’ blogs; it almost feels like I’ve been there! I was thinking of it as an inspiration for setting up a conference blog for ECSCW’07 – we’ll be hosting it in Limerick!
Going back to the CASCON blog today, I found a very interesting (and painfully true) reflection on CASCON (but it could apply to any other conference!), the incredible amount of enthusiasm and ideas they stir in us, and how these get killed by our inevitable return to our day-to-day lives!
October 23 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
The Open University is advertising an interesting position:
Research Fellow, Role of Blogs in Learning and Teaching
The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research Group is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to work on an e-learning project in the area of blogs. The project is jointly funded by the Faculty of Maths and Computing and the Virtual Learning Environment programme of the Open University. The research work will be carried out in close collaboration with industrial and academic collaborators.
Far from being just a fad, as some people predicted, blogs had become a common presence in our day-to-day lives. Their use in education gains ground, as we see.
Two years ago, this would have been my dream job. But not now… Anyone interested?!
August 18 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m striving to understand what’s happening to me, and why my apetite for blogging seems to have radically decreased. I guess it’s because I’m changing, going through a transformation period, becoming somebody else… and I like this new person much better than the old me…
I know, it would have been interesting to document this transformation. But I didn’t feel like…
I simply felt the need to be on my own for a while. Things are changing again now … I’d like to reconnect to my peers, to lay a bridge between the old and the new “me”… to get my voice back!
Let’s see if I am able to sustain this impulse by blogging regularly again!
I need a fresh start, and I should forget about the tens of unfinished drafts – they’ll never get published!
July 26 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I was away for a few days, doing field studies. This is what I found in my Inbox when I got back to work:
“Turning Munster Red”
The Munster Rugby Supporters Club is asking the workplaces of Munster to become a sea of red the day before the Heineken Cup. In preparation for the big day in Cardiff the 19th of May is to be designated Munster Red Day.
All factories, shops, offices and schools are being asked to participate in the initiative by encouraging employees and pupils to wear the Munster colours to work or school. Some of the largest employers and schools throughout the province have already agreed to show their support for the Munster Rugby team by allowing employees to wear jerseys and red clothing.
Hmm… that explained why a lot of people in my department were wearing red that day!
On Saturday, I decided to go to the city center and join the crowd. Many of my colleagues said they will be there, the atmosphere was fantastic, and, the most important thing, MUNSTER WON THE CUP!
A few images taken in the hours before the game … So that you can see how Munster red looks like!
May 20 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I just finished reading “The Deadline” by Tom deMarco, an excellent novel about project management. Here’s a good review by Richard Mateosian, and the first chapter is offered for preview here.
A few words on the plot: Webster Tompkins, a systems manager who has just been laid off from a giant telecommunications company, is kidnapped by a charming spy and brought to the fictitious state of Morovia to organise its software development industry and put to work about 1500 software engineers who are supposed to re-produce six carefully chosen (already existing) software products in a two years period.
From Tompkins’ perspective, the four most essential ingredients of management are:
– and he calls all the rest Administrivia.
Because he has too many people that have to be given some work to do, Tompkins decides to try a controlled experiment, running three parallel projects with teams of different sizes and using different methods. He envisages a sort of world’s first project management laboratory.
Tompkins is seconded by Belinda Binda -a bag lady who used to be the world’s greatest
project manager in her day, and who eventually recovers from her burn-out after embarking upon this experiment. She had also been kidnapped and offered Tompkins’ position before, but she declined and found refuge on the Morovian beaches searching in containers.
Reading the book was a delight, I was looking forward to the evenings and to travel time when I was able to continue reading.
I particularly liked this conversation between Tompkins and Belinda Binda, where Belinda explains that management involves heart, gut, soul and nose.
The ‘heady’ leader can lead, but people won’t follow. You can’t do much about the heart you’ve got, and maybe you have to be born to it. However, there are people who grow into management ; they start awkward and become confident and eventually make wonderful managers.
The soul has to do with the fact that projects prosper to the extent that people learn to work together effectively. If they work entirely apart, a bunch of piece workers in different places who didn’t even know each other, then soul wouldn’t matter. Management would be a simple matter of coordinating their efforts. It would be an entirely mechanic process.
..the real world requires close, warm, and almost intimate interconnections between team members, and easy, effective interaction through the whole organization.
And Belinda emphasizes that the manager can’t make this happen – he has to let it happen, to create an atmosphere where it can happen. If he’s lucky, it does happen. That’s what she calls building soul into the organization.
She also speaks about a team’s need for a shared vision (could be a cult of quality work, the feeling of being an elite or simply integrity): …the group desperately wants to be unified. The human creature has – built into its firmware – a need to be part of a community. And, in today’s rather sterile modern world, there isn’t much community to be had.
The scene is absolutely fantastic – a top manager getting advice from a bag lady in a Morovian park on soul and community;-)
And it relates to my current work – how to create this atmosphere where flow can actually happen ? From user-centred design to team-centred design – isn’t this what CSCW is all about?!
April 08 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m in Vienna for a short vacation with my daughter. I was supposed to be online, both for doing some urgent work, and for blogging – after all, I’m on vacation, and I’m supposed to do whatever I love to.
Well, the Internet connection of the friend who’s hosting me refuses to work. It worked at my arrival on my own laptop – not anymore! In situations like this, I used to say it wasn’t meant to – now I started doubting about my own theory… What’s the use of a vacation if you can’t do the things you like?! Weather is bad – grey skies and -6 to -8, I’m really looking forward to landing back in Dublin on St.Patrick’s Day!
We visited the MUMOK yesterday, and Albertina today – a brilliant Egon Schiele exhibition!
I’d really like to see the Leopold Museum tomorrow, there’s a Klimt-Schiele-Kokoschka exhibition, but I have no idea if I can convince my daughter to bear with me!
I’ll try chasing some Vienna wi-fi hotspots …maybe.
Anyhow, I hope to be back here in October, for BlogTalk reloaded…
March 16 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m far behind with my blogging – and there are so many exciting things happening in my life!
This afternoon I had the chance to participate in an interactive session on the Elluminate platform (oh, I should mention first that I’m taking Choconancy’s Facilitating Online Workshop).
It was a really “illuminating” experience, with Fernanda Ibarra as facilitator. Instead of a chair, I got a yoga mat (how could she guess my preference for sitting on the floor?!)
February 13 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments »