..or how I managed to get dead frozen selling Romanian language lessons on Bedford Row on Saturday;)
A year ago, I found out about the existence of an organisation meant to bring together the Romanians living in Limerick. I started going to their monthly meetings whenever I could find the time, and I met very interesting people from all the paths of life there. At the first IRCBA meeting this year- I heard about the Excursions Performance festival and the “Sell your language” happening organised by Ania Bas as part of it. Me and my colleague Daniela Butan decided to give it a try.
We found Ania (who is Polish) and Helena Zelesakova (Slovakian) on Bedford Row, and we joined them. I must say that the “would you like to buy a language?” approach didn’t suit me, so I kind of turned it into “would you like to buy a language lesson?”. Daniela and I offered 5 min Romanian language lessons for 1 eur – a rather competitive price, taking into account that Slovak and Polish lessons cost 1.50 and 2 euros!
A lot of bypassers didn’t pay any attention to us, but quite a few asked for more detail, and a few accepted our offer. It was interesting to see how perfect Romanian pronounciation someone can achieve in just 5 minutes!
I didn’t make any money on the day, but I managed to learn some Irish in exchange!
I would have loved to see a lot more people involved in teaching their own language – the mix of languages offered was exclusively East European, while there’s such a variety of people coming from different corners of the world living in Limerick!
January 25 2009 | Events and Limerick and Uncategorized | No Comments »
A post on How to turn a bad thing around on the OpenCoffeeClub Limerick blog got a lot of attention – and after that Evert Bopp, one of the fellow organisers of the LOCC, was interviewed on Today FM and on the Ryan Tubridy show.
This created a lot of buzz and the idea of organising a BarCamp focusing on entrepreneurship and start-ups
Then, I came across Stephen Kinsella’s post and listened to the podcast- he was talking about a University initiative group. It occurred to me that we should join forces, so I drew his attention to the LOCC idea.
Twitter did the rest. Other people jumped in, so on January 23, we met in UL for the first time to discuss how, when, where, who. Why was obvious: trying to turn a bad thing around… The discussion started with Stephen Kinsella, Hughie Tiernan, Bernie Goldbach and myself around the table. David Quaid, Evert Bopp, Ger Hartnett and Shane McAllister joined us shortly. We were all buzzing with great ideas about speakers, sessions, advertising and so on. The only problem we had was with the date: Stephen had already made a provisory booking of the lecture hall and break-out rooms in the Kemmy Business School. And the date was March 7. Bernie told us he just spoke to Keith Bohanna and that was the date they had picked up for Bizcamp Dublin. A short conversation with Keith on the phone, a tentative of bringing the Dublin Bizcamp to Limerick alltogether, the frightening spectrum of having two competing events on the same day, a check of the rugby calendar, and we agreed to move the event to March 21. Dellcamp became Bizcamp Limerick!
We went to see the facilities and everybody was impressed by the new KBS building.
Stephen Kinsella has the whole story in this blogpost.
January 23 2009 | Events and unconferences | No Comments »
Last night I went to the Daghdha space in St John’s Square to attend a talk by a Finnish scholar. Dr. Jaana Parviainen from the University of Tampere spoke about: “The Crisis of Knowledge: How We Know In and Through the Moving Body”. The talk was preceded by a dance performance.
I love going to Daghdha – it has a very special atmosphere (hosted in an old church I’ve spoken about before) . Imagine a big hall with pilars, cosy sofas, armchairs, bean bags and blankets, book shelves, intimate lights and hot tea served.
Jaana spoke about her early training in the Martha Graham‘s dance style, and how she didn’t quite enjoy the experience. This rang a bell to me, I had to study ballet for ten years because one of our neighbours used to run a ballet school. At some point, I even considered the idea of becoming a ballerina. I can’t say I hated it – and it definitely left some traces – I not only love watching dance performances, I also happen to dance now and then around the house .
Jaana didn’t end up being a dancer either – she studied Languages and Philosophy and wrote a PhD thesis about dance from a philosophical perspective. Nowadays she is working with a group doing organisational studies that focus on the role of the body language and body movements in an organisation.
Her talk triggered several ideas and questions in my mind:
- She spoke about bodies “moving and being moved” – yes, sometimes we behave as we’re supposed to in an organisation, and our bodies “are moved”, in a way, by the organisation’s rules, by other people’s actions and by social conventions; Jaana also mentioned the gestures and habits we’re inheriting from parents and other family members. But my thoughts went toward massage therapies – how the therapist is moving someone else’s body (osteopaths manipulating joints and muscles), or her own hands on the client’s body, listening to her intuition and trying “to see” where the pain hides.
- Moving and being moved – how does this apply to an unconference type event? Just imagine a choreographer looking at a BarCamp event: attendees congregating around the timetable and disappearing into different rooms. The whole interaction in the rooms: one-two speakers, the audience, members of the audience becoming the centre of attention, everybody turning around on their chairs, people discovering old aquaintances in the back of the room and exchanging a smile – what a fascinating “ballet”!
- How do people move in a work environment? Are their trajectories relevant? During my observation period in a large open plan full of cubicles, I learnt they are. I went in with the pre-conception that there will be nothing to observe, because people speak to each other mainly through their computers. And I was proved so wrong! People are walking to each other desks to ask a question, to share important news, to suggest a break for a discussion. People stand up to look around and see if someone is at his desk. Some people push their chairs around, some others tend to sit on their colleagues’ desks and make a tour of the team. When someone important is visiting, the rythm and the sound of the whole space is changing.
- How is distributed collaboration affected by the lack of movement and space awareness? People tend to assume that their counterpart works in a similar place, in similar conditions- and this is most of the times false! People tend to guess each other’s reactions in call conferences. People in the same room express through gestures unknown to their counterparts. Is a video channel a solution to this? I don’t think so, although it is very useful in some circumstances.
- Negative knowledge was another interesting idea brought into discussion: being aware of what you don’t know, being aware of what you sshould avoid doing and of the consequences of not succeeding. Social media seems to have a very important role in raising this kind of awareness: I discover every day things I didn’t know – and wasn’t even aware of their existence! We also tend to know more about actions considered a no-no and about failures due to blogs nowadays.
Here’s a paper by Jaana I managed to find online, where some of her and her colleagues’ ideas are introduced: Negative Knowledge, Expertise and Organisations.
And today, Jaana, together with Steve Valk and a group of members of the Daghdha Dance Company paid a visit to us in the Interaction Design Centre. It was great to have them around and talk about our work with them. Who knows?! Maybe it’s the beginning of an interesting collaboration!
December 05 2008 | Events and IDC and KM and Knowledge Management | No Comments »
A frosty afternoon… Nowadays I have to leave the university shortly before 5pm, otherwise it’s too dark to cycle by the Shannon
When I got into town, it was 5:10 – the exact time indicated by one of our colleagues for watching the sky and see Venus and Jupiter next to the New Moon.
The lights of the city and my own clumsiness in using the camera didn’t let me get a perfect picture of what I saw – but this one is nice enough – you can see Venus very clearly on the right bottom part of the Moon! Jupiter was there as well
An explanation of the phenomenon can be found here. I must say I had tears in my eyes because of the cold and I kept wondering if it wasn’t a simple illusion…
December 01 2008 | Events and Life and Limerick and Uncategorized | No Comments »
From all the places in the world I have worked in, the University of Limerick is by far the best. There are many reasons for this: the people, the campus, the cross-department collaboration atmosphere, the personal development programs and workshops, the lunchtime concerts. And last but not least, the events where we meet to exchange information and ideas about how to improve our teaching and the students’ learning. Every time I feel unhappy about how my teaching progresses, all I have to do is to attend one of these events and find out I am not the only one who encountered that problem, and learn how other people have solved it.
On Friday, after the last lecture of the semester and two other meetings, I attended a “Teaching on the Go” session organised by the Technology Enhanced Learning group in UL.
Stephen Kinsella from KBS gave a talk titled: “Many to one: Using the mobile phone to interact with large classes“. Since this is one of my major problems – how to interact with a large class during the 50 min I get with them, I thought I might pick up something from Stephen’s experience.
The talk was excellent – short and to the point – and Stephen invited the participants to join his efforts. He developed the app himself – using a cheap mobile phone and Java. He is teaching a really large class – 500 people attend his lectures in the Concert Hall. At specific points during his lecture, he asks his students for questions or comments. The messages are projected on the large screen and everybody can read them. Sometimes he gets highly relevant questions, that allow him to explain specific terms or clarify issues. Some other times he gets irrelevant stuff, or even bad language. The phone numbers are always on the screen, so he can call back the number and expose the person. But most of the students understand the rules of the game and use this opportunity for real dialogue.
Stephen is now working with a couple of Indian developers on developing a web version of his application.
A video recording of the talk is available on his blog.
The excellent thing about this solution is that it is simple, affordable and the messages stay in a closed circle. My worry about the Jaiku experiment I ran last year was that I was polluting all my other contacts with the messages I was sending to the students. In one way, this was good, because it allowed synergies to occur (like my collaboration with Bernie), but at the same time some of the students might have been put off by this transparency.
My guilt feeling for not blogging was fueled even more by Stephen’s statement that he has reached 1000 blog posts! After checking his blog, I realised it’s an excellent illustration of what good teaching enhanced by technology can do! All his lectures are available online – exactly what was suggested by my students last year (and I thought they were asking too much!)
Someone else in the room mentioned Clicker and a trial they are involved in. It’s amazing how much can you learn from your peers in an environment like UL! People from different departments come together and share their experiences and you always leave the event with new ideas and having made new acquaintances!
November 30 2008 | Events and teaching | 3 Comments »
Today a friend came to see me one more time before leaving Ireland to return to Romania. I was a bit sad thinking that during the last two years she’s been in Dublin we only met a few times. But we are such close online friends that distance won’t really make much difference…
I met Diana in 2004, when she left a comment on one of my blogposts on Prinsea, a blog I was co-writing with Gabriel Radic, a Romanian living in Paris, about the tips and tricks of blogging. To our knowledge, it was the first source of information about blogging in Romanian. I took Diana’s comment as offensive, so I fired back. Gabriel asked us to stay calm and take it offline. E-mails followed, then IM. Misunderstanding clarified, we sent each other virtual hugs and became friends.
Later in 2005, the fact that a Romanian candidate for a PhD position on my project was turned down (she had two degrees and a master’s, but no publications) made me think of a possible solution to this problem. In the west, very few people realise how things work back in Romania, and that it is almost impossible as a student to attend any relevant international conference in your field, or even a workshop. The access to prestigious publications in one’s field is also limited – the universities can’t afford subscribing. And nobody could ever dream publishing straight into a journal without being familiar with the latest progress in your field and without a supervisor’s support. At the time, I was an observer on elgg, a social networking platform developed around the idea of eportfolio. I decided to encourage a group of graduate students from Romania to start building an online portfolio in English, writing about their research interests, their readings and future plans. My idea was that adding the url to their CVs could make a difference and give their potential international supervisors an idea about their abilities. I have no idea how much the blog/portfolio idea helped to get a position – they were brilliant students anyhow, but all the 5 people in that group got the chance to study abroad. Diana was among them, and she came to NCI in Dublin to do a master’s in Learning Technologies 2 years ago.
And now she’s getting ready to return to Romania. She was invited to continue with a PhD, but she’s too keen to move back home and apply what she learnt. Time to say goodbye… no more dinners in Dublin together between the Damastown bus and the 9pm Limerick train!
Two weeks ago at Barcamp Cork II, Emma Persky made me smile and gave me an Akoha card:). “Akoha is a new type of “social reality game” inspired by the idea of pay it forward where players play real-world missions that can be tracked online” – their website says.
I played my card with Diana today, as I knew she will enjoy playing it forward. Farewell, and may the road rise up to you, dear friend!
November 16 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, I read the announcement that FriendFeed is now available via IM, and I thought of giving it a try.
This morning, while preparing my lecture on Collaborative technologies and Enterprise 2.0, a feed coming from Lee Bryant’s Twitter caught my eye:
November 12 2008 | teaching | No Comments »
Well, the Podcamp was in my calendar for the last two months, but until 3 days ago, I wasn’t sure I can go. It was a tough week (and a tough month!), and I wouldn’t have dared to go by bus or take the train up to Dublin and then to Kilkenny!
I had promised Sabrina Marczak (a Brazilian doing a PhD at the SEGAL group in Canada), who’s visiting our research group, to facilitate a few discussions with people in the Irish software industry involved in outsourcing. I have done my best, but we didn’t get many responses.
I intended to take her to an OpenCoffee in Cork, but this didn’t work out. She visited Cork last week, attending the Irish HCI conference in my place, while I was stuck at home, with an injured back and hip (don’t ask how it happened, because it was really stupid!)
But we’re coming to Kilkenny tomorrow, so who knows?! Maybe we’ll have a bit of luck!
If, by any chance, you have ever been in a software outsourcing/offshoring relationship (either at the receiving or at the sending end) and you happen to be at Podcamp this Saturday, please come and say hello!
We’re getting a lift with Marian, and I’m really excited to get the chance to talk to her on the way!
September 26 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
No, I didn’t disappear from the face of the Earth. I just keep writing drafts here and never manage to publish them…
I am in India – another one of my childhood dreams coming true. An Indian colleague, consulted because I was very anxious before my departure, said he doesn’t think I’ll encounter any life threatening circumstances. His feeling was that I’ll probably be disappointed. And in a way he was right…
Things here are very different. This is not David Lean’s India. Neither is Mircea Eliade’s.
It’s a weird mixture of aggressive capitalism and thousands of years of culture. And I need time to get accustomed to it! Maybe one day I’ll love it. But for the moment, I’m just overwhelmed.
I spent a week at Wipro in Bangalore. It was a great experience and I hope to blog about it this week!
Now I’m in Kerala, taking an ayurvedic massage course. I should be in the seventh heaven… only if I could be less critical!
I’m in an Internet cafe right now – I had to change a password that was expiring and I checked every Internet cafe in town if they would let me connect my laptop. Everybody else said: “impossible”, until I found this nice guy at Rabby Towers. Wi fi seems not to have reached this land yet – they were looking at me as if I’d have been from another planet.
Talking about other planets- I found in a bookshop Douglas Adams‘ Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I’m reading it now!
The hotel does have Internet access – but it’s an old PC in a tiny room next to the kitchen, and shared with the staff and every other hotel guest!
Going back to my hotel now, more later, world!
August 06 2008 | Travel India Cannanore | No Comments »
I arrived in Bangalore on Sunday morning at 5am. The airport looked impressive – it was just opened in April this year. On the way to the city, the first shock: shacks, rubbish, people selling food next to the motorway… And the red mud everywhere…
The second shock was my carefully picked up hotel. In my naivety, I had picked up a hotel close to the company I was going to visit. I was going to visit Wipro in Madivala, so all I had to do was to find a hotel in Madivala and check the map. I wanted to walk there every day. I didn’t want to depend on any means of transportation. This is how I found The Libra. Don’t let the banner fool you: the pictures must be taken in some rich cousin’s hotel in the UK. The place is not what we would call a hotel. Minimal furniture, windows overlooking piles of rubbish and construction sites, shower dripping continuously… After a first attempt to eat breakfast, I gave up and did my own shopping. There was a sheet on my matress and then an old blanket without an extra sheet. I asked for an extra sheet but couldn’t get one. I spent the first night covered with the towel I had brought with me. It was warm, but not comfortable enough. This is a picture of an executive roam just like mine. Doesn’t look too bad here, but it was actually not very welcoming. The rooms were under continuous camera surveillance, and I felt uncomfortable to know someone was watching me day and night.
On Sunday, I took a motorickshaw into town. I enjoyed the experience, although a sudden rain drenched my whole left side. It was less than one euro, but when I tried to ask the driver how to get back – or what was the name of the place where he had picked me up, I couldn’t get any answer. I stopped at the Mota Royal Arcade on Brigade Road, and I would have bought the whole place if it wasn’t the very first day! I tried to get an Indian SIM card, and I found out I needed a picture and a proof of address in India in order to get one. It was Sunday, so I couldn’t get my photo taken. But I had dinner in a fabulous restaurant: Just Oriental. The staff was so nice that I felt spoiled. I remember I had stuffed aubergines and they were fabulous. Nice music, nice ambiance, fantastic food and service! I went to the famous MG road and looked at book shops (almost the same books as home!), tried to buy shoes – well, for women it’s basically leather made flip-flops and nothing else!) and entered an old and luxurious saree shop, where I felt a bit like an elephant in a garden: whole families were seated, having tea and discussing the options with shop assistants, who were showing there more and more fabrics.
The rickshaw back was 5 times more expensive, but I was glad to see myself back safe. It got dark around 7pm, and I was very tired.
My contact at Wipro sent me a car to pick me up on Monday morning, and I accepted, but told him I intended to walk once I knew were the place was. The driver arrived half an hour earlier, and I asked him to wait, because I didn’t want to get there too early. He drove me through a city market and I was amazed seeing people camping there next to their merchandise. The traffic was absolutely insane, and on several occasions I feared for the lives of women and children travelling on motorcycles driven by men.
It took me a good while until I got accustomed to the hunking horns – in the beginning, I was continuously terrified. After the first trip, I couldn’t imagine walking there anymore, and I accepted Shiva, my driver, as guardian angel! Anyhow, my work took me to different locations, so managing without a car would have been impossible. The car trip took an hour most of the time…
Another shocking thing was the fly-over getting build in the middle of the current 3 lane road, in order to separate the car traffic from buses and motorcycles. I would have never thought of such a solution!
I got a Vodaphone SIM card on the second evening, not without struggle. My hotel proof of address was considered dubious. But taking into account the bombs that went off just two days before that, I understood their concern. There was police everywhere, and at every supermarket they were checking people’s bags! Shopping for food was a bit complicated, but I just went for fresh fruit, Ness Cafe and milk. I needed a lot of time to figure out what was in packages and cans.
My deceiving hotel had a LAN, so I used to dive into conversation with friends every evening and forget where I was. I could have moved out, but I didn’t have the energy to do it. And I was there for work, and work was good. My only indulgence during these evenings was to eat pomegranates – a fruit I always longed for, as it was one of the main features of Romanian fairy tales.
Crossing the road was a big adventure, especially in the dark. One evening it took me 20 min! Going out for dinner on my own was also tough! After a bad experience in a food court, where I had to queue for each item separately (curry, nan and lhassi), I decided to go for restaurants. One night at Sahib Sindh Sultan, the guy at the entrance tried to persuade me to go for a pub instead. I only wanted a decent dinner in a nice ambiance, and I stood my ground. In the end I got a little table in the middle of corporate party groups, and had a delicious dinner!
I didn’t get to see too much during the first week – in the evenings, I wandered around my hotel on Hossur Road and that was it. I was waiting for the moment when I had to get out of Bangalore as my salvation!
July 28 2008 | India Bangalore travel | No Comments »
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