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Just in case you are wondering ;-) I'm still in Italy in the Maremma. Lots of woods, meadows, and sandy beaches, excellent Morellino di Scansano, Pecorino and everything else that augments the taste of life and time. If time (especially my daughter) permits I sift thru Doug Engelbarts, Augmenting Human Intellect, written in 1962.
It's always great to look back to a then utopian (or at least hopeful) view on our working and living environment. Engelbart thought that computers are the best tools to achieve this augmentation though language, and methods need to cope with the tools (or artifacts). Interesting is his Neo-Whorfian (B.L. Whorf "language is part of forms reality") theory that the external manipulation of symbols (via computers or typewriters and the like) fundamentally influences our world or more precisely what we can understand (thru language) of something that we call our world.

@ 10:08, am 9.6.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Innovation Software|Tools 

 

Before heading to BlogWalk 2.0 and to southern Tuscany for vacation I met George Dafermos. We really had a pleasant meeting at the venue of the Vienna Linux Week which (the meeting ;-) after all owes its history to the world of blogging since we got to know each other via this channel.

@ 18:35, am 27.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Social Software 

 

Wow, the University of Vienna engages a distinct interpretation of its organizations reengineering.

Dekansklausur
Am 1. Juni treffen sich die neu ernannten Dekane und Zentrumsleiter (m/w) der Universität zu einer Klausurtagung im Hotel Hilton. Das Rektorat hat offensichtlich einen Sponsor gefunden. Eine solche Zusammenkunft aus dem Budget zu finanzieren, scheint mir doch zu absurd. Das Ereignis ist dennoch problematisch. Dem Schatten antwortet das Licht. Die negative Seite besteht in Einkommenskürzungen für Studienassistenten und Lektorinnen.... [quatsch]

@ 18:05, am 27.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: bildung | universität 

 

I'm desparately looking for a VHS or DVD version of the Austrian movie Exit ... nur keine Panik(1980). It was one of the best Austrian movies I ever saw. It is supposed to be a present for one of my best friends who turns 40 this summer and kinda was born out of this film. Maybe you can help me.
@ 23:03, am 26.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Off|The|Record 

 

Blogs seem to be an essential tool to achieve presence on the web. More and more non-geeks are getting into it. I'm looking for the next surprise coming from Austria. I found this interesting blog from a British university on this site - now who is next universities and colleges?

Welcome, Bill!
Bill Ives is a new blogger but an experienced knowledge management consultant with a background in educational psychology. Here are a couple recent posts by him that I found especially interesting:

• Can weblogs reintroduce KM to eLearning? and comments
  
• Peer-to-Peer Learning: A Parable"We decided that we were not going to train people at all."

[Seb's Open Research]

@ 21:48, am 25.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Blogosfera 

 

I'm happy to announce that Andreas Raith, a colleague of mine, finished his Master-Thesis on "E-Testing at Austrian Universities" (the thesis in only in German available). He is completing his Master of Sciene in Online Education. He participated in our corporate educational program and invested a lot of private and corporate time ;-) - for the benefit of all of us.
@ 14:31, am 25.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Neue|Medien|Ausbildung 

 

Building Sustainable Communities through Network Building: This article by by Valdis Krebs and June Holley elaborates understandable and enlightening (word of the day ;-) the use of social network analysis derived from it's maps. It anwsers questions like: who are the most influential nodes in a given network. Knowing that gives you an idea how to diffuse innovation, rumors, alerts or whatsoever. Those nodes are often not formally recognized in organizational charts or political environments. It also saves you from trying to spread you message all over the place. Or to quote the authors:

If you know the network you can focus your influence.

Now how does such a network look like? We know from popular books like Linked from László-Barabási, that the routers of the Intenet, our nervous system, people in organizations, biological system, pages on the Web (WWW) work essentially the same: as networks.

1. Birds of a feather flock together: nodes link together because of common attributes, goals or governance.
2. At the same time diversity is important. Though clusters form around common attributes and goals, vibrant networks maintain connections to diverse nodes and clusters. A diversity of connections is required to maximize innovation in the network.
3. Robust networks have several paths between any two nodes. If several nodes or links are damaged or removed, other pathways exist for uninterrupted information flow between the remaining nodes.
4. The average path length1 in the network tends to be short without forcing direct connections between every node. The power of the indirect tie is used.
5. 5. Some nodes are more prominent than others [^] they are either hubs, brokers, or boundary spanners. They are critical to network health and growth.

The authors refer to a study on that IBM conducted with major customers; by applying networkrd thinking they figured out that thos organizations with the shortest network paths (where communication flew fast from node to node) and with emergent leadership adapted best to change processes. Though the elements and rules are known they are not deployed to nurture networks.

Managing the network is the issue. This article helps understanding what's needed to help sustain networks.

(pointer via Email from Wolfgang Neurath)

Now I wonder what informal networks of - let's say weblogs and the like (social software) - can achieve on a regional or even global scale. Do birds of a feather flock together without diversity - one of the challenges of un-managed networks?
@ 12:07, am 25.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

 

Enlightening report on the conservative or protective attitudes of corporate IT departments in face of employee created workarounds and self-determined productivity tools. Jim Louderback presents his list of disruptive applications to IT-dpts. along with recommendations for the IT (to get rid of it) as well as for the users (to get away with it). Good read.

Disrupting IT and Wikis

Great article by Jim Louderback in eWeek on how social software, social networking and wifi are disruptive technologies for IT like PCs were. Makes specific Wiki IT recommendations.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

@ 09:14, am 25.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Innovation 

 

Nice comparison of default design elements (templates) of the relevant blogsoftware. Texpattern (btw: more of a CMS than simple blogsoftware) does best for Makiko.

Spotting Weblog Software through Design?

Makiko Itoh on "Spotting weblogging systems through design" - an interesting approach, observing similarities in (sometimes heavily tweaked) templates. Do we chose our weblogging system based on our aesthetically inclined minds? I am not sure, but it's an interesting read nonetheless :)

This is especially interesting to me, being I get a lot of "yours doesn't look like a Drupal site, Jonas" comments :)

[a preponderance of evidence blogs]

@ 08:49, am 25.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Blogosfera Content|Management Design 

 

This is brief but clear report on the internal more project-orientated use of the weblog metaphor within an organization. Compelling, again.

How InfoWorld uses intranet weblogs
they're using MT in some interesting ways both publicly and internally [anil dash's daily links]

@ 23:00, am 24.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: K-Log Projektmanagement 

 

Nice little weather application of the Mac OS X menu bar. I'm going on vacations thus nervously checking the weather along our route beforehand.
@ 21:12, am 24.5.2004      | Inbound Links [] | BlogThread

See also: Software|Tools