The Obvious?

I must be mad

I am taking part in a panel at the IPRA Summit in London tomorrow morning then heading out to Heathrow for the joys of queueing for at least two hours to get on a plane to Chicago for nine hours, hanging around for another two hours there then another five hour flight to San Jose to get up the next morning and take part in KM World!

I then pretty much turn around and come home ...

Bear this in mind in a business near you

If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them till last

Robert M. Pirsig

Thank goodness for Ted Graham

I was about to write about setting off for San Jose tomorrow where I am speaking at KM World and how, even though I travel a lot these days, it still seems odd to be taking it for granted that I can fly to the US and be back on Saturday.

I was then going to write about how nice it will be to catch up with David Weinberger, David Snowden and David Pollard - then I thought you might think I had something about guys called Dave.

So like I said - thank goodness for the fact that I am also looking forward to catching up with Ted Graham!

Brass Rubbing

Just been chatting with Thomas and imagine if the most visited posts built up a patina like the pews in a church?

BBC on YouTube

As I watched the video mentioned in my previous post from the BBC News site. I found myself getting frustrated at the low bit rate and the inability to read the captions. I then found myself thinking why can't the BBC do it at the same quality as YouTube.

I then found myself thinking because it only has so much money and has to make tough decisions on what to spend it on and what not.

I then found myself thinking why don't they just stick the videos on YouTube like the rest of us!

Taking sides

Richard Sambrook posts about Newsnight last night in which there was a report on the Taliban from "behind the enemy lines" as it were. I missed the piece (I am going to watch it online later) but could totally relate to this comment:

Suggestions that it is "treachery" because it is likely to influence viewers to favour the Taliban seem to me to grossly underestimate the intelligence and common sense of the public. Just because you interview someone - or listen to them - doesn't mean you support them.

The days when treachery could be so simply defined are surely behind us and, as Richard implies, the sophistication of most viewers, at least in Europe, means that jingoism will simply not be tolerated.

I wonder what Fox TV's policy is?

Staying open

My latest delivery from Amazon arrived this morning:

The Dispossessed By Ursula Le Guinn as recommended by Dave and Amba

Faithful Inteprertation - Reading The Bible in a Postmodern World by my blogging mate AKMA

A classic

There was an item on the Today programme this morning about a competition being run by BBC Music Magazine for younger listeners to review classical albums or artists and for the winners to be published in the magazine. As well as Oliver Condy, the editor ot the magazine, they also had a professional music critic in the studio.

Firstly the critic suggested that the competition was too conventional and that they should take a look at some of the "excellent" classical music blogs out there.

Oliver Condy responded by saying "There are thousands of blogs - the good ones are too hard to find." Well - the guy sitting next to him had obviously managed!

Next the Today presenter chipped in with the timeless "How do you know you can trust a blogger to write a good review?" This encouraged the critic to forget his previous endorsement of blogs and say "I am worried because no one needs experts any more - opinion seems to mean as much as expertise."

Excellent! This story has so much in it that I have had to write it even though I am forced to do so on my phone.

So to recap: It is better to have your writing judged by BBC Music because you might, just might, get published in print  than to write it on your own blog, have it peer reviewed by other classical music fans, possibly read by thousands and picked up and raved about by professionals such as the critic in the studio?

Hmmm .... oh well ... according to the Today presenter you are probably lying anyway ...

Made my day ...

Annie from ambivablog and I share links on stuff about the web and spirituality on a reasonably regular basis so I sent her a link to my previous post. In her response she referred to me as Johnny Appleseed and not knowing the name I asked for explanation. She came back with the wonderful description below which I am honoured to be even remotely associated with!

Apparently, a real person who became something of a folk legend, who traveled around the frontier planting little apple orchards in the wild for shade and fruit. It was a mission for him, a homely and friendly way of civilizing the wilderness without "developing" it. Here's a romantic version of the legend:

Somewhere, somehow, he had caught a vision of the winderness [sic] blossoming with apple trees, orchard after orchard of carefully nurtured trees, whose fragrant blossoms gave promise of a fruitful harvest for the settlers. Willingly he endured the hardships of his wilderness life as he worked to make his dream come true. His sturdy young trees lightened the hearts and lifted the spirits of many settlers, for there is a suggestion of a permanent and loving home when one plants fruit trees around a cabin.

Much nicer than being an evangelist!

Social computing as spiritual practise

I have finally got around to reading Stephen Covey's book The 8th Habit and am really enjoying it. I first read The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People many years ago and got a lot out of it at the time.

His new book is full of interesting quotes and it occurred to me on reading the following one that this is what is going on with social computing:

By spiritual I mean the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something larger and more trustworthy than our egos - with our own souls, with one another, with the worlds of history and nature, with the indivisible winds of the spirit, with the mystery of being alive.

Richard Wolman

This is what is happening on while I read and am moved by other bloggers posts and when I attempt to reach out with my own. It is what is going on when the Flickr feeds from my friends contain wonderful images of the world seen through their eyes that reveal meaning and beauty - and it is what was going on even in a work context when on our forums at the BBC people reached out and supported or helped people they had never met in ways that were truly amazing.

Some time ago David Weinberger wrote that what makes the internet hangs together is love and I wrote my own piece about love, or energy or connectedness, or spirituality - whatever you are most comfortable with - being a motivating force in the workplace. I still believe both of these to be true.

A some of you will have noticed I have the occasional rant against organised religions and the damage I believe they do. In response Dave Snowden has accused me of being critical of one form of evangelism while indulging in my own form of the same thing. I counter this by explaining that I don't in any sense want to dictate what people think or what they believe. What I do want them to do is to connect and work together using these wonderful new tools that we now have available to us to work out what is going on and make the world a better place - however they each interpret that!

My views are far too anarchic to be evangelical and this second quote from Stephen Covey's book sums it up for me:

What do I mean by spiritual? I simply mean the whole reality and dimension which is bigger, more creative, more loving, more powerful, more visionary, more wise, more mysterious - than materialistic human existence.

There is no theology or belief system that relates to this meaning of spiritual.

William Bloom