Education cuts protest

My son was on the London march against higher tuition fees and was held for 8 hours in the cold along with the others in the "kettle". This is the seminal moment in the political coming of age of this generation - this will be their poll tax. I am hearing stories of gates of schools being heaved off hinges so that kids could break out and attend.

Independent schools are threatening their pupils with expulsion if they join protests. That's interesting.

Link to my guardian comment

Kiva a fallen star

Kiva the online microloan site had always been one of my darlings. I happened on news today that it was a bit of a sham. Effective, but presenting a story in the wrong order: the loan recipients online are already funded, and the money you pledge is recycled to the next tranche not the one that grabbed your eyes. OK, that's business and process. But it hurts because it matters.

Here's the story http://beyondprofit.com/storytelling-tall-tales-on-online-platforms/ and it made me realise that however cumbersome the projects I am working on where I support a single person or work with a known physical group in one place, there is a kind of magic about reality, which the virtual can never achieve.

Great Escape

Who would have thought that refuseniks and escapism would be a viable online brand ? But here we have apparently 18,000 members for a site of city professionals whose avowed aim is to escape from the City. curiouser and curiouser.

Online petitions are they too easy

I got this one today - a stop murdoch - which is literally only 10 seconds to turn into an individual personalised email to the relevant authorities. Too quick ?

http://www.avaaz.org/en/ofcom_no_bskyb_takeover/?98.php?CLICKTF

Online Hero of the day - John Lewis

Today in Glasgow I was locked in for the whole morning with a selection of Scotland's best web and online brains - crunching the challenges and successes of The Daily What, one of my education projects.

But my online hero of the hour is actually John Lewis.com. For making an online experience that really matches the real world experience. How many retailers have their shops and their sites at loggerheads ? But at this one, you really feel the values of the two support each other.

I have purchased this strange bit of metal now in both shop and site, and the two purchases were mutually supportive. I could just type the product code from the paper receipt, into the search box, and immediately get the picture of what I was holding in my hands and puzzling over how to hang four spans of pole with only three supports.

Now thanks to Jonny L I have the solution in just a minute - and no further excuse not to drill it into a wall to hold up the offending curtain pole.

The top blogger assignment

BOSS - “CAN WE PLEASE GET HOLD OF A TOP BLOGGERS’ LIST ?”
ME - “Yes of course”

This task has sat unbudgingly in my to do list for over three weeks (OK one of them was half term). I don't usually prevaricate. But this one is elusive, and it's interesting why.

So, why do we want this list? To inject our excellent content into blogs with ready-made followings, so we don’t have to go through the sweat of building up our own readerships. A cheeky but effective barter trade. But I'm discovering, that it's by no means clear what one would be listing in a list of top bloggers.

Lists of top blogs ? There are a few of these around– usually the rankings are idiosyncratic and reflect the outlook of the compilers and the day they did it. But some have consistent methodology eg Technorati top 100 blogs list which measures daily blog “authority rank” based on a technorati basket of indices; and other rankings which mash other data sources eg quantcast, Alexa etc. Example EBiz, blogstorm

Or, we can look at points of influence and power (people, companies) who are also bloggers Eg Fortune 500 companies with a blog output . Presidents, PMs, CEOs etc also do this or have it done for them. Unfortunately, it doesn't make them influential bloggers.

We can look at media brands which also publish blog output eg Financial Times/blogs, Economist/blogs, Bloomberg blogs etc – pick the influential ones - or at least those we think most approachable and best fitting our brand. Arguably, for our business, some very focussed media brands might work better eg Director of Finance Online with committed blog output see http://dofonline.co.uk/blogs/the-edge/business/cadbury-law-5582144/. Anoraky, but the DOFOs clearly love it.

Another option is to look at major blogging platforms blogspot, wordpress etc which rank top-read blogs in their platforms for example at http://botd.wordpress.com/; or we could select their top bloggers by the tags we are interested in eg Economy http://en.wordpress.com/tag/economy/

What’s not about to turn up is an authoritative compilation of independent bloggers who write from personal and authentic perspectives. Those guys are influential not by size but by quality (of content, of audience) – and those factors don’t register on indices of bigness.

So it looks like we will be compiling our own blogger hall of fame – aggregating all the company employees’ blogrolls and blog subscriptions – it might actually be a good place to start. It’s more likely to reflect the interests of the company ? Or maybe we have found a gap in the market and the next project should be the SBI (Specialist Blogger Index) as a way of expressing the character of a company...

Know when the sun is coming

We launched our new weather service that gives you hour by hour predictions for your own 1 sq km patch of the world is amazing. So I can tell that in half an hour, the rain I am now looking at will blow away and there will be sun. Now I like that - it means I can schedule the trip to the bank so that I have more chance to enjoy it.

The trouble with statistics

Stay for free in Italy thanks to Settimana Baratto

This great italian scheme for paying for your holiday by barter rather than cash (where else but Italy) got me thinking that we could manage a week in Rome with a mixture of English lessons, house exchange (we do that already) and an offer to cook delicious polish or scottish food for the guests. What a fun way to really connect with the people you stay with. And an economic crisis beater too....

Next time you buy at Amazon

This blog in Le Monde Diplomatique takes the french marxian dialectic brilliantly to Amazon's business model. Huge profits for the owners, exploitation and precarious conditions for the workers, they say. Stimulating perspective when all we usually here from Anazon analysts is about long tails and rights deals. Why don't we get this kind of journalism in Britain ?

Berlin Conference

I am trying to get in gear for my session at Berlin Educa 2010 on 2nd Dec. The Daily Content has to be about the process of producing THe Daily What the online news service for schools.

My idea is to get the delegates to work a bit and make that day's edition.

Olive Tree

I got an olive tree coming to me in the post for a spcial sunny spot and a hope to reach the spring again in few months. Working many days a week in my garden office, I count on it to get me inspired at least half the year !

Bewitching

While thinking about avatars, faces and the like, I have to post this witch picture - a little skillful painting to turn an angel into a wicked witch !

Avatars lift off

It looks like liftoff for the paperwork mired Avatars project, which has been a victim of half term holiday.

If this week gives time to complete all the forms, we should be in go mode

A colleague in New York is touting it for the social media industry at Ad Tech conference

Here's a background spiel

Z/Yen Group, a London technology and finance consultancy, is leading a UK Government-funded strategic research collaboration to create Avatar-style interfaces as a screen-based application for automated marketplaces. In media technology, the prime application will be a new approach to algorithmic trading in ad exchanges and RTB markets. This market in the UK is estimated to be worth £ 130mn by end of 2010[1]. There will also be applications for automated execution in larger sectors such as online gaming and robot-based financial trading.

The Avatars project at Z/Yen will enable trading algorithms in any automated market to be programmed by changing the characteristics of an “Avatar” animated character. Changes to Avatars’ appearance will alter their trading scripts and thus their market strategy. Vice-versa, market participants will also be able to “read” the strategies of other market-playing avatars intuitively from their facial expressions. The experience of playing a market will become more like that of playing a game simulation on X-box. Research shows that animated avatars can reliably and effectively convey many types of information to viewers through facial expression, gesture, clothing etc[2].

The usage scenario is that a market participant will create an Avatar as an additional control interface for their automated trading algorithms in the online marketplace. Today, a market trader views his/her automated trading scripts purely in terms of numerical parameters, typically on a dashboard of read-outs and data inputs. The aim of this research, is that traders will also be able to view their market tactics intuitively through an Avatar.

We believe at Z/Yen that Avatars will allow a more direct, dynamic and personality-based view of a market – and in our research we will test the evidence for this. For real-time markets in media inventory, with microsecond decisions executed by algorithm, the ability to instinctively understand a trading tactic will yield commercial advantage as well as gains in usability and transparency.

The Avatars research project will be delivering a set of APIs for linking an animated character GUI to core trading algorithms, and to animation platforms. It will also be delivering evidence of trading performance and advantage. The Avatars project builds on several successful Z/Yen Group projects in financial innovation, use and display of trading information and managing market risk[3].

By project close in August 2011, this will be near-market research, and Z/Yen is interested in media trading applications with commercial exploitation partners. Parties interested in finding out more, should contact Project Leader Stephen Haggard at stephen_haggard@zyen.com.

---

[1] Exchange Wire 10 Sept 2010

[2] For example: Recognition Profile of Emotions in Natural and Virtual Faces, Dyck et al 2008

[3] Financial Laboratory, Best Execution

Is there a Scottish new media scene

These guys have tried to launch a distinctively Scots take on social media.

We covered it in The Daily What as a police story

I'm more interested in the Oxfam Scotland thinking on making a citizen journo network. This would really work for a country with a passionate connection at grassroots to overseas development.

Oxfam Scotland's plans for a citizen journalist network - Be Good Be Social 27th Oct 2010

View more presentations from Be Good Be Social .

Don't Get Website, Get Twittering

Don't Get Website, Get Twittering

My fine local organic shopkeeper, Costas of The Olive Tree, reports he has spent £1000 building his website.

What business will it bring him ? And what grief and effort to keep up to date.

When a simple twitter broadcast daily to the customers will be fresh and keep them coming in.

Time to bail out of websites for most of us.

African School visit worth several conferences

E-learning Africa Conference - presenting a session in Lusaka last week. My wife comes for the trip, and sets up a few day's teaching exchange in a Lusaka orphanage school run by SOS Childrens Villages. On day 2: "come to this school with me you will learn more than at a hundred conferences"

Correct. The technology and hardware infrastructure is good. In many ways, better than the London school our kids goin terms of play facilities But it sits in the director's office. Similarly the books. There aren't enough pencils for each child to work simultaneously. But there is an internet link and PC in the director's office. The CD player sits in the director's office.

However, the kids are wonderful

Education is not material Goods

Frank Furedi usually makes me fume with his complacent recycling of his latest book, but I like his argument today in spiked! that redistributionist policy around education is a load of balls.

We have come under New Labour to think that education is a limited pool of material entitlement like income supplement, to be redistributed progressively like phone access or child benefit. Of course it has to be equitable. But you start from the point that learning is a personal and vital entitlement, like health, which you can't take from one to give to another.

How would we react to a policy: Health divide to be addressed by moving doctors from the SE to the NW ? Nurses to be allocated by postcode ? Thanks Frank