Christmas greetings and thanks go out to Adrian Barker at the IDeA who, in his blog, pointed out the existence of “The Challenge of Co-production” from David Boyle and Michael Harris published by NESTA, in cooperation with The Lab and nef.

Co-production is no stranger to this blog with some nine mentions of it in the recent past and two particular posts about it from January 2009, the first of which was entitled Co-production.

It’s some 25 pages of tight small print but is  a useful introduction to what might be done, without offering any solutions, but it does clearly point out some of the existing issues:

P.6 – “The ‘choice’ agenda has been at the heart of policy towards public services for most of the past three decades, but there is increasing doubt about whether it has succeeded in delivering what people actually want.”

P.7 – “The increasing use of consumer language has encouraged people to behave towards public services as they would towards any commercial supplier. Equally, by focusing entirely on people’s needs – rather than what they can contribute – services have tended to dissempower their users and have  done little to prevent needs arising in the first place.

P.8 – Reproduces definition of co-production from: Parks, R. B., Baker, P.C., Kiser, L., Oakerson, R., Ostrom, E.,Ostrom, V., Percy, S.L.,Vandivort, M.B., Whitaker, G.P., Wilson, R., (1981). “CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS OF PUBLIC SERVICES: SOME ECONOMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS.” Policy Studies Journal 9(7): 1001-1011. which states – “process through which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organisation.”

In general a useful addition to the literature on co-production.

Nesta has just published the pilot version of the Innovation Index, the result of 18 months of work (see Innovation Index).

It revels those key findings:

• The UK invests more heavily in innovation than R&D measures would suggest. Private sector invested 14% of privete sector output in 2007. This may be one reason why the UK has enjoyed higher productivity growth in recent years than France or Germany despite concerns over its investment in R&D.
• Most of the investment takes other forms than traditional R&D. Only 11% of the investment in innovation came from R&D.
• Innovation may be responsible for the lion’s share of the UK’s productivity growth from 1990-2007. Two-thirds of UK private sector productivity – 1.8 percentage points of productivity growth per year – between 2000 and 2007 was a result of innovation.
• Innovation is strongly linked to business growth across a range of sectors.
• The UK is relatively good place to innovate, but has some important shortcomings. The UK appears to be a mid-table performer when it comes to the wider conditions for innovation. Three are the indicators UK performs less well: access to finance, demand for innovation (goverment procurement) and skills for innovation.

The Index has three components:

1. The measure of the amount of investment in innovation in the UK economy, and the effect that this has on economic growth and productivity. Wider definition of innovation has been considered including seven categories: R&D, Design, Organisationl improvement, Training & skills development, Software development, Market research & advertising and Copyright development and mineral exploration.
2. A tool to undestand innovation at firm level that captures hidden innovation. A firm level innovation survey has been developed that tested a number of areas not included in the CIS -elements of  ‘hidden innovation’-, including sector-specificity questions.
3. A set of metric to track how favourable a nation or region is for innovation. It is intended to capture neglected framework conditions to be rooted in factors that have been demostrably linked to innovation. Seven conditions have been identified: Access to finance, Skills, Competition, Demand, Entrepreneurship, Openness and Public research.

The pilot Index provides a framework that could act as basis for better policy: it links investment directly to productivity growth and it provides new data at the level of businesses on the wider conditions of innovation. This means that tracking broader measures of innovation will encourage policymakers to appreciate better the different patterns of innovation seen across the economy, including those that do not rely heavily on R&D, and also framework areas.

The UK’s economic success will depend upon its ability to commercialise and profit from research and ideas and to innovate in the service sector and creative.

Innovation was responsible for nearly 2/3 of private sector productivity growth in the UK between 2000-2007

That’s the conclusion of NESTA who earlier today launched its innovation index.

According to the research,UK businesses invested £133bn in innovation in 2007,representing 14 per cent  of private sector output. More than three-quarters of this came from “hidden innovation”, in areas other than research and development.

The index showed that a significant part of  innovative performance came not from the tradition area of R&D but areas such as design,organisational innovation and the development of innovative skills.

There was also a firm link between innovation and growth.

The study surveyed 1500 firms in the UK across nine sectors.

You can download a PDF of the full survey HERE

Sungguh aneh melihat massimo oddo dan giuseppe favali berlari menghampiri curva nord,di stadion olimpico saat pertandingan antara lazio VS milan,minggu 8 nov 2009 tanpa diikuti nesta.Padahal nesta juga termasuk eks pemain “il biancoceleste”.

kejadian ini memunculkan pikiran bahwa nesta tidak lagi memiliki hubungan yang spesial dengan para laziale,padahal seperti yang kita ketahui bahwa nesta adalah mantan kapten lazio.Dia pernah menjadi icon klub sebelum akhirnya hengkang ke milan pada musim 2002/2003.

Nesta merupakan seorang pemain yang periang,jujur dan bahkan karena kejujuranya sering di buat menderita,dia berkembang menjadi pemain lazio sejak 1985,saat masih remaja.pada tahun 1993 adalah masa dimana dia mengawali karier di seri A bersama SS.Lazio.

Bersama nesta,lazio pernah meraih prestasi yang membanggakan,scudeto 2000,piala italia 1998 dan 2000,piala super italia 1998 dan 2000,piala winner 1999 serta piala super eropa 1999 adalah sederet gelar yang ikut diberikan nesta bersama lazio.

Suatu kali,saat montella mencetak tiga gol saat derby dengan ass.rioma merda,keesokan harinya nesta menghadapi sendirian protes para laziale,tifosi yang marah itu bahkan mencoba menyerangnya.Nesta selalu terikat dengan klub lamanya,bahkan ketika dirinya dijual ke milan,dia menerima semua protes yang ditujukan kepadanya dan akhirnya pergi.

Menyimak kembali cerita-cerita nesta saat bersama lazio,sungguh aneh jika melihat hubungan yang janggal antar Nesta dan Curva Nord.klub harus menghormati semua kenangan indah yang diberikan mantan pemain istimewanya itu,Nesta merupakan bagian penting dalam sejarah perjalanan lazio di seri A maupun eropa.

Saya tidak tau bagaimana perasaan nesta dan apa yang di pikirkan para tifosi fanatik lazio,karena saya hanya tahu sedikit,jelas saya tidak punya banyak alasan untuk ikut campur.Tapi,yang jelas,melihat seorang pemain istimewa tidak berhubungan hangat lagi dengan mantan tifosi yang dulu sangat memujanya,membuat saya tergerak untuk menulis tentang “alessandro nesta”.

“sepak bola hidup dalam dunia kecilnya,tidak ada yang tidak bisa dilupakan.penyasalan mungkin masih ada,tapi bisa dikesampingkan,karena itulah saya bersikeras untuk para laziale buat membuka pintu maaf buat Nesta,lazio adalah rumah Nesta,dia ingin banyak orang menunggu dan menyambutnya dengan hangat disana….

Nesta adalah kebanggan akademi sepak bola lazio……….

Belum ada sosok bek yang setangguh Nesta………

dia pernah didera cedera tapi bangkit untuk menghadang terjangan striker-striker lawan……..

jangan melihat sosok Nesta disaat dia pergi…….

tapi ingat aksinya saat bertanggung jawab ketika ban kapten masih dilenganya……..

walaupun perjuangan itu tidak lepas dari rekan satu tim,tapi Nesta melengkapi dengan kepemimpinanya…….

forza lazio…………

Interactive Triptych Framework (ITF)

This week has been largely spent reading papers as I try to review the Interactive Triptych Framework as a possible framework for evaluating library@nesc later in the project. I still feel like I’m at the beginning of a long journey on this subject and often find that Twitter can be a massive distraction when trying to concentrate for longer than 20 minutes! That being said, I wanted to summarise the framework below from the paper which proposed it. Other papers of relevance will be documented in subsequent blogs.

Analysing and evaluating usefulness and usability in electronic information services, Tsakonas & Papatheodorou, Journal of Information Science, 2006;32

This paper presents the ITF model and suggests that interaction is effected equally by content and system characteristics. It also states that usefulness and usability are interconnected from the user’s point of view. ITF is a holistic picture of user interaction and other approaches to Electronic Information Services (EIS) evaluation. The proposed framework illustrates the interactions taking place between the three components: system, content and users. Each component interacts with each other and it is these interactions which define three evaluation approaches: usefulness, usability and performance.

An important observation of the research paper was the identification of a correlation between usefulness and usability from the users point of view. In addition to this is that fact that all attributes (usefulness, usability and performance) were equally preferred by users and considered important for their interaction. However, the research also reported that usefulness precedes usability when users are asked to state a preference suggesting that content quality is paramount for EISs.

An integrated approach which evaluates usefulness and usability is recommended in order to provide a holistic image of user interaction. If the ITF were to be adopted for the planned evaluation of library@nesc then such an approach would need to be designed. This is something which I intend to give some thought to.

Social Media event from NESTA

In addition to reading this week I also watched a streamed event on social media organised by NESTA entitled ‘Social media – a force for good?’. This well organised and interesting event invited three people with something to say on the subject to answer questions: Stephen Fry, Biz Stone (founder of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn). If you missed the live stream you can watch on the NESTA website. Although it was a talk on social media, Twitter inevitably dominated the questions. I’ve summarised a couple of points raised which I thought were topical and of interest:

• Biz stated that his prediction for Twitter in years to come is that it won’t be triumph of technology, more a triumph of humanity. It seemed like there has been recent debate about social media and whether or not it is a saviour or slayer of humanity. I think scientific research will play a great role in attempting to answer this question. Twitter is relatively young and very little (if any) solid research has been done on its effects on individuals and society. There seems to be a huge amount of potential for researchers on this subject and this makes it an exciting subject.
• Another similar question asked if things like Twitter are increasing isolation amongst people. Biz refuted this when he pointed to the many Tweetups that happen around the world. As an attendee of a weekly Twitter related meet-up- Edinburgh Coffee Morning I tend to agree. Although I am relatively new to the group it seems that many friendships have been formed through face-to-face conversation which has continued on into Twitter and more recently Facebook. The Guardian wrote this week  ‘Is local the new social now?’ and when thinking about the popularity and regularity of local Tweetups then it is fair to say that it is.
• Finally a topic which cropped up a few times was the power of the masses on Twitter. Reid Hoffman put it as “The wisdom of the crowd or the madness of the masses.” This refers not only to the information which influences us on an individual basis but also the potential of Twitter (and all forms of mass communication) to whip people up into a frenzy with (possible) catastrophic consequences. One could argue that the masses are not on Twitter which is equally correct but I wonder how long it will be before this changes and we see more extremists using Twitter to communicate their message (if not already)? Something to be aware of at least.

Finally

I thought I would post another Dilbert strip which I saw this week. Its on the theme of cloud computing and made me laugh. Have a great weekend!

Charging to read news content is like ‘putting genie back in bottle’, says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone

The co-founder of Twitter today warned Rupert Murdoch that his plans to charge for online content, and block Google from using stories produced by his News International titles, were a vain attempt to “put the genie back in the bottle”.

In recent weeks Murdoch has launched a vitriolic attack on Google and other web companies, accusing them of “stealing” content created by his titles, including the Times and the Sun. Management at News International is working on plans to introduce an online paywall next spring and prevent stories from being linked to by sites such as Google News.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today warned that Murdoch “should be looking at it as an opportunity to do something radically different and find out how to make a ton of money out of being radically open rather than some money by being ridiculously closed”.

Speaking at an event organised by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) in London, Stone added that the speed of change on the internet meant Murdoch’s plan was likely to “fail fast”. He was joined in his attack by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of networking site LinkedIn, who added: “I am sure that during the transition from horses to automobiles there were some people bemoaning the loss of horse transport.”

In contrast, Stone said Twitter’s future lay in making more of the service available to application developers and other partners so they could build on the stream of “tweets” created by its users. The social networking site’s users post more than 500 messages per second. The service is increasingly being used by news organisations as a way of discovering breaking news.

“I don’t know what the future of traditional media is,” said Stone. “But from my perspective and Twitter’s perspective I think there is a wonderful co-operative alliance there in terms of the wisdom of crowds, and as we add things to Twitter… maybe we can help.”

Twitter, which was valued at more than $1bn just over a month ago, is looking to drive revenues and eventually start making a profit. It plans to introduce some new features over the coming months. Stone, who set up the company just two years ago, said that by the end of the year it would have begun to offer its corporate users a suite of new analytical tools to help them use Twitter to keep in touch with customers and keep an eye on their brands. An increasing number of corporations, from mobile phone companies to airlines, have added Twitter as a means by which customers can get in touch.

Twitter is also considering giving its users reputation scores, which would help traditional news organisations using the social networking service to spot breaking news stories. Twitter recently announced search deals with both Google and Microsoft’s Bing and the deals added fuel to recent speculation that the micro-blogging site might be a takeover target for either business.

But Stone emphasised a sale was not on the cards: “That was never something we were interested in talking about”. Instead, the company was interested in doing more partnership deals. “One of the things we are seeking to do as we have already done with Myspace as we have done with LinkedIn, as we have done with AOL, as we have done with Google, as we have done with Bing, is to share our data and form partnerships that are long standing… Twitter wants to work with social networks, with mobile networks, with TV networks with search engines… we want to put a little Twitter in everything.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/19/twitter-murdoch-paywall-charge-content

The tables were turned on the adults last night at Urbis Manchester as a panel of schoolchildren scrutinised bids from their peers in the well known format of Dragon’s Den

Guests discussing their pitches to the young dragons

The exercise was part of the launch of NESTA’s I-Discover programme in the city which aims to ensure that young people have the vital skills, confidence and self esteem to prepare them for the future world of work.

Pupils from selected schools  are given vouchers worth £200 each term for them to spend on amazing learning experiences of their choice.

The young people themselves will choose which learning experiences to spend their money on, with activities covering a host of themes – music, sport, science, art, technology, design, architecture, business, charity and loads more.

Pupils will emerge from the programme better prepared for the future – with energy and resilience and having developed creative and entrepreneurial talents.

Sir Howard Bernstein speaking at the launch of the I-Discover programme

Amongst those speaking at the event were Ben Aurora,Director of the Education stream at NESTA,and Sir Howard Bernstein,chief executive at Manchester City Council who stressed the importance of the programme for the city.

For the record,the winning “bid” selected was a scheme to encourage children to explore technologies to help alleviate the world’s problems such as climate change and famine.

I-Discover is funded jointly by NESTA and the Manchester innovation fund.

Alan Barrell, our 2009 National Angel Summit luncheon keynote speaker, has recommended the following reports be read by members of and stakeholders in our community.

The first is titled Siding with the Angels: Business angel investing – promising outcomes and effective strategies.

It reports on a research program into Angel activity, the largest of its type attempted in the UK, which the authors contend “greatly improves our understanding of angels’ investment approach and experience, what returns are being made and what factors affect successful investment.”

The second is titled Shifting sands: The changing nature of the early stage venture capital market in the UK.

As in Canada, it found that traditional venture capital (as opposed to the independent venture capital of Angels) is moving away from the early stage.  It further found a growing dependence on public sector sources of funding on the part of early stage enterprises.

Remote attendance

I feel like I today attended an event remotely for the first time. There have been previous events where I’ve followed the goings-on via Twitter etc., but NESTA’s event today was organised really well, so it felt like I didn’t have any disadvantage from not actually being there (apart from the occasional slight technical glitch).

Social media – a force for good?

In case you’re not aware of this, it was an event where Stephen Fry, actor, journalist and celebrity ‘Tweeter’ and self-confessed technophile; Biz Stone, Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; and Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn discussed the phenomenon of social media and its future impact (I stole most of that from NESTA’s web page about the event: http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/events/social_media__a_force_for_good).

Keep it simple!

This event didn’t try to use any fancy technology, there was no logging in, it was all extremely simple: all you had to do was go to the web page and watch the live, streamed video! The great thing about this was that it meant I could easily open Twitterfall in another window (the easier to keyboard-shortcut it between the two) and follow what people were saying, both those at the event, and those following remotely like me.

I’ve heard of events being held in SecondLife, but that tends to crash my machine, or I can’t find where I want to go, and this was ridiculously easy to join in. I wouldn’t actually have minded having to register to get to the page, so they know who attended (although my tweets probably gave that away!).

Accesibility

I hope they chose this method because a large proportion of people won’t be allowed to access Webinar websites, or download software to their machine. Hopefully, most people should have been able to access this, even if they have a lot of websites blocked. I’m very lucky to have unrestricted computer access in my company, but I know that a lot of places put so many restrictions on access that even some work-related activities are impossible.

I’ll take this lesson away as one that UKeiG, or Oxford Innovation, could use in future. You don’t need to use fancy technology or anything like that – just a video connected to the website (which I’m sure is more complicated than it sounds!).

At last – content!

Well, what did they say? Because of the nature of the event, I think there was a lot said for the time it took! Rather than being speakers sermonising at you, they had a really interactive session, with lots of questions and answers. For me, the main points that I thought were of interest were (and I apologise for not being able to say who said what – it all happened so fast!):

• Twitter comes from a mobile DNA, and as technology and Twitter develop, it will probably revert to its roots again
• We don’t know where twitter might be going, or what competition might develop, but if you spend too long looking in the rearview mirror, you’ll drive off the road.
• The value of Twitter is that it is personal, it comes from people. It can (and does) have value in a business context, but that comes from the people you interact with on it.
• There are many ways the internet reflects more general human nature, with the same ebbs and flows from open groups, gradually becoming more closed and going open again. It’s like the way we used to roam the land freely, then gradually enclosed sections, created villages that became towns that became cities. the people decide they want to be more free again. Our interaction on the internet mirrors that
• They discussed the validity of just listening to sycophants over and ignoring our enemies. I think that listening to your detractors can have more power than your sycophants – it will teach you how you can improve and grow
• Twitter learnt from the images showing campuses, where the pavements weren’t where people actually walked; they left an ‘open campus’ and are paving where people are walking (of course, whether they pave in the right places is still debatable, given the uproar over the beta ReTweet update!)
• Stephen Fry doesn’t tend to read blog comments, because they’re people who want to be heard to be nasty, people who are vitriolic. I’m not sure this argument is completely valid, as the comments can be where you get fascinating discussion, but the people who leave comments will tend to be people with strong opinions, and this can spill over into rudeness that is unnecessary
  
• 25% of Tweets have an outside link, so Twitter is being used to discuss already-created news a lot. I think this could be more an indication that a lot of people are using twitter as another way to publicise their own blog, which is quite different! But not a bad thing
• Politicians have an opportunity to be honest and open on twitter and allow us to trust them again by hearing from them without the spin from their press office, or from the newspaper’s spin.
• Someone asked whether Twitter is reducing literacy levels – Stephen Fry pointed out that Byron used text-esque abbreviations, since paper was so expensive as to be prohibitive! He reasoned (this may be slightly my interpretation of what he said) that there are some people who delight in making the modern world seem inferior to the idols of the past simply by not being the same. He also believes the stereotypes of modern ‘youth’ are rubbish anyway!

Summary

So, what did I learn from this? Not a lot in practical terms, but I feel that it was well worthwhile listening in. The speakers were interesting and had a lot to say in an intelligent way, the audience asked interesting questions, and there were some insightful thoughts on what social media can bring and where it might be going. I’ll be looking out for events from them in the future, and events that are run like this, as it worked so well!

The only thing I think could be improved was the focus on Twitter – the event was branded as being about social media, but that seemed to translate as Twitter. I assume because Twitter’s founder was there, as the recent brouhaha about Stephen Fry’s Twittering (or lack of it). The event only last an hour and a half, so they couldn’t talk about everything, but it did feel sometimes like a discussion on the merits of Twitter!

NESTA have put the video on the website (http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/events/social_media__a_force_for_good), so if you missed it, you haven’t missed your opportunity!

Social Media – A force for good?

So, this is the first of my Happening posts, and I’m deviating already. This event tomorrow isn’t actually ‘happening’ in Manchester – at least it isn’t at time of writing!

This event happens in London with a small, and probably quite select, audience. I only got the email from NESTA today, but with a bit more notice maybe we could have called some friends, carved out an hour, found a place with a macbook wired up to a plasma, and gathered round with our pack-up lunches. Maybe we still will?

Tomorrow, Stephen Fry (you know who he is) ; Biz Stone, Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; and Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn will discuss the phenomenon of social media and its future impact.

Frankly, I’m getting rather bored of Stephen Fry and his love/hate thing with Twitter – sometimes I worry he will tweet himself (like pop).  That said, when I first opened my account I did follow him and @wossy for a while, until I found my own friends and interests online. So, with others I’m sure, I thank @StephenFry for my introduction to the Twitterverse.  Yes, sorry Stephen, I used you up and spat you out – or unfollowed you to be more precise.

So, in isolation, sat at ones desk with headphones on – this event might class as a ‘learning lunch’ but it’s not much of a cultural experience.  But if you guys want to gather together round a screen and discuss what’s said (with or without me!)  I think it classes as a Happening - so yes, it’s in!

IMPORTANT BIT: You can watch the discussion here on the NESTA website.

Join the conversation by posting a question for any of the speakers – all you need to do is add #svuk to your question on Twitter.

This event forms part of NESTA’s  Silicon Valley comes to the UK event programme.

Oh, what a month it’s been. While I’ve been distracted by a relapsed illness, blinds drawn against the world, the world has moved along without my attention or participation. Domestic debates over health care continue ad nauseum, and quite frankly I am worn out over discussions of the economy and the endless gaming in the Capital. It appears we are fully back to gloves off and business as usual after a brief respite. The predictability of the political cycle creates cynicism which results in apathy. The worst is when one becomes apathetic about apathy.

Things are no better elsewhere, but my attention was piqued by two ongoing issues which fall under the broad spectrum of human rights and social justice. Two issues while not dichotomous, do spin in separate orbits around the same planet. As a writer who is working at tightening up some of my random wanderings, this presents a crossroads. Do I offer both issues and then go about explaining the connection, or do I pen two essays? I suppose the twin can contain the bridge, but I’ll construct it another time.

That’s the plan, then. When I get to the other side, we can discuss my term grade. Now, off we go to serious matters.

Prima Parte
A month ago, a gorgeous young man died of a previously undetected congenital heart condition. This lovely and talented thirty-three years young fellow, Stephen Gately, was a member of the Dublin “boy band” Boyzone, a group hugely popular in the UK, including New Zealand and Australia, the Continent and Asia. The group has yet to break into the American music scene in a significant way.

Inadvertently, Gately, an actor, songwriter and one of the lead singers of Boyzone, became an unwitting poster child for gay rights back in 1999 when he was forced to come out on the eve of a titillating gossip piece in a junky English tabloid, The Sun.

“On 16 June 1999, The Sun newspaper covered its front page with what it described as a “World Exclusive” and the headline, ‘Boyzone Stephen: I’m gay and I’m in love”‘. At the age of 23, Gately sold his story to the newspaper because he feared a former member of Boyzone’s security was about to sell the story. (BBC News. 16 June 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/370073.stm)

Look at that again. Gately was 23. A bottom-feeding journalist, and I use the term journalist with reservation, set about to create a sensation with a quick cash return. The result was huge storm. It remains so today. Gately, although out to a tight circle, was not prepared to be the locus of the gay youth community. Struggles ensued, but Gately soldiered on, and in 2003, after being introduced by Elton John and husband David Furnish to an internet businessman, Andrew Cowles, the pair celebrated a commitment ceremony (The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26210611-26040,00.html. Retrieved 16 October 2009).
In 2006, they registered as domestic partners in London (Pink News. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-857.html).

It’s hard to grasp in the United States the intensity Gately’s death had on people in the UK. The outpouring of disbelief and affection from dignitaries, fans, other performing artists, and ordinary people dominated the news.

It was due to the unfortunate lack of judgement by the publisher, as well as an ill-timed case of bad taste that had Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir inciting mourners into angry activists. Her assessment was insensitive and ignorant, and read as if written by someone who had no historical sense of the past forty years since Stonewall whacked us up the side of the head in 1969. To further the offense, the piece appeared one day before the funeral. The despicable tabloid was inundated with complaints and demands for Moir’s brooming. Advertisers pulled print adverts. In every corner, Op-Ed keyboards were smoking.

A few respected popular figures made use of their access to express the general outrage and frustration. From there began a cycle of sandbox warfare. I don’t mean to make light of the situation with that term. Perhaps “ginormous pissing contest” is a more accurate description. Glib? Yes, but the picture illustrates the scene. Somewhere in the muddle people who were already in terrible pain were hurting even more.

The burden of Moir’s piece is that Gately’s death is connected in some unspecified way to the fact that he was gay.

Though the official announcement after he was found dead in a Majorca hotel room was that he died of natural causes and that there were no suspicious circumstances, Moir writes:

“Hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend…

The sugar-coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural death.” (Jan Moir, The Daily Mail, Friday 16 October 2009)

“Her evidence for that claim is non-existent. Instead, she resorts to innuendo and goes on to make a leap of stunning illogicality by suggesting that the death “strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.” (Roy Greenslade Friday 16 October 2009 13.33 BST guardian.co.uk)

She further snipes on drug use the night Gately died. Witnesses and toxicology reports concur cannabis was present. Are we still labeling cannabis as a “drug?” Besides, any causal relationship between cannabis and pulmonary edema is absurd. The Medical Examiner drew no such connections or conclusions.

Furthermore, her article called into question the integrity of domestic partnerships, by suggesting that gay couples participate in risky behaviors more often than heterosexual couples. Moir’s piece was structured on homophobic misinformation.

The original Daily Mail column was initially “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death” which they toned  down to “A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .” in the online edition. That was an improvement?

Stephen Fry, infamous polymath who is one of the kindest of the kind, and most gentlemanly of gentlemen was particularly exercised over the matter and used his nearly one million Twitter followers to express his initial reaction.

“I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of
decency would be seen dead with has written something
loathsome and inhumane.”

Harsh words from a fellow rarely given to such language. A follow-up tweet gave the web address for the Press Complaints Commission. By then the news was viral. The PCC site crashed before noon.

Fry and others have endured criticism for speaking out. This is ridiculous nonsense. Thank God that when hate mongers spew their slime, we have a few artfully articulate people who can and do speak up. Fry is lovely, but he is human, and has stepped in a pile or two. He is so transparently nice that when this has happened, he immediately owns it, apologises profusely, sometimes to the point of irritation, and moves along.

Moir, in her retraction the following week, made it even worse by trying to explain herself. Her column was fluffed with defensive rationalizations. She apologised, but in that irksome way that devalues responsibility. The words, “if I have caused distress…” is a non-apology.

“I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.” (Jan Moir, 23 October 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

There has been grumbling lobbed back over the fence from conservative sources, including Moir herself, which blame social networking for the demise of balanced opinion, thereby creating an atmosphere in which personal opinion is not respected. There has been even more grumbling over an internet fueled conspiracy to promote liberal causes by…too much enthusiasm for social networking. Pardon? Statistics show a broad majority of social network users of Twitter and Facebook do trend to fancy progressive and liberal thinking. Is that a conspiracy, or is it just a demographic?

Surely there are other examples of the value of social networking beyond mundane and gratuitous tweets by starlets? It can be a tickle. I take pleasure in following Fry on Twitter. But there are indeed more important uses available.

In June 2009, Twitter and Facebook users played a pivotal role in the Iranian elections by supporting what began as a DDoS attack against the President, after which the government shut down local internet for an hour, then restarted with a lower bandwidth and filters intended to make accessing social networks and YouTube impossible. Cell phone calling and texting was nearly impossible, and all BBC affiliated sites were blocked (Hiawatha Bray 19 June 2009 “Finding a way around Iranian censorship: Activists utilize Twitter, Web tricks to sidestep blocks”. Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/06/).

The response of the Global Village was to set up proxy servers. Iranian citizens and foreign journalists (many of whom kept behind doors to prevent expulsion or worse) could document the protests and inform the outside world in real-time of the atrocities wrought by the government against the protesting people. For two weeks the Green Revolution rode on the back of the internet.

I participated for five hours the first night and a few hours each day that first week by way of a temporary anonymous Twitter account. The content of one’s tweets mattered not, but the frequency did. On and on it went as users set their location to GMT +3.5, Tehran time. Hundreds of thousands of tweets overwhelmed the local server. Using proxy servers citizens were able to post to YouTube and update international news agencies. People were able to communicate with friends and family members both in and outside Iran. It was one of the few times in my life wherein I felt I was part of something much bigger than I could ever fully understand. But I now know precisely what “Global Village” means.

Put your conspiracy theories there, Ms. Moir, because the Twitter Revolution was Oz behind the curtain. The Green Curtain. You caught a piece of it yourself when you wrote your column about the late Stephen Gately. Mind your manners because news really does travel fast.

Fry is for better or worse, a celebrity in the UK. Cambridge educated at Queen’s College, Fry is a delightfully literate individual who is said to hold a BBC record for saying “fuck” on TV more than anybody else. The difference between the American style of celeb and the UK brand has to do with using one’s renown commensurate with one’s strengths. Americans don’t always grasp this subtlety.

An overwhelming majority of the publicly recognised species do not have the resources and skills to write or speak extemporaneously as Fry and his peers. But these others, primarily confined to life in the shadows of a nine letter landmark on a hill in Los Angeles do possess an even broader talent. That ability is an obligation to support specific philanthropic associations. In doing so, they induce their fans, many of whom seem unaware of conditions elsewhere, into taking up causes to improve the health and well-being of our brothers and sisters in places on the world map where the need is urgent.

Speak up! Speak up against injustice if language is your skill. Help improve the planet in other ways by using your time, talent and treasure according to your ability. Tweet for fun, but don’t forget the powerful medium for change you possess with your phone and computer.

And remember that for as far as we’ve come in Western culture, equal protection and civil rights are not universally embraced. Not even in the West. Yet.

(c)GoshGusMusic(ascap)2009

Milan – Alessandro Nesta baru saja menjalani operasi pada hidungnya. Namun bek AC Milan hanya perlu beristirahat dalam beberapa hari sebelum kembali memperkuat Rossoneri.

Nesta harus menjalani operasi keduanya pada hidungnya guna melanjutkan tindakan sebelumnya. Meski demikian Milan mengungkapkan bahwa beknya ini sudah akan berlatih lagi pekan depan.

Pemain berusia 33 tahun ini dua pekan lalu telah menjalani operasi pada hidungnya saat Milan menang 2-1 atas Chievo. Namun operasi tersebut tak membuatnya absen dan dia bermain menghadapi Napoli.

Kini Milan pun mengumumkan operasi kedua Nesta berjalan dengan baik. “AC Milan ingin mengumukan bahwa Alessandro Nesta telah menjalani operasi guna mengurangi keretakan kecil pada tulang nasal dio Milan,” kata Rossoneri.

“Operasi dilakukan oleh dokter Paolo Marconi dan itu berjalan dengan sukses. Pemain akan melanjutkan kerjannya lagi pada tiga atau empat hari mendatang,” lanjut klub Milan dalam statemennya yang dilansir Goal.

( key / krs )

Sumber : DetikSport

In my mind one of the most innovative organizations in the area of service design, cooperation and public services is NESTA.  They recently published a fascinating report,“The Human Factor”, that examines how co-creation with the public and patients within the context of the NHS can save both money and lives. The co-creation, cooperation, commons themes that run throughout the report are central to the work I’ve been highlighting on this blog around what I’m calling “open health”. The report is a must read for anyone interested in innovation in the healthcare or public health arenas. We’re going to have to become experts in this way of working in the future but getting organizations to think beyond traditional partnerships and anemic forms of ‘engagement’ will be challenging. Below I’ll provide some of the key insights from the report.

• Beyond Efficiencies:  Just thinking in terms of saving money without changing the nature of service design will only get you so far.  What we need is radical redesign.  Think about how to design for desired outcomes rather than purely on existing, often dysfunctional and inappropriate infrastructures
• A good case study of redesign is NeuroResponse, a social enterprise incubated by the Young Foundation’s Launchpad that addresses the unmet needs of patients with neurological disorders through the use of existing telecommunications infrastructures so that more patients can receive treatment at home. That is, moving from an acute care model to community care. The cost of a diagnosis of MS currently costs the system £17,000 per person or a total of £400 million of which the majority is for in-patient, hospital-based care. Telemedicine has the potential to save millions.
• The Expert Patient Programme is another example of how self-care is being used to improve outcomes and patient satisfaction.  Hospital admissions have been reduced by 50% and visits to GPs reduced by between 40-69%.
• Community-based initiatives tend to be better for behavioral change than top-down approaches. The Knowsley Primary Care Trust created a partnership for Wellbeing that focuses on cardio-vascular disease prevention at the community level and works through pubs, bingo halls and shopping centers. The result has been a 28% reduction in cancer morbidity rates and 32% decrease in smoking.
• Well London is a consortium of health, environmental, education and arts organizations that invests in community projects for health behavioral change.  This includes projects like Healthy Spaces that transforms open spaces into greener, more attractive places.  Community mental health is one of the focus areas.
• Transforming Innovation: perhaps the most difficult challenge is changing the way organizations think about innovation.  The US public health sector is in dire need of this change in mindset.  Getting funders AND organizations to take risks, experiment, move beyond dated ways of thinking about technologies and community is a challenge.  One of the platforms they’ve used in the UK is Patient Opinion, a platform that enables users of the NHS to provide feedback and develop networks of user-citizens to provide the essential feedback that innovators within the system can use to improve services.
• Open Innovation for behavioral change: The Big Green Challengeis another initiative designed by NESTA focusing on climate change and how communities can reduce their carbon emissions. The program is essentially a platform that crowdsources ideas for innovative strategies and provides awards for the best proposals. The concept has been extended into the obesity/diabetes space through the Healthy Community Challenge Fund to test and evaluate ideas that make activity and healthier food choices easier.

In the month or so since I posted the draft white paper on open health and platforms for public health 2.0 below I’ve receive quite a bit of positive feedback from most quarters. One of the criticisms I receive from many within mainstream public health programs is that the content is bit ahead of where funders are in the present, too much in the future. I strongly disagree, these tools are here now. We’re at the BEGINNING of a prolonged financial crisis and the old ways of ‘doing’ health and public health are failing too frequently. This is the time to innovate and think about how to design more innovative approaches, innovative institutional cultures and experiment. I was listening to a conversation on stimulus funding in public health and how organizations are being asked to collaborate as they compete for funding from the federal government. We’re still thinking in terms of partnerships rather than networks. We rarely think of new business models that we could use in public health and couple these with user-led innovation and co-creation paradigms. We may not be able to fix the poverty of resources in the short-term but we can address the poverty of imagination in health if we open up to new paradigms.

The Human Factor – how transforming healthcare to involve the public can save money and save lives – discussion paper
Author:  Laura Bunt and Michael Harris
Published: 4 November 2009
National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts

Introduction

“The National Health Service (NHS) needs to save £15 billion to £20 billion over the next few years. This paper argues that these savings could be achieved through radical patient-centred service redesign and more effective approaches to public behaviour change. However, these approaches are difficult to develop within the existing health service.

NESTA’s experience of working with leading companies and developing projects in healthcare demonstrates that radical new ways of innovating that give genuine power to frontline staff, patients and the public are necessary to make these approaches widespread. This would unlock the savings we need and improve the nation’s health.”

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Many thanks to Mr C!

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Thank you, Mr C!

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SEMPRE TE QUIS

SEMPRE TE QUIS

Sady Mac

Te quero assim
por inteira
descobrir seus caminhos
mais secretos
viajar por seu corpo
me matar de prazer
de paixão.
Sempre te quis
você sabia ou fingia
agora estas ai
nesta cama
toda nua
a  provocar-me
a sorrir
eu aqui ansioso
excitado
este desejo incontrolável
querendo explodir
dentro de mim.
Sua pele arrepiada
a passear por minhas mãos
me descontrolam até a alma
Rendo-me aos seus desejos
nos entregando um para o outro
entrando e saindo de ti
Quero assim ficar
dormir em seus braços
acordar contigo ao meu lado
Olhando-me a sorrir feliz…

A confiança de Galliani nos seus jogadores

Será que este é o verdadeiro Milan? Vitória contra a Roma, virada espetacular em Madrid e muita vontade contra o Chievo, com dois gols nos últimos dez minutos.

É preciso esperar para ver, assim como tem feito Adriano Galliani. O vice-presidente do clube rossonero tem depositado toda a sua confiança no atual elenco.

Começando por Leonardo. O jovem treinador teve um início assombroso, vencendo apenas dois jogos na pré-temporada – um nos pênaltis contra a Juventus. Na Série A, uma derrota vexatória contra a rival Inter, por 4 a 0.

Pra piorar, viu seu time ser derrotado em casa para o fraco Zurich, pela Liga dos Campeões. Muitos pensavam que o fim da sua aventura no banco do Milan teria chegado ao fim. Galliani comprou a briga e garantiu sua permanência.

Hoje o time ocupa a sexta posição no Campeonato Italiano e vem numa ascensão incrível. Mas não foi só com Leonardo que o jogo de paciência de Galliani tem dado certo nesses últimos dias.

O tão criticado Ronaldinho também resolveu jogar bola e tem sido importante para a equipe – embora não esteve bem contra o Chievo. Muitos já teriam dispensado o gaúcho – inclusive eu. Dida é mais um. O baiano, calmo e sereno por natureza, ganhou elogios após o jogo em Verona, em que fez uma defesa sensacional:

“Não são palavras minhas, pergunte a Villiam Vecchi (preparador de goleiros). Disse que ele é extraordinário nos treinamentos. Era preciso paciência com Dida e nós demonstramos isso lhe dando confiança mesmo depois da partida contra o Real. Acho que é o goleiro com mais títulos no Milan ao lado de Galli”, disse Galliani.

O zagueiro Nesta, herói no jogo contra o Chievo ao marcar os dois gols, não jogou na temporada passada por conta da grave lesão nas costas. Agora, ele está de volta e conta com o total respaldo da diretoria, mesmo um ano parado.

Já o ex-colorado Alexandre Pato parece estar a ponto de deslanchar. Suas atuações pelo time ainda não convenceram, exceto o jogo contra o Real Madrid, em que marcou dois gols e finalmente brilhou.

O Chelsea bem que tentou tira-lo de Milanello, mas Galliani disse não. O cartola acredita no futebol do bambino e prega calma – os filhos de Galliani não deve ter apanhado muito quando criança. Haja paciência!

O atacante Huntelaar ainda não mostrou serviço. Até aqui, nenhum gol com a camisa rossonera. O holandês é mais uma carta no baralho na mesa do dirigente italiano:

“Huntelaar continuará aqui, não será vendido. Sabemos quais são suas características, deve melhorar, nós temos que servi-lo melhor”, afirmou. Este jogo de paciência parece estar no caminho certo. Se virar um truco, o torcedor do Milan vai pedir seis.

Éder Fantoni

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