The UK movement to encourage employers to provide a living wage, as opposed to a minimum wage, is a commendable initiative. Perhaps it would gain more momentum if those in power could spend a week with a family on the minimum wage – or even on the living wage! A longer term strategy might be to have school leavers undertake the same experience.
To add a bit of frisson to a sharing platter, provide a tot of different kinds of sherry with each of the major elements of the dish.
After failing to record at least four ideas over recent months I’m making a determined effort to catch up. Here’s the first of the four.
Dress: Casual with one Change: A twist on organising a fancy dress party might be to specify a dress code which suggests that guests turn up in their normal attire but bring with them a change of clothes. Then, at some point during the party, have people change and parade in their alternative garb.
I asked Tom Jackson if he could suggest anyone who might be interested in working with me on Personal Document Management and he introduced me to Ann O’Brien of Loughborough University’s Department of Information Science. Ann and I duly spoke and discussed what I have been doing and what topics could be explored. A couple of Ann’s immediate off-the-cuff thoughts were:
Transferable Index: Based on my experience and system, would it be possible to develop a simple index and framework taxonomy which other individuals would find easy and useful to use?
A life in industry: Perhaps I could write a ‘book’ illustrated by references out to some of the contents of the filing system. This could be an ordinary book or an eBook.
In the short term, we agreed to explore if there would be any benefit in addressing the topic “The artefact in the digital age” using those documents I had resisted destroying, for whatever reason, after scanning. Ann will investigate if any research has been done on this topic and if it is likely that such a paper would be accepted in a journal; and I will provide Ann with a number of examples of such documents.
In 1981 I was working in the newly formed Office Systems team in the UK National Computing Centre, and I was interested in how the new technology could support the management of an individual’s office documents. So a colleague, John Pritchard, and I decided to experiment with our own documents. This was the start of a still-running practical exploration of how to manage personal documents. My collection is now very large and comprehensive, and each document is indexed and scanned. Consequently there is a substantial system and set of contents in place to explore questions like ‘How do you access a 30 year old document in an old file format’. Two papers have been published on some of the issues that arise, but there are still a few more questions I’d like to explore. And beyond that, I’d like to establish if the whole system is of any value to, say, a research institution who I could pass it onto, or whether, after I can no longer make use of it, it should just all be deleted.
Doing Spin in the gym during the Olympics made me wonder how gyms could capitalise on the raised interest in sport. Most gyms don’t have the facilities or staff to let people try out all the various different Olympic sports. However, perhaps there’d be some mileage in devising exercise routines that map onto the physical demands and skills of specific sports. For things like cycling, it would be easy to simulate actual olympic events such as the road race that Wiggins won, by building climbs, flats and breakaways into a Spin session and talking the participants through the session as though they were doing the race. A video of the road race unfolding in front of them on a video screen would make it even more realistic. Rowing machines and swimming pools could be used in similar ways. For other sports a little more imagination would be needed, but the way that Aerobics classes have been adapted in recent years to become Body Pump, Zumba, etc., shows just what is possible.
The four year Olympic cycle is something else that might motivate people. Gyms could offer programmes that seek to build people up to a peak at the time of the next Olympics, perhaps with mini peaks for the odd “European Championships”, or “World Championships” thrown in the intervening years.
Links between Gyms and local clubs that actually do the sports concerned could also be established with mutually beneficial results – more customers for the Gyms and more people doing the sports. The Gyms could provide club members with the regimes to build the strength and body control required by a particular sport; and the clubs would provide opportunities for gym members who want to try out a particular sport for real.
These ideas can be used freely, but an acknowledgement would be appreciated and, if you make any money from them, I would hope for a contribution.
In the early 1980’s, when I was researching email, I was introduced to the concept of mailbox structures by Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz. They described structuring as tailoring the computer-based communication process around a particular group or application. This concept was explored in great depth by John Bowers and John Churcher in the Cosmos project in the late 1980’s. However, I’ve lost touch with the topic. It would be fun to explore what, if anything, has been done with the concept since then.
Every now and again an idea pops into my head which interests and excites me. Often its while I’m in the shower and I spend 10 minutes or so exploring it in my head and getting enthusiastic about it. But then real life intervenes and the thought – and enthusiasm – is gone. Some of the ideas are more practical than others that’s for sure, but perhaps all deserve more considered thought, and even action, if only I had the time and energy. Its frustrating to have most of them sink without trace once the moment passes. So this is a space in which new, raw, ideas can be recorded straight away, and perhaps revisited at a later date.
I welcome any and all comments about whether the ideas are good or useless, or suggesting ways in which the idea can be extended in a new direction.
Order from Chaos on this site refers to the idea that you can combine efficient ways of sorting and organising physical things together with the power of the computer. It emanated from work I started in the 1980s on electronic filing systems (described in this 1990 paper – Ergonomic aspects of computer supported personal filing systems), and I’ve been exploring the notion ever since. In particular, I’ve done practical work on developing methods for sorting, arranging, image capture and Indexing (outlined in this 2004 white paper – OFC White Paper). I now want to investigate how other disciplines such as archaeology address these challenges; and to explore the use of RFID technology to achieve a seamless link between physical artefacts and their digital representations. If you have knowledge in either of these areas, or would like to suggest who I should speak to about either of them, please do get in touch.