Gone to the great gig in the sky

Sad to see two of the great anchors of my youth gone today. Firstly - and this will mean nothing to you if you live outside Ireland or the UK and if you can't remember the culinary marvels of Bird's Angel Delight, fishfingers, beans, and chips on a Friday, and Tom Baker as Doctor Who - Grange Hill ("flippin' heck Tucker!" "Just say no, Zammo!" And so on) is no more.

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Secondly - and more profoundly - musician Richard Wright from Pink Floyd died age 65 from cancer.

Wright appeared on the group's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in 1967 alongside original songwriter Syd Barrett, Roger Waters on bass, and with Nick 'Top Gear' Mason, the drummer. Dave Gilmour joined the band at the start of 1968 while Barrett left the group shortly afterwards. In the early 'acid' days of Floyd, Wright was seen as a dominant musical figure in the band (though not as much of one as Syd Barrett, the band’s chief songwriter and front man at the time) - his keyboard style suiting the psychedelic zeitgeist of the late Sixties. While not credited as a singer on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he sang lead on Barrett-penned songs like Astronomy Domine and Matilda Mother, as well as notable harmonies on Scarecrow and Chapter 24. Examples of his early compositions include Remember a Day, and It Would Be So Nice. As the band's sound evolved, Wright became less interested in songwriting and focused primarily on contributing his distinctive style to extended instrumental compositions such as Interstellar Overdrive, A Saucerful of Secrets, Careful with that Axe, Eugene, One Of These Days and to film scores (More, Zabriskie Point and Obscured by Clouds). He also made essential contributions to Pink Floyd's long, epic compositions such as Atom Heart Mother, Echoes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. His most commercially popular compositions are The Great Gig in the Sky and Us and Them from 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon. He also contributed significantly to other mid-period Floyd classics like "Breathe" and "Time".

Wright recorded his first solo project, Wet Dream, and released it in September 1978 with little fanfare. However, the album is regarded with some acclaim among Pink Floyd fans. Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was forced to resign from Pink Floyd during The Wall sessions by Roger Waters, who threatened to pull the plug on the album's tapes if Wright did not leave the band. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Wright does not appear with The Final Cut.

There was this big personality clash between me and Roger, and at the end of the day I realised that I couldn't work with this person anyway - so I left.

The other band members also fell out with Waters, with Gilmour and Mason starting work on a new Pink Floyd album without him in 1986. Wright rejoined the group - minus Waters as they continued to record and tour as Pink Floyd. They made two more Pink Floyd albums - I was lucky enough to see them play in a rained-out RDS in Dublin on the 'Momentary Lapse of Reason' tour, and again on the 'Division Bell' tour in 1994.

He joined his former bandmates (with the exception of Barrett), one last time at Live 8 in Hyde Park in 2005.

With Wright's passing, a hugely important chapter in my personal narrative has ended.

RIP

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Recession, the challenge to e-learning, and HMH in Ireland

I'll start this post by issuing a mixed metaphor alert: today, we're going to talk about an elephant in the room, which also happens to be an 800lb gorilla.

Intrigued? Now read on...

Back in February this year, I wrote the first of my occasional series on Recession and the challenge to e-learning; in that first piece, I concluded by suggesting that

in the era of $100 a barrel oil and the value of virtual classrooms; the ROI of e-learning as opposed to traditional methods; even the impact of traditional ways of teaching on the environment ("e-learning" becomes "eco-learning" anyone?).

Based on an announcement made last Thursday 10th September 2008, I can now assert that we are beginning to see that there is validity in this conclusion. Based on the level of investment one e-learning enterprise has committed to developing the industry in the medium- to long term, the market in now in a place to support the proposition that the ROI on e-learning makes sense, and generates profit.

E-learning giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) – formerly known as Riverdeep – is to create 450 jobs at a new R&D headquarters in Dublin. Riverdeep had its origins in Dublin in 1995 and under the leadership of Barry O’Callaghan became a global name in the e-learning K-12 market space. As an educational publisher, HMH has over 100,000 customers, generating approximately US$2.5bn in annual revenues, profits in the region of US$1bn, and 50 per cent market share of the US K-12 market, the world’s largest education market.

HMH is to establish its global e-learning R&D centre in the greater Dublin area, creating 450 "high-value" jobs over the next five years.

Fiona O’Carroll, senior vice-president, Digital Products R&D at HMH confirmed the Irish Government’s vision to create a knowledge economy by investing in people, research and innovation was a key factor in the company’s decision.

The new R&D centre will be a focal point for e-learning and educational innovation. Employees, partner companies and collaborating universities will be attracted by the quality of research, people, innovation and commercialisation activity in the centre.

The Centre will involve establishing a globally networked team in Ireland with team members and innovation partners based in the US and around the globe. The company said these jobs should be very attractive to seasoned technology professionals, engineering and technology graduates, highly creative thinkers and innovators in the e-learning space.

As I've said in the past, Ireland has a vibrant technology and knowledge-based industrial economy, and one of the domains we excel in, is in e-learning - I guess most people in the industry have heard of SmartForce and Electric Paper, for example. These large companies notwithstanding, there are over fifty 'other' e-learning development houses in the country. Not bad for a country with a population of under 5 million people.

In my view, this investment will prove to be a game-changer. As it is, you could say that HMH are the only game in (e-learning) town - if they manage the innovations and outputs afforded by this R&D centre correctly, HMH will grow to become the Google of e-learning. Indeed, the Google approach (especially the famed "20 per cent time") is a perfect model for any knowledge-based organization that wants to stimulate growth through innovative new products invented and developed by their own subject matter experts. Similarly, this R&D centre will provide the organization with the potential benefits of having an audience for life: if HMH products have the skill and facility to instil the joy of learning in the kids that they currently provide e-learning solutions for, they will have an audience for life, given that these Digital Natives (click on the link for Marc Prensky's seminal article) will grow up associating the brand with discovering knowledge and the fun of learning. In essence, we can say that the company has the potential to mould a whole generation of learners, which is an extraordinary business opportunity, but also a huge responsibility.

Do I now hear the distant trumpet of an approaching elephant?

I do...

Just an observation really. Rumours of this investment have on the jungle telegraph here in Ireland for some time now, and I was originally going to post on this topic last Thursday (the day of the announcement).

An African elephant (sans room)

I held back, because I wanted to see what reaction would come for the Irish L&D and e-learning blogosphere. I'm disappointed to say that no-one has posted a reaction to the largest investment in their industry, ever.

I'm sure people are still formulating their thoughts - I for one want to read how others in the e-learning industry here in Ireland are responding to this investment.

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References:

HMH to Create 450 Jobs and Base Global R&D Headquarters in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland Press Release. [Internet] Available from: http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/eicms/interiorpage.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2FNews%2FPress%2BReleases%2F2008%2FPressSep102008.htm&NRNODEGUID={077DB63F-4925-4D96-BEB3-364BF11C8EB1}&NRCACHEHINT=Guest

[Accessed 10th September 2008]

Ireland wins €350m HMH deal after tough worldwide battle. Irish Independent. [Internet] Available from: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ireland-wins-8364350m-hmh-deal--after-tough-worldwide-battle-1473370.html

[Accessed 10th September 2008]

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Knowledge Worker Information Processing - an Overview

The goal behind this series of posts about knowledge working and knowledge workers is to understand something of the audience that most of the efforts of organizational learning and development professionals are targeted at; the knowledge workers (KWs) themselves. Today, I'm will wrap up the series by concluding my analysis of the William P. Sheridan's How to Think like a Knowledge Worker (2008).

I believe that knowledge working is intimately bound within the organizational context: knowledge workers use their skills and experience to innovate solutions to real-world problems. One of the primary conditions of knowledge working is the social aspect – knowledge workers typically collaborate with their peers, whether they are individuals with similar skill assets, such as application development teams working in an agile software development environment, or in project teams which require knowledge workers from different disciplines (technical architects, business analysts, and product consultants, for example) to cooperate in the implementation of the solutions on a customer site.

Figure 1. Human Knowledge Mindmap (after Sheridan)

In this context, Sheridan uses the Human Knowledge MindMap (see Figure 1. to converge the skills and knowledge of domain experts to look at the internal processes a knowledge worker uses to codify and utilize information in a fashion to what Donald Schon calls reflection-in-action.

We can say that the purpose of the mindmap is to enable KWs to "think effectively" (p.13). Most peoples’ thinking, is not clear, focused, or systematic enough to perform knowledge work competently. The purpose of the Human Knowledge MindMap is one approach that enables users to do this. Whether during learning, or on a job, effective thinking consists of a set of components as characterized in the mindmap.

Table 1 Knowledge worker thought processes

Sheridan suggests that to carry out this activity, the worker should do the following:

• Pick a situation, problem, challenge, decision or choice of interest or concern (on whatever basis you regard as appropriate).

Then proceed with the following steps:

• Identify which aspects are of most interest or concern to you.
• Prioritize (rank) your interests or concerns.
• Using the Human Knowledge MindMap as a visual guide, apply the relevant concepts to the most important (prioritized) aspects of your interest or concern (limit it to the top three aspects on your list to begin with).
• If you don’t recall whether or nor a particular concept is relevant, refresh your memory by re-reading the one-page outline.
• From this point apply the methodology as outlined above (this may, in addition to other things, require reading more materials to acquire the necessary depth of understanding in the issues you are trying to deal with).

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References:

Sheridan, W.P. How to Think like a Knowledge Worker:A guide to the mindset needed to perform competent knowledge work. United Nations Public Administration Network, New York. [Internet] Available from: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/unpan/unpan031277.pdf [Accessed 24 August 2008]

Cooliris goes from strength to strength

Back in August I reviewed an application called Cooliris (formerly PicLens). In concluding my review, I said that

...this tool is exciting, [and] exhibits great potential, but needs a little work to get it past the finish line. Having said that, I can easily see it being a common part of the web experience in time to come, particularly if the developers can sustain the "fun factor" supplied by navigating through content in this environment.

I'm pleased to say that since then Cooliris has moved forward. While updating my Foxmarks today, what should I see on their (Foxmarks') homepage but the self-same Cooliris, under their 'Other add-ons we like' category. If you'd like to try the application for yourself, click here to go to their website.

In my view it's great that there are fun educational applications available; when confronted with the task of providing learning and development services for the organizations and institutions that we're involved with, it's sometimes easy to forget that above all else, learning should be a rewarding experience for everyone.

So well done to PicLens and maintain the development effort guys!

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