Working in the UK with an international team

Our English project partner arranged for a beautiful working environment: Hartham Park in Corsham.

EUROCONTROL launches new wiki-style web site on aviation safety

May 9, 2008. Brussels, Belgium – SKYbrary - a new wiki-style web site which aims to be the single point of reference for aviation safety knowledge was launched today by EUROCONTROL in partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the Flight Safety Foundation. SKYbrary provides in-depth information for aviation professionals, backed-up with an attractive search engine. It already hosts some one thousand articles, covering fifteen areas, including critical safety issues such as Level Bust and Runway Incursions. Articles are added regularly, and search words inside the articles link to additional information both on SKYbrary and on external sites. The wiki format means that visitors can contribute both articles and information to SKYbrary. An open discussion forum aims to enhance visitors’ awareness of and interest in safety. With permission from ICAO, SKYbrary includes an ICAO search engine. This will increase the speed at which answers to queries can be retrieved. As of today, key documents including ICAO Annexes (2, 10 and 11) and Documents (4444 and 8168) are included.

SKYbrary, an aviation safety knowledge wiki

Boulot a Paris

Work in London

Paris

Roly Poly and the team's sweet tooth

Chiefly British: A pudding made of jam or fruit rolled up in pastry dough and baked or steamed until soft. Good friend and project manager is fond of sweets. The UK is a fine place for enjoying sweets with typical names, many of them based on recipes dating back hundreds of year. When in West-Cumbria, do visit The Waterfront Inn in Whitehaven. By the way, the sweet tooth in question isn't roly-poly at all, no one knows what keeps him as slim as he is eating all that pudding:-)

Missing: a web2.0 addressbook

Tim O'Reilly's Radar, a must read as far as I'm concerned, came up with an interesting write-up. He echoes what a colleague and I were thinking last week when working on a project in the UK:

What really needs to be done is not just to connect the various social networks that do exist in internet network-of-networks style, but also to social-network enable our real social network apps: our IM, our email, our phone. Where, I keep asking vendors, is the Web 2.0 address book?

When one of the big communications vendors (email, IM OR phone) gets this right, simply by instrumenting our communications so that the social network becomes visible (and under the control of the user), it seems to me that they could blow away a lot of the existing social network froth. That being said, when I've had this conversation with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, he's pointed out that he's well aware of that possibility, and has been working for years to layer additional value on top of the raw social network data. And he's very right about that.

Tim's Radar caught this on Jon Udell's blog.

Cumbria revisited and clubbin' with the Geordies

My colleagues and I have been working with our customer in Cumbria again for a week. Meaning two days of knowledge management masterclass in the Ennerdale Country House Hotel in Cleator, one day on site and a day of auditing. I cannot disclose details on the project itself, but let me tell you about our travels and places in the UK we visited. Monday afternoon we went from Amsterdam to Newcastle with jet2.com rented cars from Avis (normally we have Hertz' cars, but someone took the executive decision we wanted Avis this time, sorry Gary Christie, your services have been excellent, we didn't want to change!). I got a Ford Focus 1.4, the others had a Ford Mondeo - brand new cars, but didn't like them anyway. Sluggish, no torque whatsoever, trees love these cars most probably. The steering was OK though, quite different from the Ford Siesta we had to our disposal some months ago.

The Siesta had no engine, like other Fords, but the steering rack was quite different. Turning the wheel did not immediately lead to the car moving left or right, it rather felt like whisking double cream until it sets to a firm mass leading to the wheels actually turning.

Anyway, I got lost finding myself driving in the direction of Edinburgh on the M1, again somewhere between Hexham and Carlisle on the 68, again in Carlisle's suburbia (I apologise deeply to the driver of a Mondeo I followed to his front door, thinking it was my colleagues car), finally finding the road to Whitehaven and the Ennerdale in Cleator. Also apologising for speeding on the 595 from Cockermouth to Cleator and to the people asleep at The Larches for waking them up by revving the engine to obtain some speed (a full-scale Judas Priest concert would have been unable to compete). On arrival Eelco came out of the hotel to check if it was me and got back in to order me a pint of John Smith's...sheer heaven. During the week we enjoyed supper at The Waterfront in Whitehaven, savouring balsamic vinegar glazed goat cheese and cod stuffed with seafood with a saffron sauce all combined with a fresh and dry Chablis, the well known white Burgundy wine from the Yonne area. To top it of, we had an espresso, an essential the Ennerdale doesn't offer. On the Friday I worked at the hotel, the others worked with the clients' team nearby Cleator auditing a part of the business. We were given the advice to dive into the city centre of Newcastle on the way back home. So we did! Newcastle turned out to have a lively nightlife. Diner at Sabatini's was superb: Bruschetta, Gamberoni Livornese, Fegatini Burro e Salvia, Scaloppine di Maiale Pizzaiola and Scaloppine di Maiale Sassi. Accompanied by a Abbruzian Trebbiano. Ending with, yet again a espresso ristretto. Newcastle club scene we are ready! The Attic (25-27 Mosley Street, City Centre, Newcastle) seemed to be attracting the kind of people we liked to be around with (impressionable ladies). We spent some time on the top floor being amazed yet trying to look like as-if-the-devil-cares-about-bungee-jumping kind of blokes. Ethnographic participative research one might call it. Minding our own business I was suddenly being shouted in the ear by a young lady dressed in flimsy fabric. After having repeated several times whatever she tried to convey to me, she went away. Similar phenomena kept repeating throughout the evening, sometimes ending up into being photographed with one of them, mostly leading to one of us looking baffled by the Geordie dialect.

Howay man! Me is gan hyme, yous noot foony at all. Ye knaa what ah mean leik?

Wye aye! Tara now, pet. A cannit wait till a get back hyem te see wor lass.

European project

Knowledge Management Audits in Bangkok (Thailand)

A friend of mine made it to the Thai Business Newspapers having teached knowledge management audit techniques to a large group of asian businessmen. The conference was organised by the Asian Productivity Organisation.

8 years ago... Xerox PARC

Been there, seen it and got the T-shirt!