Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD

- provides a space for reflections on a HEALTH, SOCIAL CARE and INFORMATICS model with universal potential in terms of application and users. The model incorporates two axes: individual-group and humanistic-group and four care (knowledge) domains - Sciences, Interpersonal, Political and Social. You can learn about Hodges' model here, plus items on education, global health and computing. Watch out for news about the development of a new website using Drupal.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Visual means: Patient Status at a Glance (PSAG)

A recent HSJ came with a CHKS supported document on Top Hospitals. Page 14 considers Worldwide comparison and learning from others with three items on Patient Status at a Glance (PSAG) Boards; Developing a safety culture; and Reducing readmissions.

All are related (communication, safety, outcomes, multidisciplinary collaboration), but PSAG stands out to me for obvious reasons as it acknowledges the value of visual management, a quick heads-up overview of status. On PSAG four brief sentences note that South Tees Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in the UK has applied experience from Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle to develop PSAG in surgery.

Of course this application is focussed, being quite specific in the value of fewer nursing interruptions and a daily update for bed managers. This now contributes to making many wards more productive.

Hodges' model is a 'PSAG' of sorts, but it is more general, global in scope, summative. Perhaps it could act as a precursor to discharge?

Like the astronomer's blink comparator it could provide a before:after visual cue.

So, I wonder if Hodges' model could provide not only Patient Status upon Reflection, but Care Status upon Collective Reflection. This is vital at a time when we also need the patient and carers to be more productive in terms of supporting and sustaining their own care.




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Saturday, May 12, 2012

[HIFA2015] International Nurses Day, May 12 "Closing the gap: From evidence to action"

Dear Colleagues / collaborators,

Nurses worldwide under the umbrella of the International Council of Nurses celebrates the International Nurses Day yearly on May 12. This is to pay tribute to the millions of men and women who put their lives to the service of humanity, in accordance with convention 149 of the ILO (Nursing Personnel Convention) passed in 1997. This celebration however has not yet gained the recognition it should, for how can one explain the fact that this day may even go by unnoticed in some countries, or are we therefore saying it is not worth it and why is this day not even a public holiday like for other professional groups.

I find it hard to believe that until now on this forum no one could think of it, when the celebration is due in barely 36 hours. I understand the delicate nature of health jobs, but this should not be an excuse for not paying tribute where is it due. I know this day should be meant for reflection among nurses and seeking for ways to improve nursing services. This will not happen in isolation, for nurses need the political will and inter sectoral collaboration to do their job effectively, shape a better future for the next generation of nurses consonant with current stakes.

This year, nurses are deliberating on the theme 'closing the gap: From evidence to action'. This topic is quite elaborate and needs lots of considerations both within and without the influence of nurses. Understanding evidence-based practice, seeking for sources of evidence, making the appropriate case for change and moving from evidence to action is the cycle in which nurses hope to reflect as they celebrate this year. Nurses will need new skills and expertise to deal with their clients in today's changing and challenging health environment. This is why this forum is of vital importance and I will continue to thank the team behind it. Nursing training programs may be subject to revision, expanding the legal and professional limits of practice while maintaining strict regulatory sanctions. This increased autonomy will enable nurses take up new functions within the confines of their practice and help in meeting the health needs of our population and not acting as physician substitutes or mini-doctors.

Therefore, I wish all nurses a happy celebration, calling on them to use the very rich celebration kit from the ICN, easily downloadable from their website, www.icn.ch, and share among themselves in all settings where nurses live and work. It is our day and we should be happy and honoured for the services we offer to the six billion people on earth, since nurses form the bulk of health care providers and work in remote areas in all countries.

In Cameroon, thousands of nurses from all the ten regions, shall be meeting in the economic capital Douala between June 14 to 16, to brainstorm on the activities. This event is usually opened by the Minister of Public health or his representative, various scientific presentations, round table conferences and other important activities grace the event and concluded by a closing ceremony during which important decisions taken are communicated to participants.

Tita Pale Isa Ndognjem, BSc, RN
Public Relation officer, Cameroon Nurses Association
2012 Fellow, Commonwealth Nurses Federation
paleisa AT yahoo.com 

Additional link:

C149 Nursing Personnel Convention, 1977
Convention concerning Employment and Conditions of Work and Life of Nursing Personnel (Note: Date of coming into force: 11:07:1979.) 
My source: HIFA2015

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Friday, May 11, 2012

International Nurses Day - Closing the gap: My Project for a Global Conceptual Framework for Nursing

As International Nurses Day is celebrated tomorrow on the 12th May the emphasis and work here at W2tQ lies with Hodges' model. The project is to publicise h2cm's international potential in providing an avenue to help unify nursing theory, practice and assure future research.

Fawcett wrote of the metaparadigm of nursing - namely the inclusion of the concepts of person; environment; health; and nursing.

These concepts are incorporated into Fawcett's criteria on model validation which are listed in bold-italic below.

I have also ventured some reflections on the current status of h2cm when compared against these criteria.

Assumptions underlying the conceptual model are made explicit.

It is not sufficient, but the structure of Hodges' model renders the assumptions within the model explicit. The structure identifies eight initial key concepts:

INDIVIDUAL, GROUP (population); HUMANISTIC, MECHANISTIC; SCIENCES, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, INTERPERSONAL

A complete description of all four concepts of nursing's metaparadigm are presented.

Reflection soon reveals that several environments are suggested:

PHYSICAL, ORGANISATION, COMMUNITY, HOME, RESIDENCES, DWELLINGS, COGNITIVE (conceptual), SYMBOLIC, ABSTRACT, VIRTUAL, FORUMS, COLLEGES

Propositions of the conceptual model completely link the four meta-paradigm concepts. 

This is feasible, reasoning from the foundation of the model's structure.

The internal structure of the conceptual model is logically congruent.

This does need to be demonstrated. Initial recognition of logical congruence might be found through the conjoining of disciplines, that is frequently taken for granted: PSYCHO-SOCIAL; SOCIO-TECHNICAL; SOCIO-ECONOMIC.

The conceptual model is socially congruent, socially significant, and socially useful.

I have claimed on numerous occasions that the model is agnostic, universal, accessible, and has educational potential. These and other qualities need to be critically examined.

Empirical evidence in support of the model has accumulated from many derived theories.

The two final criteria are the most challenging. Empirical evidence supporting Hodges' model is available, but again must be tested through research. If someone has time - could you please compare the frequency of a set of political concepts in the nursing literature since 1985?* The emergence of health literacy and self-efficacy, threshold concepts, conceptual spaces, the rise of the semantic web and developments in software can all potentially support h2cm. Producing a roll-call of some of the latest trends in contemporary education, research and culture is not good enough, specific studies are needed.

The total contribution of the conceptual model to nursing knowledge. 

There is a long, long way to go, but the contribution has begun ... every journey ...

Of course, it is almost 20 years since publication of Fawcett's criteria. Has the concept of congruence changed in that time? What is socially significant and useful now? What should the social and political weighting of evaluative criteria be in 2012...? There is a body of critique upon Fawcett's and other evaluative tools within nurse education.

Perhaps a new set of criteria could be defined using h2cm itself? For a model of nursing (health and social care) to be fit for purpose, acceptable and viable across the globe, there are new concepts to be represented. While that would certainly close a gap, it does not seem a rigorous or valid way to proceed. I will seek out other more recent criteria and present them here at some point.

Fawcett J. Analysis and Evaluation of Conceptual Models of Nursing, 3rd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: FA Davis; 1995.

*Many thanks - if someone should pick this up, which ever axes, concept or issue.

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Thursday, May 03, 2012

Visual Methodologies Doctoral Training Workshop 26 - 27 June 2012

Developing Theory & Practice in Visual Methodologies


The School of Education, Communication & Language Sciences and Durham University’s School of Education are holding a two-day workshop for doctoral students on the development and use of visual methodologies.

The workshop will take place on Tuesday, 26 June and Wednesday, 27 June 2012 at Newcastle University.

Further information about the workshop and how to register can be found at:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/education/postgraduate/visualmethodologies/

The workshop is part of the North East Doctoral Training Centre’s (NEDTC) annual programme of advanced training in the social sciences.

Please do not hesitate to contact Anne Parks ( NEDTC Secretary email a.l.park AT durham.ac.uk ) if you need any further information about the event.

My source:
ESA-ALL at JISCMAIL.AC.UK

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Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web

I'll start May hopefully in tune with plans towards the month's end and attending Conceptual Spaces at Work.

The SCIENCES domain page has included Markup Languages (ML) for a great many years.

In the early versions of the h2cm website there were just two 'resource' pages. When the ongoing four page format arrived then markup languages had a place.


Looking at the programme for next month's Conceptual Spaces at Work the first session listed includes this reference:
Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.
Abstract—CSML is a semantic markup language created for the publishing and sharing of conceptual spaces, which are geometric structures that represent semantics at the conceptual level. CSML can be used to describe semantics that are not captured well by the ontology languages commonly used in the Semantic Web. Measurement of the semantic similarity of concepts as well as the combination of concepts without shared properties are common human cognitive tasks. However, these operations present sources of difficulty for tools reliant upon set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning on symbolic ontologies. In contrast, these operations can be modeled naturally using conceptual spaces. This paper describes the design decisions behind CSML, introduces the key component elements of a CSML document, and presents examples of its usage.
This is an excellent source. CSML is a really significant development for me as Adams and Raubal highlight on the first page:
The computational foundation of the Semantic Web is the formal representation of concepts and their relationships using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) variants [5], [6]. These families of languages allow one to describe semantic relationships between concepts and ontologies, which can be queried using a first-order logic reasoner. An underlying assumption to these methods is the realist approach to semantics, which states that the meanings of concepts are in the real world. That is, there is a direct mapping between language terms and the world but there is no consideration of how individuals understand concepts differently. In contrast, cognitive semantics states that the meanings of terms are cognitive structures in people’s minds. This approach is of central importance for the Semantic Web, because web services interface with human users.

This isn't excellent or significant in the sense that the emergence of CSML demonstrates h2cm as a conceptual space.

Far from it.

Here and for h2cm CSML is obviously an essential tool to examine, understand and possibly extend. Anyone for PHP and XML (Drupal)? Reading the paper, it's clear that even thinking of applying CSML to Hodges' model demands answers to difficult and yet fascinating questions that involve nursing (theory, practice and values), informatics, philosophy and some maths too.

CSML project
http://virunga.sourceforge.net/

Image source:
http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/conceptual_spaces_wordl.png

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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Personal Health Records: Part II - revisiting Kim and Johnson 2002

Part I continued ...

What Kim and Johnson reveal is a level of transience that can be quite scary in this context. True, electronic health records can be archived and printed, but the latter surely defeats the purpose of the 'e'. Printing undermines the credentials. The virtual landscape presented in part I by checking the current status of these domains highlights the issue of ownership of data in a way that has provoked much debate in social media and the transferability of a person's data - information. If I want to move to another vendor, system, company (however the 'entity' is described) there needs to be standards and a degree of interoperability to facilitate this. 

Next, we have to bow to the notion of a year on the internet compared with 'real time'. M-health was a dream a decade ago. Here is another pressure on the PHR and its family members. A public-facing health record, whatever its nomenclature, must not only be responsive to the public and professional users and the 'total stakeholder community'. Now the record must be responsive according to device: from desktop, to tablet through to mobile phone.

In 2002 the PHR project was set to run and run. It had a slow, strong pulse with speedy recovery after exertion. The PHR looked fit for Olympic* endeavors.

But then the algorithms set to change personal health care (to fuse ill-health and well-being) suffered a major arrhythmia. The fate of those who became the new PHR frontrunners, the heavyweights no less: NHS's Healthspace, the initiatives of Google and Microsoft suffered the same fate. This post is from 2009:

Self-care in e-space and the need to Impress

Given the changes since Kim and Johnson you have to wonder what the next decade will bring. Whatever there will still be fog, but that just adds to the excitement as we climb the trees. Then we realise that to all of the users of health information systems (remember the user and stakeholders?), whichever TLA is employed, they are all X-HRs by proxy.
Kim MI, Johnson KB. Personal Health Records: Evaluation of Functionality and Utility. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2002. Mar-Apr; 9(2):171-180. Selected for inclusion in the IMIA 2003 Yearbook of Medical Informatics. 

 *All trademarks acknowledged.

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp 22 - 23 June 2012

I have booked a holiday for Friday 22 June because as their website announces -
 Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp is happening!

Venue: St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

I'm hoping to meet people from other Drupal events and specifically from Drupalcamp Cambridge. Although Drupal is far from a dedicated educational platform - either for authoring materials and managing learners / learning - there are many contributed modules that can be adapted and extended.

One of the three papers mentioned last week will be published by an online journal in June. News of the other two must wait, one is an end-of-year prospect. Although an abstract and preparation for the ICN Congress (if accepted!) is a non trivial undertaking, further writing must fit in with future web developments. This Drupalcamp will help bring several threads together.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

SocInfo2012: 4th Int. Conference on Social Informatics

Dear all,
The Fourth International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo2012) will be hosted at the EPFL in Lausanne (CH), in collaboration with the team Humanités Digitales@unil (University of Lausanne), on the 5-7 December 2012.

The general co-chairs are Karl Aberer, School for Computer and Communication Science, EPFL, Switzerland and Andreas Flache, Director of Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

The call for papers is open until the 7th of July, the tutorial proposals, Poster/Demonstration Papers and Panel Proposals until the 28th of July.

All information here: http://www.socinfo2012.com

The International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2012) is an interdisciplinary venue for researchers from Computer Science, Informatics, Social Sciences and Management Sciences to share ideas and opinions, and present original research work on studying the interplay between socially-centric platforms and social phenomena. The ultimate goal of Social Informatics is to create better understanding of socially-centric platforms not just as a technology, but also as a set of social phenomena. To that end, we are inviting interdisciplinary papers, on applying information technology in the study of social phenomena, on applying social concepts in the design of information systems, on applying methods from the social sciences in the study of social computing and information systems, on applying computational algorithms to facilitate the study of social systems and human social dynamics, and on designing information and communication technologies that consider social context.

A special focus of SocInfo'2012 is on how technology can influence social phenomena through better motivation of human agents, through the use of social norms, through better modeling, or through a better understanding of social concepts like trust, credibility, privacy, and fairness. To this end we are especially inviting contributions demonstrating how behavioral theory can be formalized in agent-based models to study social dynamics. It is the expectation that this contributes to a further development of the social sciences with respect to studying and explaining various behavioral dynamics, such as opinion dynamics, social conflict, innovation diffusion, market dynamics, and
crowd behavior. On the other hand, the creation of a coherent social behavioral model that is formulated as an agent system is a prerequisite for further development of socially-centric platforms and for the testing of new algorithms that use social concepts and attempt to realize social goals.
Best regards,

Claire Clivaz, University of Lausanne

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Sunday, April 22, 2012

25th Int. Council of Nurses (ICN) 25th Quadrennial Congress: Equity and access to health care (seeking co-presenters & sponsors)

Copied below is news about the 2013 International Council of Nursing Congress. There are lots of details to follow including the cost of registration. The call for abstracts invites submissions - in ONLY ONE of the following categories:

  • Concurrent session: A paper 15 minutes in length.
  • Symposium: An 80 minute session with a minimum of three speakers presenting on a single theme from different perspectives. Speakers presenting a symposium must submit a single joint abstract.
  • Poster: A visual presentation for display on a poster board.
I plan to submit an abstract but wonder if anyone reading this would be interested in a symposium presentation?

We would each cover our own expenses and so to this end I am now saving, seeking prospective financial support and sponsorship! I would of course be pleased to work with co-presenters in applying h2cm to their work and would relish the opportunity of learning from others.

As per the single joint abstract, the symposium would demonstrate Hodges' model in three nursing disciplines / care contexts, each related to the Congress theme:


Equity and access to health care

If you are interested in this possible adventure please get in touch h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk and then we can explore this further. I am especially interested to work with a student nurse and nursing colleagues working / teaching in a development context.

In February 2011 on the visit to Colombia I came my closest ever - within five degrees - of the equator. Australia would be an amazing journey not only because I have family there, but if in addition to furthering knowledge of Hodges' model I can share the experience with readers.

Many thanks
Peter J. @h2cm


Online abstract submission now open for the
2013 ICN Congress
Geneva, Switzerland, 16 April 2012 - The International Council of Nurses (ICN) is pleased to announce the opening of online abstract submission for its 25th Quadrennial Congress and CNR in Melbourne, Australia. Equity and access to health care is the theme of the conference, which will take place from 18-23 May 2013. Instructions for the submission of abstracts and details on the themes to be addressed can be accessed at www.icn2013.ch. ICN invites nurses and others around the world to share their ideas, research and expertise by submitting abstracts for the scientific programme. The deadline for abstract submission is
14 September 2012.
ICN is in the final stages of developing a rich four-day scientific programme, offering four plenary sessions, including a debate, and 18 main sessions with 54 international speakers confirmed to date. Key subjects for plenary and main sessions include gender equity, the epidemic of non-communicable diseases, the tension between personal and societal responsibility for health, wellness and prevention, the nursing workforce, ethics/human rights, clinical care and patient safety. The Council of National Representatives, ICN’s global governing body, will also convene in Melbourne just prior to the Congress, from 16-19 May 2013.
Key dates for the ICN 25th Quadrennial Congress and CNR
  •      16 April 2012 - Online submission of abstracts opens
  •      14 September 2012 - Online abstract submission closes (midnight CET)
  •      14 September 2012 - Registration opens
  •      1 December 2012 – Notification of abstract acceptance
  •      11 January 2013 – Registration deadline for abstract presenters
  •      14 February 2013 - Early bird registration closes (midnight CET).
To keep up with all the latest information on the Congress programme and related events, visit the Congress website at www.icn2013.chNCIL OF NURSES

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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Personal Health Records: Part I - revisiting Kim and Johnson 2002

When I was at HC2004 or 2005 I was given a copy of the Medical Informatics Yearbook 2003 from the British Computer Society - Nursing Specialist Group stand. Within this volume of key papers for the year April 2001 - March 2002 I found the following:

Kim MI, Johnson KB. Personal Health Records: Evaluation of Functionality and Utility. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2002. Mar-Apr; 9(2):171-180. Selected for inclusion in the IMIA 2003 Yearbook of Medical Informatics. 
The paper identified candidate Personal Health Records [PHRs], then developed criteria examining the entry and display of data elements necessary for the PHRs to serve as adequate representations of information. Then in the final third phase a selected group of PHRs were assessed for their functionality and utility (p.370). Of the 12 PHRs assessed I thought it would be interesting to check  their current status (this was a quick visit to the published domains).

Several Personal Health Records 2002 - 2012
Web Site
Record
URL
Findings
Dr. I-Net My Medical Record www.drinet.com/ A good start! Still operational domain redirects from original www.aboutmyhealth.com Continues to offer a PHR.
HealthCompass: Lifelong Health Record www.healthcompassnet.com While there are several site using 'Health Compass' the original version was not obvious.
MedicalEdge Medical Register www.medicaledge.com/ Domain currently offers support to physicians, so a PHR may be part of a package?
MedicalRecord.com Your Medical Record www.medicalrecord.com This now appears to be a directory to electronic medical records.
MedicData MedicData www.medicdata.com/ This does not appear to offer a PHR and the homepage is 'under construction'. It looks like the domain may have a new owner.
Medscape AboutMyHealth Personal Health Record www.aboutmyhealth.com/ Now leads to GE Healthcare.
myhealthnotes.com Personal Health Manager www.myhealthnotes.com/ Server not found.
PersonalMD My Medical Records www.personalmd.com Retired - leads to: www.eheandme.com/personalmd_announcement.html
TheDailyApple Health Records www.thedailyapple.com/ Social networking is vital to well-being but no PHR here.
VistaLink Health Profile vistalink.com Domain for sale.
WebMD WebMD www.webmd.com/ Very much alive and kicking commercially, but my health record / PHR not in immediately in evidence.
Wellmed.com Health Record www.wellmed.com This site leads to http://www.webmdhealthservices.com/



Kim and Johnson provide several lessons as a high quality contribution to the medical informatics literature. From the above we see that while we talk about timeliness in terms of the written record, time takes on a series of new meanings when it comes to electronic records, media, commercial companies and clearly the internet.

As I read the paper and reflected on the past decade other things fell into focus. At the end of the day a PHR should be what it says - personal. Reading Kim and Johnson this did not stop them looking at the PHRs from the perspective of doctors and informatics practitioners. There is nothing wrong with this. Although developers and political masters quite rightly seek to engage with the user, espouse usability and user testing - a system is aimed at a community.

If title [personal] follows function [record] and form [electronic] follows function then what do we have?

Don't worry if you're lost, me too (I'm musing again); let's add the fog....

It's crucial to know what's going on over the fence (similarly sometimes it helps to climb a tree). In this case the person in the form of patient is not the only consumer of the information in the record.

This is the point: systems are about a user AND a stakeholder community. Stakeholder is a much maligned word, found on the lips of those seeking to reach and engage remote ('difficult' to reach) community groups. It has a definite role here though.

Every health discipline has its record, that is a professional must. So in effect you have a series of 'X' -HRs. On paper they were - and remain in many cases - a mess. What we should have then is a hybrid health record that depending on the user morphs itself accordingly. But what is the point in pointing to users and stakeholders? Well, conceptually how far is personal from medical (nursing...) and how far again to personality? Add to the mix the question of where patient, well-being and health fit in to the management of long term medical conditions as per the critieria of Kim and Johnson, accurate entry of medicines, medical conditions, lab tests, monitoring ... and you see what is frequently a record breaking task.

This is (or was*) the challenge: to transform something that is generically personal (with the potential contradiction this implies) to something that is personalised as in 'I'.

*Part II to follow.

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Friday, April 20, 2012

A research coordination network (RCN) for Digital Societies and Technologies

From: Wayne Lutters Date: 19 April 2012 20:02:13 GMT+01:00
To: "CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG"

Subject: Sociotech announcement

Hi All,

I'm happy to write that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is now funding:  "A research coordination network (RCN) for Digital Societies and Technologies".  The focus of the RCN is towards community building for sociotech scholars. This initial funding for this Digital Societies and Technologies RCN will run through December, 2016 in  support of three broad efforts: (1) sociotech community building; (2) planning and piloting shared sociotech resources(heading towards a community cyberinfrastructure) and (3) expanding the breadth, depth, impact and visibility of sociotech scholarship.

The Digital Societies and Technologies RCN and the successful Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) summer research institutes (http://sociotech.net/) serve a similar community of scholars. However, the summer research institute is not a part of the RCN effort - it remains both a vibrant activity and distinct from the RCN.

Beyond sharing the good news, we write to draw your attention to opportunities to participate in events supported by the Digital Societies and Technologies RCN.  Calls for participation in specific events and projects will begin being announced over the coming months and much of the RCN funding is to support workshops of various kinds.  We'll need your help to plan, organize, staff and participate in these!

Feel free to share this news with sociotech colleagues and others.

Sincerely, the RCN steering committee:

Steve Sawyer (PI) (Syracuse), Wayne Lutters (Co-PI) (UM-BC), Brian Butler (Co-PI) (UM-CP), Diane Bailey (Texas), Dan Cosley (Cornell), Tom Finholt (Michigan), Sean Goggins (Drexel) and Andrea Tapia (Penn State).

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Monday, April 16, 2012

Update papers, Drupal and future April 2012

You might have noticed a slight hiatus in posts recently, in fact over the past six weeks or so. During that time I was working on a paper following the November's CARDI conference when two others popped up again out of the academic ether.

I've probably whined on before about how I write, but don't benefit from like-minded people to read stuff and bounce ideas off. It's not that my nursing and multidisciplinary colleagues are not academically inclined: far from it. There's people taking time to travel to Lancaster, Preston and Manchester to pursue good stuff. It is about mindset though for the many (and having a cussed question). That means being in the groove, finding your rubric, whatever you want to call it. The other week I was trying to encourage a colleague to do the Master's thing; because if you (we!) don't soon then it ain't going to happen.

One paper a co-written effort has been ongoing for quite sometime (must be years). Another paper highlights my idiosyncratic style when working solo (I bet my two current co-authors might agree to that) quite a few referees have. The latest co-authored effort 6,000+ words has actually come together quite quickly over the past six weeks. There was an abortive start when extending a poster was abandoned for a forthcoming journal special topic issue. Once a target publication was identified  things took shape rapidly. Nothing like a deadline to charge the batteries. No doubt there will be changes to follow, but it's a fitter piece of work on submission than I could have produced alone. I'm sparing you the specifics for obvious reasons, but when there's progress you'll have the details here. In the meantime thanks George and thanks for staying the course Mike! Extending the h2cm bibliography is never easy, but then academic writing is not intended to be.

Of course I need to leave Open Office and pick up Drupal in earnest. With the matrimonial home now a matter of many happy memories - one thing I miss is a key in the door to a place of my own.

Since summer 2008 I would have been lost without family support - thanks mum! I'd also be lost without Sue where I spend most of my time*: thanks to you too Sue!

Space to work in a consistent way though just isn't there presently. Yes, I know what this means. "You're NO genius!" If Drupal was going to happen, you'd make it happen: whatever!

The laser treatment last month worked fine: brilliant ;-) in fact. My poor left eye, is now my best. They didn't do the right, it wasn't as bad as they thought (suddenly though I notice the problem there too).

I'm really looking f/w to Sweden next month and Conceptual Spaces at Work. That trip's not about presenting - going to learn.

I've been watching SVG for many years and notice that the SVG Open series of conferences is changing its name to The Graphical Web.

Now if an investor needed a sign....

In between there's Drupalcon Munich.
 Wondering if I can justify going to Zurich in September?

*Drafted and posted in Tom and Jerry's!

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

What really makes us human?

Remembering is fundamentally recursive,
because it involves inserting a past mental state
into the present one.

Michael Corballis
New Scientist, 1st September 2007 p.48-49.

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Sunday, April 08, 2012

h2cm in the presence of -alities

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

morality     personality  
mentality   individuality   spirituality
intentionality   transcendentality  rationality
dimensionality   causality  functionality
logicality   locality   physicality
artificiality  materiality  finicality
hospitality   geniality   quality
informality     sociability      conjugality
practicality  plurality
nationality    feudality  principality  
equality  formality  confidentiality
brutality  officiality   criminality


Child to adult:
"Yes, but where does reality, aboriginality, universality, proportionality, abnormality, mortality go?"
:Adult to child

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