Drupalcon Munich 2012 [i]

Drupalcon Munich 2012 Group Photo

Well another European Drupalcon has been and gone. It was an awesome event in Munich; the venue, sessions, organisation and the community. It all proved a brilliant experience even without the night time thunder and lightening.

I'm not sure if this particular sponge is saturated to its limited capacity, but compared with previous years I took fewer notes and haven't posted as yet. The (glaring) take home lesson for me remains the same. Write less: do!

The notes I do have started after the first keynote by Dries Buytaert on the State and future of Drupal. Personally, I prefer a presentation rather than the interview format. A change in format must be a relief for Dries and for circuit regulars, but despite a visual interlude the social negotiation seemed for me to get in the way of the show and tell. Given that though Drupal is a year aware from the next release, so this reduces the 'news'. Portland 2013 will no doubt be literally more telling.

I did scribble some ..., on Entities and Properties and attending How to Dominate the Theme Layer. Useful to consider that the visual hierarchy may not match the outline of your site in terms of information architecture. The idea of styling now and injecting classes later has much appeal. I am enthralled by the prospect of font selection, colour and other site design aspects.

There were several sessions on Multilingual sites in D7 & D8. The pros and cons of node level translation vs. field level translation were explained, the latter being considered the best model for most use cases and set to be the likely default in D8. Given the cons of translation and the need to keep it simple I would set about limiting translation to Brian Hodges' original course notes and a new introduction to h2cm. Another key question referred to the type of experience you are building - is it totally symmetrical or asymmetric?

More to follow.  
Photo source:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/drupalassoc/7893709730/

Context, locus, photos and festival-non-goer (Ack. FT)

In the Financial Times, Life & Arts section, June 23/June 24 2012 Francis Hodgson wrote Hocus-focus about the 15th PHotoEspaña festival.

The curator Gerardo Mosquera introduced the broad theme of the festival -

From Here: Context and Internationalisation

- which Hodgson feels provides 'no secure binder between disaprate elements':

' "Context," he writes opaquely, "has ceased to be a 'closed' locus linked to a reductive concept of what is local; instead it is projected as a space from which international culture is naturally constructed."

Apart from giving a broad hint that pictures will come from around the world, I'm not sure that is much help for a festival-goer.' p.10.

Although I'm a festival-non-goer in this case and my access to the images is limited to the three published in the FT and online, I wonder if a link here is the interposition of local and global? The conurbation that can be described as glocal? This is what that single sentence says to me.

In accord with our economic times the festival website notes that:

PHotoEspaña has cut its budget by 25%. The public-private partnership model has been adapted to ensure a broad-based programme of exhibitions and activities.

In this sense here at least art reflects health care. The reliance on partnership, overcoming constraints whilst providing an experience that coheres.

25%

This context.

One care domain.

Which domain do we cut - the interpersonal, the social, political, the scientific? Do we vary the top-slicing across the domains? In health too we must grasp what is local, global and glocal to us.

A question. An answer - in response to recent media (HSJ Ack.)

Here are a couple of quotes from HSJ Roundtable meetings:

"What I hear around the country is that we have masses of information but we need to turn that into something that is intelligible and can be used for strategic decision making."...

"We need to look at how information links together to get a holistic picture of the situation." p. 20.

Dr Shahid Ali, (2012) Commissioning Information. Full Measures. HSJ, June 28, 20-23.

 "I don't think we should be integrating systems, we should be integrating around patients."  p. 20.

Dr Shahid Ali, (2012) Integrated Care. Let the Data Flow. HSJ, June 21, 20-25. 

"There's no integrated view of integrated care. The danger is that you have an integrated care system and everyone says, 'I will do one as well', and you end [up] with six of them." p. 22.

Owen Powell, (2012) Integrated Care. Let the Data Flow. HSJ, June 21, 20-25.


A question or two, or three ...

Is there a generic framework that can be shared and utilised across all health and social care?

A free resource that can be deployed in imagination, in solo on paper, in tandem and within a group potentially shaping collaboration, innovation, change and transformation. Applied in the clinical environment, the home, the lecture theater, the sports field...

A tool that can help support reflective practice not only at a strategic level, but the tactical and operational. What is happening on the ground floor? A framework that can help represent not only processes and policy, but practice, individual and group purposes.

Yes, policy maker and CEO meet with your information manager ... and discuss strategy.

But what is data, information, knowledge ....? What is 'health care' for it appears above we do not know?

Is there really no integrated view - even at a basic level that deserves further study?

Yes, health care practitioner meet your patient (client), their carer, your other partners (social enterprise...) and pursue what really counts: the best quality of care you can deliver given several constraints.

What is the outcome to be?

For the majority of the population (those not living with a long term medical condition) the transformation must be self-efficacy:
if 'shift happens' it must be from ill-health to health through education.

One answer:
The health care system cannot do this alone.

New patient chart to save 6,000 lives a year in the UK

The purpose of NEWS - National Early Warning Score is to standardise the assessment of acute-illness severity in the NHS and in doing so: save lives.

For me in the late 70s early 80s there was great emphasis placed on doing the charts, on 'obs' and the art and skill of observation. As a student nurse, you were finally nursing. From my mental health base, I've noticed new students today retain this enthusiasm to do the TPR and BP. To sign-off this essential competency. I mentioned art and skill above to highlight the intuitive side, not to diminish the underlying knowledge. Recognition is essential to prompt action, critical in acute-illness.

I notice some comments in response to NEWS express concern about finding agreements on units and how standards might stifle innovation. Against this though, Nursing Times reported an acute problem with the quality of nursing observation skills in 2009.

It goes without saying that the elements in NEWS are physical: respiratory rate, blood oxygen level, temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and level of consciousness. It will be fascinating to follow the results and not just in England.

In terms of integrated and holistic care - other measures will be needed.

My source: The Independent (27 July 2012).
Laurence, J. (2012, July 27). New patient chart to save 6,000 lives a year in the UK, The Independent. p.12

Ways of Seeing John Berger - Conference

5-8 September 2012
King’s College London, Strand, London WC2

2012 marks the 40th Anniversary of two of John Berger’s major works: the novel G, winner of the Booker and James Tait Black Memorial Prizes, and the collaborative, SFTA/BAFTA-winning BBC TV series and book Ways of Seeing.

In celebration, the Centre for Life-writing Research at King's College London, and the Department of English and Drama at the British Library - home, since 2009, to the major collection of Berger’s papers - are holding a series of events.

For full details of the programme, and to book, please visit our website:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/centres/lifewriting/berger/index.aspx  
Centre for Life-Writing Research AHRI - Arts & Humanities Research Institute

Room K1.26 | School of Arts and Humanities | King’s College London | Strand | WC2R 2LS |
e: ... | w: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/index.aspx

reVision Launch, 20th September 2012, Liverpool, UK

My source: MHHE list

Invitation to the Launch of reVision (formerly The Joint Forum)

We are a coalition of radical activists who believe in the social model of mental health.
We are seeking to be a voice for change by promoting and exploring knowledge and understandings of the social, economic and political causes of mental distress, and by proposing socially derived alternatives to medicalised approaches.

 Our vision is a society in which the social causes of mental distress are understood and treated with socially based solutions that improve individual lives and bring about wider social change.

We are launching our organisation on Thursday 20th on September 2012
At Liverpool John Moores University, Room 5.04, Avril Robarts, 79 Tithebarn Street,
Liverpool, L2 2ER from 1.00 to 4.00pm

We will be welcoming new members to the organisation at the launch, and are looking for people who seek radical alternatives to psychiatry and who have a critical, political understanding of the social causes of mental distress.

Our keynote speakers will be:

• Helen Spandler, member of Asylum and contributer to Critical Psychiatry
• Malcolm Kinney, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Social Work: LJMU
• Phil O’Hare, Senior Lecturer: School of Social Work: UCLAN
• Naphtali Titus Chondol, mental health activist
• Jackie Patiniotis, freelance researcher with a particular interest in women’s mental health and working to end violence against women and girls

Please email ... to confirm your attendance.

Integrated Health and Social Care Data: GIS torch

Last month the HSJ announced plans to integrated health and social care data (July 5th, pp. 6-7). The purpose is specific to support care commissioning, but ...

The related topic of integrated care is a round-robin element of policy debate. It may go quiet for a time, but it is there, needing to be fed in successive governmental and policy turns.

You might reasonably expect that integrated health and social care data, would be a by-product of integrated care. So the fact that data integration remains a 'to-do' demonstrates the patchwork nature of care integration and the many levels by which it can be defined: commissioning, practice (within domain) across care domains, budget, teams - disciplines, service organisations, care and education, public involvement and data.

I hope the integration of health and social care data at the commissioning level might also put data into the hands of clinicians and social care teams - integrated of course!

The local insights that could flow would represent a real, tangible benefit. The news item stresses the potential value for commissioners. There are as ever several caveats:

• To what extent can health and social care staff influence the shape of the dataset?
• Is it crystallized (centralised) already?
• Can the new role for councils in public health finally ignite the GIS torch to illuminate what is really happening in the local community?

It happens that:

data 'integration' 

also = data 'orientating'

So - come on policy people, commissioners and managers, don't leave the workforce out of the loop. Staff on the ground are disoriented enough by the relentless pace of change. They need a sat-nav for care. Give them the torch they need.

What is that you say? They don't have the time to critique their (integrated) practice, to formulate their questions. And anyway - they don't have the access or the skills to use the informatics resources, let alone the nous to interpret the data! Well, if that is the case then shame on you.

IdN Extra 07: Infographics — Designing Data

Visiting Manchester twice this past fortnight I'd noticed this IdN special issue on infographics in the Cornerhouse shop. The shop's only small but there is lots to dive into - arts, media, design and philosophy.

When a database becomes a thing of beauty

Infographics or information graphics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge. They are often used when complex information needs to be presented as quickly and effectively as possible, such as signs and maps. Infographics can be as simple as a bar chart or a pie graph to represent percentages in business information; or as elaborative as some of the examples in this book to communicate stories in newspapers and magazine.

Infographics can be entertaining when the information they represent is of personal interest; but it is especially fun and challenging when the topic may be as dry as representing concepts in technical manuals or scientific statics.

 <->

I don't know if it's the reduced scale, or my right eye talking but some of the text descriptions are difficult to read. The graphics and ideas are stunning, both in themselves and the questions they provoke.

Update: Drupal 7.14 + 8 and papers

My laptop is four years old next month and a refurb at that. The DVD and webcam no longer work. The Apple store in Manchester helped me update the OS to Snow Leopard and I'll catch up with the rest of the cat pack soon.

It seems I've 'summer cleaned', deleting files and older Drupal installs, the rain making me think it's April. Drupal 7.14 and version 8 are insitu. Drupal 8 would not install, MAMP's version of PHP being too old. I'm sure I checked the site, but must have missed the MAMP update which is now running. Trying to resolve this issue one really useful find c/o PHPNW is the package manager HomeBrew.

This weekend I'll upload my first Drupal test site. It's for a family member not a client, but this does not mean that the passing of time - months, years... has gone unnoticed. It's a pretty basic site, nothing elaborate. Three pages: About me, DJ-ing, and an Enquiry form. The enquiry form has been created using the Webform module.

I want the user form to be clean, without the tab options (view, edit...) being displayed. I removed them using Tab Tamer. There may be an easier way to do this - over riding, for example but it is all learning. The development effort is still not helped by picking Drupal up, putting it down...

The 'client' then wanted comments added to the form. Searching around the content types, module configurations ... was getting frustrating, a search brought me to the Drupal community and voila: success! Comments added to form. User requirements have shifted further ;-) the Sound Engineering page is to be reinstated. At least it's just a case of re-enabling it (I think) and tweaking the menu. This experience reminded me of tips from local Drupal meetings and Drupalcons: keeping a record of changes. If a new h2cm site is to be created then a log will be essential. If there is a new version of the DJ site then I will definitely use a responsive theme.

Drupalcon Munich is fast approaching. I've checked the schedule and created my personal itinerary. With Drupal 8 on the horizon for late 2013 the core conversations should be popular. I'm really looking forward to it. There are no BoFs (birds of a feather) sessions planned as yet on education or mental health. Anyone interested? I'll see if I can submit something.

On the papers front; when the details are known the bibliography entry will be fully completed:

Doyle, M., Jones, P. (2012-13) Hodges’ Health Career Model and its role and potential application in Forensic Mental Health Nursing, Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.

I am still keen to explore the possibility of a symposium session next May as per previous posts. Likewise if there are any teaching* opportunities in Australia to share Hodges' model and help to fund the (ad)venture please let me know.

*It's not so much that I teach, but that students learn.