Mark Roseman's Blog

Changing Technology.

Blogger (which I use for this and the CF blog) had quietly switched the feed for the CF blog to use Atom (and at a different URL) a few weeks ago, and I didn't notice until today. Now switched back to RSS. Apologies to those following that feed. Bad.

Spent some time rearranging the home network over the weekend (and again fighting with the wireless on Pauline's antique laptop). On the plus side, audio chat with iChat seems to work now which it didn't before. May have to go pick up one of those iSight cameras now.

Convoq: IM and Web Conferencing.

I've mentioned Convoq ASAP before, but it's now been released. Basic idea is that you have an IM system, and use that to gather people into real-time meetings as needed, so taking advantage of presence info as a queue to doing more real-time stuff. The meeting rooms are video conferencing, text chat, PowerPoint, annotation etc. - so pretty standard stuff, though Flash based.

Here's something that's really different though - the price. Pricing for an unlimited number of meetings starts at $50 per named user per year. You can buy e.g. a license for meetings up to 5 people; larger meetings can be done with a per-user-per-minute overcharge. Compare that to Webex.

Marketing Possibility.

Had a good meeting a couple of days ago with a local guy who's been a ProjectForum customer for a bit. He and a few colleagues are just in the process of starting up a company to offer marcomm services to the college and university market. Our technology may well be a good fit for them to offer to many of their clients, possibly jazzed up with some additional templates, training and consulting around it ("whole product" stuff). We're exploring ways we might make that work. For me, partnering with folks like this is the right way for things to evolve.

Cool Looking Brainstorming/Whiteboard Tool.

Had a quick peek at this... nice free-form package to collect and organize all kinds of information, tailored for creative professionals. Pretty impressive looking!

Drug Studies and Drug Companies.

Some interesting links in the current CMAJ talking about the rather selective release of results from drug studies performed by drug companies. Current example is some studies that were never made public showing the (non-)efficacy of Paxil in children and adolescents. Though they've never been specifically recommended, many doctors have been actively prescribing SSRI's for this population. Obviously, a large deal of money made by the pharmaceutical industry, though the studies now suggest to little benefit.

This whole bias/disclosure issue is one that's been seeing more play in CMAJ lately (I think less so in the US). Given the shift towards drug companies doing their own studies, or at least funding ones at universities (conditions attached), and the reduction of independent funding for independent studies, this is hugely important. I think there's some room here for the government to intervene and ensure results do get published, as Health Canada already is involved in approving these studies in the first place.

Cost of Stress.

Studies talking about the large incidence of mental health problems, now the leading cause of workplace disability, and how workplace practices such as non-stop deadlines, too much work without enough resources, etc. are leading to that. Financial costs estimated around $33 billion in productivity losses. While I'm not a huge fan of using only financial measures to measure broader costs, its always a good thing to make such "hidden" costs visible. If this is enough to get the message through to the bean-counters, all the better.

Fat is the New Smoking.

I think that is a great way to frame the problem, to really put it in perspective. It both speaks to the magnitude of the problem, the effect it has and how widespread it is, as well as suggesting hope for dealing with it, as we know smoking has been substantially reduced over the years.

Nonprofits.

Had a good chat today with someone who runs an organization which brings together people from lots of different charities and other nonprofits to help each other. He seemed quite interested in CF/PF, and hopefully over the next little while we'll have a chance to explore some ways that they could leverage our technology, and perhaps get it out to their audience for use within individual organizations. All still very preliminary at this point of course.

Reminded me of the plan we were chasing at TeamWave for a while (until the government funding we were going for didn't come together) to try to make collaboration technology widely available to nonprofits and volunteer groups in Canada. The attributes that made that appealing certainly apply to tools like CF/PF: primarily asynchronous, strong central focus on creating and evolving artifacts, comments and discussion, group memory, awareness of change, low technology requirements and learning curve, etc. All the things you want when you've got a core group of time-stretched people putting in what time they can to move things forward, and others more peripherally involved who want to stay on top and pitch in when they can.

I think the technology brings some real benefits to that type of audience. Be great to see something come together with this.

Open Source Conference.

Might see about going to this... really good set of speakers involved it looks like.

Moral Outrage.

I was scanning some of the (American) news sites today, and was ... well, not surprised necessarily, but had my disappointment reinforced by the outcry of moral outrage and indignation over the incident at the Superbowl. That a (we hope) right-wing fundamentalist minority has such a loud voice is truly disheartening. The left (ok, mainstream) truly needs to take some lessons from the right in terms of persuasion and mass communication. Imagine if so many people were so outraged and moved to action over senseless slaughter of millions of people, violence, poverty in their own backyard, the inequities in US healthcare. I guess this moment brought to you by one of those left-leaning-gay-marriage-pushing-marijuana-decriminalizing-wimpy-freeloading-commie-pinkos up north. Blame Canada!

On a related but tangential note, I recently finished Karen Armstrong's 1993 book A History of God. It discusses the evolution of Judaism, Christianity and Islam from a purely historical perspective, emphasizing how the belief systems and practices of each system responded to the various societal pressures and insecurities of different times. Was a very interesting read; extremely detailed and thought provoking, and tied together a lot of bits and pieces I'd heard over the years. The timeline it builds, and what that implies about the longevity of current practices was most refreshing. Some of the recurring themes go a long way to putting the present rise of Fundamentalism (all around) into better context. Most recommended.