Paralympics: States of Body & Mind

Very Best Wishes to all Paralympians.

Day 6 - Paralympic Torch Relay
The Cauldron is lit in Stoke Mandeville as the FOUR flames unite

Disability is also a State of Mind:

:that frequently marks the beholder.

How does it mark you?

Who do you see?

.... Let us together rejoice in Ability ...

Image c/o London 2012

Drupalcon Munich 2012 [ii]

I've greatly enjoyed a talk by Mark Boulton before at Drupalcon and as a contributor to LHC@Home this collision of the Internet's birth, Drupal, web design and high energy physics was not to be missed.

I'd heard of the LHC experiments before, but not the fact of there being four [how could I miss that ;-) ].

Mark explained about his work with CERN, the legacy site, the culture and the creation of a new site he has been tasked with in Creating Wonder. The Facet API for search and resort to personas to identify and appreciate the needs of the sites users proved key tools. There is quite a coincidence here in that CERN's user communities reflect the potential audiences I envisage for h2cm. One allied to each of the knowledge domains on the old site:

Students and Teachers (SCIENCES)

General Public and Carers (SOCIOLOGY)

the Patient, Client (Inter- Intrapersonal)

Policy Makers, Managers and Citizens (POLITICAL)

Mark also explained some of the ways he has differentiated content across the CERN community and its organisation. All very helpful advice.

Maintaining the design angle, Morten Birch Heide-Jørgensen delivered Theme < 3 drupal in his usual irascible style.

I r a s c i b l e  here means - 

insightful, Röyale, accessible, singular, commonsensical, inspiring, besuited, and leading edge.

If there is a nightmare in learning Drupal apart from the learning curve and sound of the rolling rock (ppuuussshhh!!), it is the nature of the markup that Drupal currently produces. Morten explained his frustration with the problem of DIV-itis and his resolve to address this producing a theme - Mothership which seeks to get the markup right. There are other ongoing challenges and how they will be resolved in Drupal 8, accessibility and HTML5.

As we contemplate the various processes set to try us, we become accustomed to the notion of 'lead time'. Morten's highlighting the 'time lag' in the latest and greatest HTML and CSS compared with Drupal releases was a very helpful dose of realism.

Mustn't forget Morten's fun delivery - this helps the medicine go down. In addition to the sessions there were many contacts made, people I really do hope to meet again.

More to follow.

Additional link:
BBC 2 Horizon: How Big is the Universe?

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:
http://blog.erdfisch.de/2012/08/drupalcon-munich-2012-opening-drupal-association-and-international-communities

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.

[Two related items] Public consultation opens for World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12)

Firstly:

Stakeholders from across industry, civil society and general public
are encouraged to make their voices heard 

Geneva, 15 August 2012 – The public consultation process for WCIT-12 opened today, with interested parties able to make their written contributions to the WCIT-12 discussions via ITU’s website in any of the six official UN languages.

The site opened for contributions today at 15:00 CET. It can be accessed at
 www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/Pages/public.aspx

The site is the result of a decision by ITU Council on 11 July 2012 to make a draft of the principal input document to the WCIT-12 conference publicly accessible, and to establish a website where all stakeholders can express their views and opinions on the content of that document or any other matter related to WCIT.

 

Paul Budde Communication Pty Ltd

5385 George Downes Drive

Bucketty NSW 2250, Australia

www.budde.com.au

email: paul AT budde.com.au

Secondly:

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 8:40 AM
Subject: [ISOC] NEWS RELEASE: Internet Society Board of Trustees Expresses Concern about the Potential Impact of the World Conference on International Telecommunications on the Internet
To: isoc-members-announce AT elists.isoc.org

Internet Society Board of Trustees Expresses Concern about the Potential Impact of the World Conference on International Telecommunications on the Internet

[Washington, D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland – 07 August 2012] – The Internet Society Board of Trustees, during its recent meeting in Vancouver, Canada, discussed the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) and expressed concern that some proposed changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) Treaty could have a negative impact on the Internet.

Eva Frölich, Chair of the Internet Society Board of Trustees, remarked, “The Internet Society believes that the International Telecommunication Regulations should contain high level principles and that revisions should focus on things that have clearly worked in the field of global communications: competition, privatization, and transparent and independent regulation.  It is our sincere hope that revisions to the ITRs will not interfere with the continued innovation and evolution of telecommunications networks and the Internet.”

The Board noted that the success of the Internet has been driven by open, consensus-based standards processes embodied in organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and other critical parts of the Internet ecosystem that rely on openness and transparency.

The Internet Society Board of Trustees highlighted concerns about certain changes to the ITRs, which it found troubling.  Among other things, these proposals would:

• Make ITU-T standards mandatory;
• Create a new model for Internet interconnection via the ITRs;
• Adversely impact Internet naming, numbering, and addressing;
• Regulate network aspects that have never been part of telecommunications, including IP routing; and,
• Extend the scope and application of the ITRs to the Internet and Internet providers.

The Board is of the view that these types of provisions, if adopted, could jeopardize global connectivity and the future growth of the Internet, particularly in developing countries; impact the architecture, security, and global interoperability of the Internet; and impose detrimental burdens on the free and open Internet that billions of people around the world depend upon today.

Recognizing that developing countries face challenges in building Internet infrastructure and in bringing down connectivity costs, the Board of Trustees emphasized the Internet Society’s commitment to helping these countries overcome those challenges in ways that support global interoperability and the free flow of information, such as via the development of Internet Exchange Points to improve Internet performance and drive down Internet connectivity costs.

The Internet Society is a strong proponent of the open, consensus-based, multistakeholder model for standards setting and Internet policy development.  “Transparency and the multistakeholder model are essential to developing sustainable and effective Internet public policy,” said Internet Society President and Chief Executive Officer, Lynn St. Amour.

The Internet Society Board of Trustees called on governments not to adopt changes to the ITRs that would undermine the security, stability, and innovative potential of networks worldwide. In preparing for the WCIT, the Board urged all governments to engage in an open and participatory national dialogue, and encouraged Internet Society members to contribute actively to these national discussions that have a global impact.

For more information on WCIT, visit http://internetsociety.org/wcit

Link: http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society-board-trustees-expresses-concern-about-potential-impact-world-conference

My source: Community Informatics List

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