OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

B822 Activity 1.5 Origins of Change

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 23 Feb 2012, 13:00

Think back to new products or services you have experienced.

What was the stimulus for their creation.

Intermitten wipers. A better and safer driving experience in light rain.

Stoppers on skis. I can remind having a strap around the ankle, which would snap or come lose. You'd fall over and the ski would vanish. Safer for people who used to be hit by skis ... though you still lose a ski a deep snow.

Contact lenses. Vanity. No more glasses to fog up. Sport (especially swimming). A market.

Amazon. Thought I was saving money by not shopping on the High Street at Christmas only to spend far too much online. The new way of doing things.

PayPal. Convenience of online payments. A need.

iPad. Online 24/7 sad Tried tablets before and failed, this works.

Kindle. Using 'The Swim Drills Book' and showing young swimmers images on the Kindle by the side of the pool. Reading The Isles by Norman Davies and able to carry it about. I'd like an A4 size version.

Sony Alpha digital camera body. It takes Minolta lenses I bought 25 years ago. Brilliant.

Brushes: iPad App used by David Hockney for 'painting'. It works. Brings painting and drawing up to date alongside wordprocessing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Laptop screen gone blank. Any ideas?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 07:07
It looks like the laptop has been wiped though I know it hasn't. All I have is the screensaver, there are no other controls, buttons, toolbars or anything. What did I press in error to cause them to disappear? How do I bring them back!? I don't need an excuse to be away from coursework as I had planned to play catch-up this weekend sad The last thing I did was press a button to upgrade Flipshare, software for the Sony Flip.
Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Serendipity of the chance lunch where ironically we shared ideas about social media

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 8 Oct 2011, 13:48

An extraordinary end to an extraordinary week capped by what might have been lunch alone, but at The Hub the chances of a meeting with like minds is always high. (The Hub is the Open University Campus refectory; it sits, as the name suggests between various faculties behind Walton Hall).

I joined OU eCommerce Director Mark Everest and Project Manager Alex Cabon; our enthusiasm tumbled over each other like dogs playing in fresh snow.

Alex was the Student President of AIESEC a remarkable organisation that puts young minds to work, mixing their education with applied thinking (a heady combination, we call it 'practice-based learning' at the OU Business School.

It made me think partially of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, but also of a consultancy service that Oxford students give to local businesses through the Careers Office there, mixed in with The School of Leaders in Poland (a Soros Foundation that Dr Zbigniew Pelzynski established soon after the collapse of Soviet communism).

Mark enthused about video over text - this should be me to camera for 90 seconds rather than 270 words.

I shared my idea for 'WikiTVia' in which every highfalutin wikipeadia entry becomes a video clip while Mark hankered for thousands, or was that hundreds of thousands or even a million testimonials from the OU Community i.e. everyone, 'stakeholders' we would all them, students, staff, alumni ... he mentioned the value of the footage of the plane that landed on the Hudson River, even though it was caught on a mobile phone. Footage of rough quality with an important story or event captured is sometimes referred to as 'Zapruder' after the footage of the JFK Shooting ... production stands count for nothing where the story is powerful.

During the Tsunami in Japan while I watched footage first on BBC News 24, then CNN and finally on NHK English my 12 year old son was watching authentic content without the commentary directly from mobile phones on YouTube. We've got 'citizen journalism,' now for 'citizen TV.' No longer should we be asking people to pick up their pens, rather we should be saying click record on your phone.

I've armed myself with a Sony Flip, yet I've been a broadcast cameraman in my time.

What a Sony 35mm digital camera (movie quality, can be hired for £75 a day!) cannot deliver is the content, that extraordinary story, the narratives of each person's experience with the OU. Often I feel overwhelmed by these personal stories. Anyone can tell their story - I'll interview you over Skype if that helps. Perhaps interviewing requires skills and patient, there are craft skills to shooting, editing and lighting a 'film' (which we still call them).

My role in bringing these stories to the screens of smartphones, iPads, laptops, TVs and the like occurs every time I reach for a digital recorder (sound or sound and pictures), but in the coming months will be me and a BAFTA nominated cameraman.

Have you got a story to tell?

(63137)

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H800 Reflection on e-learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 21 May 2011, 14:29

A rare moment to stop and take stock.

Does learning something new enter a phase of such frenzy that the formal aspect of the process is irrelevant.

To say I live, breathe and eat e-learning would be an exaggeration, but the mix of social media (my professional responsibility) and e-learning (my passion as an educator) on top of a foundation of 32 years of 'educational inclinations' means that I find myself in a self-constructed maelstrom of activity.

32 years ago, a 17 year old, we lived 'above the shop,' as it were, a training centre for a PLC in Cumbria. I listened eagerly to the Training Director and I was allowed to use first 1 inch reel to reel black and white Sony kit used for interview training ... and then a hefty VHS camera. I created my first 'training film' - ironically titled 'How to give a slide presentation.

A desire to taken in, and then share, what I think and understand, with others has informed my career.

Meanwhile, whilst reliving and reinventing and/or returning to my video production roots, my current interest is mobile learning - not that it is should be called 'm-learning,' just that it is 'stuff' with a learning twist, that you can have with you, connect with and use, wherever, whenever and whatever you are.

With a bit of skiing, sailing and swimming

Each in various ways as an educator, and participant: guided skiing, but never the BASI qualification, Offshore Sailing RYA qualification while instructing at RYA Level II and swimming a few weeks of effort of the most senior ASA Certification that is current (Senior Club Coach).

Everything can be taught

My turn around moment on this was a presentation I was linked to when Max Clifford, self-taught PR guru, spoke lucidly and with enthusiasm for students studying PR.

Why?

If nothing else, it showed they were passionate about the subject to study it for three years.

(Note to Max, the passionate ones might be 20% of the cohort).

And cooking?

Greek Fish Soup.

I'm yet to reach the position that I can call myself a professional academic, but is it the case the some academics (or is it just mathematicians and philosophers) are also very good cooks?.

My theory is, that they use the period of cooking, to be engaged with one activity ... while thinking of something else entirely???

 

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 22 May 2011, 14:38)
Share post
Design Museum

When 25 year old camera lenses get a digital make-over.

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 9 Feb 2011, 13:44

It pays to buy quality

22 years ago I bought a set of lenses for my Minolta SLR. Eight years ago I mothballed the camera and lenses.

P2080005.JPG

Since Christmas I've been armed with a Sony Alpha digital SLR body: my favourite lenses have given a new lease of life. Here they are:

DSC00747.JPG

These are my favourite lenses

A fish eye for interiors that covers the space you inhabit, the warping of lines irrelevant to grabbing the space. A fun way too to get a bunch of people huggled around the lens.  And a long lens to get close ... without getting close. And not so massive that I look like the Paparazzi I am never.

Who needs words with a simple set up like this?

The next step will be a body that records Hi-Def video ... and after that digital 35mm (Sony again).

  • And an underwater housing.
  • And a Steadicam.
  • And, of course, a 'Jonathan Jib.'

 

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

PDP as an ascending thermal. Come glide with me!

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 28 Sep 2012, 12:28

Love this. My PDP thermal. It works.

PDP Cycle Close Up

It works because everything hangs onto the concept without being shoe-horned.

I want to run with is as my philosophy for PDP and do someting whizzy with it as a video, animation, conference opener or something. I'd like to think it could capture peoples' imaginations, which is just what you want if you are going to motivate them to be the best they can be, so that their team can be the best they can be ... and in turn the business can be the best that it can be too.

If this is clearer try it in the long-shot.

PDP in situ

The upwards rotation, like a glider riding a thermal, is akin to a person's PDP ascendency.

What drives this, the enery as it were, is their motivation.

Tap into this and everything else will follow.

Though the timings for PDP to occur, or for self-assessment and needs analysis should be varied and applied as required, rather than becoming onorous and regular, it should nonetheless happen. This is in effect when our 'glide' banks and turns (yaws?). If following a glider in action then there varied loop/cycle sizes would be easily accommodate within the idea.

Around this mistral I have added various standard e-learning tools, which I would rank in importance. Such ranking would/will vary by person, by platform, by subject matter, but I'm certain that blogging and forums are up there as far more important than anything else in terms of engagement, collaboration and effectiveness.

BloggingAs you can see I've put in:

  • Forums
  • Eportfolios
  • Wikis

I've wrapped 'motivation' around the edges like those 'go faster' agitation marks you use in cartoons. I'll redraw it all now that I have some time to beautify and develop it further.

Around each of the above e-learning tools there are micro-loops (loop the loops even), where I've added (all colour coded by the way), things such as reflect, skill, communication, technology, reseach, analyse and so on.

Collaboration and communication are ever present as continual themes (or thermals) currents that should be ever present.

What else?

PDP%20thermal%20Midshot%20Cycles.JPG

  • Share
  • Lead
  • Inform
  • Critique
  • Assessment

I can work with the logic, keep it simple, and adjust accordingly.

Podcasts are a form of blogging, whether audio or video, as well as resources/assets in their own right.

Skype, email, TXT, Messaging ... and even 'face-to-face' communication (what's that?!) have been included.

This, in an image, is what I do.

PDP%20thermal%20Motivation.JPG

Files of research and work, days of debate and deliberation, playing around with ideas then the pressure to sum it as succinctly as possible.

This, turned into animation, or video ... i.e. rich media, is what I do to.

I hear Michael Nyman. He's permited me to use his muix before. It has pace, it is querky and challenging, and exciting ... and repetive, and driven and motivating.

And for a voice?

  • Female
  • On verra.

No one's offered me a budget yet.

£40k for a ten minute jaw-dropping conference opening extravaganza.

£500 and you get me in front of Sony Cybershot stills camera, my son's collection of Sharpies in one hand, a sheet of wall-paper backing paper taped to the kitchen door.

 

 

 

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 21 Jan 2011, 15:59)
Share post
Design Museum

Grinning like a child

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 19 Dec 2010, 08:08

I have to confess that I am chuffed at my mark for TMA02.

Whilst the work is mine I feel especially delighted that a result like this is the product of learning with a highly supportive, collaborative group that is expertly nudged, managed and poked by our Tutor. I look forward to 2011 and my final module in the MA in Open and Distance Education.

I'm enjoying this too much to take time off so will blog through Christmas and the New Year. Over the summer I bought a couple of books on e-learning. If I thought they'd be delivered I'd buy in a few more.

Or might Santa bring me an e-reader?

I find some of the best reading I do is in the bath, in bed as I go to sleep ... or sitting on the South Downs looking out to sea. I also find reading away from home is more engaging, somehow my mind engages better when I am somewhere else.

Mixing work and play?

I never thought there should be a difference.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Betamax went into the chasm, a mountain chain was built from VHS

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 2 Mar 2010, 15:15

I need a great understanding of this marketing talk

None of the terms and ideas being used by Rogers or Moore register with me despite four years working in above the line advertising. Maybe I was too divorced from the marketing process

A marketing manager from Procter & Gamble told me that all this marketing talks was nonsense, that you could not say definitively what worked ... but you had to do something! He linked it to fluke & alchemy more than any prescriptive method. At the tip of any marketing pyramid were the advertising agencies and creative teams coming up with imaginative ploys to get a product noticed.

A poorly promoted brilliant piece of technology could fail. The Wright Brothers might have 'invented' flight but they were dreadful at marketing their product however innovative it might have been. My own experience, first with a web agency & then a documentary production company trying to create e.tv was that however innovative the broadcasters could not see how an audience would pay for these 'add-ons' and they also took the view that people wanted to be entertained, not educated. Look however how well video games have and how films spin off into video games ... and video games have spun off into films.

A well advertised product, that is also a product that people want, may be under supplied causing a chasm when no one can get the product. If people get bored with lack of supply and move onto something else there will be a chasm sad

I’d like some figures on the purchase of GPS positioning for cars, Wispa bars, Apple Cube, Sony Betamax ...

Is the history of Sony Betamax a case of a chasm turning into an abyss?

Panasonic launched VHS, SONY launched a superior quality Betamax. VHS became universal, Betamax was slowly left to rot. Though professional BetaCam became an industry standard for making videos, whilst VHS took over as the medium for distributing videos to buy & rent.

To form my own opinion I need more that just excerpts from Roger's book 'Diffusions of Innovations' or excerpts & commentary on Moore. I need their books & journals they've contributed to on the topic.

So far the OU Resources give me an e.book of Roger's book, but only excerpts. Say 20 pages out of 280. I feel I am commenting on hearsay until I have had more of the facts. I also feel I am not qualified to comment as I don't have a background in marketing. (or at least not marketing 'by the book.')

I need to have something to say about:

  • market segmentation
  • market targeting
  • market  positioning

 

Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 11295099