information strategy, web management, enterprise information architecture (ia), project management and other dots in need of joining
This item appeared in our staff newsletter today:
“The project team is conducting a study in a bid to find a way to prevent the transmission of dengue virus. They are seeking volunteers to bloodfeed mosquitoes in their Aedes aegypti colony. To bloodfeed the mosquitoes, participants place their arm in the colony cage for a period of 15 minutes.
Participants will receive a $10 … Gift Card for every cage they feed.”
Not my ideal way to earn ten bucks.
Categories: administrivia, user experience.
'Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East' by Florence Nightingale -- click to enlarge. Image from Wikipedia/Wiki Commons.
It’s common knowledge that in 1854 Florence Nightingale identified poor hygiene practices as the major cause of mortality in army hospitals in the Crimea. (In fact, she thought the problem was a combination of poor nutrition and over-work. A separate Sanitary Commission arrived six months later to clean up the drainage, improve ventilation and reduce the occurrence of infectious diseases. Florence became a champion of hospital hygience after she returned to England.)
Another popular fact about Nightingale is that she didn’t believe in the new ‘germ theory’ about how infections spread. (Actually, in the early 1880s she wrote an article advocating strict precautions designed to kill germs.)
Florence Nightingale became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858. She developed the ‘polar area diagram,’ a form of pie chart, and was a pioneer in the use of what we now call infographics — visual representations of data that can be understood by non-specialists.
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References:
[Tip o' the hat to London Daily Photo blogger Ham who photographed a statue of Florence and linked to her infographic.]
Categories: analytics, leadership.
How the US Library of Congress is building an archive of the public Twittersphere. Metadata, context, links and conversational threads present interesting challenges.
Ten innovative e-books that use interactivity to enhance your reading experience.
Categories: data management, libraries museums galleries.
Photo, above: Delia Derbyshire in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, with Desmond Briscoe. Photo from BBC Radio 3's web site.
Today, 24 March, is Ada Lovelace Day. On this day bloggers celebrate the lives and careers of women in technology.
In honor of the occasion, please allow me to introduce you to Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram, two Englishwomen who in the 1960s bridged the gulf between science and art to create something never before seen or heard in the world, and to Meredith Brooks, one of Australia’s top audio engineers.
Novelist Lili Wilkinson blogged about Delia Derbyshire and the Doctor last year, and that’s a good inroduction to Delia.
Ron Grainer rightly gets credit for writing the original Dr Who theme tune, but it was Delia Derbyshire who gave it the rollicking spookiness that made the theme so distinctive.
Derbyshire studied mathematics and music at Cambridge. She was a pioneer of electronic music and sound effects. She worked in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s and 70s, using what we now regard as antiquated equipment to produce complex sounds that would be at home in any nightclub or loungeroom today.
The Radiophonic Workshop itself owed its existence to another remarkable woman, Daphne Oram, who with Desmond Briscoe persuaded the BBC that it needed an in-house production facility for electronic music and sound effects.
Daphne Oram in the studio - photo from The Guardian
Oram was, like Derbyshire, both a musician and a scientist who used technology in innovative ways. Oram invented a sound synthesis system called Oramics, which enabled the composer to literally draw the parameters (amplitude, frequency, timbre, duration) of the music she was creating. The marks drawn onto synchronised strips of 35mm film; a series of photo-electric cells under the film generated electrical charges which in turn produced sound.
A BBC News article called her the unsung pioneer of techno.
The March 2008 issue of Sound On Sound has a lengthy feature article on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the innovators who worked there.
Finally, a word of tribute to Meredith Brooks who with her partner Bill Syratt ran the Soundwarp music engineering studio in Sydney for many years. I met Meredith online in the late 1990s when we both joined the ABC’s Science Matters email discussion list.
Meredith is a woman of good humor and wit. She doesn’t blow her own horn much, but after several years I did discover that she’s one of Australia’s top audio engineers. She and Bill worked on some of Australia’s best-known (rock) music albums.
She also turned out to have remarkable strength of character and spirit: she rarely mentioned the serious illnesses she grappled with in the last several years, except when asking for help with finding practical, useful information about treatment options. Sadly, her beloved Bill succumbed to cancer in 2009.
When I wrote this blog post in mid-2010, the future of the Soundwarp studio was uncertain; Meredith was looking for a new business partner or investor, or perhaps someone to buy the studio outright.
Whatever she decides to do with the business, and whether or not she continues to participate in the online communities we’ve shared, I will always admire Meredith Brooks, both as a successful sound engineer in a business that generally undervalues women’s technical expertise, and as a remarkable human being.
Categories: leadership.
This short ad from Finland is sweet and earnest without being overweening.
I’m told that I did much the same thing as a baby. Even when cot-bound and too young to read, if I awoke before my parents I would reach for a book and tell myself a story while turning pages — in the dark if necessary.
Thus are nerds bred and nurtured :-)
Categories: KM, training.
