“People on the South Bank were doing a double take as they looked up, but no, it  really is what looks like a boat perched on the very edge of Queen Elizabeth Hall’s roof.  Not only that but in a triumph over health & safety restrictions people can actually stay in it.”

She doesn’t qualify this comment, so I can only assume it’s another one if those lazy throwaway lines that the media love, to have a pop at the perceived excessive Health & Safety culture, which David Cameron is so keen to stamp out.  Let’s have a think how this might be a “triumph over Health & Safety”.

This must mean that they’ve ignored any advice, law or building regulations that might be relevant to this situation, and that at *no point* during the planning has anyone done a risk assessment, putting guidelines in place to assure the safety of the occupants or passers-by.

Therefore this implies:

• The boat is unsecured or someone has judged it heavy enough that it probably won’t sway or topple over onto the pavement below.
• The roof weight limit has not been checked.
• Occupants access the roof and boat on their own, either by climbing the outside of the building, parachuting in, or unguided via maintenance areas.
• No additional lighting has been provided to guide them back to the inside of the building in the event of an emergency.  In such an emergency, they’ll just have to take their chances as none of the nearby fire marshalls will check that area.  The only emergency exit is to jump off the roof.

If the boat was constructed there, I can only wonder how it was put together e.g. who did the wiring and heating?  If the boat was already built, how did it get up there?  Jedi mind levitation?  Using a crane would be cheating, as that would require a whole other set of considerations, including weight, stabilising the crane, rope strength, how it was lashed together.

Would you want to stay there?

The above points are what I would expect the Health & Safety officers involved to consider: looking at each situation as the plans were developed and implemented, based on their experience, established best practice, advice from the fire brigade and building engineers, using appropriate and certified equipment.

And that’s what we refer to as a culture of Health & Safety – is that so excessive?  If this seems like common sense, can the media, press and politicians stop perpetuating those ridiculous myths and stop bashing at people trying to do their job?  This is actually a triumph for all the Health & Safety people who’ve been involved in getting this to float.

He began by highlighting the way the young people tend to arrange themselves informally, but are then frequently taught in controlled, grey concrete boxes that don’t necessarily promote the open discussions and creative that we’re trying to develop in our students.  The building also needs to take into account the work practices and the rituals of the academic community, such as posters, art installations and demonstration areas.

In his buildings, Cook uses flowing, organic concrete shapes, blending these in with plants, and places small breakout areas throughout.  He showed a current project for the School of Architecture at Bond University, Queensland, to demonstrate the shapes and space, as well as the construction and design compromises needed to deal with glaring sunlight.

To illustrate the way in which the students and staff might use the space and have a relationship with the building, Cook drew a series of wry vignettes of academics & students in typical conversations and situations around the campus.  We might recognise some of them: a rather snooty academic questioning a student’s approach to a topic; a student who’s more likely to be seen in the bar than in the lecture theatre; a showcase event to promote the institution.   With financial and spacial constraints, such beautiful design is not always attainable, and even on this project a workshop area had to be moved to some “tin sheds” round the back of the building rather than in the core where people could observe the activity.

But when considering the teaching and intersitial spaces we should think about how people work and share, and how it presents the organisation to visitors and prospective students.  Coincidentally, this came up only yesterday morning as we debate the usage of our department’s lobby areas.  Do we maintain a clean space, a calm area for breakouts, or an open area where our students can test and demonstrate their programmable robots?

It could be that our emphasis on space and organisation here is a reflection of our Engineering disciplines – a desire to optimise and maximise efficiency.  But are we missing opportunities to foster creative and interdisciplinary work, and advertise ourselves to the wider academic community?

I’ve thought of some other computing/baby analogies:

• You may have planned to install this product, or you may have just found the product installing itself one day.
• In the future you may be able to do a custom build of your product.
• When it gets to 100% it will stall for a while saying “Extracting Files” (thanks to Lewis for this one).  So you may have no idea when it’s actually going to be ready.
• Once completed, the system will spend some time cleaning up your product.
• You need to register your product within 30 days in order to receive benefits
• You will spend all your time talking about and showing off your product, even though millions of other people also have one, or more of the same.  You will ignore all criticism of your product.
• It’s recommended that you install an antivirus package, but you will still likely need regular fixes and patches.
• Training courses and manuals abound, offering conflicting advice for problems.
• You may also find some problems just go away after a while, or can be alleviated by the many leisure and productivity accessories that are available to buy.
• You can apply various themes, but eventually you will have no control over these.  For example version 1.0 has suddenly come home with the Hello Kitty theme.
• There are constant updates, each of which consumes more and more resources.
• If you have the same type of OS on each product, you can reapply the updates to the second one.
• There may be conflicts with other products, so it’s best to partition them off.
• Eventually, the product will uninstall, but leave lots of little files around and you may later find further child processes in your system consuming resources.

Any more, please add them!

Nokia had close to 40% market share in 2007 when the iPhone was released,  this was still the case in January last year. They were King of the World for several good reasons:

Evolution of Nokia handsets, 1982-2007. Newlaunches.com

Design:
The above chart  shows Nokia designs from the early days of the cellular phone up to 2007.  We saw the handset evolve from black plastic bricks, to shiny, multicoloured fashion accessories.  Whilst I never went for the bling excesses of some of the designs, there was always something to suit different people.

The functions on Nokia phones always outperformed other manufacturers, whether it be the FM radio, rudimentary music playing capability, or the camera,  And they managed to churn these out cheap enough that anyone could have them without a crippling contract.

They also played about with a variety of different physical formats, such as the flipout keyboard of the 6820 or the swivel of the 7370 (my wife had both of these), not always successful but still they led the way.  And look at the comments on the above chart – many models remembered fondly or seen as futuristic at the time.  I recall the excitement (yes, sad I know) in 1996 of seeing someone telnet into a server in the middle of the street using a 9210 Communicator.

Compare that chart, with all it’s colourful, zany designs, to the current offerings.  What do you see?  Pretty much identical plastic smartphones, all black, same size, with a rudimentary camera on the back.

Interface:
I got my first phone (a Nokia 3110) in 1999, and despite higher resolution, screen sizes, and more features, the menu system remained pretty consistent even to my last Nokia, the xPress music 5310 in 2008.  It was simple and it worked well, even on a small screen.  In later models I could also choose a icon based navigation which suited the way I used the phone, but my wife had the same model with traditional menus.

Other manufacturers never seemed to get the interface right, always having some counter-intuitive location for fairly obvious settings, or features that didn’t quite connect.  For example one year I went for a Panasonic clamshell which had one of the best cameras at the time, but unfortunately there wasn’t an easy way to get the photos off.

There are also plenty of people for whom that simple interface is fine: my Gran uses her phone to call and text.  Touchscreens, cameras or ability to run Spotify and Angry Birds are not really important to her, and I bet there are millions out there who feel the same.

So what do Microsoft bring?

Microsoft have 85% of the desktop market.

Forget the snide comments, this is how it is.  For ordinary people, who don’t have the expertise to manage Linux, or the money to throw at Apple, Windows works for them.

With almost ubiquitous 3G/WiFi, there may not be much need to physically connect the phone to the desktop like the old days, when you needed a special cable to back up your photos or install an application.  But reducing the barrier between them may make the smartphone even more useful to a wider market.

Windows Phone 7 has had a generally positive reception and there are potentially a huge number of developers, as Conor points out,  so the workload can’t be massive to get this on Nokia’s existing hardware.  Microsoft also bring lots of cash to speed this process along, and the potential to push Blackberry out if they tie in with Exchange.

In short, the design, interface and production pedigree of Nokia, combined with the desktop share and developer community of Microsoft, has the potential to be massive.  So why is everyone so quick to dismiss it as two old dinosaurs reacting far too late?

It’s a strange town, with a confused layout, though the lie of the land is probably like many other seaside towns. As you come in to the town on the A35, there are a couple of tall office buildings, which announce Bournemouth as an Important Place, but just past that there’s a lovely Victorian church which looks uncomfortable next to these giants and the busy A-road.

There seem to be dozens of large hotels, which were probably Grand in the 70′s and 80′s when they were first built, but now look shabby and distract from the smaller B&Bs and splendid Art Deco styling in smaller buildings. Many parts of the town centre are neglected, with features like the canopy in Westover Road that would be cherised in towns like Leamington Spa.

Bournemouth Imax, soon to be demolished

On the seafront is the Imax cinema pictured above, which I remember seeing Kevin McCloud’s Demolition programme about buildings that should be demolished.  I can completely understand why it’s such a white elephant as it’s  just in the wrong place, and a look in the local paper shows that it’s only able to screen short documentary films, in comparison to the South Bank BFI Imax that shows feature films.  Even the Imax in Bradford in the 1980′s showed mainstream movies in 70mm.  It now looks set for demolition, but what will it be replaced by?

The town seems to lack a focus, with traffic in the middle of the town breaking up the flow, and pedestrianised areas not really working either.  It feels like new buildings have been allowed to be placed anywhere, and business use for landmark buildings that doesn’t unify the micro-local area.  Take this view for example, just off the main shopping area, wonderfully styled buildings that in any other town would be the centrepieces of a regeneration area, with sought-after apartments and offices above restaurants, not shabby flats above nightclubs.

It was during our weekend that David Cameron made his comments about Multiculturalism and his government also announced plans to move May Day to October in celebration of Britishness.  To my mind, cultural identity and urban planning are connected.

Incoming cultures are perceived as a threat because British people (more the English really) have a crisis of their own identity.  We aren’t defined by a single religion, or costume, or ethnicity, we’re a mix of different histories, that have are preserved by local traditions.  The experience of Britishness for someone from Bradford is different to someone from Hastings.  They have different histories, trades and customs which make them distinct from other towns, but there will be some shared traits with other towns in their region, or across the country.

Culture takes place in a physical space, and when that is not used appropriately, with unrestrained developments and neglect of important sites, culture is weakened.  Town planners surely have an overview of the flow of people and businesses in a town, and should control that appropriately to make sure the story of the town is retained but kept vital.

Castlepoint Shopping a "unique retail experience". Photo by Lewis Clarke

Slightly disappointed by the town centre, we headed out to Castle Point, which the radio announced as a “unique shopping experience”.  This is just a large car park, with two supermarkets at opposite corners and a string of high street shops between them.  A few paper lanterns were strung up to mark Chinese New Year, as they were in the Pavilion Gardens, but this is a sanitised place, with no sense of history or culture or coming together of communities.   Whereas you could have a small parade and Lion dancers in the gardens, which would serve to bring closer the Chinese and British communities, this would be ridiculous at Castle Point.

So my conclusion is this: British culture is something that isn’t easily defined, but exists in our own experiences and places.   If we continue to allow town centres to lose their relevance, and be damaged by bad planning, we will still have this crisis of national identity and integration of other cultures will remain a struggle.

UPDATE:

I stated above that the Imax cinema only showed crappy documentaries, however because I had been browsing the listings on my mobile whilst in Bournemouth I failed to notice that those showings were in 2005, at which time the cinema closed.  Point still stands that they were showing the wrong kinds of film.

• the impending birth of my second child and hospital appointments thereof
• all the decorating that needs to be finished off before said child appears
• academic study and work and trying to base the former around the latter
• helping prepare a talk at Barcamp8 on the origins of social networking.

I’ve barely spent any time on MyFootballClub, though I still pop in for votes and follow their progress.   The battle to get the website working for the members just wore me out, and having got a useful platform in place,  some wonderful people running the social media side of things, and the Society in general looking a bit more positive, I felt I needed a break.

I was saddened to see that Southill Alexander have withdrawn from their league.  This member-owned club was formed 2 years ago along similar lines to MyFC but seems to have struggled and I suspect that in their caution they went too far in the opposite direction.  Will Brooks launched MyFC with huge fanfare and publicity, but no real idea of how to make the club accessible and accountable to members, but remain interesting enough to keep the funds rolling.  SAFC launched with lofty ideals but also a high price for entry.  It wasn’t obvious what was going on and how it would be better for the Club and the Member than the MyFC experience.  So it was an “out” for me, even though I knew the people involved where fantastic, intelligent and well-intentioned.

But 6 months is far too late for a blog post.  Life gets in the way, I guess!

Last time I said that the MyFootballClub website was going to be revamped, and sure enough, developers Big Spring did a fantastic job, working with members to make the public-facing page more dynamic and appealing.  We also got the Facebook Group and Twitter accounts up and running, or at least started using them properly.  Big thanks there to Paul Harrison of @carveconsulting.

A fancy website wasn’t going to be a panacea, and there are still improvements to be made at the Club and Society.  But having a positive public image and a variety of methods to keep in touch with fans and members was a step forward from where we were in February.  The next phase on from that was to develop the members’ site into what we needed to work properly as an organisation, and this happened over the summer.  I confess that I ran out of energy to be involved in this, but Julio and Jon of Big Spring have really turned the site around and made it useful, interesting and lively again.  A lot of the arguments over running the club might be the same, but it doesn’t feel as claustrophobic and desperate as it did before.

Sadly, Ebbsfleet were still relegated on the last day of the season, but in many ways (and this was voiced by old hands at the club) this was needed, as even before MyFootballClub took over there were thorny organisational issues that needed resolving.   We did learn from the disruption of last season, and despite relegation, managed to retain more of the squad than in 09/10.  The players have responded well, just outside promotion playoffs at the moment.

So things are looking up, and I believe we can start to attract people who were previously interested in the project, but put off by the lack of engagement.  Not to mention people who were interested for the same reasons as I was: to be part of a community that was trying to do something new and different.

When you look at the problems at Liverpool at the moment, you remember why MyFootballClub was an attractive concept back in 2007.  In September 2010, MyFootballClub is now getting close to what it should have been from the start.

In response to: http://www.footballfancast.com/football-blogs/ebbsfleet-united-project-doomed-fail

MyFootballClub was started in 2007 with absolutely no precedent to follow. Along the way the members and Board have had to create their own structures, policies and methods for communicating with each other and the club. Not always perfect, as I’ve reported here before, but more and more critical votes on Club business have been put to the members throughout this time.  But time and again, the members have shown they will make a sensible decision, and recent votes show that there’s diversity of opinion, which is a good thing for making the right decision, so the theory says.

Fundamentally, MyFootballClub cleared a massive debt that had been built up at the Ebbsfleet, brought the club to a worldwide audience.  Whilst momentum was clearly lost and in terms of numbers we’re a long way from those short heady days of 32,000 members, we’ve continued to support the club financially for two years.  In the midst of a recession, whilst more established clubs with bigger local fanbases have gone deep into debt, administration or even closure, the thousands of MyFootballClub members have continued to support Ebbsfleet out of their own pockets, working with other directors to ensure the players are paid, and constantly finding new ways to raise funds.

On the 27th March we were scheduled to play Chester City at Home, a big game anyway as both clubs were struggling in the table.  But Chester went bust, closed down, and for us this means £10,000 income lost, or a weeks wages for the playing squad, more or less.  So how do we get round it?  In typical MyFootballClub spirit, let’s get down to the ground and have a kickabout, with a difference.

So instead, Coach Liam Daish is holding a challenge match against team captain Paul McCarthy, with teams formed of members and fans paying £100 each for the privelege.  With a good turnout (bearing in mind our stats show catering is one of the bigger sources of matchday income) we might go some way to recouping the loss.  More on the Gaffer’s Challenge can be found on the Facebook fan page here (or on the site if you’re a member)

So here’s to failure.  And to Chester, Portsmouth and all the other clubs who are far worse off than we are.

These seemed to fall through in August when the local councils (Kent County and Gravesham Borough) and  said they would not support a community stadium on the old A2 site.  Following this blow, the freehold was put up for sale by the owners, Land Security, who also gave the club the opportunity to make an offer before the 21st Sept auction.  A group of MyFC members, directors and other supporters of the club got together to raise the funds – not an insubstantial amount, somewhere between £400-600,000.

New Player

And that was going reasonably well until Gravesham Borough Council stepped in on the 17th September and bought the ground.  This has changed the game again, as there are now two options:

1) Continue to raise the funds in order to buy the ground from the Council
2) Take up the offer of long-term, peppercorn rent

Learning to Juggle

Both have their good and bad points, but I feel that the Society Board members should not be pushing one argument over another, which has happened before and cause a lot of division.  Instead they should be monitoring the debate, providing information where needed and pushing things through at the club on behalf of members.  Despite the usual circular and emotive debate, thankfully both sides have been allowed to discuss the options.

As an organisation, we’re still struggling to deal with more than one item at a time, a shame as important issues are neglected whilst everyone’s energy is focused on the Big News.  Again, this is something that I was hoping for from the new Board – to each take ownership of different areas and foster groups of members to deal with the issues and come back to the Society.

Good news in this regard is that the Operator is planning a revamp to the website which should make this more of a reality.  This should also improve communications, allowing casual members to easily see what’s going on and feel involved.  This is essential for maintaining and growing membership beyond the hardcore MyFootballClub fans and local Ebbsfleet fans.

MyFootballGround

Incidentally, funds for the ground purchase are still being raised by the new company, MyFootballGround.  Going on what we’ve done before and the way the forum discussion’s been going, if the full amount isn’t reached MyFG will probably continue and become the company that develops the stadium.  All quite exciting, whatever the outcome!

If you’re interested you can email 0800 334 5605 or e-mail Trustboard@myfootballclub.co.uk

Despite being elected to represent the members of the Society, some of the previous Board members sermonised about their view of responsible ownership, actively opposing the open, community decision-making way of thinking that MyFootballClub was based on.  In particular, this was seen in some of the more contentious issues during the year, such as the Club budget, membership fees and player sales.

The forum discussions about these decisions went on and on for dozens of pages, with very few new facts or analysis produced along the way.  The more vocal contributors quickly dug in their heels and the casual members had no way of tracking the debate or main points.  We still need something more than the forums in this regard, at the very least to get the main points summarised regularly.

I think one of the biggest factors in the state of anomie that sometimes seems to pervade the MyFC community is the lack of faith from the Board in the ability of the membership to make the right choices.  Alice Casey describes this perfectly:

…decision makers don’t give enough credit to public wisdom and intelligence, the press consistently portray the public as being respondent, passive and powerless rather than active and influential, and people themselves do not feel able to influence decisions in their communities. These three have worked together to ensure that many citizens remain as passive consumers.

Of course for many members, MyFC is a luxury item, so the constant peril at Ebbsfleet is that if members are not engaged with the Club or if the cost is too high (bascially value for money), they can walk away.  I don’t use the term  “peril” lightly: as widely predicted, 20,000 members did not renew in February 2008.  In the run up to that deadline the Board spent far too much time wringing their hands over this, rather than deal with the issues that were causing.

My view remains that the two most important roles for the Board are to build the community within the Society itself, and to implement mechanisms to inform and involve members in the activity of the Club.

Building a succesful internet community
I’m thinking along the lines of Slice the Pie or Zopa.  I refer to these two specifically as they were also featured in Ivo Gormley’s film, “Us, Now” alongside MyFootballClub.  Like MyFC, these organisations are set up in response to the failure of “real” institutions (like record companies and banks) for certain segments of those market.

They have a product which is easy for individual members to join, participate in, and contribute towards the development of the community.  Because of this openness, they are sustainable and successful.  It’s not the ownership that is the attractive thing about MyFC, it’s the participation.

Enabling members to collectively contribute
This means more than “give us your money, now f**k off”, which is sometimes how it can feel as MyFootballClub member.  It means being open about the decisions that are being made, and that requires a philosophical change of attitude from the Club as well as the Board.

But the most urgent task for the new Board must be to sort out the communication between the Club and the Members, and maximise members involvement with decisions.

The election result:

The above was draft before the election but I didn’t post due to work things & holiday.

I’m a little bit disappointed that a couple of candidates with more technical and financial nous narrowly missed out, but the bad eggs either stood down or didn’t make it through nomination.  They’re a reasonable crew, don’t agree with all of them all of the time, but that’s democracy for you.

In general they are starting well, and the new Chairman is also keen to improve communications.   There have been a few big issues that have cropped up over the last couple of months that have served to rally people to the cause and bring cohesion to the organisation.  But I’ll talk about them later.