Ever since February 2007 I have been working as an e-Learning consultant and Moodle evangelist for Stoas Learning, the Dutch Moodle partner. From May 1st, I will start in a new role at a different company. I will become a Blended Learning Adviser at Shell International.
Stoas has been a a wonderful employer for me. They have given me a lot of opportunities and trust, enabling me to learn a lot and pursue the things that I find interesting. I have had the chance to do exciting projects for interesting clients (e.g. the Council of Europe, the EO, ABN Amro and Shell), work with some great colleagues and connect with the larger Moodle community. It wasn’t an easy choice to leave…
However, I am excited at the opportunities that I will have at a large multinational like Shell. In this role I will be doing a couple of things:
Build the capacity for blended learning in the Group
Be the guardian for Shell’s global Moodle implementation
Design exciting learning events that impact the business
Facilitate and moderate Shell’s global community of learning professionals
It is my ambition to stay engaged with the Moodle and edublogger communities through writing this blog: I realise that the only way for me to maximise my potential in this new job is to share as much as I can of what I do and be in many external dialogues. Please tell me when you feel I am straying too far from that goal.
This evening I had the chance to go to the Reichstag in Berlin. This incredible building currently houses the German parliament (the Bundestag).
Admission to the magnificent dome is free. The last people are allowed in at 22:00 and are then allowed to stay till midnight. I hope our Dutch public institutions will take the Reichstag as an example.
The view of Berlin at night was impressive. Walking up the spiral (which is separate from the downward one) make you see the full panorama about three times.
The dome was designed by Norman Foster and built to symbolise the reunification of Germany. When you look down towards the inside you can see the seats of the parliament which get direct sunlight reflected through the mirrored cone in the centre of the dome.
Looking at that mirrored cone I suddenly realised Foster’s brilliance: the cone not only allows sunlight in, it also must allow the people sitting in the parliament seats to oversee all of Berlin when they look up. To me this makes the dome a wonderful physical realisation of a metaphor for not performing omphaloskepsis, but instead looking outward to the world at large.
There are many reasons why I love living in Amsterdam. The International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) is one of them. On Monday the 24th 2008 I went to see two documentaries at the festival.
The first movie I saw was Jos de Putter‘s Beyond the Game. This “western in cyberspace” follows the two top players in Warcraft III: Grubby and Sky. Warcraft is the “thinker’s game” at the yearly World Cyber Games. The documentary did not explain how one plays Warcraft, instead it explored how heroes are created. There were two things that I really got out of it:
At some point in the movie Grubby describes Sky as being the epitome of “Mindless practise”. Sky practises 12 hours a day, whereas Grubby can be competitive with way less hours of work and relies on his creativity as a player. Personally, I could see an analogy with the current global situation where the “west” is banking on out-innovating the “east” where they just work harder.
In the movie Grubby moves to China because he has a ping of 300ms when he plays Warcraft from the Netherlands. This is enough time to make playing useless. We tend to forget that distances stay real in this global economy: You can travel thousands of miles because saving 300ms is important to you. Or in my job: You can have all the video conferencing tools in the world, but you cannot easily overcome time differences.
IDFA usually has the directors of the documentaries present at the screenings. It was very interesting to hear Jos de Putter talk about cutting some scenes because he considered it to be “too TV”.
This is not the first great video game documentary that I have seen this year. I really enjoyed The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. A completely different documentary, but a definite must see (even if you don’t enjoy videogames):
The second movie that I went to see was Leg Before Wicket by Shashi Buluswar (watch the trailer). I have had a weakness for cricket for years now and am always interested in anything cricket related. To me cricket is also about heroes. No other game has such a thin line between being a failure (out for duck) and being a hero (making those much needed runs in the last over, after a 50 run partnership).
Leg Before Wicket uses the LBW concept of cricket (with the often disagreeing viewpoints of the fielding and the batting team) as a metaphor for how both India and Pakistan take a different viewpoint on the partition of 1947. Indians and Pakistanis have a great distrust of each other and a lot of families have painful memories of what happened in 1947.
The movie shows two separate reconciliations: on a macro level the Chicago Giants consists of both Indians (of which the director of the movie was the first one in the team) and Pakistanis struggling together to make the playoffs; and on a macro level where the Indian and Pakistani governments have organised a bi-directional cricket tour, handing out visas to the spectators and building mutual understanding: “cricket diplomacy”. This juxtaposition of different worlds worked very well.
All the proceeds of Leg Before Wicket will go a to a good cause, so please buy the DVD if you are interested.
The day before yesterday I had the extraordinary privilege to see and hear an ex-president and the next president of the United States speak at an rally in Kissimmee, Florida.
We were taken to the venue by a Haitian cab driver, who not only is the best domino player of the US (by his own estimation), but also kindly let us listen to some of the Republican radio stations. He loves listening to those stations because of their extreme and ridiculous viewpoints.
We arrived at a big sports field around 17:30 where a very orderly line had already formed. During the wait we could buy all kinds of Obama buttons and T-shirts (my favourite: a Matrix spoof with Obama as “The One” and Biden, Michelle and Powell in the background). There was a heart warming amount of optimism and camaraderie in the line. The doors opened at 20:30 and we were quickly searched at a security checkpoint. Multiple helicopters circled the air, another security measure.
The field slowly filled up with everybody walking to the catheter. When we reached, we were pleasantly surprised to be only about 20 yards away from the speakers. At 22:00 congresswoman Brown, the senator of Florida and Jimmy Smith urged everybody to vote early. A lawyer ensured us that this time the Democratic party has five thousand lawyers in Florida alone, making sure that every vote counts and suing as soon as problems emerge. “They won’t steal the election this time.”
Right on time (23:00) president Clinton and senator Obama appeared. Clinton spoke first with Obama sitting next to him on a stool and smiling. Clinton said that there were four reasons why Obama is the president that the country needs:
He has the best philosophy
He has the best policy
He is capable of making a decision
He is capable of executing on the decision
According to Clinton both candidates had to make two presidential decisions during this campaign. The first is the choice of a vice president (no need to dwell on this point), the second was acting on the economic crisis. Clinton explained that Obama has had a lot of criticism for taking a while to respond, but that during that time Obama was calling his economic advisers, Clinton’s advisers, Warren buffet and other specialists realising that this was a complex situation that needed to be understood well. This is exactly what a president does according to Clinton.
Next it was Obama’s turn. He looked relaxed and spoke with an incredible clarity and purpose (without using a tele-prompter). The presence of the hugely popular Clinton gave Obama the opportunity to refer to those prosperous Clinton years in which the average yearly income rose by 7500 dollars as opposed to the Bush administration where the average income fell with 2000 dollars.
What struck me was the honesty of what he said and his willingness to also talk about the difficult issues. The US needs to tighten its belt. He will have to go through the budget “line by line” and scrap the things that we might like, but do not need. He spoke about investing 15 billion dollars in green technology and creating 5 million green jobs. He addressed the accusation of being a communist (“Yes, I shared my peanut butter sandwich in school, I am a redistributionist”). He praised McCain for his stand against torture but also pointed out the fact that McCain’s voting record has been with Bush on all economic matters. “Bush has been digging a hole for eight years and McCain is ready to take over the shovel.”
Finally he urged everybody to not think that the race has run. Everybody has to go out and vote.
It was an amazing experience being at a historic event like this.
I love Segways. In June I used one in San Francisco and I think it is an amazing extension of your body. Within five minutes riding feels completely natural. All the movements are intuitive, it is a brilliant piece of design.
I am at Learning 2008 in Orlando. I have been thoroughly impressed by how well designed the conference is. Everything seem to be consciously thought out.
The host Elliott Masie rides around on a Segway in between the sessions. I was looking at him and suddenly noticed that it does two things for him:
It makes him unique. He is the only one.
It adds height: he is the tallest guy in the room and can pet people on the back while they are looking up to him.
This reminded me of some research that I read years ago about taller people having more authority, being more successful and earning more (e.g. Short Changed).
I (obviously) wasn’t the first one thinking about this. See for example the height advantage.
This begs the question whether Masie is aware of this when he uses his Segway. If I look at how precisely designed the rest of the conference is, I can’t imagine he isn’t (which is fine…)
