A Week Filled with Events

Palatine Conference

I made it to the afternoon of this conference. With the event sponsored by Palatine, who focus on dance and drama, I wasn't entirely sure where I was going with this conference, but was interested to see that Mike Seignior, with whom I teach on the Design for Digital Media course was heading up a workshop... so I thought, yes, a great chance to see how practice and academia intersect. Interestingly many of the people there came from a practice background and have moved into academia, whereas I come from an academic background, and have started to build up creative practices alongside my academic studies, which then start to inform them! Also an interesting TAPP workshop (which fits with life-coaching interests... see photo), and the overview of what was coming with REF (formerly RAE, so many acronyms!).

Media Studies Mini Conference
It's week 10, the week the First Years for Media Studies have been waiting for - a chance to present their work at a mini-conference. We'd set this up as a real conference, with poster boards, a schedule of presentations, and a coffee-break with proper refreshments! Thought it worked surprisingly well, as many of the students had seemed rather disengaged up til that point! Unlike many conferences, not too much danger of the students running over time...

The Big Sleep Out
(see other blog entry)

Team Training Oak Hall
Made it in time for the 11.30am session: a great chance to catch up with a few familiar faces, meet some new people, find out which trip I'm on (I'll be cooking in the Loire Valley at the end of July), and a reminder of why we truly do this - not for the "free holidays" (that's for sure, we work too hard for that!), but to serve others and give them a chance for rest, refreshment and re-engagement with God.

Andy Melrose Lecture: Jesus, Judas, Jim and John: storykeeping and the world’s shortest story.
Andy Melrose is one half of the partnership behind the Storykeepers, a 1970s series, which continues to be shown, and whose popularity continues to grow around the world. A great lecture, using a mix of modern technologies, and linking Jesus, Judas, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon in interesting ways (makes me not feel so unusual for being able to make such random connections!). Afterwards was a great chance to meet up with some old faces, talk to a few friendly faces to see if there is potential for more interesting work in any area, and random talks to people who may yet become future connections - noticeably a number of people from Cultural Studies, Creative Writing and Religious Studies in attendance.

Out There Networking Event

This is the pitch which teased us in:

In this talk, Dr Stephen Thomas will explore how recent developments in digital biology are set to have even more profound social impacts on everything from longevity to identity itself. These developments are different in kind to what has gone before, for they are about us, not just our surrounding technologies.

Did you know, for example, that you don't own your own DNA? 

How come I have less DNA than an amoeba? What will it mean to be 500 years old? What is 'personalized medicine'? Where will my digital identity begin and end? Is my brain me? Is morality pre-determined? Will there be room left for religion? Is science boring?

Certainly thought provoking, and clearly a number of different interests engaging with his discussions (which come from a pharmacology/genome research perspective), and was pleased to note another scientist who thinks that the world looks so complex that there must be something behind it, and rejects Dawkins arguments!

Conference to Come
Abstract selected for a conference in Wales.

Faber Finds: Mass-Observation

Mass-Observation
I used the Mass-Observation archives extensively in my PhD research (see www.ww2poster.co.uk), as it has lots of really interesting material from observations (both direct and indirect) plus collated materials from the war years (and since). It was really ahead of its time! Much of the best material is only available by visiting the archives (based at the University of Sussex), but some of their published material is shortly to be published by Faber & Faber in modern editions.

"They offer an extraordinarily vivid glimpse of a time which will soon not be accessible to living memory. Not only that, they provide evidence of how astutely Mass Observation pre-figured many later intellectual and methodological developments in social research especially in oral history and life history research, in feminist and working class history and in the kind of social research which privileges what we sometimes call the 'ordinary person' and the importance of studying everyday life" Professor Dorothy Sheridan, Mass Observation Archive.

I would particularly recommend these wartime finds:

• War Begins at Home (1940)
• War Factory (1943)

Universities Online

As part of my research into possibilities for universities to make use of the plethora of social media around, I put out a message on my Twitter feed, and picked up a few new followers working at the overlap of social media/academia, and it's interesting to see what is popping up in this constantly changing field.

YouTube.edu
Last week (Thursday 26th March), YouTube officially launched an independent area of its site (to which Universities need to apply, and at present seems to be US universities only, but where the US leads, the rest of the world follows...) which seperates scholarly content from the more general content available on YouTube. Along with site Academic Earth which also launched last week, offering lectures direct on the World Wide Web...

Scott Stocker, Stanford's director of Web Communications notes: “Particularly in this time when the coverage of higher ed in general is diminishing in the mainstream media, it allows us to tell stories directly in a very effective way to a large audience.” Wall Street Journal Blog

It's an interesting time to be in academia, seeing what possibilities the new technologies offer, but also being aware that they need to offer a return on investment (both time and money), and to most effectively leverage the media available whilst retaining intellectual property.

Social Media MA
Birmingham City University is to offer an MA in Social Media in September 2009, and the Twitter feed has been buzzing with feeds, and the press has quickly picked up on it, publishing online material several hours before it could make it to print.

""Social media" in the context of Internet technologies is itself a relatively new term which broadly correlates to the concept of Web 2.0. "Social media consultancy" as a profession is being shaped by the early proponents of the field.

There is a dichotomy within this nascent industry. On the one hand established businesses are seeking to co-opt the tools of social media and use them for commercial gain; on the other third sector organisations are making use of these tools to build complex and conversational communication strategies for minimal cost.

This MA programme will explore the techniques of social media, consider the development and direction of social media as a creative industry, and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field." Birmingham City University.

University of Glasgow: Student Blogs
An interesting idea: "our student blogs aim to give you an insight into what it's really like to be a student at Glasgow", which they could also do via a search on YouTube! Interesting to think about the dynamic between official/unofficially sanctioned media. My expectation is that prospective students would trust the unofficial (looking) material more!

Keep Calm and Carry On

"For many the wartime slogans, such as Dig for Victory, Careless Talk Costs Lives, and Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases, have never been forgotten. Such slogans have been passed on as a part of our common heritage," says Dr Rebecca Lewis, a historian who has made a study of the subject. "Posters that were not published or were withdrawn also make for interesting study, particularly for reasons as to why they were rejected," she adds. "However, there do not seem to be many examples of these, although whether this is because records of unsuccessful designs were not kept or because there were not many was not established."

Simon Edge, 'Sign of the Times', Daily Express, Thursday March 19, 2009, p36

So, a part of my thesis is finally published... my book is still in the planning stages, and the website: http://www.ww2poster.co.uk/ needs a distinct overhaul and I am throwing around ideas for an associated blog, but I'm not there yet [EDIT: See http://ww2poster.wordpress.com/]! In the meantime, I've been quoted in the national press in relation to a story which now I've done a bit of a hunt, appears to have been circulating for some time, re the discovery of the unpublished Second World War posters 'Keep Calm and Carry On' ten years ago by Barter Books, and it's continued surprise success (although with my love of wartime posters I don't find the idea that people love posters surprising, it is surprising that such a generally non-visual design is popular, but the slogan is very strong, and very apt in the present times)!

PhD Findings
My PhD 'The Planning, Design and Reception of British Home Front Propaganda Posters of the Second World War' was awarded (without corrections) in June 2004 by what is now the University of Winchester.

A section from pages 104-5 of my thesis (copy held in the Imperial War Museum, and in the RKE Centre at the University of Winchester):

The poster with a proclamation from the King was to be ‘plastered everywhere in order to drive the contents into everyone’s head’.[1] By August 1939 war was regarded as inevitable, and by 9 August the finished drawings were submitted to Macadam for final approval. Any adaptations to proportions would then be made and the posters printed.[2] By 23 August the proportions to be printed were decided. The percentages were: ‘Freedom is in Peril’ (for remote areas), 12% (figure 22); ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’, 65%; and ‘Your Courage, etc.’, 23% (figure 1).[3] The Treasury had approved costs for a single poster, three designs were produced, exceeding estimates by under £50. “Our Fighting Men Depend on You” for factories, works, docks and harbours, was also printed, for which no allowance had originally been made.[4] By September, ‘Your Courage’ and ‘Freedom is in Peril’ were already being posted throughout the country. ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’ was printed and held in reserve for when the necessity arose, for example, a severe air-raid, although it was never actually displayed. Soon after war was declared, the small poster ‘Don’t Help the Enemy, Careless Talk may give away vital secrets’ (figure 62) was approved by the War Office and was ready to put into production. 58,000 copies had already been distributed by September 17, and 75,000 copies were to be despatched daily from September 26.[5] By the end of September 1939, roughs for further designs had been prepared and approved, including messages from the King and the Queen, designs specifically for factories and docks, and designs specifically for each branch of the armed services: reassurance, not recruiting, posters.[6]

[1] PRO INF 1/10, ‘Functions and Organisation of the Ministry. Memorandum by E.B. Morgan’, early 1939.
[2] PRO INF 1/266, ‘Memo from Vaughan to Macadam’, August 9 1939.
[3] PRO INF 1/226, ‘Letter from Macadam to W.G.V. Vaughan’, August 23 1939. In the same folder, ‘Demand for Printing Slip for HMSO’, August 31 1939, and ‘Poster Campaign: Distribution’, November 1 1940, give details of the exact quantities ordered on August 31 1939, in a variety of sizes and in both broadside and upright versions, and where distributed. PRO INF 1/302, ‘Summary of Activities of Home Publicity Division’, September 28 1939 notes that all sizes were included, from 20ft. by 10ft. down to 15” x 10”.
[4] PRO INF 1/226, ‘Letter from I.S.Macadam, MOI to E.Rowe-Dutton, Treasury’, September 4 1939.
[5] PRO INF 1/6, ‘First Report on the Activities of the Ministry of Information from September 3 to September 17 1939’, September 1939.
[6] PRO INF 1/302, ‘Summary of Activities of Home Publicity Division’, September 28 1939.

I have lots more I could say, and hope to be back with some more considered comments, summarising elements of my PhD, before I get round to the book!

Some Links:

• Stories
  Simon Edge, 'Sign of the Times', Daily Express, 19th March 2009 (not online)
• Jon Henley, 'What Crisis?', The Guardian, 18th March 2009
• Jess Cartner-Morley, 'Women of Britain - your designers need you!', 28th February 2009
• 'Keep Calm and Put Your Poster Up', Guardian Picture Gallery (not the subverted design!)
• Jane Fryer, 'Exquisitely understated, utterly inspiring, the wartime poster striking a chord in our credit-crunch times', Daily Mail, 19th March 2009
• Stuart Hughes, ''The greatest motivational poster ever?', BBC News, 4 February 2009
• 'Bookseller discovers rare wartime Keep Calm and Carry On poster', Telegraph, 23 February 2009
• I'm trying to identify a story I saw the other week, regarding temporarily taking on less hours to secure a job, as this poster was on the pictured employees desk...
• Products
• Barter Books: the 'Keep Calm' range (Mary's blog entry on the success of their find, the history (taken from my site))
• The competition, obliquely referred to by Barter Books.
• Retro to Go: Keep Calm
• Keep Calm: Rugs
  

An Interview With God

Powered by this Internet Marketing site.

Just simply wanted to put this up as I found it very inspiring (apologise for the fact that it's linked to marketing!)!

Life Coaching
Just a bit of an update as today I "felt the fear and did it anyway"... a life-coaching session on the phone! I work out so much by face-to-face communication I wasn't sure how it would work, but as soon as I got on the phone my brain switched to coaching mode, and off we went! The phone conversation did not go as expected AT ALL, but feedback is that actionable points are definitely there, and that we didn't JUST go for the easy wins! Looking forward to the next session... and meantime, tonight, I need to ensure I'm ready to give an hour-long lecture on "Media Institutions" at 9am (1st years)... slides are ready, would quite like to do it without much of a script!

More Academic Networking

Academia.edu

OK, a new site (or is it new, well, it's new to me!) has appeared on my horizon: Academia.edu. Discovered it through Facebook, when I saw Martin (Polley, my PhD supervisor) had signed up to it. Wonder why it didn't appear when I Googled "academic social networking", obviously doesn't have great SEO - have to teach them some tricks! The site looks like it could add some real value, as it has listed all departments even within the University of Winchester where I work (a small university), not just American Universities. Can list your publications, significant conference papers, research interests, upload your CV. Think it has real value-added potential!

Life Coaching
OK, maybe a blog should be about a single subject, but I just wanted to put a bit of info on tonight. This week has been extremely busy, the lowlight of which was my laptop breaking, so I'm borrowing another computer to write this (so excuse the image, created with Paint, rather than PhotoShop!). Still deciding on a new one, but in the meantime, tomorrow have my final weekend of the current course of life-coaching (it's going to be a lifelong learning skill, but have found it useful already in teaching!)

Check out:
"On other matters, I've been doing life coaching with Bex (see http://www.bex-lewis.co.uk/) and it's been really helpful. I've now got a second blog where I talk solely about my PhD, which came out of one of our sessions, and I am thinking more positively and being more organised. You should give it a go!"
http://charlynorton.blogspot.com/2009/02/its-been-few-days.html

Academic Social Networking

Although I've been playing around with a number of social networking sites, trying to identify their potential, I've not look for any specific academic networking sites, and wondered if there were any.

What is academic networking?Academic networking has a long tradition, both within and across institutions.

"Academic Networking is the development and maintenance of a network of contacts of people who have access to different sources of potentially useful information.

These information sources may be related to new research ideas, publishing and funding opportunities, teaching strategies, or new developments / trends in your profession or job." (http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/informs/DC/95/evan.htm, 1995). Some more detailed information is given in "Networking and Other Academic Hobbies".

Online Social Networking?
So, do the new platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Plaxo and Facebook have anything to offer, and are there any platforms specifically for academics?! I don't have time to even suggest an answer right now about what's on offer, but have ID'd a couple of academic sites for further investigation: academici, hypertope, and pronetos.

There's definitely scope for a research project there, especially with the growing emphasis on knowledge-transfer between universities and businesses. The ivory tower has been going out of fashion for a long-time now (not something I've ever been keen on, and saw the validity of my opinion after giving a paper at the "Public History Now" forum at Ruskin College), and the new social networking sites deserve some consideration. See a brief review by Open Anthropology.

Already Using Them?
CARET at the University of Cambridge is carrying out research to complete in 2010. The project aims to bring some of the affordances of consumer social networks to teaching and learning, and will deliver applications within CamTools, their Sakai-based VLE. Take their survey.