Digital Dialogues

Removed from Jay Cross' email list...!

I received an email this morning... from Jay Cross' Internet Time Group ... and right there, in the first line was...

"Dear Anne
I am removing your name from my mailing list....."

Gulp... what had I done wrong??
NOTHING!
Because you need to read on....

"In fact, I am destroying the entire list.
Newsletters cause more annoyance than good, so I shutting this one down. Shotgun email marketing doesn't fit the way I want to do business. "

Brilliant!
Jay has liberated me from his email newsletter! (and 3,776 other people!)
Now this email has had the most positive effect on my day - it's made me realise how many email newsletters I receive and how annoying they are....
Well - actually, email is really annoying - but that's another story!
Most of the email newsletters I receive I have also subscribed to by RSS feed into my Netvibes account. So effectively I'm clogging up my Inbox with extra reading...

I've also been encouraging the MentorNet particpants - women in small business -  to use blogs with RSS as their newsletters, rather than email newsletters. But they've been very hesitant and skeptical - I just can't wait to show them this!
As far as I know - Jay is one of the first to officially pronounce this action!

Come on everyone - let's see some more of this!

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Future Directions in Literacy: International Conversations 2007

Future Directions in Literacy: International Conversations 2007 Conference, to be held on Monday to Thursday 3 -6 September,  in Sydney.

The significance of this conference has been recognised by the Australian Government, who is sponsoring it as a National Literacy and Numeracy Week initiative. The purpose of the conference is to promote meaningful and productive conversation between the key participants in  literacy education – teachers, post graduate students, academics and policy makers – about potential solutions to the current challenges facing literacy educators. Our aim is to encourage as many of these key players as possible.

More detailed information can be found by visiting the conference website.

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Travel dilemmas...

Travelling is a key part of my life, having worked in the airline industry for so long, it's just in my blood. I guess this makes me tolerant of all sorts of challenges.... airlines delays, lost baggage, adaptor plugs etc etc -  I tend to take so much for granted as just part of the experience...
But this trip... just seems to be getting more complicated and my tolerance levels are being tested..
OK - so I choose to be in a city where security is currently front of mind... I have no problems with that! I can handle being evacuated from tube stations, I can handle access to certain areas being difficult, I allow extra time to achieve common daily activities...I can even handle rain and hail storms in summer (in Sydney that used to be common place) but here's what I can't handle:

• hotels that don't turn their hot water on before 8am
• bad coffee
• constant excuses that blame large events (eg. we don't have any irons available because Wimbeldon is on!!)
  AND... here's my current pet hate...
•  limited internet access!

Internet speed in the UK is about 4 times faster than I can get at home in Australia... it's just brilliant... but why? why? is wireless not available readily in a city with 20 million people?
I've just been wandering around  - occasionally I can pick-up a signal... and I refuse to go to Starbucks...
Why do the hotels have wireless routers that are only available when you hang out the window? Or LAN connections that charge you for 24 hours every time you login?
So - I found CISCO in Covent Garden - they'd set-up a free network as a marketing activity... interesting - considering the majority of people in Covent Garden are tourists!
And the Apple store in Regent St had free access but... I can't set-up a work station in either of these venues...
I'm not going to sit in an internet cafe ... I need to use my laptop, I want to work in my time frames, I don't want to drink bad coffee - I just want reliable access!!!!
Surely, that's not too much to ask?

As an avidd supporter of online technologies as a learner enabler, it's a blunt reminder that unless I have access... I have nothing.... sure, I can draft offline... but at some point, I still need to connect to upload.
If I want to check learning sites for activities, read the latest blog updates, I still need access...
So - the learning divide is not just about outback or regional areas - I can be in one of the world's mega cities !
It just drives me nuts...!!! 

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