OCI: Week 3

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During my undergraduate a Massey University I really loved sociology, I took just one paper on it as an elective but it was by far the most interesting. Today Darl offered us a taste of why it may or may not be my scene as we delved into dualism, duality and human agency. Our focus was to uncover and understand the metaphor of connectivity and how it explains the socio-technical aspects of our connectedness as individuals The afternoon was spent with a little bit of futurology, brainstorming in groups as to where we thought the workplace and communication would be in 20 years. I stuck to what I know and spoke a bit about the semantic web and a future where data portability has become all encompassing. I also rifted on a bit about how A whole New Mind would become a reality as almost all analytical and technical tasks become automated. If this sounds fun its cause it really is, no hidden academic essay behind the brainstorming, just a conversation and an idea. My key thought on things that would change was our need for social interaction with physical proximity and that no degree of virtualisation available in our homes will negate the need for a physical workplace to interact in. Somehow we managed to tangent onto human drivers with someone arguing that human nature has never changed and Alex had to put him in his place.
At the moment I disagree with you so we're having an argument, but 3000 years ago I would have wanted to smash your brains in. -Alex worker
Sometimes we're all a little disappointed things haven't changed. After the future session we broke up into our groups to discuss the upcoming projects, my team of four and another are working on the development of an instrument to measure someone's personal connectivity, think Myers-Briggs except instead of telling you you're extraverted we tell you you're on facebook way to much you over connected freak and might be eligible for disconnect anxiety. Good thing I have an iPhone then huh? Image Credit: Smull

OCI: Week 2

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"They projected the population of New Zealand would reach 50 million by the year 2000" "They did that, they're just all sheep, wrong species!" - Darl Kolb to Deb Shephard 
Last Thursdays class continued our conversation around purpose. We started by discussing among ourselves companies that we new well focusing on why the organisation exists, what its purpose was, any meta-purposes the organisation engaged in and any judgement values on these purposes stakeholders may have. This all sounds like a bit much for first thing in the morning, but I enjoyed talking about Ingram Micro in a "we're not that evil" kinda way. After purpose we did a lot of focus on context during this class, we did this by looking at the wider New Zealand context through a talk given by NZ historian James Belich and a case study that deb worked on for Macpac. Though the content was very interesting I felt that there was quite a lot of disconnect between what we were covering and change and innovation, our course themes. It was however of interest to bring in the concept of connectivity, particularly with our relationship with the U.K. The conversation jumped around a bit from New Zealand nationalism, competitive advantage and foreign revolutions:
"We [New Zealand] could take over London; one day every investment banker will just stand up and say: 'we're taking over'"
Our groups were dished out which was good didn't get anyone from the black list and have some people in the group I can count on. Collaboration tools have been set up for document management and everyone is happy to work over email which is good. From what i understand we're working on the development of the ability to measure an individuals connectivity, both social & technical. This looks great despite the idea of one person being connected without the need for other actors. Image Credit: Damien

MGMT 722: Organisational Change & Innovation

Americans are kinda dumb and fairly formulaic - Darl Kolb
Last Thursday I had my first lecture of the semester, a 7 hour class in a monolith of a paper designed to educate us on change and innovation in organisations with a re-occuring theme of connectivity. As my only paper of the semester aside from my dissertation it looks to offer no relief on my workload, however the 30 points attributable to the course seems incentive enough.   The paper is lectured by Darl Kolb and Deb Shepherd who with the different styles each bring there own kind of enthusiasm to class. Things are casual kept conversational which is nice great and pretty consistent with my postgrad experience thus far, the lecturers are keen to dish out words of wisdom not typical of traditional roles.
Everyone should wag at least one day per year - Deb Shepherd
The real highlight is however in the content and the way in which the course is assessed. Though there is a lot of team assessments which i normally despise, we are going attempting to be connectivity consultants on various projects which should be rewarding and challenging. In addition there's a focus on reflexivity on our own connectivity which present great opportunities to utilise more contemporary means of communication which I definitely enjoy. In addition to that great work we're also being asked to utilise "new media" in order to reflect on on our learning experiences and class themes. So consider this my first post of reflection, guess I better do some of that. After our first class (like everything else in postgrad) I now know that I don't know bugger all about innovation and change, academics love ambiguity it would seem. In social reflection however the class is great, one person showed up with only three hours sleep with alcohol on his breath, a quick trip to shadows at lunch had him going again and the meal of champions you see pictured can get you through any lecture. Teams for the projects should be allocated soon and I'll be content working with most people in the class. As this is meant to be a traditional use of new media I will endeavour to keep it fresh with a blogging style and ignore the fact that my lecturers may actually read it. This may mean some honesty I wouldn't normally impart in an academic environment, lets see how that works out.