Hans de Zwart: Technology as a Solution…

I decided to revisit all the posts on this blog and re-categorize them. One new category is inspired by Stephen Downes’ piece on How to Get the Most out of a Conference. In it he recommends to not only put your slides on Slideshare, but also keep your own archive. I have now put all my presentation in their own category and have added the option for a PDF download to each of them.

While doing this, I encountered 30 draft posts that I never managed to get around to finishing. This is the list of drafts (from oldest to newest):

• Blogging for the future (2008/10/15)
• The Tactical Technology Collective: My Favourite NGO (2008/12/02)
• Virtual Worlds (rapid e-elearning) (2008/12/09)
• Information is now validated at the point of consumption, not creation (2008/12/24)
• Google, Walmart, MyBarackObama (2008/12/27)
• What we can Learn about Learning from Games (2008/12/30)
• Open Source Red Hat (2009/01/11)
• Attention and Presence as an Alternative to the Email Time Suck (2009/01/15)
• Corporate Social Networking Part 2: The Inside/Outside Paradox (2009/02/18)
• QR Codes: Linking External Information to Location (2009/02/20)
• Networks Subvert Hierarchy (2009/03/04)
• Corporate Social Networking Part 2: A Business Case for Elgg (2009/03/18)
• Moodlemoot UK 2009: Day 1 (2009/04/08)
• Brain-machine interfaces: a new way of sensing the world? (2009/04/14)
• Universities will be ‘irrelevant’ by 2020 (2009/04/21)
• E-learning and Accessibility (2009/05/25)
• Daimler Sovereign 4.0 Versus Honda Civic Hybrid: Environmental Impact? (2009/09/27)
• Interface Specialists Unite: Please Fix Assessments in E-Learning (2009/10/20)
• A Learning Typology (2009/12/09)
• Creating a Multilingual WordPress Site with WPML (2009/12/31)
• Usability: Why Nokia Will Not Win and How I Lost My Principles (2010/02/01)
• Constraints through design vs through control (2010/02/18)
• Requirements gathering and walking in front of the customer (2010/02/18)
• Yammer Features That I Would Like To See (2010/08/23)
• Techno-habituation (2010/09/01)
• To E-read or Not to E-read? That’s my Question (2010/11/23)
• Lessons From a Do-it-at-Home Car Mechanics Course (2011/01/08)
• Learning Technologies and Fosdem 2011 – Stuff That I Found Interesting (2011/03/04)
• Technology’s Tendency to Diversify (2011/03/16)
• What Learning Professionals Should Learn From Foursquare: Location and Gamification (2011/06/25)

In my Evernote account I have stored another couple of blogging ideas:

• Bits of Freedom’s PIM
• Sent from my Wii Fit
• Blind for a day
• Email Service Level Agreements (SLA)
• Reflection and curiosity as the engine for learning
• A visual history of my computing hardware
• What we can learn from teaching korfbal at a secondary school
• Using a Contracting and Procurement process to get a new job
• Buy once versus products as a service
• Workplace engineering
• Personal terms of service

Here is the deal: If you let me know in the comments which posts (up to three) you would like to see being written by me, then I will write them in the next month or two.

A couple of weeks ago I forgot my iPad on the train.

After getting over the initial overwhelming feelings of idiocy on my part, I started thinking a bit deeper about the consequences and whether I had taken sensible precautions to mitigate those consequences.

Apologies, the below is automatically created by WordPress. It is mainly interesting for me, myself and I…

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 29 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 103 posts. There were 50 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 6th with 282 views. The most popular post that day was So what did I learn at Online Educa 2010?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, hansdezwart.info, moodle.org, siloinsiproche.com, and dommel-valley.org.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for imdb api, teaching, moodle 2.0, segway, and elgg.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

So what did I learn at Online Educa 2010? December 2010
10 comments

Did You Know Moodle 2.0 Will….? (Online Educa 2009) December 2009
34 comments

Where is IMDB’s API? May 2009
4 comments

Moodle Books from Packt Publishing January 2009
12 comments

The Future of Moodle and How Not To Stop It (iMoot 2010) February 2010
11 comments

Leela James by Flickr user Pieter Baert

Ever since I attended a conference in a Disney World resort in Orlando I have been meaning to write a very cynical post about how authenticity is disappearing from our society (think Epcot: I visited Germany, Japan and Coronado Springs in twenty minutes total). In the post I would lament on how nothing is real anymore and that everything is fake. Have you looked at any ad in Wired recently? 100% photoshopped. Have you been to the great wall of China? No part of it is really old, it has all been “renovated”. Whenever I go anywhere or look at anything the experience that is delivered to me seems over-engineered.

I have decided not to write that post. I experienced some authenticity tonight: Leela James in the Melkweg in Amsterdam. This is the best concert I have ever attended. It was better than John Legend in Bruxelles, better than Postmen in the Melkweg. Even better than Zap Mama in the Westergasfabriek. Leela rocked the house for over two hours and showed that we still have artists that can express true feelings on the stage (shame on you Maxwell). The intensity of her show was incredible and her voice is truly exceptional.

Thank you Leela for keeping it real.

Internet Movie Database

I really like the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). It is the largest freely available database of movie related data. I use it mainly for two things:

1. Whenever I see an actor or actress in a movie and cannot remember in which movie I have seen that person before. IMDB list all the actors/actresses in the movie and allows you to click on the name of each person. On the page of the person it will then show you all the movies in which they played a role.
2. Whenever I am in video store and need to know whether the movie  that I am about to rent is any good. IMDB has a ratings systems that can give you a good general idea of the quality of the movie.

This post will be about the second use case. In the video store I use the Internet connection of my mobile phone. This is a tedious and often infuriating process, especially when you want to look up multiple titles. IMDB’s pages are huge (they have many images and ads), and this makes them load very slowly. In case of an ambiguous title two pages need to load before you can see the rating. Let’s look at an example. If I search for “pulp fiction” I get the following page:

IMDB results page (click to enlarge)

I then have to click on the  “Pulp Fiction” link to see the IMDB page which has the rating:

Pulp Fiction at IMDB (click to enlarge)

After another angry session at the video store, I decided to do something about it. First I looked for a mobile version of the IMDB website. There are some available options (see here and here), but they are geared towards iPhones and don’t really work well.

Next I decided to write my own small web application and tried to find the IMDB API. It doesn’t exist! Unfortunately there is no way to easily use and re-purpose IMDB’s data. I don’t understand why some web companies (in this case Amazon) still don’t realise that this actually inhibits the building of their brands.

Luckily there is always one last option: screen scraping. I was actually willing to try and write my own parser for this (would be great practise), but found Izzysoft‘s IMDBPHP class which makes this easy work. This class allows you to get a lot of data about each movie.

After about two hours of programming I now have the following result. I call it Rent it?:

Rent it? The results for "Pulp Fiction"

I tried to design it to be as fast as possible and made it fit for purpose using the following design considerations:

• I used a big input field at the top of the screen, with a big button underneath. This input field is also shown on the results pages, so that it is always easy to start a new query. The field gets automatic focus as soon as the page finishes loading.
• Only relevant information about each movie is shown: rating, title, year, director, run time in minutes and a user generated plot outline. The title links to the original IMDB page which will open in a new window.
• The standard IMDB score is converted to a percentage and gets a background colour on the basis of the height of the rating. Red has a rating of less than 60% (not worth watching), whereas movies with green ratings are above 70% and could be interesting.
• The pages are very light: no ads or images. All the processing is done on the server. If a search has many results, then this processing can still take a while. That is why the number of results are capped at five and results are cached for a week (also on the server to benefit everybody).

I hope you are willing to try it out and look forward to any of your feedback!

Try “Rent it?“

Rent it? is also accessible through my mobile start page.

Please choose what this post is worth to you and donate!

A former colleague of mine recently read a Dutch article about Martijn Aslander and the new economy. Whenever Aslander does a presentation or talk, he lets the members of the audience decide what the value of the talk was and pay him accordingly. My ex-colleague was fascinated with the concept and is now wondering whether he should do something similar. He especially likes the idea of having a more direct way of getting feedback about what he does. He has asked me what I think of it as a business model. I will try and outline my thoughts in this post.

Aslander is inspired by Radiohead’s In Rainbows album and probably by authors like Cory Doctorow who gives away electronic versions of his book under a Creative Commons license. The reason why this can work as a business model for music and literature is twofold:

1. The costs for the production and delivery of digital goods is so marginal that it can be considered as being zero. Once the CD is finished there are no real costs to Radiohead for delivering an extra copy to someone.
2. The problem of content creators is not that everybody pirates their content, it is that nobody knows about their content. Giving away your content can help build an audience, who then might be willing to pay for others things that you do or have (e.g. go to your speech or concert). Currently this is an usual model, which by itself also generates interest (this is why it can work for Aslander). Usually the money isn’t made with the content that is given away on a voluntary donation basis, it is made with the other opportunities that become available when you have a larger audience.

I personally have reached a stage where I expect digital information to be free. If there is no marginal costs to something, then I don’t really see why I would have to pay for it. This is why I like free software so much: it enables me to use software freely and legally. It is my belief that this is the future of music too, as more and more people find it absurd to pay about a dollar for something that costs absolutely nothing to deliver.

This begs the question of how content creators can make a living for themselves. Kevin Kelly (who has been thinking about the new economy for over a decade now) has written an fascinating manifesto about the things that people will always be willing to pay for, even in a digital economy with abundant and free copies: Better Than Free. One of those things is embodiment. People will pay to see you in person.

Back to my former colleague. Should he try a business model in which he asks the participants of a workshop to pay him what they think it was worth? I don’t think he should, unless he wants to use it as a marketing gimmick. What he does has a very real value. When he does a workshop he needs to be physically present to make it a success. His time is worth something. Also, there is an optimum amount of participants for a workshop. If you get any more participants, you negatively impact the quality of the workshop: an extra space has a real and tangible cost. You cannot say the same for a song download…

This leaves open the question about how to get more direct feedback. I will have to address that in another post.

The Strida unfolded

As regular readers of this blog might have noticed: I love great technology. When I talk about technology, I push the concept slightly further than most web aficionados might do. It is not just gadgets that I like, but any well designed tool that can make my life easier is much appreciated. A great blog to see examples of what I am talking about is Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog.

I have a many pieces of technology that I really like and use often. Some examples: a Leatherman Juice Cs4 multitool, a Brabantia bin ,a Samsung NC-10 netbook running Ubuntu, a Solis Citrus Press, a Victorinox Trevi 17 briefcase or a Microplane Grater). All of these products have one thing in common: they have been extremely carefully designed for the task at hand. Every element has been consciously put in place and considered. This is refreshing in a world of more and more crap. One of my favourite books on the topic of design is Donald Norman’s classic The Design of Everyday Things. He outlines some design principles that many products violate which consequently makes them hard to use. What he does not address is the creative inspiration that is needed for truly great products.

The Strida folded

My latest technology acquisition does have this creative inspiration. It is a Strida folding bike. This brilliant piece of engineering will help me get to and from the train station every day. The Strida was featured on Cool tools a little while ago and I completely agree with everything the reviewer writes there.

The bike is very low maintenance. It uses a Kevlar belt instead of a chain, so no grease to get on your clothes. It rides a bit like a sports car drives: the handling is very direct. You sit up straight while riding the bike, giving you a good overview of traffic. As you can see on the Youtube video below, the (un)folding process is incredibly fast:

The joy is in the details: little loops allow you to lock the brakes, so that the bike can’t roll away when standing up and the carrier on the back doubles as a stand when lying down. Even the marketing people did a good job (in general I am not fond of marketeers). They know that people will ask you about the bike in wonderment, so they have provided a case of Strida business cards underneath the saddle that you can hand out.

I am moving from Stoas to Shell

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.

Reichstag, Berlin, photo by chris-dcx cc by-nc-nd

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.

A great city, Berlin.

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.