March 2008 has been a busy month. At Hull, I organised a conference on information technology usage and local governance transformations. My friends from the group ELIS and I presented our work on how adoption of IT helps unveil a number of issues in relation to governance. Good attendance including IT managers from city councils. Conclusion of the event: We are still far from the ideal of making governments participative and accountable. But we enjoy studying the 'adoption' of IT, procedures and cultural practices in what is called the 'digital era governance'.The research group also had a meeting where we discussed possibilities to move forward. We agreed to share ideas via a wiki. Easter holidays have come and we are engaging with the wiki now. We also created a discussion list for seminar participants. After this picture, we took our Spanish and French friends to the pub for typical lunch. I hope they enjoyed it!
And my students had the chance to present their project proposals to managers of a real organisation: St Stephens Shopping Centre in Hull. We had ellaborated proposals to help the centre develop a new phase. The proposals were very well received. We were lucky to have David Laycock (Centre Manager), Samantha Madden (Marketing Manager) and Rick Welton (councillor at Hull City) attending the presentations and giving feedback. For students, I think it was a very good experience. For me also, seeing how people can receive the work we do at university.
These guys might be thinking: Why are we here? Well, Mike Noble had the answer: We give it a go to our ideas, we take them outside uni! And managers enjoyed the presentations, they took some ideas to pursue forward. Possibly a new collaboration, but definitely a lot of good fun!
So, what is next? Before the month ends, begining to write my next book chapter (the information society), start the co-editing of another book with Alejandro from Venezuela on systems thinking and e-government.
April 2008: Get on with the teaching, and if time allows, travelling a bit! I will be getting 38 soon!
Next episode of the blog: Easter Holidays!
