Swarm Management: The swarm must have mechanisms for conflict resolution, for decision making, and for reward culture. There are many ways to accomplish this. A traditional voting democracy is one of the worst.
Two articles follow: one posits a seemingly global anti-US opposition, an Anti-American Network (AAN), and the other posits that political warfare is the answer to the Middle East portion of the problem. IMHO, both are worth considering. Further believe that, with respect to Boot & Doran's approach, (a) coverage needs expansion to cover all the opponents Hirsch posits and (b) political warfare is a necessary but not sufficient component of our response and an NCTC-centric structure is probably not the way to go. We already have policy in place to deal with these kinds of things but it probably needs revision in light of international and domestic politics. In my view, what we need is national leadership (read: POTUS and Congress) with the guts and principles of Britain's WWII leader Winston Churchill supported by an Executive Branch organizational structure combining the best features of their Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Political Warfare Executive (PWE), one authorized, directed, and capable of covertly, surgically and virtually “setting our adversaries ablaze.” Neither the currently tasked organization nor U.S Special Operations Command, or even the two together, is presently that structure.)
Linking networks, taking stock, planning for the future
This is a conference for researchers involved in:
Click on Image to Enlarge
The issues motivating the conference and what we are hoping to achieve are explained in the 3.5 minute video in the right hand column (video on the conference aims and background).
In brief, this is a conference about methodology for enhancing research on complex real world problems. Specifically we are interested in ways of bringing together knowledge from various disciplines and practice areas, for dealing with unknowns, and for using research to improve policy and practice.
This is a conference for you if your research interests include:
using models and scenarios as ways to bring together various kinds of knowledge
developing new dialogue methods
finding ways to help research teams collaborate more effectively
supporting policy and practice change
understanding how to deal with a problem as a system
avoiding unpleasant surprises and unintended consequences
This handbook was created to address the principle challenge for good governance — waste — and the stink that accompanies waste. The solutions in this handbook will, in our view, scale.
If you are looking for an effective tool to identify Twitter influencers in specific niches and regions of the world, here is a super handy new tool.
Twtrland is a new web app which allows you to easily find key influencers on many niche topics including the ability to identify those influencers based in specific geographic regions.
Try searching for a specific Twitter user by name and last name and check out the thorough profile that Twtrland builds for you. Very useful. Then try a city and drill down to find who are the influencers by using the filters on the left side. Finally try to search for one of the 60K skills already covered (too bad “Content Curation” isn't there yet).
From the official site: “Twtrland. It allows you to search Twitter by names, location and skills and surfaces a wide variety of insights, stats and useful pointers. It’s especially useful if you’re researching specialists (by country/location) as well as checking someone out (beyond the usual LinkedIn search).”
Free version available.
The PRO version allows for more search results, filters, the ability to collect profiles into separate folders, to export them, and to analyze fully the stats of any brand, keyword or user for $19.99.
My comment: Hard to beat. Great research tool allows you to rapidly find relevant influencers in a growing number of verticals. Easy to use. Very useful.
From PESN.com: [A] High School group in Rome, headed by Professor Ugo Abundo, have been making great strides in their LENR prototyping, holding seminars, and getting quite a bit of coverage in our LENR-to-Market Weekly compilation. Now they have a website to open source what they have been doing.
Plenty of schools use iPads. But what if the entire education experience were offered via tablet computer? That is what several new schools in the Netherlands plan to do. There will be no blackboards or schedules. Is this the end of the classroom?
Think different. It was more than an advertising slogan. It was a manifesto, and with it, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs upended the computer industry, the music industry and the world of mobile phones. The digital visionary's next plan was to bring radical change to schools and textbook publishers, but he died of cancer before he could do it.
Some of the ideas that may have occurred to Jobs are now on display in the Netherlands. Eleven “Steve Jobs schools” will open in August, with Amsterdam among the cities that will be hosting such a facility. Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad.
There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it'll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.
Preparations are already underway in Breda, a town near Rotterdam where one of the schools is to be located. Gertjan Kleinpaste, the 53-year-old principal of the facility, is aware that his iPad school on Schorsmolenstraat could soon become a destination for envious — but also outraged — reformist educators from all over the world.
And there is still plenty of work to do on the pleasant, light-filled building, a former daycare center. The yard is littered with knee-deep piles of leaves. Walls urgently need a fresh coat of paint. Even the lease hasn't been completely settled yet. But everything will be finished by Aug. 13, Kleinpaste says optimistically, although he looks as though the stress is getting to him.
‘Pretty Normal in 2020'
Last year, he was still the principal of a school that had precisely three computers, which he found frustrating. “It was no longer in keeping with the times,” he says. Soon, however, Kleinpaste will be a member of the digital avant-garde. He is convinced that “what we are doing will seem pretty normal in 2020.”
