I enjoyed a presentation at Kingston University's Information Services staff development event, to which they generously invited representatives from partner institutions such as my own South Thames College.
Christine Reid, from Strathclyde's Business School, gave a tour d'horizon of technical and social developments, asking at the end how our services would meet these challenges. It was a presentation that defies blogging, at least as a linear account. She didn't say much about the impact the current financial crisis and consequent slump might have on technology, on society and on the way we deliver services. It seems clear to me that we will not be unaffected, and I think it may mean we have to rethink the simplistic belief, the Whig view of networking as it were, that there will be continual and unimpeded progress towards a wired utopia.
But a lot of the issues she discussed were echoed in a paper by Lorcan Dempsey which has been sitting in my briefcase for weeks and which I finally read on the train on the way to the meeting:
The meeting was enriched for me by some serendipitous discoveries with fellow delegates.
