Entertainment

Consulting

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2010-08-26 14:25
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For several years now I have been consulting with a wide variety of clients to help them improve their processes and systems. If you bring me in, note that I am trained as a socio-technical systems analyst and make a couple of core assumptions:

1) Every system exists in its present form for some reason (nothing is totally irrational, there is probably someone with some power and control who wants things to be as they are)

The importance of organizational agility

Submitted by dthoma7 on Wed, 2010-07-21 11:51
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Over the past two years I have found myself increasingly involved in the movement to use technology to increase organizational agility. This movement had relied on manufacturing technology speed and precision improvements for the past two hundred years with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Recently, this is all changing as cheap access to high-speed internet and communications technologies are enabling true interaction and work product creation in distributed teams. A few weeks ago I participated in a small summit meeting at the Mountain Quest Institute (MQI) in Frost, West Virginia. MQI is a neat place, certainly restful and supportive of deep thinking.

The Age of Design

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2010-07-01 16:48
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I am marking this space to begin collecting my thoughts on the Age of Design. Future Shock, Network Nation, and Megatrends all predicted the information age. People would become information-empowered.  

 

The Internet connects people today and offers access to pricing, regulations, other government and public documents, as well as tools for manipulating data and producing more information.

Digital Archives Make Massive Content Available

Submitted by dthoma7 on Mon, 2008-09-22 14:21
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When I first published this article, I noted that there is a massive movement in content acquisition and management. Old uncopywrited materials are being scanned and placed into digital media. In some cases they are being opened up to the public.

Here is a nice story on NPR that brings a piece of this movement into perspective.

Social Media and Virtual Communities

Submitted by dthoma7 on Mon, 2008-04-28 13:28
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This is a course for the students with a strong interest in new technologies and how they may be used to create new business opportunities, particularly new social networking media.

 

Social Media and Virtual Communities

Submitted by dthoma7 on Fri, 2008-02-29 19:54
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This is a course for the students with a strong interest in new technologies and how they may be used to create new business opportunities, particularly new social networking media. Topics covered will include social networking and how the business world leverages them, virtual worlds and technologies, skills in designing and implementing social media for business value using sharepoint and iTunes U (hands on projects).

Course Web Site (Sharepoint Server: requires login. Email me to request access.

As Disney describes it, to some degree we will "imagineer" the future of business in this course... what would you do in business if anything were possible? Look at how highly Microsoft values the social networking and virtual community components of Yahoo! as a competitive factor against Google. Why? See comments from Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. The future is integrated and collaborative. Look at how firms are now using Facebook, My Space, Linkedin, and other networking tools to improve knowledge flow and enable marketing and hiring processes. Where will these tools go next? There are already tools for specific communities, such as doctors, to share cases and best practices. They may even get paid for their contributions (see the medical portal Sermo as an example).

Healthcare and ICTs

Submitted by dthoma7 on Wed, 2007-03-28 14:55
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I will be posting more here as I continue to move content to this online site. Here is an interesting tele-opthamology system. Most telemedicine has been in radiology or other 2-dimensionally capturable practices. Rural provision is improving partly due to ability to provide care through technology.


Improvement of Research Methods: Q-Methodology Application

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2006-10-05 02:11
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One of my earlier projects related to improving our ability to study subjectivity in an ordered and effective manner.  Many people shy away from such a task though the early applications of factor analysis and various statistics boldly braved this territory.  The Q-sort and Q--methodology provide just such a tool.  The paper is attached.

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