Travels etc.

I was have been recently attending to the great online course - Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World by University of Copenhagen . It has been a very interesting journey through the Muslim world. I have never had an opportunity to see this type of overview which is sophisticated enough and gives a big picture of how complex and interesting it is. I was not able to watch all the videos in the time frame provided and also missed some readings - but I saved it all for later to definitely come back to the material to continue my education. Even now I understand how important the issues raised by certain groups of religious people are to them in a geopolitical and historical context and I know more about Islam as well. I think the main aims of the course - 'to equip participants to better understand Muslim contemporary discourse about the res publica , better contextualise the demands for religious law in public life, and to better ascertain the theoretical and practic...

Some interesting ideas from the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith regarding big capital: "The trade of a joint-stock company is always managed by a court of directors. This court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business of the company ; and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail among them, give themselves no trouble about it , but receive contentedly such halfyearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make to them." "The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own , it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not ...

Not long ago I published an article  Economic Lessons - Consumer Influence on Price  with an intent to show that not everywhere rules of supply and demand work as per the textbooks and as per wishes of some people. I have discussed this topic with many people and majority seem to still believe in supply-demand mantra. Today I stumbled upon the article by BT Financial Group -  4 surprising facts about the property market : "Supply and demand pricing rules don’t always work with property".

Have read the article  The Collapse of Big Law: A Cautionary Tale for Big Med In my opinion it is all logical. When instead of thinking about health (or law, or education) as a goal, but of money as a goal - this is a natural consequence. If everybody else around is focused on maximizing the profits why lawyers, teachers or medics should be exceptional? They are part of the society.

I will be facilitating a workshop at "Intranets and The Australian Government" on the 19-20 May 2014 in Canberra. More info on the event: http://www.arkgroupaustralia.com.au/Events-F003IntranetGovernment.htm The hashtag for this event is #intranetgov and the Twitter handle is @Arkgroup . In the workshop, I will discuss the practical aspects of Intranet implementations and ways of building it using SharePoint, for it to be an efficient working platform. We will explore what can be done to design and create magnificent tools for your daily information work that may not only improve the business processes, but also increase involvement of people in information sharing and collaboration within the company. Features such as: Selection of the applications, social features, search, personalisation and other interesting topics will also be reviewed. Many new ideas straight from #SPC14  about industry best Intranet implementations and applications based on Office 365 , SharePo...