Update: Christmas and New Year

If anyone happened on my last but one post, they might be wondering whether we did go off to New Zealand or not. The idea certainly cheered me up and aided my recovery from the nasty illness I had in early December, but we decided not to have a last minute trip to New Zealand. Instead, we went south to family in Kent, and home for the New Year, and friends over for a meal and to see 2012 in. So, choosing to stay in England gave us different, but enjoyable experiences, though no warm summer sun. Summer sun is something I miss and long for. Spring and summer cannot come soon enough for me.

Networks and networking

Have just done a little bit of work on a bibliography and glossary on networks, which was very interesting, though rather open-ended.

It seems to me that networks,like discussion forums, are frequently desired and rarely enduring. Entities that are made up of a disparate body of people turn out to be messy, haphazard things, despite good intentions. You can plan to minimise failure, but you can't eliminate it as a possibility. When a network succeeds, it's exciting. When it fails, we have to get over natural disappointment and learn. That's not easy.