Week 8 – Team work.

Working as a team member has been a very interesting and challenging process for me. In both my personal and my work life I usually have sole responsibility for outcomes, and I found it hard to give up control of what I was doing for this assignment.

In all aspects of my work and sporting life I function as a leader.  I was not born a natural leader and it has taken hard personal work to develop the traits and skills that can make a good leader. In other spheres I have learnt to tackle tasks in ways that work well for me and in this project it was necessary to relinquish some of my own ideas about the shape and scope of the assignment to be an effective part of a balanced team.

Belbin's roles present a comprehensive and interesting way to look at both people and their roles within the team.  I found my team members brought so many positive aspects to the group. The team was balanced and worked well without the intrusion of the negative aspects of the Belbin-defined roles which could have made the task much more fraught.

It was a team decision that I would act as team leader and editor for assignment three. I believe my leadership style falls between the Shaper and Coordinator. I am highly motivated and task focused - aspects indicative of a Shaper. The Coordinator aspect is reflected in my determination to discover where each person's strengths lie and to use those to provide maximum benefit for the team. Furthermore, I am happy to find the strengths in others which make up for my own weaker areas and have no problem with other people who are highly motivated - in fact, I want them to display strong and consistent motivation as this moves the whole team forward.

I see Michele's role in assignment three as the Implementer. She demonstrated discipline, worked well to deadlines, and took great care to produce what was needed in a timely fashion.  Michele completely avoided Belbin's Implementer pitfalls of inflexibility and resistance to change.  As an example of Michele's Implementer characteristics she, when I sent her the audio recording from Skype which wasn’t great, she took it upon herself to re-record her audio so it was up to her high standards. Michele's attention to detail and determination to produce work of the highest quality, especially during the wrap-up of the assignment, showed a clear tendency towards a Completer-Finisher role as well as the afore-mentioned Implementer role.

We were fortunate to have Katherine's input. She was the Plant who started the process of design for the power point presentation. Katherine's solid foundation here was imperative to the over-all assignment and without this developing the presentation would have been a longer and more arduous task.

Katherine, too, became a valued Completer-Finisher in the proofing of the finished product as she picked up small errors which I had missed. Her attention to detail was appreciated.

I think for assignment three, Michele, Katherine and I complemented each other very well. The presentation was a team effort and without the willingness and motivation of the team the assignment would not have come together as well as it did. I believe our small team of three people was well balanced, enabling cooperation and a sense of working together for a common goal. Although small in number, the team was a useful amalgam of the action, people and thought oriented roles espoused in the theoretical underpinnings of Belbin's team structure.

Michele and Katherine  - thank you for your time and effort.

Regards,

Cameron

Mind tools. (n.d.) Belbin's Team Roles. Retrieved from 

         http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_83.htm

Week 8 - Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

When I first read the topic “A public speaker I admire and why”, all I could think was that there are far too many! How can I choose one? Still, I keep coming becoming back to this thought: Within science there are so many great speakers and some of them are well known and some of them are not. Then I had a light bulb moment! “Wait a minute, why does this have to be about science!”, and isn't  just a great communicator what this is all about?

At this point two names popped into my head; Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry. These are two expert communicators I enjoy hearing. I can’t pick one so I am going to choose, and explain, an extraordinary moment when these two people joined together in a debate! It’s not actually breaking the rules for the blog… I am merely modifying them!

Sadly Christopher Hitchens passed away on 15^th December, 2011.

Both Hitchens and Fry are authors who have each written many books. Most people are more familiar with Stephen Fry's acting rather than his books. Fry is associated with comedy acting more so than his extraordinary ability as a dramatic actor or taking part in intelligent debate.

The debate I want to talk about took place in 2009, hosted by Intelligence Squared. Intelligence Squared is an organisation, founded in 2002, which stages debates around the world. The debates are held in traditional Oxford style with as many as 2,500 attending some events. Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens comprised one team in this debate. The opposition team consisted of Ann Widdecombe (a British MP) and John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja. They were debating the motion: The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.

{My comment here: I have linked to the full debate and if this interests you then it is worth the time to listen and watch. But I do need to warn people if you find debate over religion and the use of religion offensive please do not watch the video.}

In this debate you can see the pure class of both Hitchens and Fry.  They make their points in the debate with humour and decisiveness. To be honest Fry does it better then Hitchens, while making Bishop Onaiyekan and Widdecombe, who are good public speakers in their own right, look trapped and ineffectual.

Fry and Hitchens are wordsmiths of the highest calibre, having a mastery of language that is outstanding and awe-inspiring. Their intelligence is abundantly apparent in that they so easily and quickly adapt to, and counter, the arguments of the opposing side. In fact they didn’t just adapt to the arguments from the other side, they destroyed them. They annihilated them. On top of this their stage presence holds your attention to an amazing degree. It is mesmerising.

To give an example (and I am paraphrasing), the topic of the harm done by the Catholic Church in respect to the ongoing hiding of priests who have molested children emerged.

Ann Widdecombe expressed disbelief that this topic was brought up at all and felt it was no longer an issue needing to be dealt with.

Stephen Fry’s answer was the best I have heard: The Catholic Church not wanting this issue brought forward and complaining that it was, indeed, brought forward is "like a burglar standing before the court complaining that the police were bringing up all the burglaries he had committed".

If, in time, I could develop one twentieth of their ability as a public speaker and debater of science and critical thinking I would have reached the lofty company of great speakers. Fry and Hitchens are true masters of the art and people I will always look up to.

    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrIHw0fZNOA

Week 7 - It's ALIVE!

“Science wat is it all abou, Techmology wat is dat all abou, is it good or is it wack!” Ali G (2003).

That doesn’t fit really into what I am going to write about, it just makes me laugh. As you all can tell by now I like science. I think what has been done and learnt in a relatively short period of history is amazing. And now I have come across this astonishing story.  Yes, I do have to say it is a press release that looks as if it has been printed without any judicious editing. Never-the-less, it is interesting.

Duke University have grown human muscle in a lab. I will add to this, not only have they grown human muscle in a lab, they have grown human muscle that works! This artificial muscle contracts and responds to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals.  How cool is that! The benefits of this are mind boggling.

As stated in the article the main use currently will be testing the way drugs work on the muscle. That means a lab can grow a working muscle and carry out sophisticated testing on it. That, in turn, means that there would be less and less need for muscle biopsies, and if you have ever seen one done you know how much of a good thing that is.

Drug testing can be done in a controlled lab on human muscle tissue, which means we may even be able to take some of the animal testing out of the system and gain a better understanding of what drugs are doing within the muscle. With the use of functioning artificial muscle the efficacy and safety of drugs could be tested without jeopardising a patient's health. It may even be possible to produce the functional and biochemical signals of rare diseases allowing for early intervention. The possibilities are endless.

This is only the start of the possible applications of this technology; just think how this could be mixed with other scientific advances. This is just me spit balling: What about the all too common muscle injury or permanent damage? Could this be the start of building replacement muscle tissue? Or with the use of stem cells could we start to build working muscle where it was once lost?

Even if this article is an overstatement of what has actually been achieved and is only an unedited proof, it describes an awesome concept.  I look forward to hearing more about this.

Madden. L., Juhas. M., Kraus. W. E., Truskey. G. A.,  and Bursac. N. (2015) Bioengineered human myobundles mimic clinical responses of skeletal muscle to drugs. eLife,  4, doi: 10.7554/eLife.04885

Week 6 - The intrepid journalist

I still have a mental picture of journalists as they are portrayed in old movies. I am sure you know what I mean. Our movie journalist finds a lead for a story so grabs his notebook and hat, runs down the leads and brings the story to light just in time for the paper to be 'put to bed'. In the real world, the majority of journalists start their careers full of idealism and the desire to produce sound, newsworthy and accurate stories. Sadly this is not really what happens and in most cases huge pressure is put on journalists to produce column-filling content at high speed.

The speed of production demanded from journalists almost inevitably leads to short-cuts and this, in turn, impacts on the quality of the information presented for public consumption. As readers, we need to work out what is the real news, what is 'filling fluff, spin, commercial press releases, or advertorials posing as news.

Now, let me ask you a question. How do you consume your news? Do you by buy a newspaper, watch the news on TV, read it on a webpage? Now for the most important question: Do you pay for your news content? If your answer is 'yes', you are in the group of news consumers that is becoming smaller and smaller.

This brings me nicely to the question of how the news purveyors make money to pay staff and keep going? The first issue is that news is a business and we must never forget this. Let's follow an example because then it can be easier to follow. Imagine a newspaper called “The NEWS”. The NEWS produces a print paper and has a flash website. The NEWS print paper comes out 6 days a week and the website is updated regularly. Now, how does the NEWS make money? First of all it needs to control its overhead costs. These are often the killers in business. So the fewer paid staff the better for business. The NEWS needs to sell as many newspapers as possible because the newspaper makes money from the advertising. The bigger the circulation of the paper the more they can charge for the advertising space. So when I wander down to the local dairy to buy a paper the price I pay is not really the cost of the paper, it is how much the dairy owner gets to give that paper space on the dairy shelves.

Now to the website. The NEWS has to pay a lot to upkeep a good, attractive, safe and fast website. When you log into their website you arrive at the front page. It has a nice classical look, with news headlines and then different areas of news with headlines, all attractively presented. Now it is up to you to click on the news items that interest you. Each time you click you go to the story and an advertisement. The more popular story or type of story, the more The NEWS can sell the advertising for.

Now think of all the content The NEWS is producing to fill its print paper and comprehensive website. It is truly massive and it is amazing how so much is written by so few people. The NEWS keeps staff to a minimum. For this reason cracks start to appear in the reporting as short-cuts are utilised. Journalists no longer have time to properly vet every story that crosses their desk. So businesses and companies take advantage of this and are producing press releases already written in the form of a story.  The journalist sees such a pre-written release and passes it on to be printed, often changing little or nothing. Yes, these may only be fillers or fluff around the main stories, but companies are sneaking advertisements in where we don’t expect it. This leads to casual readers accepting a surreptitious advertisement as genuine news.

To show you want I mean, there are a couple of simple things to look for to identify these spurious 'news' items. Firstly, within the first two paragraphs you will see the company or product name. Then there will be often be a list of reasons why the company or product provides such an advantage. This would be unlikely to be found in a genuine news story where a more balanced view should be presented. When you become aware of it, it is much easier to spot what is essentially an advertorial disguised as a news item. Look for the key clues below, and you will soon wise up to the tricks of the trade.

I have included a real example.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11384088

which purports to be a news story entitled Weight loss Maori-style makes gains.

Surely a story to interest many people in our weight-conscious society.

But is all as it seems?

The key points to look at:

1. A headline that makes you go 'wow'!

2. The second and third line gives the names of the founders followed by a simple positive statement  that sounds great.

3. In the fourth line the location of the business is given, followed by a list of irresistible benefits to be had at the gym.

This story is presented as a human interest story, when in fact it is advertising. Would you have been able to spot the giveaways in this story or would you have just gone 'Wow that is fantastic, maybe a gym would work for me'?