As awarded by the IFC, voices of independent culture ...

Its quite a list. The only issue is the lack of correlation between good trailers and good movies - which makes one think that the trailer is an art form in itself, distinct from that which it is created to promote!

I have it on very good authority from an inside source that a well-known airline, using a points system for determining promotions for staff, gives promotion points to cabin crew who don't take any sick leave during the year.

I find that a little unnerving. These are people who hand out food and drinks to other people, all of whom are usually exhausted, heading somewhere where there is no possibility of rest, and crammed inside an unhealthy metal cylinder with poor air for hours on end. Isn't that an irresponsible recipe for spreading disease – just to save on HR costs?

Busy day today – two SenseMaker™ Collector sites going live

One is a Scandinavian bank measuring employee satisfaction (in comparison to the traditional climate survey), and the other is measuring citizen satisfaction with a new service initiative being provided by a European government revenue agency.

Great projects and if you think they have resonance with what you are doing, I'd be happy to put you in touch with the relevant Network practitioners.

Some time ago we decided to publish a Directory of the accredited practitioners in the CE Network who have experience in working with SenseMaker™. The list of SenseMaker™ Design and Implementation Partners can be seen here, on the SenseMaker™ site.

We did this for a couple reasons - we want potential customers to be able to find local practitioners easily, without going through CE itself. We also wanted to encourage practitioners to list their experience with SenseMaker™ on the site, so customers can consider which practitioner may have the most relevant experience for their problem.

So far, so good. If you can see anyway to improve this, please let us know!

Most people (at least, in the CE Network) know that we have been working with the Ministry of Education in Singapore for many years. They consistently at at or near the top of most global surveys of education outcomes, in terms of academic results; they are also smart enough to recognise that they need new ways to prepare kids for the changing economy in Singapore.

Part of this effort is the Impact Assessment Study, initiated with us in 2007. In their words:

The primary objective is to experiment with narrative inquiry methods to develop a measure to assess schools' achievements in delivering holistic education for students. The study seeks to develop measures that can complement existing assessment and validation models used by schools so as to provide a more nuanced picture of the effectiveness of various school programs.

We had a great meeting today to review some of the initial outcomes from the first full round of narrative capture; we then held a workshop all afternoon with the leaders of the ten schools participating so that they can all use the data for self-assessment, as part of the annual strategic planning exercise.

A good day all round and much more to come on this very interesting project.

We've been working hard at CE to provide more resources for people who want to know how to apply our methods and tools in their organisations. A number of white papers have been in the works for some time, and we just put up four of them for feedback. You can find them here.

The four published are employee sat, horizon scanning, customer insight and culture mapping - additional ones are in rough drafts and we'll be getting them up as soon as possible.

All feedback on these (and contributions to strengthen them) would be welcome!

Nurturing an online community is an interesting challenge to say the least, and no doubt if you are visiting this site regularly you probably at least have a passing interest in such initiatives.

Accredited members of the CE Network can participate in our online community, set up through Ning, to share experiences, ask questions and make new connections in the Network. It was set up originally by Matt Moore, and we've been working with Matt to maintain the momentum behind the group.

One of the recent efforts in that direction was the Cognitive Edge Film Festival, where practitioners could post short videos of past project experiences. First prize (as determined by popular vote in the Ning community) was a place on an upcoming CE accreditation course. Ron Donaldson took out top prize and the Network got five good videos from experienced practitioners. Hopefully more videos will get contributed over time as this sort of effort delivers classic network benefits ..

We'll keep working on ways to deliver more value through Ning to practitioners - all suggestions on how to do that are welcome, but the Ning forum would be the best place to make them!

In the last couple years of my earlier life in IBM, I spent much of my time chasing deals in India. Amazing place, with tremendous opportunity and extremely bright people but sometimes the most frustrating bureaucracy, meetings and traffic on earth.

So I'm looking forward to going back. We've just posted details of our upcoming course, in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry. The two-day accreditation course will be held in Delhi in December of this year. You can register your interest now, and we'll be posting the online course registration when it is available in early October.

See you there!

Having access to case studies has been a constant request from the Network and clients. In case you haven't seen it, we're trialling a new page on the website to give more visibility to some of the commonly referenced projects undertaken (and currently in progress) by CE and the Network.

You can see the new page here - any feedback or thoughts you may have on making it more useful would be gratefully received.

If you have a project that you think should be included here, feel free to send it onto us. Over time, we'll develop a set of guidelines on what can be published here - again, any ideas on this are welcome!

Keith Fortowsky pointed me to some great music - the Ongiara album by the Great Lake Swimmers.

Keeping me company while we finish some new white papers ... soon to be published ...