… he was good and kind … she had a strong spirit and enthusiasm for life … taken too soon … sadly missed. Death and funeral notices tend to repeat the same things, they are almost clichés. Almost.
The rawness of death of a loved one saves such comments from becoming platitudes of emptiness.
I received word today that my oldest friend died suddenly. We have known each other since we were 7. At this stage I don’t know why or what from but right now that hardly matters. All I know is that a kind, beautiful, fun loving, loyal, outgoing wonderful woman has been taken from us too soon. She would have been 30 in November.
We had one of those friendships that you see in movies and read in books. We lived only a few blocks away from each when growing up. We rode to school together, were in the same class in primary school, were always sleeping over at each others places, riding to a nearby pond and catching tadpoles and then releasing them into the pool and wondering why they didn’t survive (sorry dad), as we grew into our teens we were always on the phone and giggling over silly things and consoling each other over more serious matters. We went to different high schools but remained close friends throughout. I went away to uni in Canberra and she to Brisbane. Whenever I came home on leave we would always see each other and did some rather crazy things (again, sorry about the car dad).
Okay this is something that has been niggling away at me for a while. I’ve spoken with a few people about it indirectly and after prompting have decided to blog about it - Professional vs. Non-professional. This may seem to some as being pedantic, elitist and petty but hey, this is my blog I can do what I want.
For a while now I’ve noticed a number of SEO and search types referring to themselves as professionals, just this morning I read a post where the author referred to themselves as “an SEO professional”. Um, no, sorry but you’re not.
In order to be a profession the following must be in place and adhered to:
Skill based on theoretical knowledge: Professionals are expected to have a foundation in theory relating to their field. They are expected to be able to draw on this body of theoretical knowledge and apply it in practical situations.
Extensive period of formal education: Usually a university degree. Generally this education will take the form of a professional degree. I.e.: a degree that upon conferral renders the holder eligible to enter the profession directly relating to the field of study in which the degree was undertaken. An exception to this is the Officer Corp of the military. In place of a university degree extensive leadership, strategic studies etc are undertaken over a minimum of 2 years.
Professional association/organisation: A recognised association which is organised and governed by its members.
Testing of competence: In order to be admitted to a profession, base level competencies and knowledge must be met. Initial entry to a professional body is usually given upon application, to professional degree holders. Testing however does not necessarily stop there, take the medical profession. Most medical practitioners specialise. In order to do this they need to spend a certain number of years working in various rotations and then studying and applying to sit a theoretical exam and upon passing that, a practical exam, just to be able to train in their chosen specialisation. After completing a set number of years training, they then have to sit theoretical and practical exams in order to gain admission into the ‘college’ or ‘specialised profession’ within the overall profession. I mean really, we cannot go about letting just anyone in old chaps!
Ongoing professional development: Its not enough just to undertake your initial education and get entry into your chosen profession. You need to show ongoing commitment to your profession through professional development. Not just any professional development – reading blogs and attending conferences is not enough – but ongoing training and education as outlined by the governing body.
Registered licensed practitioners: Again just having completed a recognised or accredited educational/training course in your field is not enough. A professional must apply to, and be accepted by, the governing body and be admitted to the professional register. In accepting this license (which allows for the funky use of post-nominals) you are committed to adhering to the rules, ethics and standards of the professional organisation.
Code of professional conduct: A set of ethical standards that are adhered to by all registered members and enforced by the governing body.
Public service and altruism: Generally professions are areas of work which are firmly rooted in the social ideal that the services they provide contribute to the welfare of the community.
Autonomy: Professions are generally recognised as having control over their field of work, regardless of where they are employed. For example: a librarian working in a financial institution is still a librarian; they adhere first and foremost to the ethics and standards of the library profession and not those of the finance world. A professional is not ‘governed’ nor their actions determined by an external body or organisation such as, say, oh I don’t know, Google
The post that initially got me thinking about the concept, or rather the institution, of a profession was this post about education requirements in the search industry. What struck me about this post (and the comments) was not whole university education vs. on-the-job-real-world-experience but rather the misunderstanding of the term ‘professional’. In calling yourself a professional you have by definition had to have had some kind of formal training and education, which makes the whole tertiary vs. real world argument redundant.
‘A disciplined group of individuals who adhere to high ethical standards and uphold themselves to, and are accepted by, the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised, organised body of learning derived from education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to exercise this knowledge and these skills in the interest of others.’
Again a key factor here is the mentioning of education and training ‘from an organised body of learning’. Another salient aspect of a profession is that of standards (preferably highly ethical standards).
A debate that has been rearing its head frequently is that of the need for standards in the search world. Again a formalised structure of standards (both theoretical and ethical) and adherence to, and enforcing of those standards is a key requirement in a professional body and in turn its members. Break those standards then you will be discharged, disbarred, struck off, drawn and quartered or shot at dawn. The fact that the need for standards is so hotly debated is another indicator that search as it currently stands is not a profession.
Personally I think it is a good thing that not every service or industry is a profession, especially newly emerging and dynamic fields of work. The boundaries and structures (and even the hierarchies) in place in professional associations tend to give the services an ‘institutional’ feel. Convention is adhered to and creativity can be, and often is, stifled. Do those working in search really want to be ‘professionals’?
This question is one that has been asked with increasing frequency over the past few months, it’s one to which there is only one answer – I’m not.
Most of you know by now that I am gearing up for yet another move. Yet again I am preparing to pack up my shoes and shift my life to another country. A country which I never, ever thought, nor have had the slightest desire to ever live in – that’s right, I’m moving to the US. Not even in my wildest dreams (even the crazy one where a saxophone and a carrot driving a car were chasing me). This will be the third time I will have moved countries in the past two years. Right now my life is starting to revolve around the upcoming upheaval.
In a few weeks time I’ll be in San Francisco to test the waters so to speak. If all goes well and everyones’ assurances that I will ‘love’ the place are true, then I will be applying for my visa as soon as I get back to London. I am now starting to count my time left here in only a very few short months, by the time I get back it will be in weeks. Whilst my moving to SF is not carved in stone it is a fairly safe bet, regardless of whether or not I do find myself in the States in a few months time, one thing is a certainty - I’m not going home. Not in a hurry anyway.
Up until quite recently I was thinking about moving back to Australia, or at least making an extended visit, at the end of this year. Sad to admit it but a strong part of this motivation was to renew my license. Now it looks as though I am going to have to let it lapse (will have to look into getting a Californian one quick smart). It may seem like an insignificant issue but the fact that I am prepared to let go of my Queensland license (and in turn legal identification of address for my state) indicates that returning and living in Australia is not something I envisage doing again within the foreseeable future.
Over the past week I’ve been discussing this whole realisation that you will never (or at least not for many a year) live at ‘home’ again with a close friend who is in a similar situation (although her situation has infinitely more of the crazy!).I’ve known at some level for a while now that I won’t be returning to Australia, turns out this astonishing turn of events is no revelation to my parents.
When I packed my bags and swapped the sun of Noosa for the snow of Copenhagen my mother knew I would not be likely to ever return to Australia to live again.Just this morning I received an email from the parental ones asking if they should send a certain item over.This item is my most treasured possession (no, not my bass)*.I have had this special thing for nearly 30 years (he will be 29 in September) and made the conscious decision to leave him at home for fear of his becoming damaged, or gods forbid, lost.As with the Qld license, it may seem a small thing to send him over but it signifies so much more.I won’t be returning anytime soon to reclaim him, so therefore he must make the long journey across the world to me. Hope he likes flying for the chances are he will be racking up the miles over the next few years!
“Calling America”, ELO
* Of course he won’t be sent over via post, he will be carefully escorted over with a family friend who will be in London next week.
For the first time in 13 years I am not spending the week immediately following Easter frantically reading and trying to pull together a semi-decent assignment. For the first time in 13 years I am not enrolled in some form of study. For the majority I feel relieved and have an odd sense of freedom, yet a small part of me feels uneasy and not at all comfortable. I’m not studying, I’m not engaged in some kind of formal learning activity - I feel as though a small part of my identity is missing. Over the past decade or so I have dipped into a seemingly inexplicable hodgepodge of this-and-that. From Medievalism to ethics; education to information retrieval; music to mechanics of flight; Romantic poetry to programming, Soviet studies to strategic studies. I’ve studied Italian, French, Russian and Danish to varying levels of success. For me it is not so much the end result, the bit of paper that is important, rather it is all about the learning and discovery of new things.
I have made no secret that I have found my recent educational experiences to be disappointing. This is not so much a slur on the school but is rather due to my learning needs being at a different level than what was offered by the course. This particular course did not offer me anything new, it did not offer me anything I had not previously come across. In that regards, for me at least, it was disappointing and has left me somewhat frustrated with the academic sector.
I think I will always study at some level but not with the goal of advancing or furthering my career, nor will I necessarily continue to study in a purely formal and academic environment. I already have a professional qualification, I’ve worked in my profession for a number of years now and that is significantly more important in terms of progression, I will only continue to study in LIS and IR because I want to. Gaining another masters or a PhD in this field will not achieve anything in terms of landing a ‘better’ job. Having said that, I have already organised to enroll again at QUT next semester picking up a couple of extra subjects in the IR field (would still like to do that dissertation on (Probabilistic) Latent Semantic Indexing and Anaphoric Resolution … maybe one day). After that, who knows?
Part of me has been kicking around the idea of doing an MBA, another part of me would love to do some real research into leadership and yet another part wants to focus on languages. The romantic part of me wants to get back into the realms of literature (would love to explore the approaches to storytelling in the Norse and Old High Germanic sagas, or investigate the sense of wonder and innocence found in Edwardian and post-war English children’s literature) and history, or even music, or, dream of dreams, finally learn to fly. I blame this ongoing quest for knowledge and experience on my family (curse you mum and dad for encouraging us to read!) and my undergraduate experience.
I undertook my undergraduate study at a very small, very intense, very competitive and highly unique institution and have therefore had a very, very different university experience to most. I don’t look at my time at the Academy as just ‘gaining a degree’, or even in the trite terms of ‘life experience’ that so many Arts and Social Science degree students trot out (the ‘life-experience’ is gained not so much from your classes but rather how you spent your time, what other activities did you engage in). The educational approach given at the Academy was more inline with the Edwardian school of thought as to what an ‘education’ should deliver (or at least if you were upper class and male). I now see that ADFA aimed to deliver an education that allowed for well-rounded graduates not only across a variety of academic disciplines but also in terms of our approach towards life. I also must add that this Edwardian ideal also resulted in a somewhat closed and destructive culture reminiscent of the public schools of that era - when it was good it was very, very good; when it was bad it was horrid.
As part of our degree requirements all Arts students had to take a minimum credit load from Science subjects (and vice versa), I chose Oceanography and loved it. It wasn’t just because of the week long field trips to Jervis Bay, spending all our time on private beaches or out on the water, swimming with wild dolphins but the learning of something new and previously unexplored. It allowed for an almost childlike sense of wonder and amazement. Its a feeling you can only get when you stumble across a world to which you have not had any previous exposure. We were encouraged and challenged not only to explore unknown areas of accas but to investigate and experience everything we came across (within reason, remember this was still the military - ‘Hanrahan! Stop asking so many questions - we do it this way because I say so!’ In some ways my high heels and I never really fitted in …).
We formally studied leadership; law; communications; military history, theory and policy; tactics and strategies. Informally we gained invaluable social and general life skills (yes, we were even taught how to correctly pass the port and tie a bow tie). Looking back the pressures and pace of life was insane but to us it was normal. During my 2nd year I effectively undertook the equivalent of a triple work load, with a total of 36 hrs of class contact time (English Lit was a double work load - we had English Core and then our 2 electives, add onto that honours extension classes and we were up to 16hrs contact time, yet it still only counted as ‘one’ subject. Believe me, English Lit was not the easy option). That 36hr contact load is including academic, military and civilian classes (I studied Russian for the fun of it through ANU) - it does not include sport (swimming for me) and, in my case, music (concert and jazz bands, Academy and show choirs and musicals through the Academy and two squadron rock bands for the sheer gigging fun of it) nor the other extra bits and pieces and personal pursuits we threw ourselves into.
As you can see I like studying. I really enjoy learning and exploring and doing things, yet when I am studying I loathe it and I put all my time and effort into my work. Now that I am not studying I feel that something is missing and I’m casting around for other things to do with my time. Trying to find new and interesting things in which to become involved. Maybe I need a hobby rather than study - such as hang gliding, or horse riding, or extreme cheese making …
Been having a bit of a rough go of it the past couple of weeks. Life is again deciding to sweep me up on a course not of my own choosing – things are happening and they are happening fast. Not only to myself but seemingly to most of my good friends at the moment, nearly everyone is either pregnant or moving! With these changes come decisions, some are easy and I don’t even have to think about them, others are not. There is one in particular that have been putting off thinking about, time is flying by and I can no longer bury it in the back of mind with a ‘oh, I’ll think about that when the time comes’. The time has come and the tough choices have to be faced and made.The hardest thing about it all though is being so far from those you love and trust, those whom you allow to see you when you are down and vulnerable. Those closest to you who not only listen but ask the tough questions, the questions you know you need to face squarely and somehow vocalise you thoughts and feelings about. Right now I am missing my few close girlies very much – one lives in Australia, another in West Africa and the other in Denmark. Sitting down over a pot of tea and pouring out your fears and worries is a bit hard when you don’t live in the same continent let alone country. It’s not just this ‘big decision’ but other things that have happened recently that I want to share and gossip and giggle over and, more importantly, I want to hear all their gossip and life happenings as well. Email is great but it’s not the same as being in the same room as someone and having the warmth of conversation swoop and flow.
There are times when you do feel a bit isolated, you miss the comfort of a good friend’s companionship and laughter but then there are also moments which are but fleeting interactions with strangers that make you smile and feel all warm inside. I had one such moment the other day on the train to work. I shared this with a friend (via email of course) who did appreciate how awesome this encounter was, its too special not to share with you all:
Had a lovely chat with a boy on the train this morning - and he gave me a hug. His name is Adam : ) He is 9. He was with his mum on their way to visit Gran who has been feeling poorly. He wants to be a gardener when he grows up. He liked my tail. He likes tea but only with lots of milk and sugar. He doesn’t like hip-hop but really likes Credence Clearwater. He has downs syndrome - but thats okay, ‘cos he gets lots of cuddles. Yesterday was a fun day but today is special.
Whatever you are going through, however much you feel to be isolated and alone at times, there are always moments that break through and make you feel wonderful – kindness of strangers and all. May you all have a similar encounter soon.
In a fit of procrastination at work I’ve been cleaning up my drafts folder when amongst all the random oddities I found I had saved this link – Are SEOs Better Searchers?, Discuss.For the life of me I couldn’t remember why I had thought such a thread worth saving until I found this comment:
Are SEOs better searchers? YES.
And librarians, too! Another YES.
Librarians and SEOs rock the Casbah when it comes to finding and sorting information.
Yes, yes we do.Its official, when it comes to search – we rock Why?Because we understand IR.
We understand how a document or object is stored, how it is indexed and how it is best retrieved.Quite often we are the ones responsible for the indexing and storing of the object in the first place.We were the ones responsible for the markup, the metadata, the taxonomy and other such goodies.We can also be the ones who determine the retrieval and ranking of the item.We know how to set the precision and recall, the relevance and fall-out.We understand when an overall ‘browsing’ approach is required or when a specialised domain specific search is desired.We continually observe and analyse user behaviours and different cognitive approaches.We are aware of semantic and linguistic relationships that can influence and affect what we are looking for.We can assess when a probabilistic model for ranking and retrieval may be more effective than a vector space and vice versa.Most importantly though is the fact that we can find what the patron is really looking for.We take all this knowledge and help people access the information they are after.
All this and we know how to keep the unruly in line with a well delivered ‘SHUSH!’
It seems that everyday there is a new location/map/where-am-I?-here-I-am!/GPS thingy available. I am continually amazed that such technology is available, yet alone in such abundance. I guess this sense of wonder and amazement is due to the fact that I learnt to navigate many, many moons ago, well before GPS was a viable option, especially in the middle of nowhere Back-o’-Bourke.
I learnt to navigate the old skool way – prism compass, ordnance map, ruler, pencil and paper. Before setting off out bush you didn’t get out your GPS to check your route, instead you sat down and did a lot of maths. The first thing that was necessary was to calculate true north as opposed to what the map said. Grid to Magnetic: Subtract. If I’m lost in a city, cannot find the name of the street I’m on and have a tourist map, I still find myself doing a very basic triangulation – not with my personal location/map whatsit but rather in my head. True, I am not able to give you a six figure grid reference but I can tell you where we are within a relatively small triangle.
Despite having the sense of direction of a turnip, I always enjoyed nav. It’s the maths. I enjoyed sitting under a seldom tree in the searing heat of an Australian summer, in random middle of whoop-whoop places delighting in names such as ‘Buckingbong State Forest’, and figuring out on paper where I was, where I wanted to be and how I was going to get there. Just a map, a pencil, a notebook and a compass – no GPS, no calculator, no technology as we know it. Dead reckoning has always fascinated me.
The ability now to so easily pinpoint your location and transmit that information to the world is fantastic. I love that you can easily check Google maps etc to find out where something is, what’s nearby and how you get there. I am a big fan of my satnav (or was when I used to have a car or drive BB’s truck in Copenhagen – complete with racing tyres *shakes head*). Yet there are times when I like to be able to sit down and enjoy the planning and the computation of angles and degrees, having to re-plot a course upon realising the contour lines there turn that seemingly innocuous hill into Mount F@£!-Off. If you ever go bushwalking with me please don’t bring your personal GPS or online maps, I don’t want to know.
I’m interested to know in what applications and technologies are around that you, dear reader, are amazed by and use, yet deep down inside you feel they take that little bit away from the adventure and romance of the world.
A lazy-lady post. Its been a comfortable evening slothing in front of the telly with the flat mates watching quality programmes such as Jerry Springer and Millionaire. Reminded me of this clip - it still makes me giggle. Mind you so does Danish ‘fartkontrol’, heehee
Sorry Cookie Monster …
but the learning of something new and previously unexplored. It allowed for an almost childlike sense of wonder and amazement. Its a feeling you can only get when you stumble across a world to which you have not had any previous exposure. We were encouraged and challenged not only to explore unknown areas of accas but to investigate and experience everything we came across (within reason, remember this was still the military - ‘Hanrahan! Stop asking so many questions - we do it this way because I say so!’ In some ways my high heels and I never really fitted in …).