Published a new book. It is called 'Vriendenboek' (Friends book).
It contains the collected newsletters I wrote and edited for the Friends of the Our Lady's Abbey estate in Oosterhout from 2017 - 2023.
See the Internet Archive for the contents here.
The most recent newsletters can be found on the abbey website.
Recent heb ik een nieuwe website gemaakt op www.theiland.nl met een overzicht van mijn publicaties. De website besteedt speciale aandacht aan het boek 'Een eigen wereld'. Zo kunt u er een inkijkexemplaar van het boek vinden. De website vindt u hier.
Enjoy! / Geniet ervan!
Thei Geurts
Based on a request of a Dutch newspaper I wrote a concise opinion about the importance of libraries
Libraries are vitamin hubs for the mind. As vitamins are vital for the growth, recovery and well-functioning of the body, so are libraries indispensable for self- and social-reliance and -resilience, the ability to contextualize and to give meaning in a changing society. They are gateways to knowledge and imagination and adversaries of modern illiteracy. ‘Literacy is pattern recognition and action’ (David Lankes).
The
deterioration of the library landscape is alarming. Every authority should
invest in matters that are socially desirable, but (short-term) economically
not profitable. Let’s not forget that a nation that doesn’t teach and
encourages its children to read and to stay literate long-term destroys its own
future.
Please feel free to reflect, react and to share.
Thei Geurts, February 21, 2020
Just published this book about the history of the abbey garden of Our Lady's Abbey in Oosterhout.
It is called: A world of their own; from 'Vredeoord' (Place of Peace estate) to peaceful place.
The text is in Dutch but the 300 pictures are international and mostly self explaining.
It can be ordered here: https://www.boekenbestellen.nl/boek/een-eigen-wereld/32136
Somewhere around 2002, while I was working on the concept of a Context Value Broker, a colleague asked for my opinion about the future of ICT-systems and services. Not being an acknowledged futurist, that is a hard question to answer. Many who did try were proven wrong, as this prediction of the future of mail delivery in the year 2000 may illustrate.
My answer was that I could imagine a trend in the next decades in which the IT landscape of mainly one-dimensional monolithic solutions would evolve into multi-dimensional ecosystems of pluggable knowledge and function kernels, running on agile platforms. These ecosystems and platforms would provide a collaborative base for new services and solutions that made sense of complex situations and serve users on a 1:1 basis for their individual needs. The actors in this services would be both humans and machines; even although the interpretative capabilities of machines would grow in time.
Recently, I witnessed how a young couple was serviced in their efforts to buy a new house and to take out a mortgage. The quality of service that was offered failed dramatically at all touch points.
Systems of denial are omnipresent in business and public organizations. They are a main cause for blocking innovation and transformation. Systems of denial occur when organizations are confronted with information that challenges their core (competitive) assumptions.
For many years I have created concepts, developed products and written articles related to the domain of accessible, assessable and actionable knowledge. A domain that is near to my heart, being a 21st century librarian. On my desktop I used to have an image that synthesized core elements of my thoughts in one single view. I have often used that image in all kinds of conversations with participants of various levels. It turned out to be it extremely useful as a storyline for presentation, argumentation and discussion. Creating such an image is perhaps useful in your situation as well.
For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals on-line or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation?