And so, the end is near..........

My Facebook/Twitter gloating about the great weather in Riga and the rain in Swansea yesterday has come back to haunt me. It's pouring with rain and Riga has gone the kind of grey I thought only Warsaw could achieve. I'm told it will clear up later. Quite how long later will be I'm not really sure.

So, it's may last day at the University and it's a case of cleaning up the model and agreeing the direction to go in next. It's been great working here with different people who work in quite a different way. I've learnt a lot and hopefully we have the makings of a future collaboration. When I arrived in Riga I thought 3 weeks would be a long time but actually I could easily have stayed for twice as long. I've been made to feel very much part of the team here and I've already been exploring other funding options for a return visit :-) There have also been some subtle hints that I could stay and do a PhD here and I can't say I'm not tempted........

You're a bad man and you can't go in there on your own!

I was too embarrassed to tell this story earlier but now that the end of my stay is near :-( I'm usually the first in in the morning, so I collect the keys to the office from the rather officious looking woman in very dark glasses at the front desk, who I always speak politely to in Latvian. (That doesn't mean I'm then rude to her in English) There are two keys on the very large, about 20cms long key fob. One for the office I work in and one for the the smaller office, where the coffee machine is. Not long after I arrive someone else usually turns up so both offices are generally open and whenever I've wanted a coffee I've just gone into the other office. On this day there was no one else in for quite a while. After doing some work I thought I would grab a coffee. There was no one in the other office so I used the second key on the very large key fob. I heard a slight buzzing and then all hell broke loose with the loudest alarms I've ever heard! After a short while a porter arrived and I was taken downstairs to be shouted at in Latvian. I was made to wait by the desk while a series of frantic calls were made. Maybe I was going to be taken to meet the Belarusian border guards after all! I was then taken back up to the office and given a long and angry speech in Latvian. Although I don't understand much Latvian I got the gist that I'm not allowed in the room with the coffee on my own. I must only go in the office I work in. I'm a very bad man and I'm not allowed in the office with the coffee on my own. And finally - I'm not allowed in the room with the coffee on my own!

When the others arrived later they all knew the story, Latvian grapevine, and thought it was very funny. They now joke whenever I go near the door to the office with the coffee that I'm not allowed in on my own.

To be or not to be..... the actor's role.

While we've been developing the various EKD models we've also been looking at the research basis for what we are trying to do. One interesting piece or research from the USA is about non-credit courses in US Community Colleges. The article explores the use of non-credit education as a bridging mechanism to allow students who have performed poorly in high school to enter community colleges. They argue that noncredit programs have many advantages including "lower cost; greater accessibility, flexibility, and responsiveness; and greater access to immigrants." They cite a number of cases where learners have moved from non-credit courses into success in the mainstream college. This fits well with one of the concepts in our model that knowledge is free but accreditation costs and that making the barriers to entry as low as possible can lead to greater engagement.

Today's task is to look at the Actors and Resource model. This is used to describe how different actors and resources are related to each other and how they are related to components of the Goals Model as well as to components of the Business Processes Model (BPM). For instance, an actor may be the responsible for a particular process in the BPM or, the actor may pursue a particular goal in the Goals Model. The Actors and Resources Model usually clarifies questions, such as: who is/should be performing which processes and tasks, how is the reporting and responsibility structure between actors defined?

I actually left the office at 5pm yesterday and took a 30 minute train ride out of Riga to Jurmala and had a very pleasant evening strolling along the longest beech I've ever seen by the surprisingly calm Baltic.

Art and fish?

Spent a bit of time at the weekend in two very different parts of Riga. The Art Nouveau district and the fish market - I get to go to all the best places!

Riga managed to escape the fate of many cities during WWII and it's medieval Old Town and Art Nouveau district are largely intact. The Art Nouveau district is fascinating and gives much of the city a very Parisian feel.

The fish market is part of the city market which is housed in 5 old WW1 zeppelin hangers. The fish market fills one of these and contains an amazing array of fish. The fish is all very fresh. As I entered the market I meet a fish trying to flap his way to freedom along the floor. All to no avail as he was quickly captured and returned to the stall. The fish are actually kept in tanks behind the stalls and the placed on the stall for sale. Very fresh indeed.