The ideas behind iCan, the BBC’s planned venture into grassroots politics, sound fascinating and potentially hugely influential. “The system will consist of two main components: a public forum to help people research their concerns and find others who share them, both locally and nationally, and a ‘democracy database’, designed to provide a wealth of information on grassroots campaigning and the legislative process.”
If it does help to lessen growing political apathy, it will be a tremendous contribution to Britain’s polis.
Even though next month’s G8 summit is in Evian, France, Geneva is quaking at the prospect. As the nearest city to the summit, most of the planned protests will be in Geneva. When I was there last week, expected troubles were topic A for bankers, taxi drivers and hoteliers. As a country, Switzerland is already feeling battered: the collapse of Swissair, the continuing problems of ABB, Swiss Re and other corporate icons, and the external pressures on Swiss banking secrecy all add up to a nation that has lost a lot of confidence. The Alinghi America’s Cup victory may have only been a brief respite in a pretty sorry sequence.
Bagels and knowledge management 
I’ve long been suspicious of the phrase knowledge management. But I’m convinced that Curiouser and curiouser is on the right track in citing an explanation of baking bagels as a perfect example of KM.
“Mike describes the process of learning how to bake: Taking notes. The failed experiments. Perseverence. Collecting from sources. Weighing & distilling the information. Revelations. Progress. Results. He has probably accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about baking in general and baking bakels in this instance. And he won’t share it 🙂 Sounds like KM to me!”