This is a post about treatment, it’s not about safety!

The gist is that you are responsible for your own health. The health professionals outside the ER are generally time poor, underpaid, tired and occasionally undertrained, bless them. Empathy for their situation is important. So is using a communication style to check that you and the nurse/doctor understand eachother clearly.

In case you are in a hurry here are my tips in point form:

• Put any burn under tepid-cool running water for 20 minutes – it vastly improves the outcome.
• Call an ambulance as they have specialised dressings that can also improve outcome.
• Keep a photographic record of the burn as you go on your telephone.
• Keep a record of the meds you took, any test results etc on your telephone. Either as photos and calendar entries, or in an App.
• Keep telling everyone you meet about your personal relevant issues: do not rely on them asking you. Check understanding by asking them if that specifically affects your case. eg. I have an X infection right now, does that affect my treatment?
• If you are not referred to a specialist wound nurse, make sure the leg is bandaged tightly as swelling will impede progress.
• Leg burns are painful – a bit like having contractions when you give birth. The larger body of pain lasts 7-10 days so keep motivated!
• Stay seated or lying with your leg up to reduce swelling. Periodically go to stand up and get some circulation into the leg, at least every 15 minutes if you can.
• Move your foot around in circles to get the circulation going as this aids in healing.
• I took the maximum amount of Vitamins A, C, E, Zinc and Magnesium to aid in cell repair.
• Put the heel down as you walk so your skin gets movement as it’s healing.
• Do calf stretches – at least one every 30 mins.
• Talk to people on the phone, request visits, stay chipper!
• Generally speaking wounds should heal within 2 weeks and beyond that are candidates for a skin graft.
• Sydney dwellers: there are two specialist burns units: Concord Hospital and Royal North Shore. You are generally referred to a unit to perform dressings and monitor the progress of the wound. These guys have an awesome array of different kinds of dressings to make your life less painful.

Luckily a few years ago we did the Kids First Aid course at a friend’s house. The ambulance man who took the course was very clear on what to do: put the burn under cool running water for at least 20 minutes and call an ambulance. We did that and every time we’ve seen a nurse or other wound specialist they’ve reinforced that it is the gold standard course of action.

Good luck! You’ll get through it.

I think that reputation is a game changer and this is the two sentence argument why:

1. In this world you do better if you know who you are, therefore know what your values are, and then act in a way that is true to your values.
2. If you don’t act in a way that is true to your values, your customers and collaborators sense that there is a hidden component of your identity and may behave cynically towards you. This is the point where reputations start to get frayed.

Given that you want people to engage with you – that is be internally motivated to choose you because they are on board with what you do – it’s a good idea to communicate your vision and let your true values hang out.

So your emphasis should be on telling people what’s in your vision for them. The best effect you can get is to combine social media with an event or meet and greet to let natural social intercourse breed collaboration.

OK that’s the theory, and so it’s always confirming that you’re on the right track when you find out how people are using this theory in practice.

Last week I caught up with Katrina Tucker at Metro Screen. Metro has been around for about 30 years – teaching, funding and supporting generations of film and multi-media producers. If you live in Sydney then you’d notice that a lot of slashies have got their chops from here. Katrina and I first met some 7 years ago when I was collaborating on a streaming media course.

Metro Screen offer core vocational training as well as a shifting selection of updated media skills to the NSW market. Katrina would be the first to tell you that they get a lot of social call outs and discussion in places as far afield as Indonesia and Korea, however their offer is linked to VETAB and is therefore available to NSW residents only.

An important parallel offer is Metro’s commercial hire of equipment and studio spaces and this is where the story gets interesting.

A few months ago Metro started to realise that they had a reputation for being only a student level hire providor. Through conversation and off-the cuff research they discovered that the perception amongst professionals was that they were not holding professional level equipment or professional grade spaces.

Metro realised there was an opportunity to change perceptions and be a key player in the professional hire market – and the only player in the Eastern suburbs. How could they deal with the mixed student/professional brand message?

The first thing that Katrina did was to split the brands and change the advertising message. Previously Metro had advertised their training offer alongside the hire offer in the same ad. Now the ads for hire and training are placed separately.

Next, Katrina is running a meet and greet showcasing event so that professionals can check out the gear and the spaces and network at the same time.

There’s also a plan to review the whole exercise – Katrina is watching Google statistics closely and in time will survey visitors to the event to see if their perception was changed. This final piece of the puzzle will give her management level information that she can use to make subsequent plans.

What’s really great is how this whole strategy stays true to Metro Screen’s brand DNA. “The majority of what I do is about partnerships,” says Katrina, “it’s the best method for us to communicate – we are word of mouth people.”

Drupal Commons is a pre packaged Drupal 6 (D6) distribution by Acquia. It includes an install profile, a patched D6 core, a set of community sourced modules, some Acquia modules and a Drupal Commons core (glue) module.

Drupal Commons goal is to provide an out of the box community building solution based on Drupal. It requires a lot of memory (128MB to PHP minimum) and runs heavy. A D7 release is on the cards but has no release date – too many modules require D7 ports at this stage.

Here are a list of modules broken down into feature sets:

Content / Collaboration

• OG (organic groups)
• Shoutbox
• Tagadelic
• Drupal Wiki
• Freelinking
• Profiles (core)
• CCK (content types)
• Discussions
• + 10 more

Users

• Profiles (core)
• Relationships (friending)
• Heartbeat
• Userpoints (reputation) but not Badges (though that’s possible)

Personalisation

• Flags (bookmarks)
• Panels + Context (custom layout per path)
• Apache SOLR (filters for search)
• Acquia Search (from Acquia Network Subscription – a pay service – for faceted results and content recommendation)

Management

• Quant + Charting
• Featured

General

• Admin menu
• CTools
• Calendar, Date and Time
• Flags
• Messaging + Notifications
• Strongarm (configuration in code)
• Token
• Skinr (theming)
• Rules
• Vertical Tabs (theming)
• jQuery UI (theming)

Features not in Commons but requested (contribute to http://commons.acquia.com/ to add your vote)

• Projects
• Subgroups
• per group layout
• per group content types
• Homebox (user level dashboard)
• community tagging
• popular content block
• private messaging
• document management

Acquia offer Commons open and as a managed service, as an implementation service and with their network subscription.

The book covers four basic financial models and really – let’s face it – focuses on behaviours in developed countries only.

Anderson bases his argument on the tenet that it’s in everyone’s best interest to fast-track brand establishment and market share. If you’ve done corporate finance you’ll concur and point solemnly to texts that note that endless wild growth is unsustainable and that most high growth operations tend to fall in line with CPI within the first few years. The point of FREE is that it’s much easier to blow the competition out of the water if they don’t have to get out a wallet.

People who know me will attest to my ongoing passionate interest in micropayments. Micropayments are typically transactions between $1 to $12. The idea is that you should be able to make small payments that will – through their sheer volume – lubricate the market enough to keep it going. Anderson doesn’t agree with the proposition. He uses Nick Szabo’s “mental transaction costs” as an argument against micropayments saying that,

“If you charge a price, any price, we are forced to ask ourselve if we really want to open our wallets. But if the price is zero, that flag never goes up and the decision just got easier.

“… (Szabo was right: Micropayments have largely failed to take off.)”

I find this an extraordinary thing to say given the phenomenal success of Legion Interactive, iTunes, Ebay & Google Adwords. I also happen to believe that the FREE model has been foisted on creatives for way too long and they often have a huge challenge meeting basic needs. It’s fine to gather brand share but then what? What’s the endgame? Well to quote Bruce Sterling’s response to Cory Doctrow in his State of the Nation 2010:

“Ever heard of “disruptive innovation,” “disintermediation,” “offshoring,” “small pieces loosely joined,” “de-monetization,” “plug and play,” “the network as a platform”? Of course you’ve heard of all that crap, because you’ve been tub-thumping it your entire adult life, but what the hell did you think that was all about? Did you think you were gonna bend every effort to virtualize reality, and then get a gold railway-retirement watch and a safe place to park the cradle?”

Appropriateness is obviously the keyword when thinking about both FREE and micropayments.

Micropayments in particular are going to succeed when the billing situation is appropriate. Think about phone credit as a trusted central payment gateway. Would you use your phone to buy a loaf of bread and a paper on a Sunday morning?  To lend someone five bucks?  To get into a movie theatre? To pay off a student loan? Maybe you get paid in phone credit and it’s handy because the government will find it harder to track and tax you.

The mobile money schemes in Africa are the product of some of the greatest thinking in micropayment execution and a model that I’m sure will find its way here. African consumers have an immense need  for a reliable, secure, low cost banking system. So how handy is it when banking can effortlessly piggyback on the region’s high uptake of mobile phones that don’t required fixed line infrastructure. In September 2009 The Economist published a special report on the power of mobile money. They reported that in Kenya 7 million – just under a fifth of the population – use M-PESA. Roughly $2m is transferred every day, with an average transaction cost of $20

From Africa to Brazil, China, Australia, New Zealand and through Europe – I think there is a place for mobile banking. It may not be a huge profit card for mobile carriers but it will make them popular, revitalise brands and who knows – it might shake up the EFTPOS and the credit card cartels.

The point is that both FREE and micro are good.