Risks or Negative issues involved in Sports Management Software

Sports Management Software

 

What are the risks or negative issues?

-Concept of ICT software platforms for sports management includes the need to generate revenue, provide enthusiasts with information, and provide management and grass-roots volunteers support with administration, cohesive governance and general good organisation.

-Online support for Sports Management software for small-scale users poor. Most available software is free and easy to set-up but lack of tutorials and hard-copy instructions for people unfamiliar with ICT, especially given the voluntary nature of clubs/societies in Universities, schools and communities.

-With the rise of commercialisation and globalisation governing bodies of sports and amateur societies are under pressure attain higher levels of coherence and governance (King Report 2002). This is a move away from ‘kitchen table’ committees, use of sports management software must be open and easily adaptable to this mentality.

-New need for transparency, accountability and work-flow systems which may not necessarily be engrained at levels of voluntary participation in sports management. Grass-roots participation in sports management traditionally not wholly compatible with business models, philosophies and methodologies. ICT Sports management systems must cater for the transition.

-Need for information and time management, communication and administration throughout implementation of new ICT Sport Management systems. Given the disparate nature of volunteers, training in these new methods is essential for cohesive management.

-Growing market, patents important especially with increase of open source software. Need to avoid legal issues like that of easyjet:

 http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2070891/software-developers-warned-legal-risks

-Availability of software and literature to enable ICT to communicate with fans, etc. This heavily out-weighs the availability of Sports Management software designed to ensure smooth and cohesive internal management of sports management bodies.

-Centralised and secure IT software platform is essential, one that is not short-lived. Overhaul of ICT platform every few years is a costly risk. The focus needs to be on the Sport Management rather than IT management, needs good managers to realise this, and given the voluntary grass-roots nature of Sports Management (5 million people in the UK alone) will they be adaptable to change?

-Not a lot of competition on the market at the moment for larger-scale business developers, variation of services likely to increase in future years. Difficult to break in to the market for new developers of management packages.

-Overall idea of centralisation and pro-active uptake of new ICT platforms is essential for reducing costs in all organisations. This idea is no less important for small scale bodies, councils or voluntary societies who need to break through the ‘pain barrier’ of adopting new technologies.

 

 

 

 

Kids being raised by the internet.

Though im loathe to repeat a story from our sensational newspapers today, I will anyway (and from that paragon of responsible journalistic integrity the Daily Mail too!).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=542968&in_page_id=1766&ito=1490

 20 hours a week at the computer? I think thats probably better than 20 hours a week in front of the television. At least with social networking sites there is a degree of social interaction occurring rather than zombiefication in front of the latest “dancing celebrities making over an airport departure gate” bbc show.

Threats and weaknesses of Cogknow

Their are many issues that need to be addressed with the increase in dementia sufferers. Most of these are linked to our aging population. In the future the amount of elderly citizens will be out of proportion to the amount of people within the working age, this will mean a greater tax burden on society to fund care for suffers. It is important to realise a balance between our societies social conscience and the budget set aside to care for the elderly. The provision of care to dementia sufferers will become a hotly debated political agenda. For example is it more feasible to provide care in specialised units and should future sufferers be removed from their homes and placed in these units instead of providing one to one solutions?

Risks that specifically relate to the Cogknow project in the initial phases include.

Lack of care provider/physician buy in: These groups will have to be involved from the start to the finish of the development phase so that they will support the direction of the project. when the project is realised they will be the main proponents of the product.

Training: A great deal of the concept is based on technologies that will be out of a dementia sufferers scope. Care providers will need to be trained to high standard to provide the best benefits. Also specialist technical expertise will need to be made available along with support groups.

Face to Face contact: the cogknow project is there to complement the care given by care providers, under no circumstances should it be used to replace it. Unfortunately budget restraints may aim to do this, this has to be denied at every level. 

Open innovation risks vs benefits of this concept

 Risks

-Intelectual property rights, must be legally sound use of open innovation materials. Increasing demands of licensing issues, who decides what is open and what is closed? Things are usually a mixture of open or closed, this leaves a grey area. 

-Distribution rights- eg movie industy. They could in theory demand software to protect the distribution and viewing of the material they distribute. Some steps to do so eg pay per view on Xbox live, subscriptions. There will always be ways around this though.

 -Security- Open innovation use of materials must be secure, threat from bugs/hackers if using an unqualified supplier/developer. Old view that open innovation is piracy or theft. In terms of software can threaten monopoly as design is transparent

-Openning up software can reveal its weaknesses, bad reputation for a company may result.

-Supplier qualification - Do your suppliers meet your own standards? Obvious risk if they do not, how can you be sure? Need for compliance standards.

-Low compliance standards, may not meet your own standards, risk of failure if using open end user development

-Product quality, how to monitor progress effectively? Not as easy as to monitor as closed innovation, less control?

-Slow time to market (issues of slippage, and as a result effectiveness/value of  product), how to pull together resources for openly developed software

-Lack of regulation. Need for a new style of leadership with open innovation. Leader must persuade developers that what they are doing is worthwhile, new motivation. Are developers less disciplined if they know they can quit at any time? 

These risks it has been suggested can be mitigated by introducing the following:

Product Road-Mapping and Portfolio Management

Iterative Product Development and Validation

Product Architecture and System Design across the Value Chain

Knowledge Management on the Front End of Innovation;
Content Management, Product Data Management, and Search

Intellectual Property (IP) Security & Management, Authentication, and Authorization

Talent Management

The right Product Lifecycle Management - Sourcing Platform
Since the goal is to lower costs while lowering risks and increasing quality and value. The right, integrated, platform will go a long way towards helping you implement the strategies above.

(Source: http://blog.sourcinginnovation.com/2007/08/27/the-benefits-and-risks-of-global-product-development.aspx )

Benefits

-Only thing to fear is fear itself- example of lego’s succcess of opening up their code. Users are increasingly inquisitive and talented, to let them experiment increases the demand and kudos of a well-developed piece of software for a company

-Openness complies with the essence of free open sharing in which the internet was created

-Incentive for creation, encourages experimentation and creative process

-Value is not necessarily obtained only by controlling access and charging for it, but value for an innovation can be obtained by sharing it. This is the case with Wikipedia and with Linux. The more it is shared, the more valuable it becomes.

-New technology has the ability to track the (intellectual) rights of material, less risk of theft.

-Openness inevitable? End users find loop-holes to make protected material free and open eg.CDs Peer to Peer filesharing. Can creative industries afford to stand in the way of this onslaught? Expensive legal cases as a result, companies can benefit from open sharing.

-R & D, would a company rather have 10 R &D collegues or a million?

Not everyone agrees that openning up movies to “pirates” is going to harm the movie industry:-

Risks and negative issues in technology, opportunities and benefitial issues

Risks/Negative issues

A useful article in the independent on Sunday recently highlighted a few social implications of facebook/bebo users

: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/facebook-can-ruin-your-life-and-so-can-myspace-bebo-780521.html

-No control over who views often highly personal information on your homepage eg. prospective employers/collegues…

-Risk of poor character representation. More importantly, how safe is your personal information…eg home address,telephone number

-Potential for harassment or identity theft or worse? See youtube video posted yesterday on this site for rape case as a result of Facebook harrassment. Easy access to information, people often forget social network sites are in the public domain.

-Much irresponsible use of social networking sites, a potential to forget that this is communication with real people without the barriers of face to face social convention. As (very) young people make up a majority of users, can they really act responsibly with this technology? No doubt the cases of harrassment/stalking will continue to rise if unchecked. De-personalises (is that a word?) communication

- Facebook has come under fire for its use of advertising on the site. No way of knowing what company holds your information…

-Facebook very hard to leave. Must delete every comment, post, application to really leave the network

-Social networks are a distraction, do they really contribute to the sense of an online community? Do they really provide any insight in to the modern world or is there too much information to obscure any real trends in society?

-A fad…Facebook and Bebo are slowing down, have they had their day? Too commercialised? Growing sentiment that this is the case. Social networking sites are in fashion now, wait for the backlash.

-They are difficult to negotiate due to the number of pop-ups and advertising space. Heavy corporate investment, does this dilute their validation as a forum for free speech and the sense of community?

-Evidence that many people spend more time on their social networking site than they do with people in the real world. How can this be healthy? Social networking sites are designed to be fun and easy to use, are they becoming addictive?

-These sites arguably over-valued. Can one networking site be worth more than the GNP of a small country? Bubble will inevitably burst.

Opportunities/Benefitial issues

-Business-wise a success story. Myspace, Bebo, Facebook valued in the billions

-Opportunity to gauge trends in the market through use of online applications, advertising, quizzes etc

-An opportunity for people to communicate with others as they have more time to think about what they want to express. Obviously as it takes more time and effort to post something about yourself there is an opportunity to confidently convey yourself to the world.

-Fan-sites popularity, meet people with mutual interests and hobbies. At a business level bands can create newsletters and communicate directly with fans eg. Myspace phenomenon of acts like arctic monkeys, kate nash, libertines. Adds to the hype and offers a community orientated experience for fans who do not even need to meet to communicate.

-Will the bubble burst for this technology? No concrete evidence that it has or will. As users drive the popularity of these sites their scope is potentially limitless.

-Offers cheap communication between people on opposite sides of the globe on their own terms. No expensive phone calls. Applications available allow the sending of online cards, gifts etc. If these gifts could be traded in against sites, there could be a new business potential. Eg send an online card with a £20 amazon voucher “inside”. People keep abreast of friends’ travel and work news when a few years ago this would have been impossible/expensive.

-Example of Second Life. Total immersion in another virtual life, interesting from a social anthropological perspective. Online community growing all the time. Social networking sites could offer a version of this immersion in the future.

-For many just a harmless way of keeping in touch with old friends…the casual user

Dangers of Social Networking

This is quite an interesting video on the dangers of Social Networking

The Risks and Negative Issues in the use of blogging

A Blog is a website where entries on an individuals weblog are presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs can contain a persons views or commentary on a news item, technology, business or can be simply a personal log or diary of the person writing. There are many risks and negative issues associated with blogging.

Legal Issues

Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights

As many blogs are developed from comments in other blogs or derived from an article, there are undoubtedly going to be copyright or intellectual property issues associated with blogging. According to MarketingSherpa.com, Blog Copyright Theft is on the rise. The President of MarketingSherpa Anne Holland in an article called “Blog Copyright Theft on the Rise” makes the point that after doing a search for MarketingSherpa, many blogs contained cut and pastes of some of the articles they had written. Although some of these articles were cut and pasted by fans of MarketingSherpa, they were also cut and pasted by people who were trying to generate traffic for their Google Ad-Sense revenue.

Read the full article here

The Content of Blogs

Blogs, especially where businesses and public figures are concerned, can sometimes contain sensitive information. A public figure may be defamed when a blogger writes sensitive information about them that turns out to be untrue. For example, a parliamentary candidate for office may have their name dragged through the mud on purpose by an opposition campaign to stop them getting elected. Business may have some trade secrets that they do not want revealed. In fact one of the biggest risks in blogging is writing about a business you work for in a negative way. In fact many people have lost their jobs over articles they have written in their blogs.

The first cases in Britain of someone being fired by a company was when Joe Gordon a Waterstones employee in Edinburgh, allegedly wrote items in his blog that brought the Waterstones company into disrepute. His blog lost him his job in January 2005.

The first ever case of someone being fired because of their blog brought about a new phrase to be dooced.

“The word dooced was coined in 2002 by Heather Armstrong, a Los Angeles web designer who lost her job after writing about work colleagues in her personal blog, dooce.com. Her subsequent advice to fellow bloggers is straightforward: ‘Never write about work on the Internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact …’

The emergence of the term dooced has brought with it a range of legal and ethical considerations surrounding the activity of blogging. Increasingly, Internet lawyers are advising companies to set out clearer guidelines for blogs written by their employees, and at the beginning of 2005, a Bloggers’ Rights site was launched, which lists ‘blogophobic’ companies that have dooced their staff and urges employers to establish specific policies on blogging.” (Source:http://www.macmillandictionary.com/New-Words/050131-dooced.htm)

An Example case of someone getting dooced by their company was a woman who worked for Delta Airlines. Her company phoned her and terminated her contract because she had allegedly placed illicit photos of herself on her blog. Ellen Simonetti had started her blog “Diary of a Flight Attendant” in January 2004 when she lost her mother in September 2003 to cancer. Her blog was started because she felt it was easier to write her feelings down than to talk about them. According to Ellen her company work record had been good and she had nothing but commendations from fellow workers. She continues to write her blog.

Article on CNet about Ellie Getting Fired

Ellies Blog

Ellie on The Montel Show

A Web Guide for People on their Blogging Legal Rights

Another ‘Dooced’ Blog Court Case where a British woman was Dooced by a Parisian firm

It Seems even McDonalds believe that employees can be ‘Dooced’!