Spanish story. French music. Slovak dancing. Great drama.

I love dance and am trying to find ways to see more of it. Mostly this means getting myself more organised!

The latest opportunity came via my Czech/Slovak connections through whom I learned that the Slovak Dance Theatre were performing their version of Carmen for two nights only at Jacksons Lane in Highbury.

I did not know anybody else who was going but I was free that evening and Highbury is not that hard to get to (when the Northern Line is working) so I thought that I would give it a go. And I'm glad that I did.

The first good news was that the tube strike had no impact on my travel and the second was that some people that I knew were also there. One of them, Ruzena, is Vice Chair of the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) and she had done some publicity for the event and had been rewarded with a ticket. A quick word with the organisers from here and I had a reserved seat too.

Jacksons Lane, a former church, looks to be an excellent community venue. The theatre seats around 120 people, there is a nice cafe that boasts a good selection of vegetarian food, a small bar and a mix of community spaces some of which were also in use that evening.

I had a little idea of what to expect from a short video but that's never a fair way to judge anything so I sat in my seat in the middle of the second-back row with an open mind.

The first thing you notice is that it's a small group so each of the dancers has several roles, sometimes crossing genders to do so.

The dancing is energetic and expansive making full use of the depth, width and height of the stage. The set remains constant and largely anonymous as a series of scenes are played out before it, smoothly flowing from one to the other as the story unfolds.

The tension of the drama is maintained throughout (there is no break) as we watch the various couples come together, argue, split, flirt, reconcile and, eventually, kill.

The standing ovation at the end was well deserved.

This is only the second time that I've gone to see dancing by myself at short notice and it's worked better than expected both times. Must do it again.

LIKE 19: Open Source software for libraries

LIKE 19 continued the impressive run of monthly meetings, this time looking at the use of Open Source software at the King's Fund Information and Library Service.

The minor teething troubles LIKE had at their first meeting were quickly and ruthlessly removed. The layout was much more open to improve networking and the organisation was faultless. I had the honour of being orange juice monitor for the evening and was allowed to wear a LIKE badge as a reward. Shame I left it at home :-(

Our speaker for the evening was Ray Phillips, Head of Information Services at The King's Fund. He spoke articulately as he told an interesting story about the koha Library Management System (LMS) that informed, provoked and captured our attention.

I'm hardly an expert in LMS, unlike most of the people in the room, but I do have some pedigree, my very first computer programs for Dorset County Council way back in 1978 were for their new Library system which was then introducing the new wand technology to read the labels in the books.

But it was the open source aspect of the story that interested me the most and there were some cross-industry lessons here that I found useful.

The main argument for Open Source is the cost, i.e. it's free (though maintenance is extra) and normally this is seen as sacrificing functionality for price, e.g. MS Office v OpenOffice. Ray Phillips told a different story and explained that software developed by the community for the community is actually better than standard commercial software.

Organisations are geared up to buy expensive software and don't really know how to buy things that are free. Traditional procurement procedures are long and expensive and are based on making a decision strictly on cost. Thus makes the cost of buying more expensive than the thing that is being bought and leads to the wrong questions being asked.

The talk and questions over, the food and second round of drinks arrived and it was full hurl in to the networking, which is where LIKE excels.

The conversations flowed.

Among these was a long session on Information Management methods with Debbie and Ben, comics with Laura, holidays with Sally-Ann, the BCS with Conrad, bears (again!) with Marja and future LIKE topics with Nova.

I may have volunteered to lead a session on personal information management (e.g. email techniques) but hopefully this will have been forgotten.

There were more conversations with more people but pen and paper were put away by then so I have to rely on a memory that has never been very good with names. However, I think that you get the point that the talking and the mixing both work very well.

It's rather like speed dating but without the embarrassment of finding out how few people want to see you again at the end of the evening. Besides, you already know the answer to that as most of us will be back there again next month.

Moving forward with Depaul

Back in June I was very pleased to be involved in the initial work that TFPL have been doing with homeless charity Depaul and last week I was equally pleased to be involved again. So much so that I made the trek in to the City of London for the meeting even though I was enjoying a week's holiday at the time.

The evening started with an update on progress from two TFPL consultants who have been working with Depual. They presented a view of an organisation that relies heavily on the skills, dedication and goodwill of a few people.

It's also an organisation that does a lot of good work, has a strong sense of it's mission (i.e. the six areas of need it needs to address to help people to recover their lives) but which is still prepared to ask for help when it sees the need.

After a couple of months of work, those areas of need had been crystallised down to branding, fund-raising, case studies and volunteering and we organised ourselves in to four groups to address these.

I chose the branding workshop because of my recent experience with this at Logica and at The Mount/King's Oak.

We had a wide-ranging discussion at our table, as you would probably expect, and I'll do my usual unfair thing and pick out just a few points from the notes that I took at the time.

Homelessness has dropped off the media radar as an issue and most people probably think that the problem has been solved. The biggest issue Depaul has, therefore, is in raising the profile of the problem rather than how they try to solve it.

Depaul need to be clear on their mission (and I think they are) which is to take a holistic view in addressing individuals' needs. In contrast, Crisis is more an emergency fix and Shelter more of a political campaign.

The view of the customer is key. The brand needs to speak to their needs and to compete against options like a no-hassle night in the cells.

The all-tables wrap-up session allowed some  cross-fertilisation of ideas and provided a fitting end to the evening. Closing conversations with the Depaul people there suggested that they found the evening valuable and, in the end, that's what really mattered.

The work over and still buzzing with intellectual adrenaline we headed to the nearest pub for more conversations and a gentle warm down for our weary brains.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I like to do on my holidays.

RED

RED is a triumphant addition to the rapidly growing list of films based on comics.

And it comes with some serious pedigree, the original comic was written by Warren Ellis and the film's stars include Bruce Willis and John Malkovich.

Last Saturday I helped myself to a double-dose of RED by watching the film then reading the comic. It was not a strategic decision to do things in that order it's just that I was not able to buy the comic any earlier.

About fifty of us crammed into one of the small theatres in the Odeon Studio in Richmond and quite an odd group we were too ranging from small boys (under ten) to grannies (over seventy) with a smattering of young women. I was expecting just lads of all ages.

RED hits the ground running and never stops. Within the first minutes Bruce has single-handedly taken out a SWAT team who fired even more bullets than were used in The Matrix.

The film continues in much the same rich vein of action laced with clever humour. There's a good plot too and some wonderful acting by people who are obviously playing their roles more for the fun than the money. It really was a lot of fun.

The comic came as bit of a surprise having seen the film as the only element common to both is the hardly original theme of an ex-CIA agent been chased by his former colleagues. Perhaps they paid Warren Ellis just for the name RED.

The comic is more about a killer coming to terms with what he has done and, as such, brings to mind Joe Haldeman's All My Sins Remembered. It's a short comic, only three issues in the collected edition, so there is less to get your teeth in to than the film and so, while the comic has undoubted merit, it's hard to recommend it to a casual reader.

The same is true of Kick Ass and Wanted, both of which are reasonable comics but much better films.

Ponds, palace and plants

The combination of a short holiday and a bright Autumnal day naturally leads to Kew Gardens.

It's a big place, far too big to explore on one visit, which makes repeat visits all the more rewarding. And the changing seasons help too.

This time the Play School decision was to go in via the so-called Main Gate off Kew Green, rather than the more usual (for me) Lion Gate or Victoria Gate (which most people think is the main gate).

The first place to explore was the north corner where Google maps had revealed ponds that I had not seen before.

They are well hidden by trees and even knowing they were there they took some finding.

The first was clear, loved by ducks and geese, and kept alive by a small fountain.

The second was perfectly still allowing plants to claim it as their own with only a few lost coots daring its green surface.

There were few other people in this corner of the garden and one of them, another regular visitor to Kew, said that she had not been to the ponds before either. I suspect some sort of cloaking magic.

From the ponds it's a short walk west towards Kew Palace, the smallest of the royal palaces.

Behind Kew Palace, i.e. on the north side, is a small formal garden with structural hedges, not unlike the side garden at Ham House.

But this is a bit bigger and a bit grander than that with a rectangular pond, a semi-circle of statues and sunken flower beds. Something to tease the eye in every direction.

The palace itself is not bad either.

It's beauty derives mostly from its symmetry and order but the bold contrasting colour helps too.

From Kew Palace its another short walk to the Orangery for what was going to be lunch but as I ended up having some Seville marmalade cake it was probably more an early afternoon tea. With cake like that who needs lunch?

Turning east from the Orangery takes you to the grass garden. And I love grasses.

This section of the gardens is small but the clever people there have managed to pack in many varieties of grass and to arrange them so that their differences and similarities are emphasised.

Man and grass have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship for tens of thousands of years and Kew helps you to appreciate that.

The prettiest way home from there is through the Princess of Wales Conservatory which also fulfils the unwritten rule that every visit to Kew includes a visit to one of the three main greenhouses.

The variety and extravagance of the plants makes all the greenhouses worth visiting but the Victorian ones have the advantage of grandiose architecture that the Princess of Wales sadly lacks. It already looks old and worn, unlike its much older companions.

The trip ends via the Victoria Gate and a 65 bus home.

Another two hours or so spent pleasantly in Kew Gardens with the promise of more to come. It's a real treasure and deserves its regular worship.