About Change Alley

Photo by jez s

In the Autumn of 2005, a small but perfectly-formed group of Open University students got together at the end of their course for a beer and a chat. The course we’d just completed, U316 ‘The Environmental Web’, had used the Internet and its countless inter-connections as a metaphor for the complexities of our environment. One of us (the memory of precisely who is dulled by time) suggested that we should start a joint environmental blog site, using our newly-acquired skills to provide a forum for debating environmental issues. That blog became ‘The Coffee House’.

Just over two years and several incarnations later, ‘The Coffee House’ has a bastard offspring, ‘Change Alley’. Both names take their inspiration from London of the 17th and 18th centuries, where coffee houses provided meeting places for the movers and shakers of the day to exchange information and buy and sell assets. Change Alley, originally Exchange Alley, became established as the alternative venue for overflow traders from the Royal Exchange.

Change is a recurring theme in the posts that turn up on this blog. Types of change, rates of change, responses to change. Social change, technological change, climate change, loose change. If change is up your alley, bookmark ‘Change Alley’ and tell us what you think.

Photo by chalkie

Pete Smith @ January 28, 2008