A new application on Facebook is What French Philosopher are you? I find these things to be addictive and fun so I joined and ended up as Albert Camus which is fine by me.  As for Sartre his best philosophy was achieved through literature; Roads to Freedom carries far more meaning than Being and Nothingness as well as being significantly more digestible.  30% of my friends got the same answer, the same percentage were Voltaire.  6% for Descartes which is a worry (who are these people), Bergson, Derrida and Sartre to be expected.  I then got carried away and did the German option ending up as Heidegger.  I was worried that might be the case given the odd provocation from Boisot over the years.  21% of my friends were the same so that is some comfort, but the vast majority (37%) ended up as Liebniz with a few for Kant, Marx and Hursserl not to mention a strong showing for Nietzsche. 

Much more fun (and the same validity) as the nonsense that is Myers-Briggs; maybe there is a new business here with suitable outcomes?  All those scoring for Satre being required to plunge a knife through their hand while attempting to seduce young students?  It would make the HR function a more interesting place to be. 

I am privileged to live in rural Wiltshire, and a five minute walk from my house is an tract of ancient woodland known as the West Woods.  At this time of year we tend to get inundated by tourists as said woodland is currently a sea of blue.  I spent most of Sunday glued to the computer attempting to catch up on a range of work before heading off on a three week round the world trip, but around 1700 I picked up the camera (mine again at last after Daughter completed her A level photography exams) and headed off for the woods seeking to take advantage of the evening light.  I left it a little late, or I need a new and better camera able to handle low light conditions.  However I got some reasonable photographs that can be viewed via the Flickr icon on the main page of the blog.  One close up is shown here.  I love the evening light and sounds, or rather absence of sounds, there is a sense of relaxation about it.  You can nearly always see Hares and Badgers if you tread quietly, and as dusk crept in a Barn Owl glided over the lane in front of me.  I got home to see the sun set over the roof of the house.  Much as I love visiting cities I don't think I could live in one.

For all followers of The Archers, the longest running soap opera in the world and a cultural icon.  There is a new timeline (with audio clips) of the full history from 1951 (Dan Archer retired his last working horses Boxer and Blossom) to the current days with a married homosexual couple, the red kite controversy over Will and Susan's dislike the Vicar's impending marriage to a Hindu Lawyer.  Where else would you get this richness!

Someone asked me the other day to give some notice of where I will be in the world to allow for meetings, adhoc sales support for the network or the odd public seminar (always happy to do these if it helps people locally).  If you subscribe to Dopplr, one of the really, really useful social computing sites then you will see everything planned about a year out.  The next three weeks sees a round the world trip involving Montréal, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles (maybe), Auckland, Singapore and Amsterdam.  Details below

Continue reading "Coming trip" »

Four and a half hours on Greek roads from Volos to Athens; an aborted takeoff followed by the pilot saying  lets try it again and see if we get the same warning light; Terminal 5 (it has a persona now and it is from the dark side of the force) disgorging my bag, but taking a wheel in the process  just to let me know who'se boss; twenty minutes to get out of the hire car lot; three sets of road works and one diversion later I finally get home.  My refuge at the end of this: a large glass of Penderyn.  A newish venture and a wonderful malt whisky, strongly recommended to anyone who appreciates the water of life.  If you want to argue the case, then do it with the Viet-Gwent, pictured left.

From the tasting notes:  At premium strength (46% vol) Penderyn has an exceptionally balanced taste with an aroma of cream toffee and fleetingly of fresh new heather.  Then, as the initial sensations fade, the finishing notes of tropical fruits, raisins and vanilla emerge strongly and are long lasting.

Thanks to a strike by local Lorry drivers I had a fairly traffic free drive from Athens airport to Volos last night.  Four and a half hours with some good scenery along the way but not much, so my journey was relieved by catching up on podcasts.  In this case I had four hours of Melvyn Bragg covering a range of subjects from King Lear and the Greek Myths, to the Multiverse and Ada Loverlace's links to Babbage and the foundation of computing.  All 40 minute chat shows with major academic figures, getting into subjects in detail, but also in an understandable way.  My journey back tomorrow should yet me through the Norman Yoke (we still suffer from that in Wales), The Dissolution of the Monasteries, Kierkegaard and Materialism.  I should also manage Yeats and Irish Politics.  If I get bored with the good Lord Bragg of Wigton, well I have the ABC's podcasts on philosophy to catch up on, and fora satirical interlude the BBC's Now Show.

Several things struck me as a drove north through the Greek landscape.  Firstly radio remains one of the great mediums to communicate ideas and thinking.  It is much more powerful than television.  Secondly podcasts, and the willingness of broadcasters to make their material available is providing a wonderful new way to access this material. Thirdly, radio is the last refuge of the generalist and all round thinker, where intellectual is not a dirty word and you can avoid the soundbite culture of the trivial.  Radio, combined with podcasts mean that I can listen to the latest on cognitive science as I walk between meetings in London and the wonderful Phil Adams whose views and passions I largely share, can keep me motivated through the most tedious of tube journeys.  I just wish the BBC showed the same generosity as the ABC who make all of their material available on line, not just the most recent edition.

How can BA create new super swish first class lounge (OK I am traveling economy to Athens but AA Exec Plat status gets me in) without any power points and with a wifi system that is overloaded with the lounge at 10% of its capacity.  One World has a whole new meaning: It's our world and your privilege to be allowed to fly with us.

Back to scenario planning tomorrow when I have calmed down.

When people talk about having  testicular fortitude in respect of a female candidate for the Presidency of the United States you start to wonder what sort of world we are living in.  Would an equivalent phrase relating to race be acceptable?

A reminder to all (especially all those in North America) of our coming Accreditation Course, 13th-15th May in Montreal Canada.  A short hop from anywhere in the East Coast and a wonderful city to visit in the Spring and the location (see photo) looks outstanding.  Three days of deep emersion in Cognitive Edge methods, together with the underlying theory and a chance to understand (and be qualified) SenseMaker™ projects.  There is some new material as well.  I will be looking at the creation of crews as an alternative to SWAT teams and matrix based organisations along with new approaches to scenario management.  Another big new theme is how to identify the different identities in play within employees and customers (a complexity/narrative alternative to profiling).  The teaching will be split between myself and one of our most experienced practitioners, Michael Cheveldave so you will get a good balance of theory and practice.

Members of the Boston Knowledge Forum and the ActKM listserv get a 10% discount. If you have been on an earlier programme and want a refresher then let us know and we will cut you a deal.  The 10% discount also applies if you are nominated by an existing member of the network.  For those of you interested in starting a project we are developing a new offering which uses the course as a kick off, so if that is of interest email me and we can discuss.

The interconnectivity of the modern world is at times a truly wonderful utility.  Yesterday a tweet triggered me to reflect on Open Source; today Technorati links me to this blog on Scenario Planning, which in turn references this article by Conway both of which quote me.  I now have another blog in the RSS feed!

Linda Popova, the blog author, correctly spots that while Conway quotes me on the irrationality of human decision making, he fails to see that I argue that reality exists (I remain amazed that you have to argue this with some post-modernists) and the tensions between perceptions and reality provide an important tool for thinking about the future.    Linda concludes her blog by saying: I would not apply scenario planning to my national security issue as long as I’m doing a situation assessment. However, I do believe scenario planning as a technique could be a valuable addition to long-term strategic analysis, especially when used to challenge assumptions about rational choice whether on an individual or a collective level. 

Now I have a lot of sympathy with that but not complete agreement, so I thought I would use the stimulus to blog some thoughts on scenario planning as a technique.  I will do this in the form of a series of statements.

Continue reading "Scenarios: use and abuse" »

This blog was stimulated by two things:  (i) A useful post from Doc Searls on advertising in the context of Microsoft and Yahoo, and (ii) a barb in an otherwise friendly series of tweets (I will leave the author anonymous) which said No offence, but getting the feeling you can take the people out of IBM, but never the IBM out of the people.  The tweet was based on a point of view that saw our open source methods yet proprietary software model a little contradictory.  Now I have not taken offense (although IBM phrase considered in isolation is offensive) in part because I think the position deeply confuses the concept of open source with that of not having to pay for things.  It also fails to understand that all business models make money somewhere, the issue is where and (to my mind the most important thing) the degree of transparency of said business model.  This also links back to the dependency of freeware on advertising.

Continue reading "Open source is not the same as freeware" »

That's the last time I let someone use by Macbook.  Ugg, worse than peanuts in a pub

Ark group have offered readers of this blog a 15% discount on the forthcoming Knowledge and Content UK conference in London  25-26 June 2008.  If you are interested email Leigh-Jane and reference my name.

I gave a keynote today in Perth, Australia about the future of the ICT function, along with issues of compliance and the anal retentiveness of Sarbanes-Oxley which despite its good intentions is to my mind increasing not decreasing the possibilities for fraud.  The more you make a procedure explicit the easier it is to game.  For those interested the podcast is here.  I was I freely admit a bit disruptive.  The speakers who followed me were all taking more conventional routes and I had seen their slides in advance - an irresistible temptation to a debater.  The audience was great - they got the jokes, understood irony and were generally cynical in the best sense of the world.  One of the nicest things that anyone said was that I had exposed the brutal reality of the customer experience.

At the same time there were several statements with which I profoundly disagreed.  This includes: Centralisation for the greater good and the incredible proposition that If it is not in the data warehouse then it can't be true.  A lot of people seem to want to fit things into comfortable rather than challenging models.  We were told that ECM (Enterprise content management) is the latest buzzy think.  From what I can see there is no difference between ECM and ERP which only partially succeed and CRM where it abjectly failed.  Business intelligence was raised, but I could have made the same statements about its utility and tools eight years ago as I would make now.  In effect any new requirement or need was being interpreted within the constraints of an older model of the ICT function.  New wine was being poured into old wineskins.

Thanks to Brian Sherwood Jones I have discovered a far more respectable phrase for one aspect of sense-making namely interpretive phenomenological analysis!  Reminds me of a scene many years ago when my mother was Chairman of the Education Committee for Flintshire and came home in hysterics as the then Director of Education had suggested a need for more linear based print media.  On enquiry it turned out he meant books.

The Gallery Hotel is one of those interesting design hotels that I have managed to find around the world.  A good place to stay in Singapore if you can get a reasonable rate (which is not always the case).  It's also next to one of the most unique places  I know to eat in the Kee Teochew restaurant on Robinson Quay; pictures here, they don't have a web site.  The dough and shredded port, not to mention the chinese omelets are to die for.  Just like Guinness in Dublin, for some reason Tiger Beer in Singapore tastes different from when I buy it in a supermarket in Marlborough.  We had a good dinner tonight - the first gathering of the Cognitive Edge headquarters staff; a grandiose title, but we do have staff now, not to mention an office in one of the new creative areas of Singapore.

Having spent three hours either side of midnight getting 7 photographs printed for my daughter's A level project, you had all better appreciate the selection I am publishing today.  The above is Avebury Church with the sun setting; on the established church of course, nothing like the young for symbolism.  She then took the 4,500 year old Stone Circle at dawn with the Tolkein Tree in the background so you can see where her religious sympathies lie!  One of those is below with another shot of said tree from the village.

Continue reading "Avebury by Eleanor ap David" »

For those interested I will be running a three hour open seminar in Perth this coming Thursday 1st May at Curtin University from 1600-1900.  I will be focusing on a range of topics associated with SenseMaker™.  That will include narrative based research in social systems, fragmented real time assembly of scenarios (as opposed to traditional scenario planning) and narrative based knowledge management.  I will also focus on the work we are doing to create quantitative measures in what has traditionally being a qualitative area.  That means finding ways to shift from outcome based targets (which to my mind are damaging public service provision world wide) to impact based measurement which allows for governance, but does not restricting the ability to experiment and adapt policy to local context: somethings might work in Sydney, but fail in Kalgoorlie.  Its also about doing more with less, something critical for government and industry alike.

There will be a fair number of people from a Systems Thinking background there so there will be some interesting discussions.  The session is in  Room 213 in the Graduate School of Business, Curtin University. This is situated on the corner of Pier and Murray streets in the east end of Perth.  I am told it's diagonally opposite Miss Maud's restaurant and that every taxi driver knows where that is.  Drinks will probably follow, location to be determined.

I will also be keynoting that morning on the future of Information Management in organisations at this conference along with the hon. Francis M Logan, Robert Eames, Kemal Hasandedic, Robert Mackinnon and Yathin Naidoo

I previously blogged my thoughts having heard Chandren Nair speak in Hong Kong.  I concluded by saying Imitating and copying the dominant imperial culture has never been a good thing. Rome, London and Washington all suffer over history as a result and create suffering in their own turn. Hopefully more will pick it up and will see Asian developed business schools in Singapore rather than outposts of European and American Universities.  I know learn of a new leadership programme organised by Chandren Nair which looks interesting.  The thing I like about it is its action orientation.

Many years ago when I spent some days with Thames Water field staff one of the water quality inspectors, learning that I was an occasional (and lackadaisical) ornithologist took me up to the top of the Chiltern Escarpment.  We laid on our backs and waited, and a few minutes later a pair of red kites swept over us at a height of a couple of meters to take advantage of the thermals.  It was a glorious sight.  When my parents were alive I used to take the long route between Marlborough and Moelfre, passing over the moorland above Llanidloes past Llyn Clywedog to Machynlleth.  It was rare not to see red kites on that trip and the glories of the trip compensated even if there were none.  The photos at the end of this post should illustrate that.

Continue reading "The most beautiful of raptors" »

A provocative and worrying take on the future of the internet with some interesting historical precedents.  Thanks to Susanne Bentley via Maggie Buxton on Facebook for the link.

Continue reading "Net Neutrality" »

An excellent evening - we issued an invitation to network members to join current course members for an evening meet in a pub.  A good number turned out and lot of good conversation ensued.  It was also a very natural event, a convivial gathering of old friends, and new ones.  Good conversation, updates on what people are doing and several possibilities for future working together.  Thanks to everyone who game.  If I agreed to do anything send me an email to remind me!

I just returned from a performance of Birtwistle's Punch and Judy in the Young Vic.  It was his first opera composed over forty years ago, before the latter opera's of Brittain with whom he overlaps.  I think that Bertwistle, Maxwell and Adams in different ways are the three greats of modern opera, and comparable with the creativity and originality that characterised the period around the turn of the last century: Verdi and Puccini but not Wagner.  No one is in the same league as Wagner, although Bertwistle's most recent, The Minotaur comes close.  One of the very different things about tonight's performance was that it was in a very small theatre, in the round.  Queuing to get in I discovered the composer behind me!  Sitting to the side, at times I could have touched the singers.  You could see the sweat on their brows and the intensity of the experience was grated for its increased intimacy.  The brilliance of the work is the way he takes a common story, Punch and Judy and translates it into a complex series of interactions; the juxtaposition of violence and sex, of brutality and sensitivity to give two examples.  Opera for me is a complete experience, and Wagnerian opera transcendent .  Everything is there, music, drama, art and the voices of great stars you feel physically, you don't just hear them.  It's also a living art, for over 200 years now we have had a continuous flow of high quality original material.

I'm getting worried about some aspects of the `Wikipedia.  The problems I reported earlier have continued with more encounters with Wiki-facists.  As a part of that battle I have now heard stories of Wiki-stalking and see evidence for myself of pervert structures being built up.  No ecology can survive unrestricted predation without damage, and possibly fatal damage.  So, in this post I start with my story, move to contributions from an anonymous third party and then open up some questions for future discussion.

Continue reading ""Wikipedia is an interesting long-term study in editing by psychopaths"" »

It's been years since I took a sleeper train and then I take two on successive nights.  It worked out well as I was at a performance of The Minotaur last night (if you are in London go, it is a wonderfully, lyrically rich, musically outstanding myth and metaphor that makes you think, while transcending reality).  It finished at 2220 giving me enough time to get to Euston for the 2345 sleeper to Edinburgh.  I return tomorrow, overnight again to an Accreditation Course in London. 

There is a sort of romance to the night sleeper, shades of Agatha Christie and all that although the Caledonian Sleeper is no Orient Express.  However you get a comfortable berth, a cup of tea and bacon roll in the morning and land in Edinburgh at 0730 in time for a shower before moving on to a day of meetings.  A lot less hassle than finding an over priced hotel room and dealing with a too-early or too-late flight.  A good use of time, no plastic bags needed for the liquids and a wee dram before retiring ....

One of the questions asked yesterday at the Durham Seminar (Podcast and slides available when I get home tonight on a working network) was what recommendations the panel would have as to the future of a MBA in a Business School.

Continue reading "Whither the MBA?" »

I always like coming up to Durham, although arriving at 0115 this morning as a result of a series of nightmares in Terminal 5 was not enjoyable.  The town itself, with the cathedral is still one of the most amazing sites and an early morning walk with the mist and sun playing games with the architecture is a great experience.  However on the down side they the University just doesn't get the needs of an IT environment.  Getting web access these days should be free, if not then an ID and a password should do it.  Not here; I have to go and see the IT department and set up proxy servers (taking notes so I can reverse all of this later).  I can now get internet access, but I can't upload the podcast from my lecture to the web site.  Neither can I get my email other than going direct to the server.  Lots of Universities are like this.  They create major obstacles to communication which is an irony given their purpose.

Just who are they protecting from whom?

Tom Davenport has picked up on the question of prediction markets.  He is looking for information on use and knowing Tom will do a good job of putting it together so if anyone can help, do!  I  have mixed thoughts on the subject.  Part of that is cynicism about anything with that much hype, especially when the hype doesn't seem to match up with conversations I have with people in the claimed successful user companies.  One of the problems for me is that in a market everyone is aware of other people's bets and the market therefore will tend to equilibrium.  Prediction Markets are not examples of The Wisdom of Crowds whatever Surowiecki says.  In fact he seems to contradict himself

Continue reading "Prediction markets" »

I visit Switzerland from time to time (not enough really).  In contrast with elsewhere in the world WiFi access from Swisscom is not the normal rip off.  You know how that is, you are in an airport or train station and the minimum fee is a full day or an hour at a high rate.  Swisscom give you a broad range of options from multiple unlimited access day rates to multiple use time slots which last for over a year.  So today I used up the last five minutes from a 60 minute slot I bought several months ago and then lasted for two days on another.  The connection is fast, the web site multilingual and easy to use.  Mind you this is Switzerland.  I remember being on a train once that was three minutes late getting into Basel and the conductor came round the train to apologise to everyone.

I presented at an academic conference in Ascona Switzerland yesterday.  The presentation covered some statements about what is or is not possible in modern system design and then went on to the basics of complexity theory, pattern based intelligence and the design principles and applications behind SenseMaker™.  The start will have some new material for those who have heard the basics elsewhere, and overall it is a slightly different take than the normal commercial conferences.  I am also testing out my new digital recorder which is very cool (the battery compartment comes off to reveal a USB stick).  However I have not worked out all the settings yet so the files are large .....

The podcast and slides are now available

The ActKM discussion on information and knowledge has continued to expand its range.  In a recent exchange Joe Firestone made reference to a paper he co-authored sometime ago which he regards as a definitive demolition of the Cynefin framework.  Now I have consistently refused to provide a formal response to said paper.  It is a great example of the strawman fallacy, describing what I say in a way that I do not recognise, and then attacking the representation.  To reply to it requires multiple but I did not say that statements which becomes nonsensical when it goes beyond a certain limit.

One of the big things in my original paper was the statement that knowledge is simultaneously and paradoxically both a thing and a flow, a reference to wave-particle duality in physics.  As the issue came up again I went back to the paper, and reread it in the context of disputes over categorisation.  That gave me some new insight and I reproduce the post below for those who have not read it in the ActKM listserv.

I conclude (to give you a flavor and encourage reading) If you think in categories, then the world is presented as categories or a failure to categorise.

Continue reading "Wave-particle duality" »

Two great posts from Patrick Lambe, one of the folly of Wisdom Management and the other a wonderful example of status gone mad.  Patrick's set up of Steve Denning on the ActKM exchanges was also a delight as participants will know ...

Having survived the stress of checking a bag into Terminal 5, it popped up on the belt at Malpensa airport but that may have used up my quota of luck for the day.  I am now enjoying the normal uncertainty of working in Italy, namely no one is at the airport to pick me up and no one is answering their mobile phones.  It does always work out in Italy (well, a friend of mind once ended up in a brothel in Milan, rather than a hotel in Piacenza, but he was a Navy Officer), but I must admit to some nervousness.  Either way I am heading in the direction of where I think the conference is, somewhere north of Lugano.  I should make it to Switzerland, but I may end up on the park bench.  The secret is not to worry (although that is difficult).  I remember walking up and down the station in Milan looking for the train to Piacenza once and could not find it.  It was only when I gave up, sat down and had a coffee that it appeared.  Attempting to make the system works fails, adopting an it will work out philosophy has always succeeded in the past.  I will now travel in the hope that it will do so tonight.  If you don't hear from me by the weekend send out the search parties and drag Lago Maggiore

The debate in Wikipedia over standards has got interesting.  On the one side we have those of us who spend time on the page who want to do something minor - change the colour of the information book to red.  It turns out there are another group who are putting all their energy into a template page, seeing to enforce a single template with a common approach.  Now having some uniformity makes sense - but surely varying the colour of a boundary to the national colour is reasonable diversity?  If any wants to help please vote KEEP here.  Where does this desire for uniformity come from?

There are a few (a very few) places left on the London Accreditation Course 23rd to the 25th April.  We have to confirm numbers to the host this Wednesday!  While we will do our best to accommodate people after that date you might not get anything to eat!  Details of how to book here.  If you have been before and want an update (about 30% of the material is new over a couple of years ago) then there is a discount for network members.  Also we now sell the three days separately.  Day one is strategy including the Cynefin model,  day two narrative with an extended session on the software in the evening and day three networks including new material on crews. 

After that we move to Montreal for the East Coast of North America .  I've never been there before so I am looking forward to it if only for a new Starbucks mug!

Once upon a time people in Information Management decided that they wanted a cool new name or two.  Taxonomy was becoming Taxidermy so they absconded with Ontology and twisted its meaning.  They they decided that they were into Knowledge Management, but in practice all they did was to create Information Management Systems.    Now they are moving on and talking about WIsdom Management.  Even one respectable University is doing this, but guess how?  They are setting up a web site for people to exchange ideas and engage in richer conversations through online discussion forums.  So once again the solution is Information Management.  OK I may be doing them an injustice, studying wisdom is obviously a good thing, as is using information technology to help.  But it's not wise to use a structured environment; the fragmented and connected world of social computing is not only more effective, it is more adaptable and more open.  As to consultants who want to peddle wisdom management; may the Lord have mercy on their souls, as I certainly won't.  I may loose a few friends over it.  Steve Denning is defending the idea on the ActKM forum and I praying that he is just being provocative, seeking to raise a reaction.