Hi David,

I attended this conference and like you I was disappointed with some of the ideas presented. I get extremely frustrated with the models proposed. I was particularly frustrated at the discussion on compliance ... it fell like we were being smacked with a cane. I had vision of that guy from the movie Oliver with a big stick in hand and us all cowering down saying "Please sir .... we want to me more innovative", and him coming along slapping our back say "NO you must comply, comply, comply ....". As you point out, if stringent controls are put in place people will always find a way around it. Compliance bashing from the records management fraternity is not solving the problem. We need to work together (convergence) on coming up with workable solutions rather than imposed solutions.

"SmithyGeorge"

Hi Dave :

I was at that ICT thing and you were most definitely centre stage ... well done and most enjoyable.

Alas I don't even know what "ICT" stands for, as they didn't seem explain or ironically spell it out. I suppose it could stand for anything ... maybe Inherently Constrained Technologies or Ill Conceived Tools or just a neologism for "a story told in a one act carrying a strange attractor in the peformance" eg he is going to tell an ict.

I did have a question that I couldn;t fit into question time ... it evolves out of the Best Practice Manual debate ...

If you could not wrest the Best Practice Manual from corporate shelves due to separation anxiety would you instead advocate two companion manuals?? :
1 A "Worst Practice Manual" which could be compiled around the watercooler, tea trolley or smoking tree; and/or/maybe
2 An "Odd Practice Manual" which could be a repository for weird, surprising or curious practices that pop up from time to time and often have weak signals embedded in them.

Of course neither of those manuals would be produced in bounded carbon fibre & fluid forms (aka documents) but instead should only exist as knitted narrative strings with or with virtual knots (aka verbal macrame).

Anyhoo... thanks for the visit to little Perth in the downunder mild west.

In closing did you know that "Perth" is only Rune in Viking lore that has places named after it? It is on all accounts and according to Ralph Blum, the Rune of "Initiation", and involves "Something Hidden" and "A Secret Matter". Just a random thought.

Come back down again sometime.

Pad Bennett

Brilliant summary Dave as to the nature of ICT (but how depressing) - sadly you frequently have hostility to change and a degree of ineptness within inhouse ICT on the one hand a aggressive manipulation and a type of social thought control engineering by product and "thought" consultants who prey on organisations gullibility (and too frequently their incapability to manage at the big picture level).

But it's the data warehouse one that I am particularly interested in. While many will correctly worry about the fact that data errors can creep into a data warehouse and of course (see Pier Paolo's entries) incorrect assumptions about what is being modelled, A key point at a more theoretical point level that many people miss is that a data warehouse fully encompasses the closed world assumption. Now one can formally show that the closed world assumption is an instance of non-monotonic reasoning. The idea behind that is that conclusions can change by the addition of premises, but the view that "if it is not in the data warehouse then it can't be true" is an instance of classical logic and blatantly fails to recognise the closed world assumption behind the data inside the data warehouse. Its such a stupid thing to say I despair at the thought that people would be taken it by it.

"I was I freely admit a bit disruptive"

We wouldn't have expected anything less!

I think I was probably a bit disruptive myself a couple of days ago when I stood up at a conference and asked "who died and put the IT people in charge of what we can and can't do, anyway?"

In all sincerity: I see no reason for them to be the gatekeepers of yes, and it's about time the users stood up and demanded that IT returns to the role of service department.

As a side note, I am interested in your reference to new wine and old wineskins - it seems to be a bit of a recurring theme. I used it myself in relation to a different matter, yesterday, and will probably be posting on it later today.

I did not attend the ICT conference in Perth but did meet Dave Snowden at a Curtin Uni function before he left (he was still on full charge but wilting a tad by 8:00pm!).

I started in IT in the mid-1970's (as a punched card carrying student) and left in the late 1999's due to boredom and the emerging (non)challenges of connecting photocopies to the LAN!

After years of database evolution from hierarchical, network and finally relational (through a phase of pseudo-relational) -- and network development from green-screens linked by controllers on phone lines, through to LANs, WANs and finally the internet, I went looking for planning and policy work -- and never got back to the 'fair'.

The total control-culture being spoken of here (above/below) was always there and part of the major battle ground at the time was the emergence of PC based network computing from the (most often) IBM based mainframe computer room. The wars of Culloden could not have been worse (for change agents).

In any case, the culture has most likely lost its fizz because the free radicals left a decade ago. What's left is 'administrative-itis' in most cases in a typical in-house/out-house computer service.

So, yes, we'll all be Runed said Hanrahan before the ICT culture is put out!

By the way, ICT now stands for "I Can't Think" -- remember the old IBM CEO had a "THINK" sign stuck on his desk for a reason.

Oh, I also did some Futures studies while running wild and naked through planning and policy lands. It won't solve the age old fight between records, librarians, archivists and IT as to who owns (read controls) what -- but history does tend to repeat itself: my view is it's soon back to the 'mainframe' model with Microsoft's Cloud approach via the internet coming over the horizon any time soon (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/technology/23soft.html) . Who'll deliver to the thin client? The local Telco or even router company -- invest in your local Teloc and/or CISCO! And at that scale you might get some real IT experts back into the business of running professional data/information services to the business functions (as per water & power etc). Encryption is the key.

My 2-cents worth from Perth!

I did have a question that I couldn;t fit into question time ... it evolves out of the Best Practice Manual debate ...

If you could not wrest the Best Practice Manual from corporate shelves due to separation anxiety would you instead advocate two companion manuals?? :
1 A "Worst Practice Manual" which could be compiled around the watercooler, tea trolley or smoking tree; and/or/maybe
2 An "Odd Practice Manual" which could be a repository for weird, surprising or curious practices that pop up from time to time and often have weak signals embedded in them.

Risky strategy, I think ... Chris Locke, one of the authors of the book The Cluetrain Manifesto, wrote another book several years later that foresaw quite clearly the rise of (attempts at) using "social media" (read new-fangled ICT ;-) for business marketing.

Few organizations get the new-fangled participative, interactive, social media-based marketing (more-or-less) "right", perhaps in good measure because it often goes against what would be considered "best practices" in marketing.

This, of course, is one of the areas in the business use of ICT that has occupied much discussion over the past two or three years. The book he wrote contains many insightful perspectives and practical recommendations. However ...

Locke's book ? A dismal flop, quickly remaindered, I think you can obtain used copies on Amazon for $0.01 if I recall correctly.

He made the fatal error of giving it a controversial title ... "Gonzo Marketing- Winning Through Worst Practices", a tongue-in-cheek swipe swipe at standardized marketing practices.

It's quite a good book actually, in my opinion.

Glad to see you are on your usual fine form.
I think "exposing the brutal reality of the customer experience" would make a fine strapline for Cognitive Edge :-D

Concerning the "If it is not in the data warehouse then it can't be true": in the world of psychotherapy we have a saying "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

Two quick thanks to russell & jon for quick rejoins:

Thanks Russell for the "We'll all be Runed" quip ... might be a good title for a short piece, I've been working on. Remember that Runes emerged as a primitive knowledge management system when sticks and stones were the handy tools to share and pass on collected wisdom (similar to tarot, cave-painting and i-ching in other parts of the old planet. These ancient Oracles have been supplanted by new fangled wizz bangery ... but methinks we haven't actually wised-up yet.

Thanks also to Jon for the good book tip ... I vaguely remember scanning it cos of the Cluetrain link ... but will go back to it on Jon's recommendation.

The Best-Worst-Odd Manual-Metaframe suggestion is indeed Risky ... which from experience opens a more interesting Return-potential range than a no/low risk strategy. Perhaps useful in the early Safe-Fail dialogue-diagnosis-development stage.

Yet the Best-Worst-Odd combination is more about experiments in triangulation of thought away from the black-white linear debate. It adds the Odd part to Best-Worst line because it is the Odd moments rather than the Eureka moments that catch the scientists eager eye for discovery (thanks Einstein or Asimov ... can;t remember which).

Which leads and links me to something Dave posited at the Curtin gig later in the day. His cool software Sensemaker is experimenting with alternative index forms, has started with triangles and is looking for other fertile forms.

Dave : beware the Mobius Loop ...you may end up with folk chasing their backsides ... it helped Ford revolutionise the conveyor belt driven production line but may get lost in translation at 3+dimensional space required for complex system observations.

Instead look to quantum geometry and the stuff it yields ... a good starting space is Mark White's amazing piece on the subject : http://www.codefun.com/Geometry_quantum.htm
I've created a bunch of shapes myself over the last three decades and find the one that links closest to the untwisted DNA replicator gives the most interesting results in the practical insight arena.

So thanks all.