So, right, imagine that you've got a padlock. And imagine that that padlock has got two keyholes, and can only be unlocked if both keys are used. But the key to lock the padlock is different to the key that is used to unlock the padlock, and whilst you are the only person who has … Continue reading Crap tech industry metaphors: 13 Public & Private Keys
Category: Hobby horses
In 1993, in the spring of my final year at university, I stood for election to become the President of the Student Union at Loughborough. On election night, with a turn out of around 1,000 votes, I lost by a margin of about seven. I've never stood in a popular ballot since then. I learned … Continue reading Elected
I'm generally not that patriotic. I was born in Northern Ireland in 1970, both of my parents the children of mixed English/Irish background, on one side Catholic on the other Protestant. Before I was three years old Mum and Dad moved back to the South East of England - they'd been in Belfast for a … Continue reading National pride
The dust has had some time to settle now on last week's Nadellagate, and it's left me thinking that the tech industry, and IT in particular, has a deeper issue of lack of a diversity of thought of which gender bias is just a symptom. I'm not one who particularly believes in diversity for diversity's … Continue reading Limited memepools
Yesterday I found myself in a couple of conversations that revolved around what has been a bit of a recurring theme for me - the dangerous downside of measuring things. The first was around the gender inequality evident in the IT industry. My own view is that this is a symptom of a more pervasive … Continue reading Don’t count on it
I'm very lucky to live in the stereotypical leafy South West London suburb of Teddington. Close to the open spaces of Richmond and Bushy Parks, with a thriving local independent shopping centre, great schools and other amenities. The best way to illustrate what sort of a place Teddington is is when I saw dog poo … Continue reading Leading questions
Every so often I search for myself on Google. This is me keeping tabs on my online identity, and not just vanity. Honest.I've noticed recently that at the bottom of the search results (which are mostly about me, which is a big "Yay!" for my integrated social search optimisation strategy of just blathering a lot) … Continue reading The right to not be forgotten
Coadec Executive Director Guy Levin wrote an interesting piece on Wednesday calling for a clearer view from government about positive disruption in the start-up space. Now I'm sure that government needs to have a view and encourage entrepreneurship, but this is a two-way street. There seems to be an almost "autistic" nature of the … Continue reading An ethical code for disruptive startups
"#HR needs to stop reporting and start predicting" - Michael Carty, twitter.com/mjcarty The quote above from Michael on Twitter this morning (you can see the full thing here https://twitter.com/MJCarty/status/493812100138287104) got me thinking. It mostly got me thinking about how I seem to be developing a particular breed of Big Data iconoclasm these days. The reason Michael's … Continue reading Big data: The tyranny of the past
And so the Cabinet reshuffle happens. Farewell "voice of reason" Ken Clarke (although if your idea of "reason" is fag-smoking, Hush Puppy-wearing and jazz-listening, then you need to have a good hard look at yourself). And farewell, too (from the Department for Education) for Michael Gove, architect of some of the most significant changes … Continue reading Changing leaders
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