I've got a rough and ready rule for assessing whether a website is kosher or not. Is there an easily accessible "About" page. It's not infallible, but if that basic test isn't passed I get a bit suspicious. At yesterday's Spark the Change conference there was a presentation from a representative from the US-based "platform … Continue reading Accountability
Category: Hobby horses
One from Adam one the Twitters... what on earth are people thinking of when they describe a computer programmer as a "ninja"? A software developer who wears pyjamas and a facemask? One who you barely ever see? One who never says anything to anyone? Or, as Adam puts it for "Agile Ninja Coder", one who's dressed … Continue reading Crap Tech Metaphors 12: Ninja Coder
Last week I had the pleasure of spending some time with IT Directors and CIOs from a broad spectrum of UK organisations on board Aurora for the Spring 2014 IT Directors' Forum. It's the second of these events that I've attended, and it was noticeable this time around that in comparison to two years … Continue reading Relative value
So news arrived this morning that one of Ukip's prominent non-white supporters, Sanya-Jeet Thandi, is leaving the party because "they are playing the race card". Putting aside for a moment what terrible political judgement Ms Thandi must have to have signed up in the first place (apparently it was their economic liberalism that attracted her, … Continue reading I’m not a racist, but…
One of the things that seems to be common amongst people working in start ups is the idea of "the exit". In the days before this current wave of digital technology transformation, to set up a company you needed some serious capital. To manufacture things you needed factories and hardware. To provide some sort of service you … Continue reading Rushing towards the exits
There is a piece that Adrian Bridgewater has published on Computer Weekly about collaboration tools that's got me seriously concerned about the ability for enterprise software to do anything outside of the realm of Taylorist scientific management. Adrian's article looks at trends in the collaboration space that seem to be moving from focusing on humans … Continue reading Reverting to process
There's one of my many potted theories that I've recounted to a few folks over the past couple of weeks that I thought worth retelling here. It's basically a way to keep your head up when confronted by the madness of corporate bureaucracy... There is a whole body of knowledge in the world of Sociology known … Continue reading Everything has a reason
The world of customer engagement is a funny, almost bi-polar place. On the one hand it should be totally people-centric, as it's the place where companies converse with their customers. Except it's in many cases completely industrial - a world of de-skilled white collar work where the production line, six-sigma approaches of manufacturing have been deployed … Continue reading Customer engagement bypass
I'm indebted to @DannyGroner from Shutterstock for pointing this one out, and particularly because it's been nagging at me for months. It's a visual metaphor, and it's the use of pictures of bit "coins" to illustrate stories about Bitcoin. Because metal coins are about as far away as you can get from what Bitcoin … Continue reading Crap tech industry (visual) metaphors: 11 Bitcoins
After my recent ramblings about the lack of diversity of thought within the tech industry, co-incidentally my former Microsoft colleague Ben Nunney is just in the process of launching a new campaigning body called ethicalco.de. The, particularly internetty, world of tech is a bit of a dichotomous mess. On the one hand you have Edward … Continue reading Diversity in tech
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