I fought the law…

Nearly a quarter of a century ago I began on the circuitous path that is my career with a few jobs working for the big accountancy firm KPMG. Back then big accountancy firms were big accountancy firms, but they were beginning their mutation into what they have become today - multidisciplinary professional services providers. Over … Continue reading I fought the law…

Changing habits

The Emotional Change Curve is something of a stock in trade amongst people involved in organizational change management, and a model that I have used extensively over the years. The model and its variants are derived from work by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and plots a series of emotional reacts that people have when confronted by change … Continue reading Changing habits

The unstoppable rise of PRTech

My LEF colleague Dave Aron posted about a fast food drone delivery service a couple of days ago. Having been recently reading James Garvey's takedown of the PR industry The Persuaders, it got me thinking about how there is an increasing breed of technology publicised these days which, for want of a better term, one could call … Continue reading The unstoppable rise of PRTech

The tools of mass creation

My earliest experiences of computers were as them being tools of creativity, and that's framed my use of them ever since. The BBC Micro didn't really do much unless you gave it fairly comprehensive instructions. Sure, they could be used to play pre-bought games, but in the very early days the thing came with a … Continue reading The tools of mass creation

Cinematic Archetypes and achieving AI

There are a few scenes from the movies that have, unwittingly, become the archetypes for technologies of the "future", even though the movies themselves are decades old and the future is still to be equally distributed: Holographic video - the Princess Leah "Help us Obi Wan" projection at the beginning of Star Wars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIFJLMyUwrg Wave … Continue reading Cinematic Archetypes and achieving AI

The remarkably unglobal Internet

And so after a fortnight in flip-flops, it's back to work. A few observations... It's increasingly disconcerting to live in a world without high-speed Internet. The villa where were spent our holiday had broadband glitches for some of the time we were there, and it really brought home how much we rely on reliable connectivity.  … Continue reading The remarkably unglobal Internet

Change leadership

It's all change in Government technology circles. The various changes that have happened at the top of the Government Digital Service and elsewhere in recent days signify something, although I'm not entirely sure what. Derek du Preez makes a good stab of it here. All this change got me thinking. For a while now I've been … Continue reading Change leadership

Further adventures in VR Land

After last week's tinkering with making an interactive digital world out of reality, this week I've had a bit of time looking at how to create 3D models that can be viewed using a Virtual Reality headset. To start off, I've got three potential target VR environments. The cheapest is the Google Cardboard viewer, a … Continue reading Further adventures in VR Land

Creating immersive walkthroughs

360 degree photography is a thing these days. Increasingly you'll see photos on places like Facebook that enable you to pan and zoom around to explore. You can then combine these spherical photos to create clickable "walkthroughs". It's even then possible to view these walkthroughs in a 3D Virtual Reality headset like Google Cardboard or … Continue reading Creating immersive walkthroughs

Where can I use machine learning?

It's a question I'm being asked a fair bit at the moment and for the legal-minded folk I'm working with a great deal at the moment, this is how I respond... Machine Learning is really interesting. It's being applied to all sorts of problems where traditional models of programming have fallen short. It's mostly based … Continue reading Where can I use machine learning?