There are some impressive numbers being bandied about in the recent announcement that RBS is the first bank to sign up for Facebook at Work, the social network's fledgeling business offering. By the end of March they aim to have the service available to 30,000 users, and all 100,000 employees will be "using the tool" by … Continue reading No need for training
Category: Themes
Whenever something goes wrong in the world of tech, there's a knee-jerk reaction that often ends up making things distinctly worse. Post traumatic tech disorder. We're seeing it at the moment in the aftermath of the Talk Talk debacle. Calls for cross-industry regulation to ensure that this sort of thing will never happen again. In general … Continue reading Post traumatic tech disorder
I have developed two coping strategies for dealing with Big Data vendors that I thought worth sharing. The first is a simple technique. When bombarded with marketing slop about how big data is going to change the world in general and your industry in particular, ask them to present the data that allows them to … Continue reading Coping strategies
We now have a date in the diary for the first Free Range Gathering - Thursday 4th February 2016. Email me if you're interested in coming along and I can keep you posted to location etc. You can also join the Free Rangers LinkedIn group here. I'm bouncing the idea around of a get together for people … Continue reading Free Range Gathering
All weekend the question "A SQL injection attack, in 2015?" has been going around my head. If you don't understand why, you must have missed the news that UK Telco TalkTalk had suffered a major theft of data from what it appears were its woefully inadequate systems. If you don't understand "SQL injection attack" I'm increasingly … Continue reading Crying wolf
Think about the things that you truly value in your life. Your family, your friends. Your experiences. The things that make you feel alive. How many of those things do you quantify? My hunch is that the answer is probably none of them, for most people. Why, then, in our organisations and institutions have we … Continue reading The value of anything
In my Cloud-based, multiple device world of work, skipping freely from one software as a service to another, it's sometimes difficult to remember that most people's working life simply isn't like this. In the past seven days I've had conversations with people from two organisations where the default position for access to online services (including … Continue reading Issues of trust, competence and a nailgun
I originally published this in early September when I was still technically working at GDS. At the time I was asked to edit it as it was thought that it was "too political". Rather than edit, I withdrew it. I'm no longer there, so thought it worth republishing... I'm just coming to the end of a … Continue reading Public sector
There are few things in the tech industry these days as pervasive as the Gartner Hype Cycle. And I'm done with it. Why? Why done with something that through its commercial success and ubiquity has obviously proved its utility? Because I think it perpetuates the "sudden invention" myth that stymies so many people from thinking … Continue reading I’m done with the Hype Cycle
I found myself chatting to a few folk about the IBM Watson artificial intelligence thing at a lovely event organised by Slalom Consulting. Being in that mild state of belligerence that only a couple of glasses of a nice red can give, I was a bit dismissive of the undoubted achievement that the Watson team had … Continue reading Britain’s Got Robots
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