Whatever your views on Britain leaving the European Union, the country is certain now to be entering an extended period of negotiation with the EU and its member nations to unpick the UK from its forty-year relationship. In the past few weeks there has been a repeated claim from various government ministers that we shouldn't be … Continue reading Poker face
This week I have learned: - you know you are getting old when Shadow Ministers look like they've just left college. - problems get solved when people come together. Invariably they are created when people work individually. - the mechanics of the new project are a surprisingly complex example of play and integration of skills … Continue reading Weeknote 310: psychopathic guillotines
Next week, along with good chum Chris Weston, I am launching my latest media experiment - a podcast called WB-40. Every week, for 40 minutes (or thereabouts) Chris and I will be exploring a couple of subjects. Next week we start with the themes of Robotics and the Internet of Things. It might be good … Continue reading Announcing: the WB-40 Podcast
I've been recently orbiting again in public sector circles, and it's striking me how much of the work that is the Civil Service is about implementing change. The delivery of new policy, the dramatic changes in funding in the past six years, the forthcoming consultancy jamboree that will be the country's skulking out of the … Continue reading The need for change
This week I have learned: I'm really not going to put up with being told that the reason Brexit won't work is because people who don't support it are talking it down. That's like saying the EU fails because people who didn't like it talked it down. If you honestly think that 37% of the … Continue reading Weeknote 309: Xenophobes
We've got an apple tree at the bottom of our garden. Because I have the gardening abilities of a small pickax, the base of the tree is surrounded by weeds, many of them big and spikey. The lower boughs I can reach. The fruit there is invariably half eaten, by birds, by maggots. I'm convinced … Continue reading Crap tech industry metaphors: 16 low hanging fruit
As I continue to explore themes and topics as part of the research for my book, I'm stumbling across interesting resources that can help individuals and organisations to up their capabilities to play - particularly play of the tinkering variety. This page will be a reference point for them along the way... Creative Toys 130 … Continue reading The Play Book Toybox
This week I have learned: - Silicon Beach was a wonderful opportunity to hang out with some brilliant minds, some new, some known already. - going back somewhere after a period of rapid change can be a bit parallel universey - we like bundles. Consuming unbundled stuff is a cognitive (over) load. Next week: focus … Continue reading Weeknote 308: the beach
My esteemed former colleague Euan Semple published an interesting little video on YouTube yesterday. I think I've seen the "Ambulance Drone" clip before, but through my new-found PRTech lenses, I smelt something of a rat, and called it out. "Spoilsport" said Euan, quite rightly. https://youtu.be/y-rEI4bezWc For the record, Ambulance Drone was a design concept from a … Continue reading Virtually reality
"How do you eat an elephant?" The metaphor is oft repeated in working life, and elephant eating seems to be a stock in trade of the average large organisation. But nobody seems to stop and ask "Why the bloody hell are we eating elephant? Isn't there something a little smaller?" Simplification has become the mantra. … Continue reading Everything is a complex system
