Repeatable, predictable

We love to predict the future. Predicting the future reduces our uncertainty. It reduces ambiguity. And it's often wrong. Predicting the future comes in many forms. There are the seers and guides who issue pronouncements, whether it's that the world will end a week on Friday, or that 2015 will be the year of Wearable Nano … Continue reading Repeatable, predictable

Bring Any Device

About six years ago I started to look at the options to introduce "Bring your own device" thinking into my then employer, the global marketing agency Imagination. It shows how quickly the world moves, because this was just before the BYOD moniker came into fashion and certainly before any of the big technology vendors had … Continue reading Bring Any Device

Technical debt, MVPs and an irritating jingle

A New Year and a new online security scandal - this time involving purveyors of customised greetings cards and irritating advertising jingles, Moonpig.com. Well, I say "new online security scandal" - apparently this one has been around since August 2013 and involves an insecure API which allows just about anyone to post orders on behalf of … Continue reading Technical debt, MVPs and an irritating jingle

Yearnote 2014

Another rollercoaster year, but 2014 was one where it felt, at least towards the second half of the year, like it was beginning to make some sort of sense. Business has started to pick up, and I enter the New Year with a number of things in the pipeline. That's very different from where I … Continue reading Yearnote 2014

Weeknote 225: crimble

Things I have learned this week: - I distinctly prefer working with people in the learning and development world than those in the world of technology - greatness is terribly subjective (and wonderful as a result) - there is a power in maintaining a consistent level of naivety (or maybe nativity...) - diary scheduling is … Continue reading Weeknote 225: crimble

The Top Posts of 2014 – Part 3

In the summer I started to use the LinkedIn publishing service to cross-post things from my own blog onto the business social network. Although the editing tools are a bit ropey, and the reporting non-existent, people seem to be commenting on LinkedIn articles a lot more than on my own site (mostly I guess because I've … Continue reading The Top Posts of 2014 – Part 3

Why do we need phones?

With news this morning about how BT are looking to acquire EE, I've been having conversations with a few people recently about the point of telephones in this day and age. There's an awful lot of assumption and learned behaviour associated with these devices, and the continued existence of telephones (desk-based ones in particular) is today … Continue reading Why do we need phones?

Failing gracefully

The shutdown of airspace across the UK at the end of last week raised an issue that's been bouncing around in my head for a while: that we have long since reached a point where the systems which we have developed, and the interconnections between those systems are too complex for us to understand. From what … Continue reading Failing gracefully

Weeknote 225: the ramp-down

Things I have learned this week: - there's an awful lot of (IT) history on my doorstep - most technology problems aren't the technology - most people problems aren't the technology - the same event run to different audiences can have remarkably different results Next week: the last working week of 2014