With the exception of opera, I have had a number of fascinations with songs sung in other languages. There are vast swathes of Brazilian music I adore where the musicians could be singing about the price of frozen peas for all that I know of Portuguese. I have absolutely no idea what Sigur Ros are … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 2014
Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, silly hats and Giorgio Moroder. What's not to like?Random Access Memories is a cracking album. https://open.spotify.com/album/4m2880jivSbbyEGAKfITCa?si=0qoVAqvARHSNCy3xWS1ToA You can see the #51for50 project to date here: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/category/projects/51-for-50/
This week I have learned: only when you really start to get under the covers of how your customers live their lives, you really can get to think about how to provide them with better services.And you also need to understand what those services actually are.Going through a really formal procurement process has been at … Continue reading Weeknote 503: levelling
Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, April 2015. People skills in technology leaders are as important as ever. The abiding memory that I’ll have about this year’s CIO100 judging is how solid people skills were a differentiator for so many of the eventual top 10. What is worrying is how this should still be seen as exceptional … Continue reading CIO Archive: It’s a people thing
Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, April 2015. It's hard to believe that live streaming for the masses was still a novelty as recently as 2015. How quickly things change. I'm part of the disenfranchised majority. But hey, that's enough about the UK's political system. I'm also an Android user, so that's two disenfranchised majorities of which … Continue reading CIO Archive: Up Meerkat
Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, June 2015. Thoughts on how Technology teams should be ahead of a commoditization curve in internal business services. In hindsight I was probably a bit optimistic on how far Technology teams had come on that particular journey. Last week I spent some time running workshops with Market Insight professionals from across … Continue reading CIO Archive: Pioneering
Alt-J's An Awesome Wave is a wonderful, stupidly pretentious album. It made a beautiful counterpoint to the flurry of sick and poo that was living with a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old, four days a week driving them over to Reading to arrive at nursery early in the morning with at least one of us invariably … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 2012
This week I have learned: that we have permission to proceed to the next stage for our transformation project. Numbers and timeframes are the next step.Oh, that I need to find an alternative to calling it a "transformation project". I'm really starting to dislike the term. Answers on a postcard to...I'm increasingly suspicious of organisations … Continue reading Weeknote 502: presenting
Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, June 2015. A longish article to try and explain some of the useful stuff that came out of the Socio-Technical movement of the 1960s and 70s... Matt Ballantine debates the importance of culture change as part of the move to a cloud based operating model for CIOs We are facing uncertainty … Continue reading CIO Archive: Of Clocks and Clouds
Orginally published on CIO.co.uk, July 2015. During lockdown I've been observing that online meetings strip out much of the value of getting people together. Seems it took a tube strike to observe this first time around... This week we saw transport chaos in London with the walkout of London Underground staff causing the most significant … Continue reading CIO Archive: eMeetings, bloody eMeetings
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