The Obvious?

Telegraph CIO on swapping Google in for Microsoft

Paul Cheesbrough, a former colleague from the BC, has taken the leap with the comment that:

"The CEO’s challenge to IT was to stop being a beat-up group."

Lets hope he proves an inspiring example!

CIO

Tickles goes walkies .....

Best practice?

Michael Walsh just sent me the following list gleaned from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual Section 11 General Interference with Organisations and Production"

(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Job going at Going Solo

My friend Stephanie Booth is hiring:

Going Solo is looking for an enthusiastic salesperson to negotiate and finalise sponsorship deals. After a very successful first event in Lausanne, Switzerland, the conference is taking place again in Leeds, UK, on September 12th. There are plans to produce the event elsewhere in Europe and in the US.

I reckon she'd be great to work for!

Faith in human nature ... and iPhones

I have been making such a fuss about the loss of my iPhone and my inability to pick up one of the new ones yesterday that my very good friend Geoff Jones took pity and sent me his 2G iPhone in the post. It arrived this morning, recorded delivery, wrapped in foam in a small wooden box.

I have to confess to having had a lump in my throat as I unwrapped it.

iPhone 3G Launch

I am watching leo Laporte do 24 hours of coverage as the 3G iPhone launches in various timezones around the world. Not even half way yet and he is looking fresh as a daisy!

I'm also looking forward to the reports from my mates at Sleepydog who have launched a life blogging app for the iPhone called LifeCast. They are going to be sharing video and images from various UK iPhone outlets and aggregating content on rezpondr.

National Secular Society

I just joined because their vision seemed worth standing up for:

We want a society:

In which those who have no religious beliefs do not suffer discrimination or disadvantage as a result. We want to ensure that religion is not allowed to dominate those areas of society that we all have to share – education, health care, social services and the political arena. We think religious views should be accorded only the respect they earn, not what they simply demand.

Where free expression is recognised and valued as the very bedrock of a democracy, and where it is vigorously protected.

Where people are allowed to make up their own minds and allowed to freely change their beliefs or abandon them if they want to.

In which education is objective and free from ideological manipulation. We want our education system to be secular, so that children can make up their own minds about what they believe. ‘Faith schools’ have no part in such a system.

In which human rights are paramount and can never be sidelined by religious demands.

With a clear separation of church and state so that no religion or denomination receives special privileges.

On the death on an iPhone

My iPhone is dead. It is official. Even an Apple Genius couldn't revive it after the water damage it suffered during a downpour on my walk the other night.

The reason I am posting about it is that it is more than annoying - it is also sad. This thing has been a constant companion and almost like an umbilical with its ubiquitous connection to my family, business, and social networks online. It has entertained me in endless airport queues and told me where I was when I hadn't a clue. I have played with it constantly enjoying the smooth, pebble like sensation as I rolled it in my hands almost as if it were worry beads.

It has been an efficient, aesthetic and emotional delight since I first turned it on and now it lies there without a pulse.

Audible

I am a big fan of Audible and have been for years since I got to meet their founder, Donald R. Katz, many moons ago at MIT. I listen to audio books all the time on my iPhone and find it a great way to squeeze new books into otherwise "dead" time.

I have wanted to publish my current listening on my blog for some time and so have just become an Audbile Associate and now include a link in my sidebar, below the Amazon Associates one, where you can see, and buy, my current listening.

Scrobbling again

One of the many reasons I love my iPhone

the iPhone wins because it both keeps us in the flow and keeps us loosely connected. Perhaps a little like adding a “lurking” factor…. iPhone in hand I have a better sense of what my friends and colleagues are doing.. I am more connected without actually thinking about it or working at it.

Stuart Henshall

And why this matters:

‘We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing. Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.’

Douglas Adams via a humungous post from David Smith

Congratulations to School of Everything

School of Everything, on whose advisory board I sit, have won a New Statesman New Media Award.

Well done to a great team with a great idea.

Niall Cook's given birth ...

.... to a book!

Congrats Niall.

2gether08

I am really looking forward to tomorrow's first ever 2gether, "A festival of ideas, popular technologies and progress", in London. Steve Moore has pulled together a really interesting bunch of people and I am going to have the fun of hosting a couple of the sessions - JP Rangaswami on Cluetrain + 10 and Julian Baggini on "a journey into the English mind".

Books, books, books

Picking up on my earlier post about the web increasing the amount and quality of my book reading I thought I would point to some of the tools I use to bring this about.

Firstly I use Delicious Library for the Mac to keep track of the books i actually have on my shelves at any time to help find them quickly and also to facilitate selling those I don't want to keep second hand at Amazon.

Secondly I use Librarything to keep a record of all books I have read, both good and bad, since starting to use the system. I also rate my books on Librarything and will some time use it to generate recommended reading lists etc. I can also see what friends are reading, read their reviews, connect with other people I don't know yet who are reading the book I am and all sorts of other wonderful web 2.0 goodness.

Lastly I have just started playing with bkkeepr, thanks to a comment from Adrian, which lets me keep track of where I am in my current book and add online notes through Twitter.

As a last note the "Current Reading" link on my RH sidebar links through to an Amazon associates link which means that if any of you click that link and buy the book I get a small percentage of the sale. This earns me enough to get a free book once a quarter or so.

I have reproduced my recent favourites below so feel free to click through, expand your reading, and fund mine at the same time!

Skcollob Koob

I’m less likely to read print lately because I can’t tag, bookmark, and share the stories. Info gathering has become a social process for me

Leo Laporte

Book bollocks

I read more and better books now than ever before thanks to the web. What I don't read is Nicholas Carr!

The mighty pen-pal

"What I’d like to see is a pen pal web site designed to end war. The idea would be to connect citizens in different countries at such a high rate it would be politically impossible for the two countries to start a war.

You might support your government in a war against a country full of people you don’t know. But would you support a war that has a good chance of killing your e-mail friend Phlubanakawahaha and his entire family? There is some theoretical level of citizen-to-citizen contact that makes war between two countries virtually impossible."

Scott Adams quoted in a great post from Virtual Economics

The Four Principles Of Social Computing In Business

A comment from Andrew MacAfee that it is not management that slows Enterprise 2.0 adoption but users reminded me of the need to do anything to help them find their feet and gain confidence and that made me think of the power of Open Space whose Four Principles could easily be applicable to social computing in business:

Whoever comes are the right people - this is meant to alert the participants to the fact that whoever attends a session is "right" simply because they care to be there.

Whatever happens is the only thing that could have - this is meant to tell the attendees to pay attention to what is going on at the moment, instead of worrying about what could possibly be.

Whenever it starts is the right time - clarifies that there is no given schedule or structure and emphasises creativity and innovation.

When it's over, it's over - to tell the participants not to waste time, but move on to something else when the fruitful discussion is over.

source Wikipedia

As those of you who have experienced the power of Open Space will know these are not irresponsible laissez faire but tough principles that unlock all sorts of magic that would never happen in more directed environments.

Related posts:
<A serious point about levity.
A word or two on love
Stuff
Don't just do something stand there
Why it is the "social" in "social computing" that matters
My favourite Drucker quote ...
The perils of making things easy
We get the world we deserve
Is it just technology?
Are we mad?
The Boss Delusion
Trust

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Mixed blessing

The raised profile of E.2.0 means you have to ask bigger, uglier people for permission.

From Geek & Poke via Ross

A humanizing influence

Someone once asked me what my motivation in getting involved in social computing for business was and I replied that if I had humanized the workplace just a little bit I would be satisfied.

A presentation from Richard Dennison of BT at a BCS event brilliantly conveyed the bottom line business benefits of allowing people to open up and connect using social tools and he reminded me yet again of the absurdity that the workplace ever became somewhere where people had to leave their real selves at home and weren't encouraged to think and engage at an emotional level with their organizations or their work.

I recently watched Lord Levy talking on the television about his career and it was all about people, relationships and conversations and yet some people still express concern about the word social being inappropriate in the boardroom. I don't disagree that it provokes a reaction but to avoid using such language simply out of fear of upsetting someone is disingenuous. What is important about these technologies is social. Not in any political or revolutionary sense but in the sense of being about people and connections between people.

As Richard said last night we are simply getting back something we have lost and I replied by suggesting that we are simply trying to make it easier for something that desparately wants to happen to happen and a lot of the work easing back some of the concerns and fears of what has sadly now become unfamiliar.

Get well Doc

My good friend Doc Searls is in hospital with pancreatitis at the moment but even that can't stop him blogging!

Get well soon Doc.

Times they are a changing

In the last three hours none of my family have watched a television and yet:

The kids watched video of themselves when they were younger using Front Row streamed off my media server to their iBook.

We all watched an EyeTV recording of Dr Who on the big iMac

My wife then watched Casualty on the iMac using the BBC's iPlayer

I watched leo Laporte's twitlive.tv streamed via Stickam from his personal studio in California

And all of this was what is now typical behaviour on a typical day.

Most companies who try to do Enterprise 2.0 will fail

And it will be for these reasons in no particular order:

1. They think it is about technology.

2. They aren't prepared to deal with the friction that allowing their staff to connect generates.

3. They will assimilate it into business as usual.

4. They will try to do it in a way that "maximizes business effectiveness" without realizing that it calls for a radical shift in what is seen as effective.

5. They will grind down their early adopters until they give up.

6. They will get fleeced by the IT industry for over engineered, under delivering solutions, think that Enterprise 2.0 failed to live up to its promise and move on to the next fad.

7. Lack of patience

8. It is not companies who do Enterprise 2.0 it is individuals.

Note to self

Many TWiT's are silly ...

.... and I love them nonetheless but last week's was serious and a cracker. Featuring Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine it dealt with all sorts of interesting copyright and other legal issues - fascinating.

Web 2.0 Strategies

I am really looking forward to chairing this event next week not least because there are a load of people speaking who I have wanted to meet for ages!

Bugger Enterprise 2.0 ....

... this is technology that makes me really happy.

Thanks to Geoff for finding EveryTrail that takes my GPS track from my Garmin, connects to my Flickr photos and with a few clicks of the mouse allows me to post this trip report on my blog.

Bliss!

Ogwen Cottage to Nant Peris - Widget powered by: EveryTrail

Don't you just love PR folks?

From an e-mail I received today:

"To present Alfa Romeo's new small sports car, the MiTo, we've decided to invite a team of international bloggers and entrepreneurs who are outstanding figures for their intelligent and innovative use of social media. We're particularly impressed with the excellent work you've been doing in these years with traditional and new media.

That's why we'd be extremely pleased if you would like to take part in the presentation of the MiTo. It will take place in Varano, Italy on July 9th and 10th, 2008; your visit would of course be at our expense, including your travel arrangements.

And no, I don't intend to respond!