Author Archives: Mark

Techno Tips Number 1

Well it’s Christmas and it’s Hanukkah so I suspect that lots of you got exciting new presents, techno presents. So to round things up here are some helpful hints and tips.

1. MacBook Touch Pads

The latest MacBook touch pads support multitouch so you can use more than one finger at a time. You can find find a helpful overview here.

But they also work with Google. You can raise the PageRank of a page on Google by using a thumbs up gesture, similarly thumbs down will lower the PageRank. This only works if you are logged into Google and using their new social search rank feature.

2. iPhone

The iPhone 3G has GPS and a tilt sensor. This means that it will automatically flip the screen direction when you cross the equator going from northern hemisphere to southern or vice versa. This only works if it is on when you cross the line so it will not work on planes.

3. Vista

Vista has a feature called SuperFetch. This speeds up the loading of frequently used programs over time by learning those applications you most commonly use. This is very handy but what if you don’t use the same applications day in and day out? Well you can then tell Vista to forget things sooner. Just create a text file in your ‘Documents” folder called <name>DohDohDoh.txt where <name> is your name, and in that file just put one line “ForgetItFaster=TRUE”

“Should” Should be Banned

Why would my Vista machine not connect to my wireless network? At first I thought that it was down to a clash with the router. When I changed the security settings it seemed to work but then it just randomly stopped connecting.

The symptom was always the same, it could see the access point and if I hit the laptop enough times it would kind of connect locally but would claim it could not see the Internet. The little pop up in the bottom right hand corner would say “Access: Local, Limited” or something of the sort.

I tried new drivers – no use, new access point – no use, new LAN card – no use.

I had given up hope until I tried a beta  test Vista laptop on our work public wifi connection and had the same problem. At home I could run cables but at work we have to get it to work.

After much Google-fu the answer turns out to be that Microsoft read “Should” as “Must” in a standard.

It has to do with how Vista responds to DHCP. The gory details are that Vista expects the world to behave one way and a lot of access point vendors decide to behave a different way. Net result, you get limited access from Vista via wireless.

There is a fix which involves editing the Registry.

Or you can run this utility.

As it changes the Registry you need to run it as Administrator. Right-click on application and chose “Run as Administrator” and then allow the next UAC dialogue.

I have tried it on two machines and it has resolved the problem. So if you have a Vista machine and use wireless then I strongly urge you to run it. Though if it destroys your machine and/or your planet I cannot be held responsible, for anything, ever.

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Fight the gap

I spent Wednesday at Microsoft as part of the launch of e-skills Big Ambition initiative which aims to increase the number of girls in ICT.

The figures are depressing, whilst the number of women studying technical subjects has increased in recent years, the number of women studying ICT has fallen and it continues to fall.

What is it about my world that makes it so unattractive to women?

We had some great speakers on Wednesday who made it plain that it was possible for women to succeed in IT, have a great job and manage to achieve a winning work/life balance. The audience of 170 13~14 year old girls were obviously inspired by what they had heard as only 33% said they would consider a career in ICT at the start of the day but that had risen to 81% by the end of the day.

Part of the day was a workshop where the girls came up with new ICT product ideas which they presented to a panel of judges, of which I was one. The ideas were fun, well thought through and there was a real sense of excitement about the whole process.

So how do we preserve that sense of excitement and engagement? How do we make our world visibly appealing to a wide range of people?

Why is ICT such a monoculture? Not just in terms of gender or ethnicity but mindset as well. People will talk about how it attracts people into maths, physics, logic hence it is mainly a world of inward focused people whose minds run on linear paths.

But that strikes me as a description, not an explanation. In ICT we spend much of our lives working with people, not machines. Trying to work out what it is that people want to do. Testing our assumptions with them. Training them how to use the systems. The machine bit, the “logical” bit is the easy part, ICT is not an exercise in hermeticism, it’s about making things happen for people.

The more we can do to encourage a broad swathe of people into the profession the better. I am sure that one of the reasons why so many corporate systems are ugly, inefficient and hard to use is that we have allowed ICT to become a world of stereotypes.

It’s down to all of us in the profession to challenge those stereotypes and encourage diversity. Not for moral reasons, though those are important, but because else we will simply be unable to deliver the critical systems which people need from us.

Oh and someone asked me about the “dream job” line on the Big Ambition website. My dream job? IT obviously 🙂

What would monkey C do?

Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks? His reply was “Because that’s where the money is”.

When I look at some web initiatives I find myself asking is this a Willie Sutton initiative? That is, are we targetting a mass market? A space where visitors will naturally congregate. Or are we blazing a new trail?

It seems obvious that expectations about visitor numbers, levels of engagement, impact of an initiative need to reflect where in the webcology we are positioning ourselves so why then do I still have discussions with people who expect Facebook levels of traffic for an initiative which is either of specific importance but limited wider attraction or so far off the beaten track as to be invisible?

In the former case, you may well get very intense and active participants as it can be something which the target audience feel passionate about but if the business case said you would get 1000000 hits a day then you are stuffed if you only get 100 people a day visiting the site, even if they are committed users who find it really important and are very vocal supporters of the engagement.

So the key conversation to have is right at the very start. Because while it may be tricky at times to transition a niche site into the mainstream, it is much easier than promising to rule the mainstream and only achieving niche.

An Adventure of Keats and Chapman

I inflicted this on staff in my Department so now it’s your chance, oh Internet.

A virtual prize for the right answer and the first person to name the writer I have so poorly pastiched.

Keats and Chapman had travelled to the Lakes in search of peace and the possibility of artistic inspiration, at least that was Keats’ idea. However the weather had been terrible and the inn where they were staying was notable only for its leaking roof and the vileness of its beer.

The two friends had grown irritable and it seemed that the trip would produce nothing but bad feelings and ill temper. Then one morning the sun came out and the sky was cloudfree for the first time all week. Keats and Chapman set out into the morning for an early walk.

They walked to the nearest lake where they found a rowing boat in the care of a local child. Negotiating feverishly Keats managed to secure the hire of the boat and he and Chapman set out across the water. With only a single pair of oars Chapman found himself doing the rowing. Keats sat in the prow of the boat and watched his friend’s exertions with interest, calling out pieces of advice from time to time and making a range of comments on Chapman’s style of rowing.

‘Can you not row any faster?’ said Keats.

Chapman complained that the boat was heavy, indeed very heavy.

Keats began to look about the boat and rummaging in the bottom of the boat he found a large household brick. Looking around he picked it up and threw it into the lake where it instantly sank.

Chapman was still having trouble with the boat and it soon became apparent that water was leaking into the boat and weighing it down. The flow of water increased and it was with some desperation that the two friends tried to get the boat to shore. The flow of water was such that it was very hard to steer the boat and Chapman’s efforts at rowing seemed doomed to failure. But with one final effort they made land.

Standing on the shore, panting heavily. Keats looked down at the waterlogged boat and with a supreme effort said ‘As ye seep so shall ye row.’

The question is did the waterlevel of the lake go up, down or remain the same after Keats threw the brick in? And why?

Breaking rocks

There was an interesting post on Slashdot this week about someone who went to load their official Cisco VPN client CD only to find that it was in fact a bootleg music disc. These things happen,  suppliers outsource to third parties who subcontract to others who find slack in someone else’s JIT delivery system.

Then I read this piece and cogs slowly, rustily start turning in my mind.

Complexity adds risk. If I have just a single rock then my risks are limited, the rock basically sits there. I could lose it or drop it or trip over it or break it but that’s about it. If I have two rocks then not only have I now doubled the number of those risks but I gain new ones as well – one of the rocks could fall off the other for example or I could lose one rock behind the other.

So complexity breeds risk, so far so obvious. Companies outsource and there is now an added creator of risk to mispress CDs, government buys from the cheapest supplier and there is now an added creator of risk to mis-sell hooky gear, you can name your own examples.

We work to try and mitigate these supply or delivery chain risks but there are two additional sources of complexity which we do not always consider.

The first is that risk mitigation can itself be a source of risk. Recent events in the financial world are a classic example of this. Some people thought that they had cracked the secret of achieving high returns without high risks. IT supports the creation of complex and often opaque financial risk management tools which make Black-Scholes seem like basic addition. Combine this with automated trading engines and we create a vast cybernetic plate-spinning engine which works until the first plate starts wobbling.

Paul Samuelson said “Business is the management of risk”, for me this means that unless you are willing to manage your risks then you should not be in business. And management does not mean magical thinking.

The second source of emergent risk arises out of the complexity of individual systems. Think for an instance about how you are reading this piece. You are using a computer whose hardware you trust, whose operating system you trust, a browser you trust, a network connection you trust, a network protocol you trust, a website you trust, a web server you trust, web server hardware you trust, and network hardware you trust.

That’s a lot of trust isn’t it?

You’re quite sure you want to come in?… Very well

Jeremy Gould’s very interesting exploration of social media adoption has just reached part 5 – Experiment.

I am very keen on experimentation, my whole vague concept of entrepreneurial government relies on experimentation.

The problem is that my world is deeply averse to anything which might lead to blame or which has any connection to the concept of “risk”. Problematic when you are experimenting!

So some hints on how to get your experiment through the dread CIO challenge, which is like Dragon’s Den only with real dragons, and they have guns, and ADH*bang!*

Security

What, if any, data do you propose to collect or share? Who owns it? Is it personal data either in DPA terms or Hannigan? How valuable is it? If we lost it which page would it appear on in the paper? If your proposed host is offshore then are there any implications? Do you even know where the site will be hosted?

Procurement

How do you propose buying the service? Is it below single tender level? Is it on a framework? Whose? Why this company? SME? How is the service priced? What does it look like if we have 100 users, 1,000, 1,000,000?  How much is the fish!? How much is the chips!? Does the fish have chips!

Audience

Who is the audience for this site? Does the site need to be accessible? (the default answer is always yes) Multilingual? Global? Moderated? Will they expect a reply?

Technology

Is it new tech? Have we or someone we know used it before? Is it tech trial or a product trial? Are we locked in if we use it? How much training is needed to use it? To support it?

Purpose

The most important question of all – “What does success look like?” If you cannot answer that then give up now. I am always depressed at the number of events/projects I attend where people find that question hard to answer.

This list is not exhaustive and nor am I trying to put people off experimenting. We need to try and yes, we need sometimes to fail, if we are to learn. But I am well aware of my own failings around bright shiny baubles to recognise the need for an appropriate degree of rigour.

And now to get back to my own experimenting. Now, where did I leave that account manager?…

Burn Prate

I was talking to someone last night about reputational capital. Reputational capital represents the level of trust or credence a person possesses. It’s a common feature in life – the football manager who is trusted because they have won a cup previously, a politician who has solved a crisis, a detective who has cracked a case all possess reputational capital which they spend buying our trust, our agreement, our complicity.

Reputational capital is hard to earn and easy to dissipate. Those of us who are service providers will know all too well the way in which years of exemplary service count for little if email goes down for 10 minutes.

Reputational capital is part of being a leader, we will buy charisma, vision and energy for a while but at the end we look for delivery, real or spun. There are plenty whose reputational capital has been built on the labours of others and the sheer good fortune of being in the right place at the right time. Such people try desperately to eke out their reputational capital just long enough to get away with it.

Change programmes can burn through reputational capital at a ferocious rate. We all hate change, even if we claim to love it we usually just mean that we don’t mind change when it happens to others or when it is pleasant and we are in control.

Incremental change works both because of the frog boiling effect but also because it keeps the reputational capital pot topped up.

I find myself wondering can I make sure that I do at least one thing each day which adds to my reputational capital? And ensure that I promote it. After all, reputational capital only works if people know your reputation. Which I suppose works both ways …

Tweeting my hat

Just back from Twestival, thanks to Amanda’s persuasion and her great event organization. I could not stay too long due to a previous trip to the dentist but when I left at 7pm it was already looking good. And sorry I missed the Huddle team.

So now, despite previous protestations I am now on Twitter. “But why, man, why?!” I hear you all cry.

Well I forgot one key feature of Twitter, one application which changes everything, the one thing which made me change my mind.

Twitter provides the ability to indulge in instant begrudgery and the immediate production of rambling gibberish. The very cornerstones of my culture!

Long Week Words

The tool shapes the hand.

A posh way of saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.

I am writing this on a Nokia N800, a little internet tablet, kind of like a Linux based iPhone but without the phone bit just wifi, Skype and Gizmo, Firefox and access to a large repository of free software.

The thing I have found most interesting about using such a device is how it shapes my approach to the internet. The internet is no longer something remote, locked away behind a computer that will take ages to boot, but it is now immediate, personal, readable!

I am not a big fan of the ebook concept, it threatens to leave the past mutable and the present controlled, but as I type these words and my brain nods sagely I can feel my paws twitch as they dream of an infinite library.