>Users on iDesk plc's ISP help desk: 30
>What year is this?
>1999
Geek boyfriend (what other kind would there ever be?) points me in the direction of his old workplace. I apply for a help desk agent job. I know nothing. I cram. I know something. I get the highest score in the entrance exam after a weeks training. I'm the only girl. By this point, I'm starting to wonder if I will always be the only geek girl. I've met other girls who geek, but to not the point of being completely entrenched in the shiny world, almost every move a digital one.
I help users of various ISP's sort their connection problems. I ask them to hold their telephone receiver next to the speakers of the computer and diagnose problems by the sound of the modem. It's still a sound which wrenches a particular feeling from me, of sounds lost, and times past. Evocative. I get customers who hear the female voice, ask to be passed to a 2nd line tech, who promptly pass them straight back to me, after being told their being put through to the 'expert'. They're not, but I'm as good as all the other 1st line techs.
The company has a games room. Nope, not that kind, thought there is a pool table down the hall, a room full of gaming rigs loaded with Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike. Someone throws down the gauntlet. Girls don't play first person shooters (FPS's). Well this one does and she snipes the boys asses all over the maps. The web has changed, people are using it, people are connecting to it, people are using ICQ to chat across it. Now the noise has started, the sheer mass of pages and people creating a digital cacophony of thoughts, opinions and pages posted and then never touched again, the web littered with the detritus of the geeks short attention span.
>Users on the iDesk plc's help desk: 300 or so
>What year is this?
>2001
2001. Team Leader of 15 people at the age of 23. Only in a dot com. So much shine, so much promise, so much enthusiasm and determination. Managing geeks when you are one is so simple, the motivation as simple as ensuring that everyone feels that they contributed to the final decision, that there is a democracy, that you will stand in front of them and take the shit as long as they don't give you any and respect that. Still playing Counter Strike, still kicking ass. Except now voice over IP (VOIP) technology has taken off and everyone has a headset and is talking. Including me. And I'm the only female voice for quite some cable length. And it's an issue. Of course it's an issue. I'm shooting the hell out of 17 year olds and I'm a girl and they.don't.like.it. Quit the game, wondered off to Everquest for a while. Pretty, shiny, but not shiny enough to make me stick with working out the complicated interfaces and mathematics.
Dot.com crash. Make someone 32 years older than me redundant. Take voluntary redundancy myself. Bubble burst and the bright side of tech turns dark. Heart sore. I loved that job more than was entirely sensible, my social life, my love life, my world. But it was so so good when it was good, empowering and confidence building.
>Users in the generic office: Some
>What year is this?
>2003
My friends are geeks. My girlfriends, well some of them are geeks too. So are my boyfriends, no change there then. We still chat on the internet, we still arrange big group holidays on the internet, we still live in the dark ages on the BBS we all use. Internet forums have arrived and gone from badly built difficult to understand mess to intuitive streamlined behemoths. I don't work in tech, but most of my friends do, and all of them are earning at least twice what I am. I can't code, I can't system administrate, I can't do anything quantifiable technical. So time passes and I have ideas and I talk them through with friends when drunk and brave but nothing ever comes from them. I am a girl, I am in admin, I am in my proper place in the world, spending my far better paid boyfriends money and accepting that this is the way the world will be. The fire has gone out because there is nothing there to fan it.
>Users in the admin office: 4 (all women)
>What year is this?
>2008
I've been drafted in to fill a tech post. Except it's really not a tech post, it's an admin post with a bit of techy stuff attached to it. But it's not data entry or copy typing which is what has been dominating the previous god knows how many years and so it's grabbed, and gladly. With it my interest in tech and it's ability comes back. Someone takes a chance on me. Someone understands that whatever I don't know I can learn and damn quick. Someone sees past me and past the job history and understands that I love tech.
I play with GIS and Map Info. I help people with their day to day Word and Excel problems. I fix the printer. Then I start to push the edges and make the mapping better, push it harder, ask what it can really do, how can we really represent and visualise our data. I discover I'm a data geek, among many other kinds of geek and disappearing into a spreadsheet makes me happy. I discover Facebook and it's a one night stand, I discover Twitter and it's a long term relationship. I start to wonder what the tech can do for us, whether they're just tools in the dry sense or whether they're tools for change. I talk to people, I write in here. I start to stick my head above the parapet at work.
I regain everything I lost when the dot com crashed. The #geekjoy and the deep seated belief that tech can change the world only this time is the right time, this time the rest of the world is on board, this time the bubble wont burst and it wont all fall down and this time I can switch into top gear, throw everything I have at it and things will change, magic will happen and the fire will continue to burn.
I love technology. I love geeking. I love connecting and linking and introducing and networking. I am the shyest person you will ever meet, but you wont ever see that except in words written down here. Technology enables me, a little geek girl with big big big ideas, to become the spark that lights other flames, the passion and the drive which gets things done and finished and wrapped and completed. Digital allows me to run on 4 streams at once, process all the data, learn as fast as I've always wanted to, to speak and be heard. It enables me to have an opinion, to be gobby, to test my new found confidence and my old love of all things tech and do something with it, make it tangible, stop talking and start doing.
I want to burn the envelope, screw pushing it. I want to turn the sky red, never mind blue. I want to inspire and enthuse and share the possibilities because the possibilities are endless, they really are, the only limitations here are ourselves, our human capacity to comprehend the sheer scale of the world as it opens up and all geographical barriers fall.
I am passionately, resolutely, irrevocably a geek. If I'm talking tech and digital, don't expect me not to be empassioned, fiery, or enthused. This I love and I make no apologies for it.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
I'm going back to the start (#geekjoy)
Some of you will be too interweb young to know about text adventures, or indeed multi user dungeons, or the history of social media - and I mean the true history of social media, not the history that many think is the history.. I haven't been here from the start, but I've been......around. A digital whore, picking up systems, playing with them and dropping them again, staying with some for long term relationships, Ctrl+C'ing out on others after a brief dalliance on sheets littered with zeroes and ones. This is my #geekstory, tell me yours?
>Users in the college library computer section: zero
>What year is this?
>1993
1993 was the year I first saw a computer. None of my friends had computers. None of my friends were remotely geeky. I was so uncool in school, even the dungeons and dragon players seemed unapproachable, settled in the library with their incomprehensible analogue systems. I went to college and left the uncool behind, somehow, but the curiosity for computers didn't start here. My first interaction with a computer was with a Pentium 286 (I think?) running Windows 3.11, standalone. I learnt how to start software by clicking the .exe and that was it, because all there was was Word and it didn't really fan the flames. It was a box. I could write words on it and they would print out.
Underwhelmed, frankly.
>Users in the Babbage computer labs, ground floor, University of Plymouth: Many
>What year is this?
>1995
Two years. We didn't know then that the speed of development and change would carry on at the same pace, but so much changed in those two years that I got a glimpse, even then on the tour of the university campus, of what the future would look like. And it looked damn fine to a hick from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Somerset, let me tell you. Sparks. Curiosity. Macs before they got colourful or white, still at this point a dull beige. Aesthetically unattractive. But.
Netscape. The beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with something I later learned was a web browser. Pages with grey backgrounds. All black text. No understanding of how to use it, playing, clicking, following the spidersweb across the world. Back then, you had two options. Using a directory, the name of which I can't remember but I think might have been Yahoo, which listed, and yes, I do mean actually physically listed, in lists, every website known to man because there were that few then, or to follow the trail of little blue underlined words.
It felt like falling down the rabbit hole.
I can still remember the feeling. I was absolutely completely consumed with following those links. Disappeared into them for hours, coming out two continents and 7 conversations later with people on the other side of the world, asking them incessant questions, them asking me questions too. Nothing seedy, not yet, the incessant wail of Age/Sex/Location (ASL) hadn't filtered through the ports yet, just an innocence as people tried to find out what it was like to live on the other side of the world from real people who were really, actually, talking back. In real time. Type something, hit enter, there the words appeared for both of you to see. My partner in crime during this time? Another girl, as mesmerised as I. I don't know where she is now, but I hope she still geeks well.
>Users in the Babbage Sun lab, 2nd floor: Less than downstairs
>What year is this?
>1997
Another two years. Email is becoming prevalent but it's definitely not the first thing you ask someone for. Web addresses of companies are making their first debut on buses on the streets of Plymouth. Things are.....emerging from the underground? Was there ever an underground? I don't know. I sat with hackers, geeks and cool kids in a lab for 7 hours a day, playing with the tech, learning to use a command line and getting my head around the lack of windows, the lack of pretty pictures.
I discovered Bulletin Board Systems, chat zones, I crossed the country to meet other geeks, I talked into the small hours about absolutely nothing and I made friends that stayed. Friends who have gone on to change the world. Friends who have stepped off the world and off the grid. Friends who have pushed the boundaries of neurological exploration and disappeared down the rabbit hole too. Friends who own Ferraris and friends who build the games we play. Even, perhaps, friends who hacked the Vatican though I never knew if he was lying. The tale was funny to tell all the same. More importantly, I was in a group of people who understood my incessant curiosity, who tolerated my cross examinations happily and who were all, to the very last man, smarter then me. Because this was a lab full of men and I was the token girl, and this was a situation to become replicated later, many many times.They even danced on podiums next to me to Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold. They lost it next to me on the dancefloor to Bon Jovi and Nine Inch Nails. Geeks. The few. The hardcore. But happy.
To be continued.......
>Users in the college library computer section: zero
>What year is this?
>1993
1993 was the year I first saw a computer. None of my friends had computers. None of my friends were remotely geeky. I was so uncool in school, even the dungeons and dragon players seemed unapproachable, settled in the library with their incomprehensible analogue systems. I went to college and left the uncool behind, somehow, but the curiosity for computers didn't start here. My first interaction with a computer was with a Pentium 286 (I think?) running Windows 3.11, standalone. I learnt how to start software by clicking the .exe and that was it, because all there was was Word and it didn't really fan the flames. It was a box. I could write words on it and they would print out.
Underwhelmed, frankly.
>Users in the Babbage computer labs, ground floor, University of Plymouth: Many
>What year is this?
>1995
Two years. We didn't know then that the speed of development and change would carry on at the same pace, but so much changed in those two years that I got a glimpse, even then on the tour of the university campus, of what the future would look like. And it looked damn fine to a hick from a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Somerset, let me tell you. Sparks. Curiosity. Macs before they got colourful or white, still at this point a dull beige. Aesthetically unattractive. But.
Netscape. The beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with something I later learned was a web browser. Pages with grey backgrounds. All black text. No understanding of how to use it, playing, clicking, following the spidersweb across the world. Back then, you had two options. Using a directory, the name of which I can't remember but I think might have been Yahoo, which listed, and yes, I do mean actually physically listed, in lists, every website known to man because there were that few then, or to follow the trail of little blue underlined words.
It felt like falling down the rabbit hole.
I can still remember the feeling. I was absolutely completely consumed with following those links. Disappeared into them for hours, coming out two continents and 7 conversations later with people on the other side of the world, asking them incessant questions, them asking me questions too. Nothing seedy, not yet, the incessant wail of Age/Sex/Location (ASL) hadn't filtered through the ports yet, just an innocence as people tried to find out what it was like to live on the other side of the world from real people who were really, actually, talking back. In real time. Type something, hit enter, there the words appeared for both of you to see. My partner in crime during this time? Another girl, as mesmerised as I. I don't know where she is now, but I hope she still geeks well.
>Users in the Babbage Sun lab, 2nd floor: Less than downstairs
>What year is this?
>1997
Another two years. Email is becoming prevalent but it's definitely not the first thing you ask someone for. Web addresses of companies are making their first debut on buses on the streets of Plymouth. Things are.....emerging from the underground? Was there ever an underground? I don't know. I sat with hackers, geeks and cool kids in a lab for 7 hours a day, playing with the tech, learning to use a command line and getting my head around the lack of windows, the lack of pretty pictures.
I discovered Bulletin Board Systems, chat zones, I crossed the country to meet other geeks, I talked into the small hours about absolutely nothing and I made friends that stayed. Friends who have gone on to change the world. Friends who have stepped off the world and off the grid. Friends who have pushed the boundaries of neurological exploration and disappeared down the rabbit hole too. Friends who own Ferraris and friends who build the games we play. Even, perhaps, friends who hacked the Vatican though I never knew if he was lying. The tale was funny to tell all the same. More importantly, I was in a group of people who understood my incessant curiosity, who tolerated my cross examinations happily and who were all, to the very last man, smarter then me. Because this was a lab full of men and I was the token girl, and this was a situation to become replicated later, many many times.They even danced on podiums next to me to Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold. They lost it next to me on the dancefloor to Bon Jovi and Nine Inch Nails. Geeks. The few. The hardcore. But happy.
To be continued.......
Monday, 27 September 2010
A digital commitment
I am a digital bunny but I do hereby declare:
Digital capability should not be restricted to those lucky enough to be on the end of an unbundled exchange.
Digital speed should not be restricted because of your geographical location.
Digital accessibility should not be an issue. Ever. The software is there, it is our job to ensure it always has something to spell out.
Digital snobbery has no place in this world. Blogeratti, twiteratti - this is about elitism whether you like it or not. Get over yourself.
Digital activism is not militancy.It is not the new army. It is a bunch of geeks giving people a platform to voice their passion, belief and enthusiasm. Engagement doesn't always tell you what you want to hear. Listen. The future is hearing both sides of the story.
Digital worlds can exist next to analogue ones. Analogue tastes better, smells better and the sunshine feels fantastic as you climb out of the freezing cold lake. There will always be a place for it, don't disappear out of it.
Digital friendships are a reality. Treat them with the same respect as you would the friends you meet for coffee/beer. Don't lie, don't disappear without a word, don't assume who the people you are talking to are. Ask them. Engagement isn't just for 'citizens', people need to interact too.
In this world that is changing so fast, sometimes it can feel like ethics are fading away. So this is my commitment to everyone I deal with.
I will play nicely.
- To always explain when you're misusing technical terminology
- To always do the explaining in plain English
- To always be straight about what the tech can and can't do to the best of my knowledge
- To own up if I find out from someone smarter than me that something was possible when I told you it wasn't
- To never use the terms 'reaching out', 'blue sky thinking', 'web n.0', 'thinking outside of the box', or any other vacuous terms unless absolutely necessary and unless they're needed as a bridging tool between tech and non tech.
- To never laugh when you get it wrong
- To never rain all over your enthusiasm
- To explain in clear language why something is absolutely definitely a bad idea technically, but also when I'm saying no because snowflakes falling down an email is just not an option.
- To explain the geek speak in all forms, repeatedly as many times as asked
- To tell you when I genuinely don't know something, but to always try and point you in the direction of someone who does.
- To use the word virus carefully, with due care and attention
- To look away when you're typing your password in front of me in full faith
- To inspire and enthuse others as best I can
- To pass it on, always, and never keep data to myself if it's possible to make it open
- To enable you instead of always showing you how it's done
- To ignore your fear but come back to it another day if that's what's needed
- To pay attention and notice when your eyes are glazing over and step away
- To not squee, LOL, *hug* or ROFL in a professional capacity
- To retain a sense of humour, always, because this shit is complicated and all of us want to throw out PC's out of the window at some point
Digital capability should not be restricted to those lucky enough to be on the end of an unbundled exchange.
Digital speed should not be restricted because of your geographical location.
Digital accessibility should not be an issue. Ever. The software is there, it is our job to ensure it always has something to spell out.
Digital snobbery has no place in this world. Blogeratti, twiteratti - this is about elitism whether you like it or not. Get over yourself.
Digital activism is not militancy.It is not the new army. It is a bunch of geeks giving people a platform to voice their passion, belief and enthusiasm. Engagement doesn't always tell you what you want to hear. Listen. The future is hearing both sides of the story.
Digital worlds can exist next to analogue ones. Analogue tastes better, smells better and the sunshine feels fantastic as you climb out of the freezing cold lake. There will always be a place for it, don't disappear out of it.
Digital friendships are a reality. Treat them with the same respect as you would the friends you meet for coffee/beer. Don't lie, don't disappear without a word, don't assume who the people you are talking to are. Ask them. Engagement isn't just for 'citizens', people need to interact too.
In this world that is changing so fast, sometimes it can feel like ethics are fading away. So this is my commitment to everyone I deal with.
I will play nicely.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
A friendly definition
There is always a sigh of relief when something I've been grappling with is picked up by someone else and the notion of the problem expressed far better than I can. Tim Lloyd is todays provoker of the sigh, with a link he posted to the issues GP's are having with friends versus patients versus patients who become friends versus....well you get the drift.
I'm struggling too but for different reasons. Back when the web was small, when peoples 'handles' would pop up in various places on usenet, web chat systems, BBS chat systems and game zones, you could be relatively sure it was the same person behind all of them. Some of them were hackers in the traditional sense and some in the modern sense. Some had police scanners taken off them in HMV in Plymouth. Some of them just loved taunting me by hacking my node on the network and making it play music - a fate worse than death on behemoth old Suns we used to play on. But there was a playfulness there too, and a big feeling of community. People crossed the country to meet other 'geeks'. People crossed the country to meet people they'd never met before, just for the luxury of speaking the same language as the people they were going to see. Geek.
The community grew, and people joined and left. Time passed. When we weren't looking, the web happened, forums and all that new fangled jazz. We all eventually caught up with Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Communities drifted apart as the geeks suddenly discovered that a) they were suddenly cool b) there were geeks more local to them than a 100 mile round trip and c) as connections were made in different places based on different hobbies and interests.
The problem is, I'm still struggling with the same thing everyone else is struggling with. At what point does online collaboration become a friendship? At what point is it okay to offer a virtual *hug* (yes I'm old skool, and?) and at what point is someone not of the old skool where that was expected and a *hug* will result in a raised eyebrow and a 'get away from me freak girl'.
I don't know how to tell the different from the geeks who's hearts were absolutely always in the right place and the new school of geeks. The former are still there and I still adore and respect and admire. The latter are bandwagon jumpers, seeing tech as an an economic, financial and career opportunity, not a tool for social change, for engagement, for inclusion, for balancing playing fields, allowing people to do their jobs better and more efficiently, for empowering people and giving them a voice. It's possible to be both I understand this absolutely. But peoples motivations matter to me, and I am catching up with catching up with who is on the right side of the line and who is on the wrong side.
Which brings me to the point. Which is that I am slowly understanding that ideas are a commodity in this brave new world. That the girl who lamented to a friend 6 years ago that no one would ever pay her for her ideas and why didn't the world work that way and what was I supposed to do with all these ideas I had no idea how to implement, that I knew tech could make possible but that I didn't have the tech knowledge to actually implement - in this world right now, those ideas are valuable. Not in monetary terms, perhaps, but in ways that I am only slowly beginning to understand.
So, when the geeks inherited the earth, turns out things got more complicated, and not less. Inheritance means responsibility, means slowing down and taking stock, means that those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves (not all geeks, I know this) are getting caught in the crossfire of other peoples agendas. I do not like this at all.
It's like swimming with sharks. I knew it would be. I didn't expect it to be so difficult to discern the sharks from the good people. And I am old fashioned, but I only want to collaborate with good people.
I'm struggling too but for different reasons. Back when the web was small, when peoples 'handles' would pop up in various places on usenet, web chat systems, BBS chat systems and game zones, you could be relatively sure it was the same person behind all of them. Some of them were hackers in the traditional sense and some in the modern sense. Some had police scanners taken off them in HMV in Plymouth. Some of them just loved taunting me by hacking my node on the network and making it play music - a fate worse than death on behemoth old Suns we used to play on. But there was a playfulness there too, and a big feeling of community. People crossed the country to meet other 'geeks'. People crossed the country to meet people they'd never met before, just for the luxury of speaking the same language as the people they were going to see. Geek.
The community grew, and people joined and left. Time passed. When we weren't looking, the web happened, forums and all that new fangled jazz. We all eventually caught up with Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Communities drifted apart as the geeks suddenly discovered that a) they were suddenly cool b) there were geeks more local to them than a 100 mile round trip and c) as connections were made in different places based on different hobbies and interests.
The problem is, I'm still struggling with the same thing everyone else is struggling with. At what point does online collaboration become a friendship? At what point is it okay to offer a virtual *hug* (yes I'm old skool, and?) and at what point is someone not of the old skool where that was expected and a *hug* will result in a raised eyebrow and a 'get away from me freak girl'.
I don't know how to tell the different from the geeks who's hearts were absolutely always in the right place and the new school of geeks. The former are still there and I still adore and respect and admire. The latter are bandwagon jumpers, seeing tech as an an economic, financial and career opportunity, not a tool for social change, for engagement, for inclusion, for balancing playing fields, allowing people to do their jobs better and more efficiently, for empowering people and giving them a voice. It's possible to be both I understand this absolutely. But peoples motivations matter to me, and I am catching up with catching up with who is on the right side of the line and who is on the wrong side.
Which brings me to the point. Which is that I am slowly understanding that ideas are a commodity in this brave new world. That the girl who lamented to a friend 6 years ago that no one would ever pay her for her ideas and why didn't the world work that way and what was I supposed to do with all these ideas I had no idea how to implement, that I knew tech could make possible but that I didn't have the tech knowledge to actually implement - in this world right now, those ideas are valuable. Not in monetary terms, perhaps, but in ways that I am only slowly beginning to understand.
So, when the geeks inherited the earth, turns out things got more complicated, and not less. Inheritance means responsibility, means slowing down and taking stock, means that those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves (not all geeks, I know this) are getting caught in the crossfire of other peoples agendas. I do not like this at all.
It's like swimming with sharks. I knew it would be. I didn't expect it to be so difficult to discern the sharks from the good people. And I am old fashioned, but I only want to collaborate with good people.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
If you always do what you always did......
If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.(Anon)Thinking digitally and thinking differently. Big ideas and big changes in direction for public sector. But fundamentally, we are at the crossroads, and I'm afraid depending on your area, we're there right now. Not in a few months when you've written a strategy and done some research, but right now. Times aren't changing, they have changed. And if you stick to the same business approaches that you've always used, I think increasingly you'll find your returns dwindling.
Yesterday, through talking to various people, I decided that the phrase social media is one I'm going to try and step away from. Thankfully, it seems I'm not alone. We are communicating digitally, shaping worlds digitally, enabling communication digitally and reconnecting communities digitally. Social media is, in most peoples heads, Facebook and Twitter. It's so much more than that. It's the software my mate's building to allow people to easily self publish. It's sharing your photographs and getting feedback and unexpected praise. It's asking the hive mind what it thinks about x, y and z and getting a quick and sensible answer and it's about philanthropy done on a very small scale but done by people like you and me.
What I'm getting at is, the platform almost doesn't matter any more. The foundation is the web, of course it is, the zeroes and ones that flow beautifully through the system, the packets that fly, the routes that mimic the nodes in the brain. But it's there and it will stay and it will endure. It's what we put on top of it that matters, how we use this and our motivations for doing so to a lesser extent. But to use all this possibility, this massive capability can be boggling and overwhelming.
I owe a confession here. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed too. I'm a geek and I sometimes still struggle to think digitally. I'm not talking about the fact that I still buy papers and books. I'm not talking about my ability to pick up 90% of software programmes and play with them until I understand them......an approach I apply to most of my life these days. What I'm talking about is the ability to incorporate digital communications into everything I do, to weave digital tech into the way I live my life and do my work. It should come naturally to me, and in some ways it does. But in order for you to weave digital into public sector, you first have to understand public sector. And understand it well, from the operations to the politics, from the internal politics to the unions. So, although in some ways I suppose you could say I am a digital citizen (I registered to vote online, I order those books online, I watch and become involve in conferences online, I talk to friends, arrange social activities, get told I've got interviews for jobs online), I am also right back at the beginning in some ways.
So, my conclusion is this. Effective digital engagement and communication has to start with something else the web does well - collaboration and crowd sourcing. Finding the experts in each of your departments who've been there while and know the intricacies, and collaborating with them in order to enable them to make the decision about which channel is the most appropriate to use to give out any specified message. Communications as a Department should be the hub of everything, but the spokes must stretch out into every single other Department, with that communication being two way, otherwise all expertise of one type will sit in the middle, another type at the end of the spoke and never the twain shall meet. Which is pointless, frankly, and does no one any favours.
So. Thinking digitally. Turns out it's not as simple as I first thought. Neither is communicating effectively and efficiently. Turns out, in order to communicate effectively externally, you must first be an absolute master at communicating internally. And that being a perceived 'expert' in one thing can be the most humbling experience of all, because it reveals in glaring technicolour exactly how much you don't know about absolutely everything else. So, this is where I become unpopular. Because I am in public sector and I'm working hard to try to join the dots. How is outsourcing to private sector with no experience of public sector going to work? Maybe the right question is, where are all the private sector consultancies and advisors who have experience of public sector?
And yet. Here is where I lie my hat.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Geek <=> cool?
Somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong. Or, rather, I'm not sure something actually has gone wrong but I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with it. Or, perhaps it is that it is what it is and I am reluctant to step up to the plate but I know that I must, in the same way that we all must if the big society is to work, and those of us who are dreamers, idealists and wishers, we all want the big society to work.
I know some things. I know these things through being inside something. It's as natural to me as breathing, a framework where I instinctively operate. It's not got a name and it doesn't need a special name. It's not cute and fluffy and it's not going to change the world. Except, that was 3 years ago. Now I know some things for the same reasons but I feel somehow responsible for making those things cute and fluffy and accessible. I feel responsible for passing it in, for teaching people, for explaining in plain English to those far smarter than me. Sometimes I find myself in such ridiculous situations, explaining something which to me seems so damn simple, to someone who could intellectually eat me for breakfast.
I am confused. Bewildered. There is a new world order, why yes there is, but instead of being at the bottom of the pile, suddenly I seem to be in the middle somewhere. Have the geeks inherited the earth?
Well yes. Yes they have. But with inheriting something, as in reality with heirlooms, there comes a certain responsibility if you are a certain kind of a person. I suppose I am a certain kind of a person. I don't believe it's someone elses job. I don't believe someone else should pick up the baton. I wont leave well alone. Some of my friends, who are geeks, think I am ridiculous for getting involved. They think I am talking pipedreams. Others don't understand the need for translation, others sneer at those who need translation, instead wanting to keep the knowledge and thus the power to themselves.
Lets get this straight, right now. I am not cool. I am a geek. Being a geek is not cool. If it is going to become cool to be a geek, and increasingly it seems that this might be the case, then I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with that. I love digital. I love technology. I love burying my head in a book. I want to know everything, all of it, all of the time and right now. I do not want to be cool. Cool is frivolous, cool is unquantifiable, cool does not come in black and white and cool is out of my control. Someone else decides whether I am cool or not and I am simply not interested in that. I'm too old, too grumpy, dress too differently, and frankly, am just too uncool.
But I am a geek. A big geek with a big heart. It used to be that that bemused people. Confused them. I would speak, the words would come out of my mouth, and there would be confusion in the listeners eyes. What is this you speak of? Why are you telling me these things? Why are you so enthusiastic about something as stupid as talking in text? We talk to each other, there is no space or time for your weird ideas here.
Now the world has flipped and I am catching up. And I am the one who is confused and bewildered. I perpetually feel like I am supposed to be doing something where I am not entirely sure what something is. I have ideas, hundreds of them. I sit and listen to other people talking and 90% of the time ideas spark and pinwheel off in my brain and I reach for a pad and I scribble and scribble and scribble some more. Ideas, imaginings, what if's, why can't we's, how about we do it that way, or try it that way.....a constant processing of input and generation of output. That's not cool. That's being a geek. An acknowledgement of a brain which works like a computer, which needs rebooting each night, defragging occasionally, but when running at optimum can crunch masses of data and come to conclusions easily and smoothly at the end of the crunching.
I have spent a long time hiding this. I have spent a long time only letting similar people see.
Slowly but surely, the decision to just see what happens is creeping up on me. To jump, take a risk, do something, do something. But that's not cool and the last thing on earth I want to be is cool. The technology is cool. The digital capability is cool. Faster broadband, smaller chips, more efficient processing, crowdsourcing, village pumps , virtual noticeboards, unconferences and bar camps - they are all cool.
I am not.
I know some things. I know these things through being inside something. It's as natural to me as breathing, a framework where I instinctively operate. It's not got a name and it doesn't need a special name. It's not cute and fluffy and it's not going to change the world. Except, that was 3 years ago. Now I know some things for the same reasons but I feel somehow responsible for making those things cute and fluffy and accessible. I feel responsible for passing it in, for teaching people, for explaining in plain English to those far smarter than me. Sometimes I find myself in such ridiculous situations, explaining something which to me seems so damn simple, to someone who could intellectually eat me for breakfast.
I am confused. Bewildered. There is a new world order, why yes there is, but instead of being at the bottom of the pile, suddenly I seem to be in the middle somewhere. Have the geeks inherited the earth?
Well yes. Yes they have. But with inheriting something, as in reality with heirlooms, there comes a certain responsibility if you are a certain kind of a person. I suppose I am a certain kind of a person. I don't believe it's someone elses job. I don't believe someone else should pick up the baton. I wont leave well alone. Some of my friends, who are geeks, think I am ridiculous for getting involved. They think I am talking pipedreams. Others don't understand the need for translation, others sneer at those who need translation, instead wanting to keep the knowledge and thus the power to themselves.
Lets get this straight, right now. I am not cool. I am a geek. Being a geek is not cool. If it is going to become cool to be a geek, and increasingly it seems that this might be the case, then I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with that. I love digital. I love technology. I love burying my head in a book. I want to know everything, all of it, all of the time and right now. I do not want to be cool. Cool is frivolous, cool is unquantifiable, cool does not come in black and white and cool is out of my control. Someone else decides whether I am cool or not and I am simply not interested in that. I'm too old, too grumpy, dress too differently, and frankly, am just too uncool.
But I am a geek. A big geek with a big heart. It used to be that that bemused people. Confused them. I would speak, the words would come out of my mouth, and there would be confusion in the listeners eyes. What is this you speak of? Why are you telling me these things? Why are you so enthusiastic about something as stupid as talking in text? We talk to each other, there is no space or time for your weird ideas here.
Now the world has flipped and I am catching up. And I am the one who is confused and bewildered. I perpetually feel like I am supposed to be doing something where I am not entirely sure what something is. I have ideas, hundreds of them. I sit and listen to other people talking and 90% of the time ideas spark and pinwheel off in my brain and I reach for a pad and I scribble and scribble and scribble some more. Ideas, imaginings, what if's, why can't we's, how about we do it that way, or try it that way.....a constant processing of input and generation of output. That's not cool. That's being a geek. An acknowledgement of a brain which works like a computer, which needs rebooting each night, defragging occasionally, but when running at optimum can crunch masses of data and come to conclusions easily and smoothly at the end of the crunching.
I have spent a long time hiding this. I have spent a long time only letting similar people see.
Slowly but surely, the decision to just see what happens is creeping up on me. To jump, take a risk, do something, do something. But that's not cool and the last thing on earth I want to be is cool. The technology is cool. The digital capability is cool. Faster broadband, smaller chips, more efficient processing, crowdsourcing, village pumps , virtual noticeboards, unconferences and bar camps - they are all cool.
I am not.
Monday, 13 September 2010
Networks & Nudging (cross posted to Mud in my eyes)
Sometimes two opposites collide.
I'm a fat mountain biker and a multi media communications officer. This post is about both these things because, increasingly, those two things are becoming interestingly intertwined as the reason I am fat and still mountain bike become something of a conundrum to be unravelled for central government.
It's nothing to do with me. It's really not. Except that when people start talking about things I have personal experience of, these days I get frustrated enough to want to set the record straight.
Paul Ormerod has written a 'pamphlet', which appears to actually be a report for the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Mannufacturers and Commerce) called N-Squared. It tackles the government on it's recent assertion that nudging is the way to get people to change behaviours. I feel eligible to comment on this as, when I booked a hotel last night, the first thing I checked was whether it had a gym so I could get to ride a bike at least once in the 3 days I was away from my 'real' one. That, right there, is behaviour change for me.
Nudge comes from something called 'behavioural economics'. Don't ask. Instead, read this, which is the thrust of the matter, for me:
Out there on the web are thousands of communities and they reside in very many places. Sometimes there is crossover. To understand how the web works is to understand how it motivates and supports and this is where the lack of research and understanding is becoming clear in central government and those who swim around it.
I use a forum called Singletrackworld. It collects a lot of like minded mountain bikers into one place. Rides are organised, old kit is sold, random arguments about politics and music are had, but there is very much a sense of community with the same people posting on a day to day basis and then a further circle of people commenting a few times a week on posts that particularly interest them. It's a group like any other, with the interactive dynamics that the Tavistock Institue so well defined, just like any other.
Some of those people are on Twitter. But the thing which Twitter does best is to connect people of people. So, some people from Singletrack are on Twitter. But the friends of the people on Singletrack are not on Singletrack but are on Twitter. And so boyfriends, girlfriends, riding partners, riding groups, sons, daughters, skills guides, DJ's, journalists and editors all collide in one loosely defined group on Twitter. They're in my mtbfabulousness list if you're interested.
They're the people who keep me on the straight and narrow. Actually, let me rephrase that. They're the people who kept me on the straight and narrow at the start, when I needed them. And I did need them. I was fat and horrenously unfit and I'd not ridden a bike in a long time. I didn't know I needed them, it wasn't a conscious decision, it was just that all I talk about for a good portion of the day when not at work is mountain biking and so this amorphous mass of lovely people slowly infiltrated my world. Some found me cos of this blog, Mud in my eyes. Some from seeing their friends chat to me. Some from the odd time here or there where they got added into a mass conversation about forks or flat pedals. Some because ideas of a ride out were being muted and some because of the girly biker community.
Twitter is a collision, crossing over point and shaper of new communities and networks. As a result, you find people who are also trying to keep fit and earn cake. As a result, you find other people who talk really quite a lot about mountain biking. As a result, when you don't want to leave the comfort of your sofa, you are constantly reminded of the benefits of doing so as other peoples ride reports flash up your screen. It's a great motivator. As a result, when you're feeling terrible, you can always have a quick moan and get picked up again. As a result, slowly but surely, going out for a ride becomes routine instead of a novelty and slowly but surely, your fitness improves and your world view and behaviour changes.
This is the importance of being inside something to comment on it. This is perhaps the responsibility of being inside something to be in a position to comment on it. If this works for me, would it work for others? I don't know. It seems people are writing successful books on half the story, but misunderstanding the other half because they don't use the mediums of which they speak. N-Squared hits the nail, right on the head.
In my world, my Twitter 'friends' are the people who have kept me going, kept me riding, kept me determined to get better at this ludicrous sport. They've advised, sympathised, calmed and encouraged, cheered and motivated and you know, without them I'm not sure I'd have ridden the route I rode yesterday.
Never underestimate the value of knowing others can. Never underestimate the power of following others. But most of all, understand that the key to behaviour change is a weird mix of technology, digital and sociology and psychology these days and more research badly needs to be done to get to the root of what works and is efficient, and what doesn't and is not.
I'm a fat mountain biker and a multi media communications officer. This post is about both these things because, increasingly, those two things are becoming interestingly intertwined as the reason I am fat and still mountain bike become something of a conundrum to be unravelled for central government.
It's nothing to do with me. It's really not. Except that when people start talking about things I have personal experience of, these days I get frustrated enough to want to set the record straight.
Paul Ormerod has written a 'pamphlet', which appears to actually be a report for the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Mannufacturers and Commerce) called N-Squared. It tackles the government on it's recent assertion that nudging is the way to get people to change behaviours. I feel eligible to comment on this as, when I booked a hotel last night, the first thing I checked was whether it had a gym so I could get to ride a bike at least once in the 3 days I was away from my 'real' one. That, right there, is behaviour change for me.
Nudge comes from something called 'behavioural economics'. Don't ask. Instead, read this, which is the thrust of the matter, for me:
This essay argues that to be effective, the policy frameworkMy personal experience is that both are true. Except not in the way that these people seem to think. It's the combination of both, where one feeds the other that the thrust of the change is born.
for the twenty-first century must not only draw on the new
insights that behavioural economics gives us, but also needs to
be underpinned by an understanding between this and how
networks influence our choices and how these change over
time. Indeed, the impact of networks is potentially considerably greater than that of ‘nudge’. This makes creating good policy harder while offering huge potential for change.
Out there on the web are thousands of communities and they reside in very many places. Sometimes there is crossover. To understand how the web works is to understand how it motivates and supports and this is where the lack of research and understanding is becoming clear in central government and those who swim around it.
I use a forum called Singletrackworld. It collects a lot of like minded mountain bikers into one place. Rides are organised, old kit is sold, random arguments about politics and music are had, but there is very much a sense of community with the same people posting on a day to day basis and then a further circle of people commenting a few times a week on posts that particularly interest them. It's a group like any other, with the interactive dynamics that the Tavistock Institue so well defined, just like any other.
Some of those people are on Twitter. But the thing which Twitter does best is to connect people of people. So, some people from Singletrack are on Twitter. But the friends of the people on Singletrack are not on Singletrack but are on Twitter. And so boyfriends, girlfriends, riding partners, riding groups, sons, daughters, skills guides, DJ's, journalists and editors all collide in one loosely defined group on Twitter. They're in my mtbfabulousness list if you're interested.
They're the people who keep me on the straight and narrow. Actually, let me rephrase that. They're the people who kept me on the straight and narrow at the start, when I needed them. And I did need them. I was fat and horrenously unfit and I'd not ridden a bike in a long time. I didn't know I needed them, it wasn't a conscious decision, it was just that all I talk about for a good portion of the day when not at work is mountain biking and so this amorphous mass of lovely people slowly infiltrated my world. Some found me cos of this blog, Mud in my eyes. Some from seeing their friends chat to me. Some from the odd time here or there where they got added into a mass conversation about forks or flat pedals. Some because ideas of a ride out were being muted and some because of the girly biker community.
Twitter is a collision, crossing over point and shaper of new communities and networks. As a result, you find people who are also trying to keep fit and earn cake. As a result, you find other people who talk really quite a lot about mountain biking. As a result, when you don't want to leave the comfort of your sofa, you are constantly reminded of the benefits of doing so as other peoples ride reports flash up your screen. It's a great motivator. As a result, when you're feeling terrible, you can always have a quick moan and get picked up again. As a result, slowly but surely, going out for a ride becomes routine instead of a novelty and slowly but surely, your fitness improves and your world view and behaviour changes.
This is the importance of being inside something to comment on it. This is perhaps the responsibility of being inside something to be in a position to comment on it. If this works for me, would it work for others? I don't know. It seems people are writing successful books on half the story, but misunderstanding the other half because they don't use the mediums of which they speak. N-Squared hits the nail, right on the head.
In my world, my Twitter 'friends' are the people who have kept me going, kept me riding, kept me determined to get better at this ludicrous sport. They've advised, sympathised, calmed and encouraged, cheered and motivated and you know, without them I'm not sure I'd have ridden the route I rode yesterday.
Never underestimate the value of knowing others can. Never underestimate the power of following others. But most of all, understand that the key to behaviour change is a weird mix of technology, digital and sociology and psychology these days and more research badly needs to be done to get to the root of what works and is efficient, and what doesn't and is not.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Carefully stepping
So. @dominiccampbell tweeted a link to this slightly soul destroying story on the Guardians website. Now, for somewhat obvious reasons, I am slightly ferocious on such topics these days. Not because I receive any benefits at all, not because I have ever receive benefits of any kind, but because there but for the grace of god rings more true with some of us than perhaps others.
For the record, I did not avoid claiming benefits for any high faluting reason other than that to set foot in a Job Centre was one of the most soul destroying experiences of my life, that I got a job before any money ever made it into my account, and I vowed never ever to repeat the experience again if there was anything at all I could do to avoid it. The resolve of which led to assorted really rather random temping jobs I really wasn't qualified for, but there you are.
Anyway. After my initial reaction, which was 'oh here we go again, first it was us public sector bods, now it's the other group of people who are hard pushed to defend themselves without sounding whiny, the people in receipt of ESA'. On reflection, actually, at least us public sector bods have a means to express our displeasure, being as how I'd guess most of us have access to a keyboard and connection. Recipients of ESA, I would imagine, are not quite so unilaterally lucky.
So, I'll be gobby on their behalf on the understanding that there is a comment section below, and I fully and wholeheartedly accept that I may be wrong on some of the following assumptions and that I will, quite happily, accept this in the way that I have historically and will continue to do so, because I don't actually know anything at all, only wish to know everything.
One of the reasons, one assumes that a person may end up in receipt of ESA is mobility problems. I'd tell you what criteria there actually are for being in receipt of ESA but all the documentation says refer to DMG 41012 and of course, guess what? Well, you try Googling it.
So I assume some of the people in receipt of ESA have mobility problems. Some of these will be static and some will be degenerative. But surely some of those people, if given broadband connections and adequate training could work from home? Of course, allowing them to work from home would require a seismic shift in employers attitudes to allowing people to work from home, to sorting out secure tokens for them - but all of this should be possible should it not? It is, after all, the 21st century, no?
Except, of course, this is Great Britain. And we are not a Scandinavian country who manage to get it so right, but the country who manages to get it so wrong, and so instead of enabling people to get back to work on their terms, within the parameters of their restrictions, so that those restrictions disappear into the ether of the world wide web, email, telnet and all the other magical little tools which mean you don't actually have to sit behind a desk in an office which is absolutely resolutely not designed to accomodate a wheelchair, you can, instead, contribute to the economy, be proud of yourself, and gain all the benefits we all take for granted of getting up in the morning, driving to work, and coming home (one hopes) feeling vaguely achieved for the day. Because, you see, digital tech means we could. We really could. We could, with a little of that old blue sky thinking which actually should be called green sky thinking in this country for the regularity with which it happens in government, give a large amount of people some connection back. Some worth back? I don't know.
What I think I do know, is that there really must be some people out there who, if given the tech to do it, would run forums for the government, act as moderators, contribute ideas, pass on some innovation, and generally be absolutely fab.
Except they can't, because the digital framework that is needed for them to do so is nothing so much as a pipe dream and so instead we take money from them, instead of enabling them to earn more. If someone could enlighten me as to how that is not in any way short sighted, ludicrous, a complete misdirection of public savings and an insult of discrimination to boot, because I am struggling and I'd like someone to come along and explain this to me in words of 1 syllable. What am I missing here?
For the record, I did not avoid claiming benefits for any high faluting reason other than that to set foot in a Job Centre was one of the most soul destroying experiences of my life, that I got a job before any money ever made it into my account, and I vowed never ever to repeat the experience again if there was anything at all I could do to avoid it. The resolve of which led to assorted really rather random temping jobs I really wasn't qualified for, but there you are.
Anyway. After my initial reaction, which was 'oh here we go again, first it was us public sector bods, now it's the other group of people who are hard pushed to defend themselves without sounding whiny, the people in receipt of ESA'. On reflection, actually, at least us public sector bods have a means to express our displeasure, being as how I'd guess most of us have access to a keyboard and connection. Recipients of ESA, I would imagine, are not quite so unilaterally lucky.
So, I'll be gobby on their behalf on the understanding that there is a comment section below, and I fully and wholeheartedly accept that I may be wrong on some of the following assumptions and that I will, quite happily, accept this in the way that I have historically and will continue to do so, because I don't actually know anything at all, only wish to know everything.
One of the reasons, one assumes that a person may end up in receipt of ESA is mobility problems. I'd tell you what criteria there actually are for being in receipt of ESA but all the documentation says refer to DMG 41012 and of course, guess what? Well, you try Googling it.
So I assume some of the people in receipt of ESA have mobility problems. Some of these will be static and some will be degenerative. But surely some of those people, if given broadband connections and adequate training could work from home? Of course, allowing them to work from home would require a seismic shift in employers attitudes to allowing people to work from home, to sorting out secure tokens for them - but all of this should be possible should it not? It is, after all, the 21st century, no?
Except, of course, this is Great Britain. And we are not a Scandinavian country who manage to get it so right, but the country who manages to get it so wrong, and so instead of enabling people to get back to work on their terms, within the parameters of their restrictions, so that those restrictions disappear into the ether of the world wide web, email, telnet and all the other magical little tools which mean you don't actually have to sit behind a desk in an office which is absolutely resolutely not designed to accomodate a wheelchair, you can, instead, contribute to the economy, be proud of yourself, and gain all the benefits we all take for granted of getting up in the morning, driving to work, and coming home (one hopes) feeling vaguely achieved for the day. Because, you see, digital tech means we could. We really could. We could, with a little of that old blue sky thinking which actually should be called green sky thinking in this country for the regularity with which it happens in government, give a large amount of people some connection back. Some worth back? I don't know.
What I think I do know, is that there really must be some people out there who, if given the tech to do it, would run forums for the government, act as moderators, contribute ideas, pass on some innovation, and generally be absolutely fab.
Except they can't, because the digital framework that is needed for them to do so is nothing so much as a pipe dream and so instead we take money from them, instead of enabling them to earn more. If someone could enlighten me as to how that is not in any way short sighted, ludicrous, a complete misdirection of public savings and an insult of discrimination to boot, because I am struggling and I'd like someone to come along and explain this to me in words of 1 syllable. What am I missing here?
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