Russell Davies

Interesting economics

When I first started doing Interesting I had no idea how much stuff cost. So I thought it might be useful to share all the economics from last time, in case anyone fancies doing something similar. It's pretty straightforward:

We sold 380 tickets at £15 each so gross revenue was £5700

Eventbrite took a fee of £767.60

The Conway Hall including PA, sound person and extra mics was £1389

There were a few misc costs: bunting, pencils, wine, a taxi, some carer time, which came to about £350.*

Which left, roughly, £3200

So, thanks to the generosity of the speakers (and to everyone who came) we donated £3200 to the Equal Community Foundation (the organisation Rujuta spoke about) and other speakers donated money to their own good causes too.

*Though, thinking about it, that doesn't include all that wine, which I also need to pay for. Which means that I've made a small loss. Ah well, it was worth it. 

No great rush

Putting this here because I'm always looking for evidence that we're not hurtling faster and faster into the future faster than anyone's ever hurtled into the future faster and faster before etc etc. You know the kind of thing:

"Some economic historians like Robert J. Gordon actually contend that we’re not in a period of great technological innovation at all; instead, we find ourselves in a period of technological stagnation. The changes brought about by the development of information technologies in the last 40 years or so pale in comparison, Gordon argues (and this is from his recent book The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War), to those “great inventions” that powered massive economic growth and tremendous social change in the period from 1870 to 1970 – namely electricity, sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine, and mass communication"

The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Issue a Press Release

29 Bullets

I keep pondering on the question - what would a digital 'white paper' be like? And something recently reminded me of tufte.css. It's not the whole answer to the white paper question but the way it handles graphics and 'sidenotes' is interesting. So I cast about for a bit of writing that would be good to experiment with and struck on my Wired/PowerPoint thing. The idea of re-writing that in a Tufte-style was appealing so I've done that. This is the unsubbed, unedited version I originally sent to Wired so it may well be substantially different to the printed version, it may contain all sorts of mistakes. For which I obviously apologise. But I like how it works as an online piece.

Resonant

"We’re ruled by a cadre of senior civil servants and politicians who don’t understand technology, still think it’s a gimmick and are more concerned with building empires than delivering good services to the people of the United Kingdom.

Many civil servants lack even basic skills. Things as fundamental as knowing how to type – let alone the more advanced things they need to know to work in the 21st century. This makes them resentful of “digital” and resistant to the change that it means.

I see very little being done to support civil servants, help through this period of change to the very way they work, let alone a widespread plan to upskill them.

Pay, reward and “performance management” structures are not fit for the 21st century and are not what truly motivates people. Creative thinking, innovation and new ways of doing things are not recognised or rewarded.

And while the civil service is in this period of retrenchment I can’t do any more of the exhausting fights to gain even an inch of ground."

More

Fun with start-ups, 2009 style

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Whatsup

As Mat says:

"The real story of Hillary Clinton's email "scandal" is the unusable and expensive shite IT systems that most governments provide."

Which is why Civil Servants who have to get stuff done end up outside their official networks:

"When the world’s nations sit down to talk nowadays, there is a distinct difference to the way diplomacy is done. Influence is no longer defined only by special relationships and old alliances, but which WhatsApp group you are invited into.

The rise of WhatsApp diplomacy is transforming the negotiating chamber. There are countless groups of allies and virtual huddles, exchanges over policy statements and fine print, and fair amounts of banter and even emojis (Vladimir Putin is referred to by widespread use of a grey alien avatar)."

Seems so long ago, so far away

Chiefly Digital

"I see a fair few people RTing this cartoon about the value of Chief Digital Officers because they don’t understand how f’ed most orgs are"

As Sam points out, Tom's cartoon illustrates how far from getting the point of 'digital' most organisations are.

If your Chief Digital Officer is 'floating somewhere between a CMO and a CIO' then, yes, it is a stupid idea. Because, for the thousandth time, 'digital transformation' is not about transforming marketing, it's about transforming the organisation.

I recently got asked for 'Digital Transformation' advice by the COO of a decent-sized organisation. Having ascertained that neither the COO nor the CEO had any experience of 'digital' I suggested that one of them should leave and be replaced by someone who did. They thought they wouldn't do that. Instead they're considering Plan B which is to hire a Chief Digital Officer and give them all of the CEO's authority. That might do.

Visibilty, accountability

These two things are worth reading together:

Matt thinking about the 'line of visibility' - what a service should show to the people who use it.

Richard thinking about designing accountability into public services.

And the best Mexican restaurant I'd ever been to

I spent a tiny amount of time in Moscow in the mid 90s. One business trip and some traipsing around the rest of Eastern Europe. This (from an archive of Russian photography) is exactly how I remember it.