Monty: Anti-Quantic

The information age.

A new industrial revolution powered by silicon electronic technology, binary arithmetic and computer science.

I'm one of the worker bees of this epoch. You'll find me buried deep within the hierarchy of corporations composing symphonia of code on the plastic piano, or perhaps helping those already dependent on technology to cope when a malfunction occurs.

In my spare time I spend countless hours browsing the worldwide web via various devices: desktop - laptop - tablet - smartphone. Or I can sometimes be found dancing to music created on computers much like the ones that I work with. I play games on my X-Box, and when I shop, each purchase is recorded in large remote databases. Through these I become a segment score; my behaviour correlated with marketing campaigns, demographic pigeon holing and environmental conditions until I become a predictable unit of potential sales.

Greek crisis: Human freedom as the grit in the management machine?

I'm writing this in May 2012, which in the UK currently is much colder than one would expect of late spring. At the moment I am engaged on a data analysis contract, helping a national media corporation to roll out new product offerings to its customers. In the somewhat warmer corresponding period a year ago I was in wind-down mode after terminating my contract at a large banking organisation. The immediate future looked wonderful. I had a long vacation in the South of France planned for July and August during which time I would be writing a book about IT service. In preparation for that I was geared up to spend June ensconsed in Western Bank library (Sheffield University), reading and note-taking. It turned out to be quite idyllic. I would cycle the 5 miles down from South-west Sheffield (and it is down, my house is 500ft vertically above Sheffield city centre) to the library where I'd read, write, doze, and take the occasional stroll around the city.

Social Luddism?

By now most British internet users will be familiar with the YouTube video of Emma West expounding her controversial views about the ethnic makeup of the UK on a South London train. The video appears to have been shot on a mobile phone and quickly "went viral". Fascinating how what once would have been a purely local issue, a story to amuse colleagues with at work, became - through the power of these new technologies - a national news story and a case for the judiciary. For good or ill, big brother is certainly watching us, and yet with our personal recording equipment to hand, we ourselves are all the means of that surveillance.

'Tunnel Vision' or 'ITSM and the Passage of Time'

My career has taken many twists and turns over the years. However, in my work, technology has always been a constant. From analogue to digital electronics; assembly code through ansi C to visual languages; and desktop support into line management and ITSM. I've recently popped out of my umpteenth chrysalis and find myself fluttering my wings in the pretty garden of data and predictive analytics. ITIL seems like a distant dream (or is that nightmare?).

A Heresy: Social Media Ain't Perfect

File this one under heresy. Burning at the stake is thankfully consigned to history, but "flaming" is not. The responses to this may therefore be quite interesting. Also this is not actually related to the psychology of IT service management, but rather to the psychology of social media use. It's a departure, I know, but hopefully an entertaining and thought provoking one...

The process of changing one's perceptions can begin in the most inauspicious of moments. I've already alluded to this in previous blog entries by way of the manner in which my older views towards radical feminism and operatic music were changed during chance encounters.

I had another such damoclean conversion recently. At the time I thought very little of the sentence that prompted the change; I considered it another fashionable utterance designed to make an impression. The time and place was the Sheffield DocFest early in 2011 and the catalyst was a talk given by the filmmaker Adam Curtis (All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace). What he said was this: "Twitter is a self-aggrandising, smug pressure group, that's all it is". I enjoyed the quote and watched it reverberate around the blogosphere for a couple of days.

Climate Change

I'm heading down to the Languedoc in southwest France later today. I planned this trip some time ago and the idea is to enjoy the cultural and culinary delights of the region and to write a lot (not blogs, I'm working on a book). In addition, I was also looking forward to having a real summer and topping up those vitamin D levels. The last time I visited that region (in 2007), the temperature was regularly in the mid-thirties, and even in the dead of the night it was very hot. I've been keeping a close eye on the weather in recent weeks, and those who watch Le Tour de France will have also noticed that there has been a lot of rain in southern France this year. The Languedoc, a normally sun-pounded setting, is a little less so this year, leading folk to talk about climate change.

#ClimateNotCulture

I thought I'd take some time out from some rather serious and quite involved writing that I'm doing to exorcise (exercise?) a minor obsession of mine.

Organisational culture seems to be a buzzword in ITSM circles at the moment, and for good reason. I think its becoming clear to most that the laudable aims of our discipline cannot be achieved without paying attention to the people who work within the sector. Good old homo sapiens, were not like microprocessors; we don't execute a JP NZ 4000H command if certain conditions are met or not met. So the question appears to be, how do we align the mindset of those working in the ITSM enterprise with its stated goals.

The answer to most is simple. Get the culture right.