Category: Education

People – they are always a challenge…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Recruitment

How would you answer if someone at the start of their IT-sector career asked you ‘What’s the most challenging thing you’ve encountered throughout your career?’  Your answer might be something personal like, for example, a family, financial, or health matter, or it might be something purely professional like a task that proved especially testing, getting the right people into the right roles to deliver project or business objectives, or coping with change during rapid organisational transformation or growth. You will have your own answer, but what’s the Badger’s? Well, it’s one word, and that word is ‘people’.

In the Badger’s experience, people are crucial for success, but they are a never-ending challenge! Why? Because people have unique backgrounds, experiences, thought processes, perspectives, fallibilities, strengths and motivations that make them a melting pot of unpredictability and surprises! An illustration from the Badger’s first role as a project manager is pertinent. A graduate programmer, a lady two years out of University, had been recruited by the Badger’s employer. Her CV looked good, and she’d done well during the recruitment process. The Badger’s line manager charged him with using her to fill a vacant programming role on his project team. She seemed like a good fit, and she appeared to have settled in well by the end of her first week with the team. Within a month, however, the project team were mutinous! Her work was poor, she had not completed any task, her attitude was surly and self-centred, and her timekeeping was appalling.

Chats with the Badger to encourage improvement and explore whether there were any hidden underlying personal problems proved fruitless. Formal HR processes came into play, during which it became clear that this person wasn’t interested in programming, being part of a team, or a career with the company. Employment with any company, she ultimately admitted, was simply her way of obtaining money for expensive holidays! She was exited from the company. The Badger learned that there’s more to people than is visible, that they are complex, have values that might differ from your own, and that they can take up lots of valuable management time!

The fact that people were the Badger’s most challenging thing throughout his career is not surprising when life is dynamic, circumstances change, and individuals are always adapting to new personal and professional situations. The Badger always rose to the challenge, because people from the most junior to the most senior matter if you want to succeed. With the relentless progress of automation and AI, it’s easy to think that dealing with people is becoming less relevant. Not so! AI may change everything, but it’s people who are crucial to harnessing its potential to making a difference. People will always be a challenge, but knowing more about what makes them tick will be essential for handling the challenges of the foreseeable future…

Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Light underpin the digital world of tomorrow…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Batteries, Change, Education, Information Technology, Learning, Obsolescence, Science & Engineering, Smart & New Technology, Technology, Transformation

A trip to the supermarket provided a reminder that without physics, chemistry, and mathematics none of our modern tech, internet, and online services would exist. Hardly a revelation, but what triggered this heightened awareness? Well, just the simple act of taking a small bag of spent disposable batteries to a recycling bin in the supermarket’s checkout area. The bin was full to overflowing with used disposable batteries from toys, clocks, TV remotes, cordless computer keyboards, wireless mice, and a myriad of other sources that use replaceable batteries as a power source. The act of depositing his spent batteries reminded the Badger that each one is actually a little capsule of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and that our digital world depends on these subjects and batteries of one form or another.

On returning home, the Badger reflected on the science, materials, manufacturing, and recycling of these disposable batteries and whether they’ll ultimately be made redundant by newer power source innovations in the decades ahead. After all, the Titanium Citizen Eco-Drive watch on the Badger’s wrist uses solar and artificial light for power rather than replaceable batteries. It’s a technology that dates back to the mid-1970s, so it’s not new. Furthermore, the 1980s pocket calculator sitting on the Badger’s desk is also solar powered with no replaceable batteries. It’s a memento from a major 1980’s software development project and it works just as well today as it did back then! The Badger thus found himself wondering why power derived from light sources hasn’t rendered the disposable battery redundant in the last 40 years. Well, to make a functionally reliable, manufacturable, commercially viable product that has physics, chemistry, and mathematics at its core takes years of research to come to fruition. The good news is that it looks like lengthy research is bearing fruit and we may soon see a revolution that makes natural and artificial light the power source for a wide range of our devices, see here and here.

We should not be surprised that the coming years are likely to see a significant change in how our in-home devices, smart tech, and personal computing devices are powered. The use of replaceable batteries looks destined to decline. There’ll ultimately be no more charging cables, and no more trips to the supermarket to recycle spent batteries! Things, of course, are never that clear cut, but if light photons hitting panels on a home’s roof can generate electricity for household use, then it’s inevitably just a matter of time before light will power our gadgets and render disposable batteries redundant.

Fundamentally, power sources – and everything else in our modern digital world – are determined by physics, chemistry, mathematics and years of research. We should never shy away from being educated in these subjects because they – and light – are the seeds that will determine whatever we want the digital world of the future to be…

Contracted working hours, and achieving your potential…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Science & Engineering, Wellbeing

The UK’s A-Level exam period is underway and runs until the end of June.  Students sitting these exams receive their results in the middle of August. It’s an intense time, especially for those who’ve applied for University and need to achieve certain grades to confirm a place on their preferred course. According to UCAS, the proportion of UK 18-year-olds applying for University this year stands at 41.3%. That’s up from 38.2% in 2019, but marginally down on 41.5% for 2023. Since last year, however, applications for engineering/technology courses, and mathematical sciences/computing courses, have increased by 10% and 7%, respectively. The Badger thinks that’s a good thing. These subjects are, after all, at the heart of our lives on this planet. Whether we like it or not, it’s science, engineering, maths, and computing  that make everything possible.

While chatting to a teacher recently, their passionate focus on their pupils and desire for good exam results was strongly evident. In particular, they mentioned that seeing their students attain or exceed expectations in their exams was a source of great personal reward for their teaching over the school year. The teacher had strong opinions, one being that people don’t really appreciate that the hours worked by teachers far outweigh those stipulated in their employment contract. ‘That’s actually no different to people working in commercial enterprises; at least you have a long break over the summer’, the Badger commented without thinking. If looks could kill, the Badger would be dead!

The teacher, who’s never worked in a commercial enterprise, was adamant that no one works as hard, or as far beyond the hours stipulated in their employment contract, as teachers. This rankled with the Badger, because it’s not true! An incoming call to the teacher’s smartphone, however, fortuitously stopped the conversation from taking a potentially disagreeable turn. Health professionals in the NHS often convey a view similar to the teacher’s too, but the reality is that many in technical, management, and leadership positions at project, business, and executive levels in commercial operations often work beyond the hours in their employment contract without tangible reward irrespective of greater work-life balance awareness. The performance of their companies would suffer if they didn’t. In fact, research shows it’s the setting and profile of how additional hours are worked that differs greatly between teachers, doctors and their commercial enterprise counterparts, not the actual number of additional hours worked which do not differ vastly.

Well, good luck to those sitting their exams and striving for a place at University. Whatever the outcome, remember one thing. To be successful and have the job satisfaction and the type of rewards you want in your chosen field, an intelligent, hard-working, flexible and can-do ethos will always be a necessary imperative. Working only the hours in an employment contract will rarely help you achieve your full potential…

What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Education, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, social media, Tech for social good, Telecommunications

The Badger was asked the question ‘What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?’ during a conversation with a youngster who’s just started the final year of their university degree course. The conversation was centred on the Badger’s experience in the IT industry and was primarily focused on helping the youngster not only look  beyond completing their degree, but also decide whether to stay at university for a higher degree or move into industry to bolster their immediate income. As the Badger described some of the dynamic technological changes encountered throughout his own career, the youngster paused for a moment, pursed their lips, frowned, and then unexpectedly asked this question.

The Badger was taken aback. After what seemed like a prolonged and embarrassing silence, but was really just a few seconds, the Badger took the easy option and answered with a bland ‘I don’t know. Different generations will probably have different views.’ The youngster smiled and chided him for being cleverly uncontentious! They then answered  their own question, and their answer took the Badger completely by surprise. Why? Because he did not expect what he heard from a Generation Z person who is completely digital-native with no experience of life without the internet, personal computers, social media, or mobile phones.

‘Social media is the development that has had the most detrimental impact’, they proclaimed. They contended that social media has developed such that its content is the  embodiment of 7 R’s – rage, rumour, rackets, rubbish, robbers, retail, and revenue – which is growing to be ever more corrosive to the fabric of society. They voiced their distrust of the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), and expressed  concern that users of such platforms are naïve about their impact on personal privacy and social stability. Their final assertion was that social media has had the most detrimental impact on the world in the last 20 years because it has undermined law and order, respect for others, encroached on privacy, and enabled the immediacy of widespread fraud and misinformation. The Badger, who was a little surprised at hearing this from a digital native of Generation Z, quickly refocused the conversation on the youngster’s post-graduate aspirations!

Whether you share the youngster’s view or not, history suggests that some developments which change society are lauded during their time, but ultimately prove to be devastating in the long run. For example, fossil-fuels revolutionised life in the 20th Century, but they have had a damaging impact on the sustainability of life on our planet and are now shunned. The Badger’s undecided whether social media, a once exciting early 21st Century development, falls into this category, but if you want some fun at a multi-generational gathering of friends or family then ask the youngster’s question. The result is almost guaranteed not to be what you expect…

Children’s toys and ‘invisible’ e-waste…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, e-waste, Education, Information Technology, Toys

One day last week, the Badger arrived early to collect his grandson from nursery school. As he waited, he  couldn’t help a wry smile as the young tots resisted the nursery leader’s attempts to get them to tidy the plethora of toys away. One little girl came up to the Badger with a battered Fisher-Price musical guitar and insisted on showing him how to extract noise from it. The noises from the guitar demonstrated that it was on its last legs! One of the nursery helpers then ushered the little girl away, and as she did so she told the child that the toy was broken and needed to be ’thrown away’. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’, or did they mean ‘recycled’? It was pretty clear that they meant the former.

In due course, the Badger’s grandson, who had been playing with a musical toy in the form of a mobile phone, was returned home to his parents. Afterwards, the Badger found himself cogitating on how different today’s pre-school toys are from those of his generation. No toys for pre-school kids in his day required a battery to function! Today,  however, toys requiring a battery and containing microchips are commonplace. The Badger found himself  muttering a phrase that everyone uses at some stage when they get older, namely ‘those were the days’. His thoughts moved on to the nursery helper’s ’thrown away’ remark. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’ rather than ‘recycled’? Well, since toys top the list of  ‘invisible’ e-waste finding its way into landfill, then, yes, they probably did.  

Many things young children play with today contain recyclable electrical or electronic material that goes unnoticed. The amount of such material in an individual toy may be tiny, but every little bit matters if we truly want a sustainable future. Unfortunately, however, awareness that a child’s toy should be sent to recycling at the end of its useful life isn’t as high as it should be. That’s why children’s toys contribute to the growing so-called ‘invisible’ e-waste in the world’s land fill sites. The Badger thus feels it’s incumbent on us adults to be more knowledgeable and make better decisions when it comes to disposing of broken children’s toys.

The Badger also suspects, perhaps wrongly, that the WEEE’s recent International E-waste Day on the 14th October 2023 passed most of us by. It’s purpose was to shed light on the overall scale of  ‘invisible’ e-waste, see here.  Our awareness of ‘invisible’ e-waste must be improved, and, as the WEEE Forum puts it, we must all be more conscious that we can recycle anything that has a plug, uses a battery or microchip, or has a cable. So, if you hear someone telling a child that a toy should be ‘thrown away’ then tell them to recycle it, and wish them good luck in getting it out of the child’s hands without a tantrum to do so…

Tech for social good…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Digital devices and the environment, Education, Information Technology, Life, Tech for social good

Sitting at his desk over the weekend, the Badger enjoyed a coffee and a slice of cake  while reading about Charlie Mackesy, the Oscar-winning author and illustrator of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse. The words ‘Every day I wake up wondering what I will draw today. I’m just another human trying to tell the truth. Love, kindness, and empathy are the answer. And cake…’ struck a chord. Not because the Badger was eating cake, but because they resonated with the circumstances of someone he knows and helps. After retiring from a low-wage, low-skilled, working life, they live alone with their cat and wonder what to do every day. They have no home broadband connection or digital devices. Although they are proud and fiercely independent, they allow the Badger to provide help, kindness, and empathy as they try to navigate a world that demands tech awareness, devices, and skills that they’ve never acquired.

This person illustrates that in the UK, a country with a high level of digital infrastructure, there are still many digitally disadvantaged people. This person cannot afford a broadband connection or connected devices, and even if they could, they are at a loss on how to use them. Their priority is simply to ‘keep the wolf from the door’ with their meagre budget. The Badger visits once a week with doughnuts, his tablet and smartphone, to chat over coffee. They often have worries that he manages to alleviate using his smartphone or tablet. A few weeks ago, the Badger gave them an old tablet found languishing at the back of one of his cupboards to help acquaint them with modern tech without the worry of cost. After some initial reticence, their confidence in using some of the rudimentary aspects of the device is rising. It’s small but rewarding progress!

After his visit last week, the Badger came across the ‘Circular electronics for social good: reusing IT equipment to bridge the digital divide’ research from the Good Things Foundation (a UK digital inclusion charity), the Circular Electronic Partnership (CEP) (the biggest names in tech, consumer goods and waste management), and Deloitte. It’s an enlightening insight into digital inequalities and how equipment reuse can not only help address these, but also assist in reducing a growing e-waste problem. The major businesses engaged in the CEP are clearly taking tech for social good seriously. But here’s the thing. Digital inequality, reuse and e-waste of course needs action from charities, businesses, and governments, but it also needs regular members of the public to reach out to the digitally disadvantaged in their community with kindness, empathy, compassion, and above all patience. Tech for social good needs people to engage with others at a human level with patience, which – sadly – seems a rarer commodity today  than it used to be…

Your face, your voice, AI, and human rights…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Education, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Legal matters, Online Safety, Privacy and Surveillance, social media

In the gap between completing his undergraduate degree and starting post-graduate study, the Badger took a temporary job as an assistant in a dockyard laboratory performing marine metallurgical failure investigations and associated corrosion research. It was a great few months which enabled the application of what he learned during his undergraduate degree to real world events. Those few months are the reason why, for example, the Badger has a particular interest today in the findings of the investigation into the Titan deep-sea submersible failure. The dockyard lab staff were experts with colourful personalities and diverse opinions on a wide range of topics. Engaging in wide-ranging discussions with them, especially at lunchtime in the canteen, was enlightening, thought-provoking, and has been the source of fond memories lasting for years.

One particular memory is of one senior expert, highly respected but always cantankerous and quarrelsome, refusing to be photographed sitting at their electron microscope for a newspaper feature about the laboratory. They didn’t want their image captured and used because, they claimed, it was part of ‘who they were as an individual’ and therefore it was part of their human rights to own and control its use. The lab boss saw things differently, and for days there was a lot of philosophical discussion amongst staff about the expert’s position. The newspaper feature ultimately used a photo of the electron microscope by itself.

The current strike by Hollywood actors, due in part to proposals relating to AI and the use of an actor’s image and voice, brought the memory of the lab expert’s stance regarding their image to the fore. In those days, the law was more straightforward because the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, and artificial intelligence didn’t exist. In today’s world, however, images of a person and their voice are routinely captured, shared, and manipulated, often for commercial gain without an individual’s real awareness. The law has, of course, developed – all be it slowly – since the expert’s days at the lab, but the surge in AI in its various guises over the last year seems to illustrate that the gap between legal/regulatory controls and the digital world continues to widen.    

Today, and with advancing AI, an image of you or snippet of your voice can be manipulated for any purpose, good or evil. Whilst there’s some teaching of online safety at school, is it enough? Does it sufficiently raise awareness about protecting ‘your image and your voice which are both key attributes that characterise who you are as a person’? Did the dockyard lab expert have a point, all those years ago, in asserting that it was part of their human rights to own and control their image? The Badger doesn’t have the answers, but he senses that AI and human-rights will inevitably be a fertile ground for campaigners, legislators, and regulators for many decades to come…

Should ‘information’ be thought of as a poison?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Information Technology, Learning, Life, Online Safety, Press & Media

A couple of weeks ago, BBC News unveiled BBC Verify, a new brand to counter disinformation and reinforce audience trust by showing how its journalists check the veracity of what’s reported. Inevitably, Verify has been frequently featured in the broadcaster’s radio and television news programmes since the announcement. Surveys (like the one here, for example) show there’s been a significant drop in trust in the UK news media over the last five years. With BBC News having suffered one of the biggest drops, it’ll be interesting to see if Verify helps to stem their downward trend.

The advent of BBC Verify, plus recent social media and online clamour surrounding a number of human tragedies, triggered childhood memories of the Badger’s father reading his newspaper at the breakfast table. He would regularly say ‘Don’t believe everything you read in newspapers, lad. Most of the information is just poison’. In today’s world we access and consume news and information in a very different way, primarily via our televisions and internet enabled laptops, tablets, and smartphones on a 24 by 7 basis. This fatherly advice, however, seems even more relevant than ever today. These days, being sceptical about the content  you consume and wondering if it contains something poisonous likely to harm you, is definitely no bad thing.

In biochemistry, a poison is a natural or synthetic substance that causes damage to living tissue and has a harmful or fatal effect on our body. The act of poisoning involves a cause (the poison), a subject (the entity being poisoned), an effect (symptoms), and a consequence (debilitation or death). Awareness that things like insect and snake bites, drugs, dodgy food, pesticides, radiation, and biological/chemical agents can poison us is good, but our awareness that ‘information’ can poison our minds and change behaviour is still too low, especially in youngsters whose lives are dominated by social media and the virtual world. It’s no surprise that evidence for harm to young people’s mental health through their use of social media continues to grow.

The Badger’s found himself wondering if there’s merit in thinking of ‘information’ as a poison giving the synergy with the act of poisoning noted above. Just like a medical drug, ‘information’ consumed in an appropriate context from a trusted source can do much good. But also like a drug, ‘information’ in high quantity glibly absorbed and accepted from anywhere can cause an individual great harm. Categorizing ‘information’ as a poison might, perhaps, simplify and embed greater understanding of its potential impact on wellbeing, especially in youngsters.

The Badger tested this musing with his teenage nephew, only to be told that age had clearly affected his mental faculties! If that’s true, then it’s down to the ‘information poison’ he’s consumed over the years and the fact that there’s no real antidote in sight…

Exploding batteries…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Electric cars, Life, Risk, Technology

A note in a Christmas card this week was not only a reminder that the imminent festive and New Year holidays aren’t always jolly occasions for some people, but also that our modern lives depend on rechargeable batteries. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, household devices, DIY tools, gardening equipment, and electric cars all have a battery at their heart, but do we fully appreciate the risks of having battery powered devices in our households? Probably not. We tend to take their safety for granted because they are certified to comply with requisite safety standards.

The Christmas card and the note therein was from a cousin. It conveyed Christmas greetings, and also information that the battery in their mobility scooter had recently exploded causing a fire and attendance by the fire brigade. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but smoke damage has rendered their home uninhabitable for the next six months.  The Badger phoned his cousin, who has poor mobility due to advanced cancer, and was impressed by their insistence on looking forward with positivity rather than dwelling on events and their new circumstances. The first thing they said was a line from the movie Forrest Gump, namely ‘My mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’’  Their objectivity and optimism was remarkable given their health and the stress of having their life turned upside down before Christmas.

A security video shows the mobility scooter, unplugged, not being charged, unused for a number of days, and covered by its standard weather-proof cover, simply burst into flames when the battery exploded! The fire brigade are now using this as part of their campaign to raise awareness of the potential fire hazards associated with rechargeable batteries in, for example, e-bikes, e-scooters, and …mobility scooters used by the infirm.

As we approach Christmas, the Badger’s intent here is not be alarmist,  but simply to make three points. The first is to not only encourage you to be aware of the risk that comes with the use and storage of equipment with rechargeable batteries, but also to raise the profile of related fire brigade safety campaigns. The second is to reinforce a point the cousin made in our conversation, namely that Christmas is not really about material things, it’s about people, community, and looking forward rather than dwelling too much on past tribulations. The third is simply to wish all readers a happy and safe Christmas and New Year, and to encourage optimistic thoughts whatever your personal circumstances. Oh, and there’s one final thing. After the Badger finished talking to his cousin, he felt overwhelmingly relieved that Santa’s sleigh for delivering Christmas presents to children across the world is powered by magical forces, and not by batteries that could explode!!!

Think differently about your performance appraisal with your boss…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Learning

The reactions of people who’ve just had a performance appraisal with their boss varies enormously and also highlights how different we are as individuals. Personal reactions, of course, cover a wide spectrum. The Badger’s experience, however, is that while a person’s demeanour and body language says a lot about their reaction, most people share little more than the odd comment about their appraisal with others. There are always, of course, people who think they’ve been treated poorly and say so to anyone who will listen. In the Badger’s experience, such individuals tend to be self-centred, averagely talented, poor listeners, and they normally have egotistic or narcistic personalities.  These individuals, and those at the other end of the spectrum who are just downright lazy, unproductive, and permanently negative,  tend to share their displeasure widely and keep HR functions busy with claims of unfair treatment.

A youngster in their first job since leaving University 15 months ago whined to the Badger this week that their appraisal had been a shock and unfair. The youngster, hungry for rapid career and salary progression, unfortunately failed to recognise that they haven’t adjusted to working life as well as their peers. The Badger explained this, and in the course of doing so remembered some wisdom from a training course he attended many years ago. On that course, a behaviour expert, building on the sport coaching work of Tim Gallway, emphasised that we should think about individual performance using the simple equation ‘Performance = Talent – Interferences’. If someone has 100% Talent, then their Performance is never 100% because there are always Interferences from personal and/or organisational factors. Personal interferences come, for example, from lifestyle, health, family and/or caring responsibilities. Organisational interferences come, for example, from skill set mismatches with work role, adequacy of role definition, relationships with leaders and work colleagues, organisational bureaucracy, and factors like organisational dynamism and workforce stagnation if business growth is poor.

The behaviour expert’s key message was that everyone has Interferences, so no one can ever perform at 100%! Interestingly, they used the same equation to describe the performance of a company. In this case, Talent represents a company’s portfolio of  products and services, and Interferences are largely the policies, processes, and  controls that influence the delivery of the portfolio to clients. Bigger companies tend to have more Interferences than smaller ones, and no company ever performs at 100%, although clever accounting and expectation management often masks this!

So, think about your performance appraisal in the terms above. Your Talent is constant, so your Performance dips when Interferences rise. Eventually Interferences will reach a level that makes you feel like doing something different with your life. It’s very empowering when this happens, because it definitively changes the way you approach your appraisal with your boss.