Category: Education

Quick to blame or complain, slow to praise…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Business Continuity, Education, IT Project Management, Psychology, social media, Technology, Uncategorized

If you’ve ever been asked to take on the responsibility for fixing a failing project, programme, or service delivery that’s causing serious relationship, financial, reputation or business difficulties, then you’ll know that when you take the reins lots of people will tell you about the bad things, who’s to blame, and what should have happened but didn’t. You’ll also know that far fewer people will tell you about the good things, the good people, and their good ideas to improve matters. There are always good things! They are, however, swamped by a fog of grumbles, complaints, politics and blame narratives! An experienced leader knows about this imbalance and ensures that ‘balance is restored’ by putting the right people with the right attitude in the right place to turn failure into success. After all, it’s a fully committed, positive and aligned team that really turns things around, not the person at the top!

Have you ever wondered why people tend to complain, blame, and exude negativity more than praise and positivity? The answer lies in the physiological wiring of the brain. Put simply, the emotional part of the brain processes ‘bad events’ whereas the rational part processes ‘good events. The former works much faster than the latter, which means we assign fault and blame quickly and frequently but think long and hard before giving praise. Fascinating stuff!

What triggered the Badger to think about this? Two recent events that made the Badger feel that today’s tech-dependent society has lost all sense of balance, objectivity, and community. Both events related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first was a conversation with friends that concluded that ‘Quick to blame or complain, slow to praise’ and negativity has pervaded every facet of journalism, the broadcast media, and social media, and that ‘blame and complain’ has more noticeably become the norm in society as digital tech has boomed over the last twenty years.

The second was in the local supermarket whose shelves and frozen food cabinets were largely empty due to panic buying. Behind the Badger at the checkout, two people proudly crowed about how they had each bought two extra freezers online ‘just in case’, They then bitterly complained to a store worker about the empty shelves and blamed the supermarket chain for incompetence. They then blamed a different local supermarket chain for not having what they wanted either, and the UK and Chinese governments for letting all this happen!

The checkout operator winked. ’I think it’s just the way their brains work. One has a cough so you might not want to serve them’, the Badger said in response. The checkout queue fell silent! The Badger left the store certain that it’s time for our tech-centric society to concentrate more on praise and positivity than blame and complain. That would, however, require a rewiring of our brains.

There’s no ‘Smart Living’ without ‘Smart Working’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Business Continuity, Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, Education, Internet of Things, Smart & New Technology, Uncategorized

‘Smart working’ has existed in the tech and IT industries for years. With pandemic coronavirus, many companies in many sectors will be severely disadvantage if they don’t have the capability! ‘Smart Working’ has pros and cons, but the pros dominate by far in today’s world of work. A software engineer neighbour, for example, sees nothing but benefit from ‘Smart Working’. He works permanently from home and travels just one day each week to his employer’s office or that of a client. His deadlines are the same as being in the office, but he feels much more productive, less stressed, and has a better work-life balance compared with the grind of a daily commute. He feels strongly that ‘Smart Working’ helps his carbon footprint, his employer’s carbon footprint, reduce costs for everyone, and makes handling crises like coronavirus easier. His employer trusts him not to abuse working this way – a trust he repays with unwavering loyalty. He says he’ll never go back to working permanently in an employer’s office!

The Badger embraced ‘Smart Working’ anytime, anyplace, anywhere years ago. Since leaving the corporate hamster wheel, however, the Badger’s feeling that ‘Smart Working’ will soon be the permanent way of working has strengthened. Coronavirus will surely reinforce that the days white-collar-workers must travel to and work in offices of their employer or a client are coming to an end. We’ll always work in offices, you might say! After all, Aristotle pointed out that we are social animals that need workplace interactions. The Badger’s seen some truth in this over the years, but for today’s younger tech natives the social interactions aspects of the workplace are gravitating faster and faster to the virtual world as technology advances.

It seems likely that pandemic coronavirus, environment/climate change, and heightened public awareness of the delicacy of global supply chains will drive faster change in the way we live our lives. Society could be at a turning point with ‘Smart Living’ becoming a much more dominant part of our psyche and behaviour. This will happen faster if employers henceforth adopt ‘Smart Working’ from home as the norm. When the current economic turmoil triggered by oil and coronavirus abates, political and business leaders will realise attitudes on how people should work in order to mitigate risk in the modern global world must change. ‘Smart Working’ and ‘Smart Living’ should go hand in hand. Without the former there can be no latter.

So, now’s the time to press the case for ‘Smart Working’ if your employer doesn’t currently have it. Remember that ‘Smart Living’ is more about the way you think, behave and take action than it is about the Internet of Things and the interconnectivity of gadgets. As Mr Spock would say, ‘It’s only logical that ‘Smart Working’ has to be a core component of ‘Smart Living’ and we need both to address our problems’.

‘We are all doomed!’… No we are not…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Education, Offshoring, Opinion, Uncategorized

This blog item – the 100th since the blog’s inception – arose from a conversation with someone grumbling about their employer offshoring software development and IT support to India. They used the phrase ‘We are all doomed!’ from the UK Dads Army TV series and ignored the Badger’s ‘No we are not’ riposte.

The Badger remembers ‘We are all doomed!’ being frequent refrain of UK IT staff in coffee-point discussions during the surge of offshoring to India in the early part of this century. UK IT staff were initially sceptical and dismissive of the capabilities in India, and hence reluctant to move work offshore. Offshoring, however, was a necessity driven by market forces and staff eventually realised that ‘No we are not’ was the right riposte to ‘We are all doomed!’. Today, globalised IT work is a norm. The Badger was part of this journey because ~20 years ago he helped to acquire a small software company in Bangalore and then monitored it proudly as it blossomed into a very large, successful, global IT delivery centre.

That small Bangalore company was full of young Indian staff who were hungry to learn and succeed. It was clear from the outset that they would flourish after being acquired because they had an impressive commitment and attitude that contrasted markedly with an ‘entitlement culture’ evident in some UK youngsters at the time. Today, however, things seem different.  Based on the number of UK millennials who want to work hard, learn, acquire skills, and be successful that the Badger meets, that ‘entitlement culture’ appears to have waned. Coupled with advancing technology and changing geo-political environments,  perhaps we’ll see some retrenchment of offshoring and IT globalisation in the future.

The Badger thinks that ‘We are all doomed!’ has also become an unspoken undercurrent to matters relating to the potential coronavirus pandemic in recent weeks, especially in social and broadcast media and the press which seem to have erupted with a questionable mix of instant opinion, misinformation, grumbles, individual experiences, and comments on country responses. Even stock markets have taken flight, ostensibly because – surprise, surprise – no one can predict the future. The Badger takes the hopefully rational view that we are definitely not doomed! Why would we be when we have overcome challenges from ‘The Millennium Bug’, SARS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and Ebola in the last 20 years?

The Badger does feel, however, that coronavirus is the starkest reminder yet of the downside risks of the relentless march of globalisation. Perhaps this combined with climate change will mark a turning point for globalisation? Time will tell.

Finally, just remember that humans are excellent creative problem solvers, so if someone suggests ‘We are all doomed!’ just say ‘No we are not’. Then playfully ask their view on what would happen if social media, global communication, and internet services collapsed. They’ll look you in the eye and scream ‘We are all doomed!’ much, much louder…

Software defects…a fact of life.

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Banking, Education, Internet of Things, Smart & New Technology, Technology

The Badger recently used a bank’s online processes to establish formalised ‘power of attorney’ control over someone else’s accounts. Formalising the ‘power of attorney’ and setting up the associated internet banking facilities was pleasingly easy. Everything went smoothly. This week, however, the Badger encountered a problem. Not a major one, more an inconvenience. The Badger, as ‘power of attorney’, set up a new payee in order to pay a small invoice the same day. However, a ‘technical failure’ error message appeared every time the Badger tried to send the payment. Grr! The Badger called the bank, who were very helpful. It was a known problem – a software defect. If you are a ‘power of attorney’ and click the ‘send payment immediately’ box, the software won’t let you send a payment! The solution? Click the ‘send at a future date’ box – i.e. tomorrow – instead. The solution worked perfectly.

The Badger wondered why this ‘software defect’ hadn’t been picked up in pre-release testing. The experience was also a reminder of how reliant we are on software and on it working correctly. It was also a reminder that software will always contain defects even when the best design, development and testing practices have been used. While the Badger cogitated on this, he saw last week’s reports from the US about the software for Boeing’s reusable spaceship, Starliner. The reports, here for example, highlight a review following the unsuccessful Starliner test flight to the International Space Station(ISS) in December 2019, which has exposed ‘process’ failings in the software design, development, testing and assurance oversight of the ~1 million lines of code. Oh dear. There are obviously many more defects in the software than the ones that impacted the mission in the first place. The Badger raised his eyebrows in surprise. After all, well-established engineering disciplines and processes for producing quality software have been around for a long time and are there for a reason.

Software runs the modern world. It’s everywhere. Its scale and complexity have risen dramatically in recent decades, and when software goes wrong it can have wide ranging, unwelcome, and sometimes disastrous impacts. You can get a sense of the scale of some codebases here and you’ll find some of the software failures that have wreaked havoc and disruption in recent years here. Without software, modern civilization would grind to a halt.

Years ago, the Badger was told ‘Never expect software to be perfect’. Wise words still relevant in today. AI, autonomous vehicles, robots – and so on – are not immune to having software defects, so when you go about your daily life just remember that a software defect is always lurking somewhere, and that it will manifest itself at the most inconvenient time. That’s just a fact of life in today’s world!

Anything ‘Smart’ or New Technology always has a downside…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Digital devices and the environment, Education, Smart & New Technology, Smart Motorways, Uncategorized

A one-liner that’s obviously true. All things ‘smart’ and new technology have pros and cons for both individuals and for society. History shows, however, that we only really pay attention to the cons when they bite us. When they do, attitudes change and what was a norm can quickly become a pariah. Plastic illustrates the point. Although first invented around 1860, mass adoption took off in the 1950s and today plastic is everywhere in our life. Recently, however, we’ve realised the danger from the ~8.3bn tonnes is in landfill or polluting the world’s oceans and so the world is now quickly moving away from this non-degradable material. Big UK supermarkets, for example, are now significantly reducing its use in packaging.

So, what triggered the Badger to focus on this one-liner truism? The trigger was a ‘permanently connected’ teenager’s tantrum which happened when the Badger was reading about the cons of ‘Smart Motorways’ (see here and here, for example). The tantrum arose from the perfect storm of their smartphone battery expiring just as a power cut knocked out internet access at home. Much teenage wailing about the end of the world ensued. The Badger unsympathetically pointed out that the teenager hadn’t actually died has a result of becoming ‘disconnected’. Thereafter a sensible conversation took place about how the world has changed since the Badger was a youngster, and the importance of thinking about the cons of using today’s online technology.

Badger described how he was raised on eggs, bread, butter, bacon, cabbage, sprouts and spuds, and how he played outside in the dirt, climbed trees, gathered tadpoles from ponds in jam jars, and watched a TV with only two channels and no remote control. There was no phone, no electronic calculator, no tablet or laptop, and music came from a radio or vinyl records. The Badger did a paper round, walked to school, did jobs at the weekend, and played football with mates on a local green whenever he could. Fish and Chips was the only takeaway food, shops closed for a half-day mid-week and all day on  Sunday. The Police were respected and so was independence and privacy. None of this stopped the Badger having a rewarding career in IT, or being a balanced, law abiding citizen!

The Badger told the teenager he was pro ‘smart’ and new technology when it respects an individual’s privacy and fulfils a true need in a person’s life, and he suggested the teenager think about a) the tech they use, why, and its cons, b) their privacy, and c) how they would live without a smartphone, tablet or laptop because they would indeed continue to live without them!

The conversation ended as soon as power returned restoring connectivity. The teenager then took a call from a friend. The friend was told that the teen wouldn’t be downloading a new app that ‘everyone else is using’ because they didn’t need it and they wanted to think about privacy and its cons. Result! The teenager had been listening after all…

Hone your Delivery Leadership skills by taking a central, company-wide role…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Education, IT Project Management, Training, Uncategorized

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The Badger was asked by a group of young IT project managers (PMs) to describe something in his IT delivery career that spawned significant learning. There have been many learning experiences – all important in their own way – but one quickly came to the fore. It was the learning that came from a ‘career transition event’ which required the swift development of new personal skills as well as the rapid assimilation of broader business knowledge in order to deal with new challenges. The event itself was a move from being a successful software, systems integration and service project leader in the company’s engine room, into a central, company-wide, delivery leadership role within the company’s overall business leadership team.

The Badger learned from the move that he had aptitudes that others could see but were unknown to himself! The move to a central company role meant learning new soft and hard skills, and new ways of thinking and behaving that built on the deeply embedded disciplines and learning of a delivery background. After progressing from programmer, through team leading into the delivery leadership of fixed price IT contracts of ever larger scale, complexity and commercial risk, the transition to a central company leadership role was still difficult! Perspective on how the company worked, its priorities, and the context in which decisions were made, all changed.

In explaining this to the young PMs the Badger summarised three things. First that good IT delivery leaders are natural problem solvers and managers of risk. They are organised, commercially aware, good decision makers, and people that get things done. These are valuable traits in a central role because others who operate centrally often have little real experience of doing the real work that brings in profit. The second was that a central company-wide role really does change the perception you have of your company. You see how it really functions, its priorities, and why decisions can sometimes be different to what you expect. The third was that if you as a PM get a chance to work in a central company-wide role then take it! You may find you don’t enjoy the experience, but you will learn lots and it will make you a better and savvier delivery leader. It will definitely change your perspectives and make you think hard about what you enjoy and what you don’t.

One of the PMs subsequently asked the following:

‘So, we should extend ourselves, be thirsty for new knowledge, always build on what we are good at and enjoy doing, and get some central company-wide experience to broaden our minds, our knowledge and our capabilities?

The Badger replied with one word. Correct!

Robots in Nursing Homes…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Digital Transformation, Education, Health & Social Care, Innovation, Internet of Things, Uncategorized

The Badger’s immediate priority in 2020 so far has been dealing with the health and care of a frail, 91-year old, father in moving to a nursing home after a lengthy stay in hospital. This transition went better than anticipated and the Badger’s respect for all the health and care professionals involved has reached new heights. They have been magnificent. A transition to a nursing home becoming ‘home’ is, of course, difficult for any person, especially when they have medical, mobility and dementia issues but still desire full independence, but the staff have been great and have eased the process for everyone.

If you have dealt with a similar scenario then you’ll know that it makes you aware of little things that can improve the patient’s quality of life and the bigger things that would help carer’s in their work. Useful items of simple technology are available that can help with the former – see here and here, for example – and robotic pets might ultimately help some people in the future! Regarding help for carer’s, however, the Badger’s observation is that technology that helps to safely move the human body during the daily routines of life will provide the biggest help. There has been robotics research in this area for some time, and robot advances in nursing home settings is moving apace in Japan, gaining more momentum across the developed world, and receiving investment from the UK government. If the Badger becomes resident in a nursing home in a few decades time, then a robot will inevitably play a role in getting him out of bed!

A young digital native in the Badger’s family made the following comment after the Badger’s father had been in his new home for a week:

‘There’s no point in me having a laptop, tablet, smartphone, Alexa or online games when I get old because I’ll forget what they are and how to use them. Talking to someone will be more important’.

The Badger wouldn’t put it quite that way, but the comment was very insightful!

The right robots will undoubtedly help in a residential care environment, but in the Badger’s opinion they will never replace the humanity shown by the special people who really care for their vulnerable and high-dependent residents. The Badger ’s father readily responds to people who engage him with encouraging words, a touch of a hand, a smile, a wiggle of the nose or a wrinkle of the face, and a joke or some banter. Robots  that help care staff should get more profile and investment, but it’s people and the humanity of their interactions that really makes a difference in our twilight years. So, bring on the robots, but not as a replacement for the special people who look after us when we can’t look after ourselves…

Youngsters, gaming, ‘STEM’ and a 3D printer…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Computer gaming, Digital devices and the environment, Education, Technology, Uncategorized

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The Badger’s long believed that a solid education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) arms you well for whatever you want to do in life, which, after all, often takes you in directions you never envisage. With a solid foundation in STEM subjects, you will be armed well for anything that unfold. Having a good STEM grounding doesn’t limit your horizons, it expands them! Brian May , guitarist in Queen, and Rowan Atkinson, ‘Mr Bean’, illustrate the point perfectly. The former studied Physics and Mathematics and has a PhD in Astrophysics, and the latter studied Electrical Engineering. A good STEM grounding never stops you from being an artist, a musician, an entrepreneur or businessperson, or a creative type!

So, what’s this got to do with 3D printing? Well, the Badger recently asked a group of youngsters between the ages of 11 and 16 what they did with their spare time. Unsurprisingly, playing games on their phones or games consoles dominated the response. It made the Badger wonder if introducing them to some alternative tech could reduce the dominance of gaming and yet be as much fun while having a stealthy ‘STEM’ educational element. The Badger’s not anti-gaming, just pro broadening the education of digital-native youngsters whenever possible, but feels that youngsters would benefit from something else in their digital mix. That something is a 3D printer!

The Badger has recently embraced 3D printing in the home environment. Indeed, the picture above is of a bespoke, 10cm tall, model produced on the Badger’s own 3D printer. The printer cost less than £250. There’s a wide range of available printers suitable for youngsters, as well as software (much of it cheap or free), and the Thingiverse provides a great source of customizable 3-D models to start with. It’s a great feeling to design your own thing, build a 3-D model of it, and watch it being manufactured in front of your eyes. It’s creative, fun, and inherently engages you with STEM by stealth in the home environment.

The impact of 3D printing on major industries and the potential of the technology as a teaching resource have long been recognised. The Badger thinks that youngsters can learn lots from having this fun technology at home to use in their spare time. For less than the price of the leading games consoles you should think about getting a 3D printer that will be covertly ‘STEM educational’ and yet provide hours of fun as a creative alternative to gaming. What’s not to like! A youngster could create ‘the next best thing’ using a 3D printer in their bedroom. It could diversify their entertainment and make them the next super-successful ‘tech’ business mogul. Hmm. Let’s not get too carried away for the moment, but you never know…

Being educated and aware of ‘Fake News’ leads to intellectual stimulation and entertainment…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Ethics & Regulation, social media, Uncategorized

Lots of things the Badger reads online and in social media feeds appear to be true but often aren’t. That’s not really a great surprise because misinformation, propaganda, hoaxes, and stories created deliberately to deceive or manipulate have been around since ancient times. In modern day parlance, ‘Fake News’ has reached epidemic proportions because modern technology and social media have made it so easy to create and disseminate without the controls that normally apply to traditional print and broadcast media. Today, neither traditional print or broadcast media or ‘always on’ online social media is free from claims of ‘Fake News’. Historically we have tended to believe information provided by organisations or people we trusted, but when reading items on his smartphone the other day the Badger found himself wondering if you can actually trust anything anymore!

The Badger ended up asking himself two questions, namely ‘Do you really know what Fake News is?’, and ‘What’s the best way of dealing with Fake News?’. The answer to the first question was an emphatic Yes. There’s many explanations of ‘Fake News’, but one the Badger likes for its laudable simplicity is ‘What is Fake News’ from WEBWISE. Answering the second question was more difficult. Governments have explored the subject and a UK Parliamentary Select Committee report on ‘Disinformation and fake news’ published in February 2019, for example, provides a fascinating read. The Summary – page 5 and 6 of the report – and especially the last two paragraphs, signals that more regulation and regulatory oversight of the digital world is inevitable with the big tech companies very much in the cross-wires. Change will happen but the wheels of governments turn very slowly! However, the question the Badger really asked was what’s the best way for himself to deal with ‘Fake News’ today? Well, the Badger thought for a moment and decided the answer’s very simple. There isn’t a best way!

One of the sentences in the Summary of the report noted above struck a particular chord:

‘In a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices.’

The Badger thinks being educated and aware is the most powerful weapon to counter the foibles of today’s digital world. We should all learn to be suspicious of anything we see, hear or read on our connected devices. So how does the Badger deal with ‘Fake News’ today? Easy. By having that education and awareness, by thinking, not taking things at face value, and by being objective and not following the crowd. So, strive to be more educated and aware of ‘Fake News’. You will quickly realise that it provides more intellectual stimulation and entertainment than most of the comedy shows and soap operas available on your digital TV!

A New Decade Beckons(2)…Bumble Bees and Satellite Constellations!

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Climate & Environment, Education, Space, Uncategorized

On Christmas Day the Badger and his wife, supping mid-morning coffee while chatting about the mild weather, saw a Bumble Bee fly past the kitchen window and land on a daisy flower in the garden. We had never seen a big fat Bumble Bee in the garden on Christmas Day before! Previous Christmases have had bleaker weather, often colder with heavy frosts and occasionally snow. Indeed, a decade ago the weather was truly bleak at Christmas and since then we have noticed that the festive season’s weather getting noticeably milder. We decided that this year’s Bumble Bee sighting must be (unscientific) evidence of climate change.

As we finished our coffees, we were joined by another family member who seemed thoughtful as they watched the lone Bumble Bee fly off into the next garden. We all speculated what we would see if the scene was replayed in Christmas 2029, and the family member made an unexpected prediction, namely that in 2029 there would be lots more native flowers in bloom at Christmas but no sign of any Bumble Bees! They also predicted that there would be more OneWeb and Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth at Christmas 2029 than Bumble Bee sightings in our garden for the whole year! Hmm. The Badger asked for some rationale.

A discussion ensued, and – put simply – the underpinning rationale seemed to be the following. Firstly, a view that technology, the internet, and instant information is the utility of modern life, that it has destroyed privacy, and that the OneWeb and Starlink satellite constellations merely provide a ‘Phase 2’ reinforcement of these same points! Secondly, a belief that over the last decade our global leaders have pandered to vested interests and failed to act on any of the big issues that affect life on our planet. Thirdly, that this will not change in the next decade. And finally, a belief that political, commercial and vested interests always win out over what really matters to the lives of the vast majority of people…and Bumble Bees! Essentially, the family member predicts that we’ll be able to watch endless YouTube videos and movies anywhere on Earth in 2029, but we’ll be no further forward in addressing the big sustainability issues affecting life for all species on the planet.

Time will tell if this is a fair point of view, but the Badger’s more optimistic. We are where we are. None of us can change history, but we all have a voice and can influence the future. So please think about what’s right for species like Bumble Bees in your New Year resolutions. They need your support to survive, and we all need them more than we realise for our own sustainability on this planet. ‘We need Bumble Bees more than we need huge constellations of satellites’. Hopefully our leaders will listen, or Christmas 2029 will be grim…