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Showing posts from 2015

On communication and fragmentation

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The Rosetta Stone, British Museum by Gary Denham I've dealt with work flows that result in communications for many years and one trend that I've noticed over the past 5 or so years is that unlike previous communications channels, wh ich might have remain relatively small and fragmented before they become widespread, there are now various avenues for communication and people will be comf ortable using more than one ; even fr om the same device . For example, I have friends that will use email, F acebook messaging, WhatsApp, Snapchat and SMS (or iMessage) between the same set of people depending on both the context and content of the messages. Some background I was recently at a conference where Patrice About from AirFrance made the point about various customer service aspects for airlines now don't have a single way of achieving that service and passengers expect to use the most convenient method available to them, for

FORUM: SITA's Europe Aviation ICT Forum 2015

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Leaving Athens Following on from my last trip to the SITA Summit in 2014  this year's SITA Forum in Athens had similar themes, but with a more airport focused audience. I think my biggest take away is that self-service is important ; not just as a method in cutting costs but also in improving the passenger experience ( #PaxEx ) via two main factors - control and information. Control To pick out the two salient illustrations of this, for control I'll turn to Patrice About from AirFrance. He made the point that consumer bag tracking devices now available for about $50, and these aren't under airline control or put in baggage with their knowledge. So the industry faces a choice - either find a way to work with passengers bring their own device or bury head in sand and have pax that are better informed than airline agents when a bag has been put on the wrong aircraft. This trend is happening now, the good news for airlines is that bag tag devices are GPS/sim based and m

On post-technical and beyond

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Photo by Matt Cornock (flickr) I have been messing around with computers and first started writing simple code about 30 years ago. Since then I have gained a degree that contained a large "technical" component analysing and solving problems with code.  My professional code has been experienced by hundreds of millions of people from organising school transport for special needs children, overhauling part of the British rail infrastructure, supporting the programme management of a massive bank refurbishment in the UK to more recently supplying travellers around the word with tickets, information during disruption and the chance to feedback to their travel company. I have also written a content management system in one language that I didn't use professionally and some small open source utilities in another.  I don't list out these achievements to convince you of my ability as a programmer, far from it, at my best I was merely average. My code was never truly

On AI and the future

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The Future Soon by K Rupp on flickr Last Friday was the last dConstruct (at least in it's current form). For the past ten years this has been an interesting design conference held in Brighton looking at the culture/technology intersection. As a Artificial Intelligence graduate the subject matter was right up my street and changed the way I look at things just a little. While at University I had a certain nostalgia for the golden age of AI in the late 50s to early 70s, to have been around while Winograd , Weizenbaum , Schank , Newell and Simon were writing the papers that founded approaches and I was studying all those years later. What changed after dConstruct was that I now almost wanted to have been born later , with advances like 3D printing, robot kits that retail for around $1,600, and 10 companies with self-driving permits in California it feels like an exciting time to be studying, creating and entering the job market.  Looking at my Twitter timeline, this doe

On storytelling and stories

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Stories & Storytelling_1956 by Sterling College (flickr) In a lot of software projects the tools - such as prioritisation, backlog grooming, MVP - and artefacts that they produce - such as  job stories, roadmaps, personas -  are useful but ultimately I believe that they are about allowing a community of people to tell a story.  When "going up" to people at budget sign off level they are generally short of time, so the stories need to be the point and tightly foccused on giving a sense of what has happened and what will happened, including topics such as: What are you doing?  Which business goal does this achieve?  What is the value? (e.g. either cost saving/revenue protection or increase in revenue) In my experience  when going into detail level with implementers  they like to hear the answers to these questions:  Why is it needed?  How does this fit into bigger picture? and What will we be doing next? I have tried experimenting with storytelling in ro

On tools and technique

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Photo of Bellagio by me Bit of a parable about chasing silver bullets ... I have been a keen photographer since mid-2008 when I got my first SLR. Since then I have taken tens of thousands of photos, practising my technique and getting used to the tools available - for example natural light, flashes or particular lenses. Most of these photos never see the light of day and get written off as I don't like them for some reason or other, but I can't bring myself to delete them and every now and again go back and look to see what I can salvage. Each time I then fall into the trap of Gear Acquisition Syndrome ! I have been doing that recently and looking at what themes I can find in my photos and how they can be edited to fit in a series - at the same time as pricing up the latest Fuji X-T10. This time there are a couple of photos that have not only gone from the "nah" pile, but are now being shared on the Internet with other people! So, what has changed? ... The

On done and successful

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"Success never slee... by icon" by MsSaraKelly (flickr) Do we declare success too soon? That's a question I've heard posed by Gojko Adzic in a couple of talks plus a workshop that he ran with Dave Evans and it has stuck with me ever since.   To paraphrase most projects or initiatives conflate "done" - for example as in "dev done" - with "success", when really it should be on delivery of value in a business outcome. So it maybe that we declare success in producing a new running shoe, when really it should be when the athlete who buys it runs a personal best. Or maybe creating a Video ad that is actually seen. What success looks like and when we reach it matters to me as I want to keep focus ; I also feel that the goal of success, and what it really means, is a key navigation aid in maintaining that focus. One product that makes me think about this is Google Glass and how the delivery of the product wasn't the final hurdle, t

On things changing and staying the same

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Mainframe Computer by Dave Winer I recently spent some time with my maternal grandparents. My grandfather often likes to tell us stories about his past career and this visit was no different. Previously I have heard about his work in London as an accountant using earlier computer systems, such as those pictured to the left. I don't remember any stand out stories or great surprises from this era, other than how similar it was to my own experience working on a Y2K project more recently. However, this chapter was more recent and dealing with his time in the small Sussex town they lived in while I was growing up. I listened to him explain how he had first started to sell personal computers with a business partner and then later to bundle with Sage accounting packages as a reseller- this was when PCs were very much a business tool and before Sage had grown as large as they are now.  Afterwards it struck me how the two different markets are so different now, large enterprise

on automated and manual experiences

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As my running season finishes again, I've been looking at buying the photos of my personal highlights. :ast year I wrote about my experiences in on buying behaviours and usability and this year I have spotted other annoyances and lessons to learn. Untagged photo search options This year I started the Brighton Marathon 10km with two other people, so after looking at my photos I went and had a look at theirs. When I did this I noticed that there were some of my that weren't tagged with my bib number. No problem! I thought, there is a handy search option here. So I entered the both the colour and type of my top and shorts and hit go ... and none of the results that came back contained me (or runners matching the description I had given!). Luckily I have worked in IT, creating various document and workflow systems, for a number of years; so my eyes spotted a reference number on each indivdual photo - in the example to the right BTK00124. So my next step was to