Today I had one of
those uncommon confluences of seemingly disparate items that spurred
me into writing this piece. Oddly it started with me wanting to post
something in agreement with a short paragraph in the speech CM Gorst
gave to the IoD on the 8th
December. You can read the entire item at
http://www.gov.je/News/Speeches/ChiefMinisters/Pages/InstituteofDirectors2015.aspx
The excerpt that
caught me eye was paragraph/sentence 7 “Globally, the
population is increasing, economic power is shifting and concerns are
growing over climate change and future food, energy and water
security “. I concur. I said so repeatedly on the senatorial
election hustings in 2008 and especially in 2011. In politics as in
investing there is a world of difference between being right and
being right on time. Nevertheless it has to be said the CM has
grasped something very important. The question is what we do about
it? But that is not where I want to go today.
Annually we have a
social survey in the Island. It one of our few good sources of
opinion in that it takes a relatively large sample, meaning the
results should be pretty reliable. The latest one is out now at
http://www.gov.je/Government/JerseyWorld/StatisticsUnit/PeopleCommunities/Pages/Socialstatistics.aspx
Dismay hardly describes my feelings on seeing the chart at figure 6.4
:
If 60% do not think
they have much if any influence over Jersey, who does have influence?
Is it any wonder our election turnouts are so embarrassingly low? I
do not propose to go into any detail about solutions here, but I will
give a couple of exemplars as to the nature of the problem.
Recently the JEP have
been running pieces on what various States members have achieved in
their year since the elections. Again I'll eschew the opportunity for
some humour at their expense. I want to go back the senatorial
hustings at the RJAHS. Everyone of the successful candidates said
they supported local organic growing when pressed, except arguably
the now Chief Minister. So what have they done, these independent
candidates? Has any of them bought a proposition, or even questions
on the organic sector and its obvious decline locally?? Has any of
them written to organic farmers to find out what is needed? Have
they been in contact with the Jersey Organic Association about the
problems? I can be pretty confident the answer is no, they have not
actually done anything conspicuous. So what was the value of those
repeated pledges at the hustings?
It was in trying to
post a response (positively!) on twitter about the Chief Minister's
speech I mentioned above that I discovered the Assistant Minister for
digital etc had blocked me. I was somewhat surprised – I have been
following him on twitter a number of years, and yes I do challenge
some things he posts, but equally I often retweet his occasional
blog posts too. For those who don't know twitter, it allows one to
post short items and to choose who to follow ie whose postings you
get to see. You can block someone from seeing your posts. The only
reason I can see for doing that rather than simply unfollowing is to
stop them being able to respond to your posts.
If I had to guess I
would say the issue arose from a comment I made on another site about
the senators recent posting on innovation see
https://blog.gov.je/2015/11/20/action-on-innovation/
. He had my hackles up before the end of the first sentence
“Innovation is about dreaming up great ideas that change the world
“ Simply not so, on so many counts. The piece is written from a
very narrow and partial view of what innovation is and what it
delivers.
Perhaps the assistant minister knows more about it than I
having spent less than a year in office, but it seems unlikely. I
was there at the first AI blossoming, I worked for commercial
research groups and centres for several years as the programme
coordinator of the postgraduate training partnership with Cranfield
University. I've been involved in patent battles (proving prior art),
two trade sales of tech businesses I part owned, I was even an
external supervisor for a couple of PhD students (one on
multidimensional project management representation, the other on the
application of AI to water asset management). While writing up my
own thesis I was engaged as one of two people to set up and run what
was them the largest medial trial database in Europe (100,000 cohort
colorectal cancer study). My mate Dave and I set up one of the first
commercial web sites in the UK, to support our SF and book trading
business, before E-bay existed and EPOS software was available to us.
Oh yes and I managed and co-owned a software house that grew in 5
years from a 4 person team to being bought out by one of our
customers for several million pounds. That's just the software side
for starters.
Really I am not
bothered that the assistant minister blocks me. There are plenty of
people about who will willingly tell him want he wants to hear. What scientists learn early on is that it is your critics and detractors that are your best friends in getting to the truth, the best explanation/model/solution. Sycophants are of no assistance
Software projects can fail on the misplacement of
a single punctuation mark in hundreds of lines of code. (It makes
writing for people such a delight, thye being much more forgiving of my typing !) Miss-stated requirements and
unacknowledged assumptions are usually catastrophic to projects.
Opinion and theory count for little against delivering something
that works. My best advice to anyone dealing with innovation and
digital work is that practitioners are well accustomed to hearing & ignoring
B/S and bluster. If you don't know your stuff, you'd be best to say
nothing at all.
