Category Archives: Life

Parenting goes corporate

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Regular readers will be familiar with my dismay at the kind of bumph that passes for strategic planning. I recall as ‘thinker in residence’ at a one of the major departments in Canberra having a discussion with senior management about Web 2.0 and innovation in government. They began the conversation by posting a list of dot points which purportedly identified the department’s or one of it’s division’s strategic goals.  I was completely lost. I can remember nothing of the strategic objectives of the department, but I think one of them involved getting more outputs from inputs. (Which gives you some idea of how useful – not – such desiderata are.)

I loathe long retreats that seem to go forever which come up with mission and vision statements and other religious credimus (I am informed by my Latin studying son that ‘credimus’ is the plural of ‘credo’.) I think such things are now going out of fashion, but the new things seem even worse to me. One such is functional diagrams. The problem with functional diagrams is the suggestion they create of one to one mappings between nominated functions and what people do. Or articulations of ‘values’. Spare me. So tell me, if we don’t put ‘honesty’ in does it mean we’re not too keen on honesty? Timeliness? Equity? Transparency? What do we leave out? Why? I have been known to feign death to avoid such deliberations.  Continue reading →

Games

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Games seem frivolous. They can stand as metaphors for life, but typically, the outcome of games doesn’t really matter. I wanted Collingwood to win it’s last game this year, but it didn’t and that’s that. Doesn’t matter. Still as I gradually realised when working on the Government 2.0 work in 2009, the element of play is critically important and not just to high level ‘brainstorming’ activity, but to seizing the opportunities for innovation of all kinds from major disruptive innovation to the most minor improvised improvements in the way things are being done.  That’s why I thought things like mashups were so wonderful – they are low cost ways of breaking things up, and inviting others into play with one’s assets (or copies of them while the ‘real’ ones remain on the official website or otherwise in the system somewhere.

And with games becoming so much more prominent in young people’s use of their time, it’s not surprising that educators are arguing that games teach a new kind of literacy. Gamification is all the rage in Silicon Valley. As Wikipedia explains, gamification is

The use of game design techniques[1] and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Typically gamification applies to non-game applications and processes (also known as “funware“)[2], in order to encourage people to adopt them. Gamification works by making technology more engaging[3], by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviors[4], by showing a path to mastery and autonomy, and by taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming.[5] The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, filling out tax forms, or reading web sites.[3]

Michael Neilsen’s new book on Reinventing Discovery has this to say about Foldit, a very clever gamification of the arduous task of figuring out how proteins fold  which has generated new scientific insights about the formation of proteins.

I was skeptical when I first heard of Foldit. it sounded like the dull educational computer cames I saw in school when I was growing up in the 1980s. But I downloaded the game and spent hours playing it over several days. . . . . People play the game because it’s good.  It has the compelling, addictive quality all good computer games have: a task that’s challenging but not impossible, instant feedback on how well you’re doing, and the sense that you’re always just one step away from improvement.” (p. 146.)

But you can argue that games are more important than that. Continue reading →

Meme Weaver

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Yesterday I followed this mellifluously titled article on why the author hadn’t been able to write a best selling ‘ideas book’.

This is what I had to do. First, I needed to have a platform. A platform is something you stand on. It makes you taller than you are. In trade publishing, a platform is the same, but it’s a prestigious brand. I had two: from a trade editor’s point of view, I had been a “professor” at the big university and a “writer” at the big magazine. Second, I needed a big idea. A big idea is an enthusiastically stated thesis, usually taking the form of “This changes everything and will make you rich, happy, and beautiful.” A big idea must be counterintuitive: the this that changes everything must be something everyone thinks is trivial, but in fact matters a great deal. In my case, the this had to be Wikipedia, so my big idea was “Wikipedia changes everything.” I had done no research to substantiate such a claim. Third, I needed a catchphrase title like The Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point, or The Long Tail. The title had to be the kind of thing that becomes a cliché. Trade editors would demand this. And in fact a trade editor suggested a good title—WikiWorld. . . .

I started doing research. . . . It forced me to scotch the idea that “Wikipedia changes everything,” because it obviously didn’t. The truth about Wikipedia was messy. I couldn’t boil it down to catchphrases and anecdotes. So I did my best to reduce the inherent complexity of the subject, and submitted the manuscript. Was it good? Well, the book did the job as I understood it. Was it done? Yes, and that was important. But I was worried. I had strayed from the big-idea template. My book was a convoluted story involving evolution, human nature, media technologies, and their effects on human society and thought. Surprisingly, my editor liked it a lot. He compared me to Jared Diamond. I didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not. I had some serious questions about Diamond’s work, as did many other historians. My agent, however, assured me that this was the best possible news: Diamond’s books sold like hotcakes.

Then my editor fell ominously silent. E-mails went unanswered, phone calls unreturned. What had happened? My agent explained that my big idea—which in fact was no longer my big idea—had a short shelf life. That’s why my editor had wanted the book in six months. Other Wikipedia books were in the pipeline. Some of their authors had higher platforms, bigger ideas, and pithier titles than mine. The clock was ticking. After six months, my editor finally wrote me. Not surprisingly, he no longer liked my book. Too complicated for the average trade reader. He advised me to speculate. “Unleash your inner Marshall McLuhan,” he said, and rewrite the book.

This was excellent advice from a smart man with decades of experience in trade publishing. But I realized that I had no inner Marshall McLuhan. Even more important was my realization that I had no inner James Surowiecki, Malcolm Gladwell, or Chris Anderson. From my editor’s perspective, these were models, and rightly so. They made trade publishers a fortune. From my perspective, however, they were good writers who had spun big ideas into gold. I couldn’t write a big-idea book, because, as it turned out, I didn’t believe in big ideas. By my lights, they almost had to be wrong.

Anyway, at the bottom of the article was a link to another project of the author’s – the new book network where there are podcasts of interviews with the authors of new books. Seems like a good idea to me.  Apart from anything else I like the guy’s sense of humour – which is evident in the site’s video and in lots of his write ups. and, as I snuffled through a cold in bed last night, managed to listen to a bunch of interesting interviews, the highlight being the one with Elizabeth Anderson on her recent book  The Imperative of Integration (Princeton University Press, 2010).

Now more than ever . . .

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I’ve been struggling to articulate my objection to little strategic set pieces which appear before policy proposals.  They typically take the salient challenges from conventional wisdom – for instance right now that we’re facing potential environmental catastrophe, sovereign debt crises and various other dangers – and then present the policy proposals they are promoting as particularly well suited to those problems.

Trouble is, the two things are disconnected. My usual reason for doing something – like for instance Windows on Workplaces - is not because it’s uniquely well suited to our particular circumstance but because in virtually any circumstance it would be a good idea. Indeed, though there are exceptions, if one is going to implement some policy, one generally wants some faith that the policy suits any circumstances, because circumstances change.

But just as we incessantly ‘theme’ conferences around the issue du jour, somehow there is this compulsion to present an idea as some response to its specific times.

Speaking of Windows on Workplaces, the US Government publishes detailed data on the way in which different US Government agencies perform on employee satisfaction surveys. BestPlacesToWork.org is an excellent initiative, but couldn’t happen in Australia at least right now, because our own Australian Public Service Commission doesn’t want to publish agency specific data.

Anyway, here’s how BestPlacesToWork tells us why its service matters

Today, America faces high unemployment, a growing federal budget deficit, war in Afghanistan, a major military engagement in Iraq, an aging population, long term-energy needs and a host of other daunting challenges. Now, more than ever, we need effective government and public servants who represent the best and brightest that our nation has to offer.

It also tells us that “The 2010 rankings are the fifth edition of this ongoing series, following the 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 versions.” and that

The rankings provide a mechanism to hold agency leaders accountable for the health of the organizations they run. They also offer a roadmap for better management and provide an early warning sign for agencies in trouble. Had Congress or government leaders paid attention to the 2003 Best Places survey, for example, they would have found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was last in the employee rankings. That was two years before FEMA’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina, but at the time, few noticed.

So if we need the site now “more than ever”, I guess we needed it less just before Hurricane Katrina hit. I guess those earlier editions should have been forwarded with words to the effect “Now, we need effective government and public servants who represent the best and brightest that our nation has to offer – but times may be coming when we will need it even more.” Continue reading →

Thoughts on Manning Clark on reading Mark McKenna’s new biography

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Shared life, shared memories ... Dymphna and Manning Clark in 1989. It now appears it was Dymphna, not the historian, who saw the aftermath of the Nazi pogrom.

Manning and and Dymphna on the veranda of their house at Wapengo on the NSW South Coast

Inside Story has just published an essay by me in which I try to figure out Manning Clark. I was working on this within the bowels of what is not so politely called the ‘back end’ of Troppo when Ken Parish sent me an email saying that he liked the essay as it was coming along.  But it was still fairly repetitive, so I smartened it up and sent it off to Inside Story for a more salubrious publication than we amateurs can hope for here on Troppo.  I’m not too sure what the point of publishing an earlyish draft of the essay is, but Inside Story don’t like us reproducing their copy in its entirety, but I wanted to put a marker here to the final essay and it’s here in Troppo’s back end so I’m going to press ‘publish’ and be done with it.  But I’ll assume unless otherwise stated that comments below relate to the final version up on Inside Story. And even if you do read the material below, you should read the final version linked to above – or otherwise miss out on the story of the contraband frozen salmon marked “printed matter” that Dymphna smuggled through US customs.  (Please don’t pass the story onto Chris Mitchell or there’ll be hell to pay).

ooooOOOOoooo

I’ve written once or twice about Manning Clark on Troppo and have managed to rack up over 3,000 words in this post. Given it’s got a nice spot for an ‘intermission’ I’m going to publish it in two parts.

I lived in a converted garage out the back of his house in 1990 – in between two close friends living there for several years each on either side of me – and got to know him and his wife Dymphna quite well. Manning Clark both as he appeared on the public stage and as I knew him and his expansive circle of family members, friends, followers and acolytes and hangers on of various hues (like me) remains a subject of fascination. One reason for that is that, to use one of his own high blown expressions, he dreamed a great dream. To use Woody Allen’s expression, he wanted to eat at the grown ups table and had the temerity to imagine that he could somehow fashion literature out of his very vivid and melodramatic view of his own experience.

A second reason is that the dream he dreamed was about us, about our history.

A third reason is that, in contrast to other great national cultural figures of his generation, it’s painfully unclear what he achieved. His monumental history is a very strange beast, full of inaccuracies ( not of great moment by themselves, but for what they may portend).

McKenna’s biography helped me clarify my own thoughts about what I think of his history.  I’m sorry to say that I think it’s pretty much a disaster. It is an attempt at an anachronistic genre – an attempt to write history as myth as Thomas Carlyle wrote (I can only really take about one paragraph of Thomas Carlyle at a time – separated by at least a few hours though usually it’s a few years – he was also a big defender of slavery against the likes of those cold blooded practitioners of a new and ‘dismal science’ – his expression – called economics – which brings one up a little short, but I digress). The anachronism of the genre ramps up the degree of difficulty – the chance of pulling off what he’s attempting by a great deal, but perhaps leaves it as a possibility. It would be possible to write something great writing additional books of the Bible – ie not as contemporary literary interpretations but additional books to add to the series – but it would be pretty damn hard. Like imagining a painter who could create really great art as an imitation of some past style. I know of none who’ve done it.

Continue reading →

Nervous Norm and the Crossword Bandit

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The reported death of old-time Sydney crim ”Nervous” Norm Beves has provoked my nostalgia gland.  According to the SMH:

Nervous Norm’s criminal ineptitude was so legendary that for years ”Norm’s form” was used as the case study on recidivism for police officers studying to be detectives. …

Colourful Sydney racing identities, ex-crims, lawyers and golfing buddies were on hand to farewell Beves, who had once worked for George Freeman and later, when he wasn’t shoplifting, on the wharves.

”No one is unluckier than me,” Beves was heard moaning to his wife in an intercepted call played to the Wood royal commission on police corruption in 1996.

Actually, my great uncle Andy was quite a bit unluckier than Nervous Norm.  What’s more, he moved in a much lower class of criminal than old Norm. No-one in their right mind would ever have considered employing Andy as caddy master at the Australian Golf Club, not unless they were keen on daily trips to pawn shops to redeem the members’ clubs.  Andy even presided over the theft of all the grog from my parents’ wedding reception at Paddington Town Hall by engineering a brawl out the front to give him cover to back a truck up to the rear entrance while all the guests were milling around in Oxford Street.  The brawl hit the Daily Mirror at the time, but not the fact that Uncle Andy had ripped off the liquid supplies.

Andy had a nickname too.  The Crossword Bandit.  He used to fill them in to relieve the boredom of long hours spent “casing the joint”, but always left the completed crosswords behind at the scene of his crimes.  And when the CIB found them and came around to see him, he always confessed.  Uncle Andy was institutionalised.  He couldn’t cope on the outside.  One of the few clear memories I have of him was when I was about 8 and Andy accompanied us to Central Railway Station in Sydney where our grandfather was managing to hold down a regular job for one of the few times in his adult life.  He was selling papers on the ramp at Central.  “Sun or Mirror” he’d yell every few seconds as the commuters surged past.  It was the best he could manage as an epileptic with  a metal plate in his head after a fair slice of his brain had been shot away in France in World War I after enlisting at 16 by lying about his age.

As Andy accompanied the Parish tribe up the station ramp to see granddad, a couple of burly blokes in ill-fitting suits passed us.  “G’day Andy”, one of them said , smiling. ” G’day George, Fred” Uncle Andy replied in his thick Scottish-Australian brogue.  “Who were they?” my mum asked, impressed and nervous at the same time. “Oh, that was Detective Inspector Jones and Detective Sergeant Oldfield (or whatever) from the Armed Holdup Squad” , Uncle Andy explained.  It wasn’t the answer Mum had been wanting.

The sins of the fathers . . .

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How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

From ”Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany”, by Nico Voigtlaender, Hans-Joachim Voth, NBER Working Paper No. 17113