iancollingwood

Over the summer we played host, at the office, to a charming young chap by the name of Charlie. He was 15 years old, bright as a button, and had come to spend a week with us as part of his school's Work Experience programme. We were happy to have him, and - so far as I can tell - he was happy to be here. When we parted, I like to think that we both felt the time he'd spent with us was worthwhile. I even found my tarnished faith in the youth of today largely restored. When he leaves school, I might even offer him a job.

Now, I haven't any data to back it up, but I'd imagine that there must be very few people in the world who'd claim that placing school kids with companies for short periods over the summer is anything other than a good idea. A classic win-win. At the very worst it might help some gifted young rebel to discover that a life spent staring at a screen, bickering over who's making the next round of tea, is a life which they will move heaven and earth in order to avoid. For other, less radically-minded youth, it might just be a way to learn about the kind of skills they'll need to get a job when they leave school.

Six months on, and last week, we received another request from a parent, asking if we'd play host to their child for two weeks in February. The parent in question had visited our offices, met our team, and had evidently decided that ours was a friendly, safe workplace in which their precious offspring might be educated and, perhaps, inspired for the short duration of their stay.

We refused.

You see, in the six months since those long, dappled summer days, and, without our noticing, things have changed. Our workplace is no longer a Safe Place for a child to loiter. A worrisome, ill-defined threat has descended, and our sunny little office is now, apparently, a dark and sordid place for children (and Vulnerable Adults).

What's happened, you ask? What caused this shadow to fall upon us? Have we just noticed Josef Fritzl, camped out under the boardroom table? Have we spotted Gary Glitter's spangly boots, stashed in the corner of our stationery cupboard?

No.

What's changed is that we - like every other workplace in the UK - are now subject to the double-think lunacy of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and their "vetting and barring" scheme.

I'm no lawyer, but from what I understand, the law now dictates that any employer who permits a child to spend more than 3 days out of any 30 in the presence of an adult who has not been officially rubber-stamped as being "100% ISA-approved Non-Paedo" is committing a criminal offence. Whilst I'm a fan of Work Experience - I think it's a worthy scheme and I'll do what I can to get involved - I won't risk a large fine and criminal proceedings just to help our pimply youth learn how to surf Facebook all day without the boss finding out.

I could avoid this risk, of course - all I have to do is persuade every single member of my staff to subject themselves to the humiliating, time-consuming and, worst of all, utterly pointless ritual of "proving" that they aren't kiddie-fiddlers. (Ar at least, if they are, they haven't yet been caught). And for this inanity, I hand over 60 pounds per employee.

Ermm. No thanks. Let the kids spend their summers hanging around the local bus shelter anti-socially-behaving. I've got my business to worry about.

What a brilliant example of ill-thought-out policy-making. What a pyrrhic victory for the burgeoning paedoparanoia industry. What a depressing example of our perverse willingness to prostate ourselves in response to the Daily Mail's hysteria-du-jour.

It's embarrassing, it's expensive, but worst of all, it's just pointless.

San Francisco's city council has opened up its data to the world, so anyone can use it to build useful - or useless  - tools and applications. We've seen apps to help you find your route home on the BART, apps to guide you to the nearest recycling centre, apps to help parents find child-friendly parks - even an app to help you choose the restaurant nearest you with the fewest cockroaches.

There's a few reasons why this is a Good Thing:

1. "Many brains" means that we have (potentially) several million smart, motivated citizens coming up with new ideas for using public data to help their fellow citizens live safer, healthier, greener, maybe even happier lives.
2. "Many hands" means that we end up with valuable and useful apps that the public bodies would never have the money or time to create.
3. It's our data - we paid for it to be collected, so why shouldn't we have the right to use it any way we like? (This makes it all the more depressing that here in the UK, the Post Office charges people to use the postcode database National Rail Enquiries shuts down the wonderful MyRail Lite just so it can flog its own iPhone app. And while we're at it - why doesn't all that Ordinance Survey data belong to us?)
4. The kind of apps that people find most useful may help policymakers to understand more about what we actually care about. Actions speak louder than words, and seeing how many people are using an app may give some idea of the issues that people care about. This kind of meta data might be one of the most valuable unexpected emergent effects of all this.

Over here in the UK, we're way behind. Directgov opened up their data to developers earlier this year via the Directgov Innovate project but it's been a pretty disappointing show so far. It's not clear where the "streams" that one needs actually come from. I couldn't see any, and most of the rather paltry total of 13 apps created so far seem to rely on scraping sites - leaving developers to format and structure data themselves.

I'd love to see things improve. In London, for example, the natural choice would be to open up transport data. That's pretty structured and really useful to citizens. I have no idea if TFL allows use of their data for free, but if not, they damn well should. Malcolm Barclay launched a couple of decent-enough iPhone apps for Londoners, but they're far from perfect. And they're both iPhone only - so no help to people on other platforms (excuse the pun).

What else might help? Well, besides relying on the efforts of concerned geeky citizens, I think that this is one space where brands might step in and provide real value. Surely HSBC's vast marketing budget could pay for a suite of handy free apps for travellers, rather than flogging to death their tired-looking Global/Local campaign?

Cheap, easy, viral and (gasp!) actually useful? Surely that's a winner.

This guy is an Incident Recorder.

He walks around London (I saw him in Gower Street) with a small webcam Velcroed on his chest doing absolutely nothing except.... Recording.

Apart from the half-zen half-kafka debate to explore what an "Incident" is, I find this guy remarkable. I asked him what on earth an Incident Recorder was. He had that slightly impudent, self-important sneer that not-real-coppers seem to have, but he still told me that he gets paid to walk around, waiting for an Incident that he can Record.

Am I the only one who thinks this is odd? Didn't it used to be sufficient for someone to be an eye-witness of an incident? Is the video footage he is shooting even admissable in any kind of court? And is this symmetrical surveillance? Would this plasticop have carried on Recording his Incidents if his camera had happened to light upon, say... a policeman beating a newspaper seller to the floor with his truncheon? Would the video have made it back to the station, or might there have been a technical glitch?

The next question... given the new law banning the filming of coppers, would it have been classified an Incident worthy of Recording if he had seen me taking his photo? I took mine covertly,  of course... iPhone-ninja-style...

...in case you thought I made it up.

Delightful hypocrisy from the Soaraway Sun.... 

(12 page funeral tribute - free inside!)

Found on the BART. How do London Underground approach this? Why doesn't Network Rail give access to its datastream?

Respect to the BART (man).

It seems that tweeting the name of a recognized restaurant (in London at least) means you get autofollowed by OpenTable. Clearly some marketing idea being enacted here. Sounds like a great way to build a twitspam database.
 
This might be old news to real social media marketing gurus. I thought it was worth mentioning...

Proper advice (via www.fastcompany.com/magazine/05/dee2.html">FastCompany) on management and leadership from the man who set up Visa. I'm pasting in the whole piece as I feel it's all worth reading.

Dee Hock on Management

PhD in Leadership, Short Course:

Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.

Associates:

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

Employing Yourself:

Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength. It is idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

Compensation:

Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality. As Napoleon observed, "No amount of money will induce someone to lay down their life, but they will gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon."

Form and Substance:

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral. Failure to distinguish clearly between the two is ruinous. Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future. Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference. The closest thing to a law of nature in business is that form has an affinity for expense, while substance has an affinity for income.

Creativity:

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. You must get the old furniture of what you know, think, and believe out before anything new can get in. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

Leadership:

Here is the very heart and soul of the matter. If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself -- your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers. Use the remainder to induce those you "work for" to understand and practice the theory. I use the terms "work for" advisedly, for if you don't understand that you should be working for your mislabeled "subordinates," you haven't understood anything. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.