Tomorrow I’m going to take my daughters down to Timaru to visit him in hospital.

I wasn’t originally going to take my 7 year old down but because of the Christchurch earthquake she has no school.  She was delighted to be going to see Granny Jo and Grandpa Martin and they were likewise pleased at the thought of seeing her.

She seems to have made a special connection with my Dad.

But here’s  the thing that perhaps is a little strange – or maybe not…I don’t know.

Dad is really my stepdad and my 7 year old daughter is really my stepdaughter.

And the thing I remember really clearly about my dad (who I met when I was 6) was his unshakeable belief in me throughout my childhood.  And when I see or hear him interacting with Hannah I can hear that belief and love in his voice.

One of my favourite memories takes place in my first (and only) term at Notre Dame Senior School. I think it was October/Novemberish and it was the time of the school cross-country.

Back in those days, they didn’t stream the cross-country into years at all.  The whole school from 12 year olds (me) to 17/18 year old 6^th formers all shot across the hockey fields and up into the woods at the same time.

I’d been a passable netball player in junior school but nothing exceptional.  Dad had been a runner at school in his time and the night before the cross-country he had given me two pieces of advice – to pace myself and to enjoy myself.

To this day, I don’t know why he and Mum turned out on a cold autumn afternoon to watch me run.

But when I emerged from the woods, I was running by myself…as I headed back across the fields I could see and hear my parents cheering me on.

I was placed 4^th.  Not for my age group but for the whole school.

And I went on to be a reasonable runner.  No exceptional, not really competition level but reasonable.  If I’d wanted to run more Dad would have believed in me and supported me; as I explored other opportunities he believed in me and supported me.  It was an unwavering and unconditional belief.

I think my daughters (regardless of strong or loose blood ties) are lucky to have him in their lives.

• Only 30 or so responses
• 80% from outside NZ
• 85% didn’t bother with a cover letter, despite us requesting one
• With the remainder the cover letter was generic and/or clearly aimed at a job that wasn’t the one we offered
• It appeared that no-one actually visited our website to find out what it is that we actually do.

Where are NZ’s best and brightest?

I have become much more ruthless about tools lately - I simply don’t have the time or inclination for anything too complicated… As you’ll see from the below I am a hi-tec and a lo-tec girl.

The game changer for me has been my iPhone.  Where I’m perhaps a little different from most is that I have never been much of a photographer .  I have gone years without taking photos.  Even with previous phones the effort involved in downloading the photos to a PC and then uploading them somewhere else or sending them to other people was too much for me.  Now I do one click to take the photo and then a second click to send it.  My parents get daily photos of their granddaughter and we are collecting a great record of her first year of life.

I use Evernote frequently.  In fact, I have all of my useful “stuff” sitting in Evernote.  It has completely replaced Delicious for me. I record my families birthdays, gift ideas, useful websites and music I want to download.  Most helpful is that I have Evernote wherever I go.  Again, I don’t have to do anything, it is automatically available to me online, offline or on the road through my iPod.

I eat breakfast going through the blogs that I subscribe to.  I flick through most of them looking for useful references and points of view.  In particular, I find that most of my non-fiction reading (about a book every fortnight…) comes from blog recommendations.  We’re also starting to get value from our internal team blog - particularly the insights that people are recording from conferences. 

Now onto the lo-tech.  I use a hardback, unlined, moleskin for ideas/thoughts and general writing.

For thinking, I work in colour on a large A3 artists pads…I’ve used this recently to map the model from The Opposable Mind onto my life and onto my thinking about the business.  The key to this is to not to aim for pretty or for perfection.  That can always be done later. It’s really to focus on getting the ideas out and I enjoy the paper and pen effect.

How about you? What are your deliberate knowledge structures?

I have recently changed my online book provider (mostly) from Amazon to New Zealand’s own Fishpond because I feel like I should support the local guys.  The biggest thing that I miss though is the recommendations based on my buying history.  So one might think that the next best thing is when a book is bundled with a similar or related title and presented for one great price….

As our 6 year old grows up the picture books that we used to read at bedtime are no longer holding the same appeal so I wondered if it was time for something more sophisticated.  Perhaps a bit of Roald Dahl.

Here is the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory bundled with The Combat History of German Heavy Anti-Tank Unit 653 in World War II!!!!  I swear this owes nothing to my browsing or purchasing history.

I have precisely three positive memories of drawing as a child.  One is of a house.  I was at Sarnia school in Durban so must have been about 6.  My memory is not of drawing the house but of being proud of the drawing and then having to submit it and not seeing it again until the end of the year.  Both the injustice of surrender and then the disappointment on getting it back, and realising it was not as good as I had remembered it to be stay with me.  My second memory is of enjoying technical drawing classes at Mpelembe School.  What a strange subject to be studying at 12!  Nevertheless I liked the sense of order.  The sharp pencils, completing the letter in the table at the bottom of the page, the precision all gave me great satisfaction.  The final memory is of drawing comics in my bedroom in Surrey.  I got a book out of the library that was a step-by-step guide for children and it seemed to work.  My cartoons were recognisable and fun.  But that’s just three positive memories. As for the rest of my childhood drawing wasn’t even on the horizon.  I read a lot and was often outside running around.  Variously I wanted to be a farmer (until someone told me I couldn’t be a farmer but only a farmer’s wife), a park ranger, a teacher and a policewoman.

And then at 38 here I was sitting in a church hall uncertain and anxious but ready to give it a shot. 

It was a combination of thinking and circumstance that brought me there.  At the start of 2009 I talked with Grant about this being the year of experience.  So often I’ve been caught up in whether I’m doing well enough, is it time to buy a new car or a new appliance yet?, could we pay off the mortgage faster.  And some of these are useful thoughts.  But I wanted to put something else in there.  What would happen if I focused my time and money not on the accumulation of things but on the exploration of experiences?  I knew Grant would want to do drawing with me.  He is such a creative person so this seemed like a good fit.

The lessons were perfectly structured.  The attractive tutor had a softness and air of gentleness about her that reassured me that I would not be laughed at or feel like a failure. 

What was remarkable was the way in which something magic – the ability to easily draw hands, faces or landscapes could be reduced to a series of simple techniques.  That is, they were simple to understand and, when applied, generated reasonable, approximate results.  So the next step to becoming good at drawing is to overlay experience onto the techniques.  I understand now some of the use of light and tone, some of the use of measurement, perspective and relationships.

The first step was to draw a self portrait.  This was to be our before shot.  After the embarrassment of a poor showing here my confidence started to be rebuilt as we copied a picture of Stravinsky by Picasso.  Sophie explained how the conscious mind gets in the way of good drawing because it focuses on attention on what it expects to see, what it thinks a hand looks like for example, and not what is really being seen.  So, we tricked our minds with the Stravinsky copy by turning the picture upside down.  Now instead of a man sitting on a chair, complicated folds in his clothes and interlocking fingers we had a puzzle of lines, measurements and shapes.

As I concentrated I was completely absorbed.  There was no mental chatter and I was amazed at the conclusion that I’d been drawing for about 2 and ½ hours.  And when I turned my rendition the right way up it actually looked like the Stravinsky – although the head was a little bit off.

This pattern was to continue the next day as, using different techniques, I drew a hand.  It was incredibly calming.  I was completely absorbed and unable to multi-task at all.  There was no stopping for 5 minutes to do an email or to make a phone call.  I had to be there, in the moment, or the drawing simply would not work.  Another lesson was the need to have faith.  Using these techniques it was not clear that something recognisable would actually emerge from the process.  The exercise where we drew chairs, by drawing the spaces between the parts of the chair was a case in point.  Here it seemed as if a chair would never emerge from the geometric shapes that I was constructing on my paper.  In fact, I really struggled to see my chair even though I could see the chairs in the drawings of those around me but as I persevered and Sophie pointed out some of the line to me, suddenly my chair burst on to the paper.  Then as I added some contrasts and drew in some of the features I got satisfaction from making my chair real.

I found myself completing a drawing and wanting to start again as the realisations of the lessons seeped in by doing.

Interestingly, my most successful days were the first three days.  I think my brain was tiring (this was the most extensive workout I can remember it having in years) by days four and five and foolishly the work demands from home had well and truly started to have an impact. 

Having said that, the lessons towards the end of the week are there in my brain and are shaping how I look at things.  I found myself sitting on the train and just looking at peoples’ faces.  I can see so much more now than I ever used to.  The different lines and lengths, the subtleties of light that show the muscle and bone structures that sit beneath the skin, and the way in which space works to define objects.    Most importantly, I’ve been reminded of the power of focus, and how rejuvenating it is to absorb oneself completely in something, creating a state where the inner voice gets no airtime at all.

 I know what comes next.  Next is practice but doing it for the pleasure of solving the puzzle not as a task to be completed.  Because practicing will make me better able to see the shapes and to get the measurements and relationships right.

As I type this, I’m sitting outside and looking up I can frame a view of an interesting looking tree.  Not fully grown yet it stops before the top of my vision with the young branches forming beautiful shapes.  I think this will be my next project.

[I did my drawing class with Sophie of Drawing Potential in Melbourne]

The Enterprise Content Line shows hubs for Open Text, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Autonomy/Interwoven.  There is also a smaller hub for Alfresco commonly thought to be the gruntiest of open source document management products.

A couple of the strong players in the NZ market are missing (CMS Watch comment that this is just a subset of the vendors that they monitor):

• Objective from Objective Corporation
• TRIM from Tower Software (bought by HP late last year).
• And DataWorks that was going strong in the NZ local government market in the early days of EDRMS but has not won much in recent years

What is increasingly apparent - and no surprise - is the convergence between enterprise content management, web content management, enterprise portals and social software and collaboration.

This throws up an interesting dilemma for the selectors and implementators of ECM solutions.  How much do we buy from the ‘get go’ and how much should we implement first up?   What do we use as part of a bundle of services from one vendor versus to what extent are we going to mix and match?

In NZ, I suspect that the PRA may be distorting these choices somewhat with a strong driver behind RFPs still being PRA compliance.  Note the number of tenders that are still being released asking for a PRA compliant solution - despite solutions not being compliant in and of themselves. 

If the PRA driver was removed I wonder what would be the top priorities for NZ organisations in the selection of ECM solutions and what would be the strongest business reasons for investment.  Is it finding documents, is it accountability/risk management, is it better ways of working together? 

What have been the drivers for your organisation?

He didn’t talk about this research though at TED.  Rather he talked about moral virtue and the need for this to go hand in hand with practical wisdom which is moral will plus moral skill, especially:

• Knowing when and how to make exceptions
• Knowing when and how to improvise
• Knowing how to use moral skills in the service of the right aims

Reassuringly, apparently one doesn’t need to be brilliant to be wise.

The combination of rules and incentives are not enough to get a job done.  Scripts are insurance policies against disaster but they also ensure mediocrity.  Too many rules prevent improvisation.

The keys to remoralising work are to celebrate moral exemplars and to combine will, skill and people knowledge in taking action at work.

Liz Coleman - argued that our eduction system has not been preparing people to be good citizens.  She related this to the increase in specialisation arguing that the value of the educated generalist has declined.  I have considerable self-interested sympathy for her argument.  I often wonder whether, if I had a more specific and technical skillset, I would make more money and increase my work satisfaction…but that’s an aside….

She stated that there is a combination of 5 things that together have not served us well:

• Fragmentation of knowledge
• Technical mastery
• Neutrality of values
• Oversimplification of civic engagement
• Idealisation of the expert.

Instead she advocates an action oriented curriculum that blends disciplines in the service of solving the problems that really matter.  Examples of the disciplines that are required include: rhetoric, design, mediation, improvisation, qualitative reasoning and technology. 

This should be supplemented by practitioners joining the curriculum and students moving outside the classroom.

I hope this talk goes up the site soon as there are a number of people I know who would find it both interesting and challenging.

Alex Tabarrok - the theme of this one seemed to be ‘all is not lost’.  While the world is currently in financial turmoil we are in a unique position in history because at the start of the 21st Century growth extended to almost all parts of the world.

New ideas drive growth and larger markets save lives as they increase the incentive to product new ideas.  One world market gives us many more idea creators.

Bruce BuenodeMesquita -this talk was all about using game theory to predict how people behave. He gave us predictions for Iran but his insights are applicable to much more than just politics.

Game theory is based on the assumptions that:

• People are rationally self-interested
• People have values and beliefs
• People face limitations

When we are trying to understand and predict decisions we make a mistake if we just pay attention to the person at the top of the power ladder.  There are lots of people shaping decisions.

In order to make predictions we need to ask the following questions:

• Who has a stake in the decision?
• What do they say they want?
• What priority does the issue have for them - how are they on this issue compared to other issues?
• How much influence could they bring to bear.

In making decisions we all care about two things: the outcome and the credit for the outcome. Different people trade these off in different quantities.

Choices, changes, values and beliefs are all we need to know to predict a person’s actions.  When this analysis is created across all influencers in a particular problem them the outcome of most complicated negotiations is predictable.  Situations can then be engineered to get a better result.

I think there are fascinating implications for change management and influence in this paper….especially the information about the particular things to focus on when trying to understand someone elses motivation.

Dan Ariely had several fascinating anecdotes…so much so that I stopped taking notes so my comment on this paper is brief.  I have bought his book though and am very much looking forward to reading it.  The main takeaway for me is the reinforcement of ’social proof’.  Social proof is a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his seminal book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ and relates to the fact that we are much more likely to do the things that our peer group is doing,  Dan Ariely demonstrated this with reference to cheating showing that cheating rose or dropped significantly if a group had clear, visible social proof that this was the norm among their peers.

• Frame upsetting experiences as memories
• Take responsibility for everything that happens to you
• Seek out help in all directions
• Embrace different patterns - be the person you were called to be.
• Abandon the search for approval - you’ve already made it through

Willie Smit’s talk is one I’m looking forward to hearing again.  Although it was ostensibly about reforestation it encompassed a whole range of different disciplines in order to save forest habitats.  Most important seemed to be listening to the local people and designing interventions that really deliver for them - so the model is not ‘one size fits all’ but really needs to be tuned to the requirement of each unique area and peoples.

Kicked off by Nina Jablonski we enjoyed a fascinating combo of history and science.  The history of human evolution has been written in our skin and Nina took us through what this astounding assertion really means. 

Next up was Louise Fresco who bravely baked bread while delivering her TED talk. She talked about authenticity in our food and how removed we have become from what our bread really is.  This drives many people to advocate a return to small scale farming and the growing popularity of farmers markets is a part of this.  However, Louise’s argument is that if we embraced a return to this type of farming on a universal scale we would essentially be relegating the third world to poverty.  This is a luxury solution for us but is damaging for them. 

Instead world food production needs to increase rapidly.  And what we need to do this is clever low-key mechanisms.  She urged the audience to lobby government for an integrated food policy and that as individuals we need to understand our own food chain - where our food comes from.  I don’t really understand what an integrated food policy for NZ might look like or whether we have an issue with this in NZ but it has certainly sparked my interest in the role of food in the world economy.

I loved the book Eat, Pray, Love and had high anticipation that Elizabeth Gilbert would be talking about her next book.  Instead she provided a thought provoking discussion of genius and creativity.  She asked ‘Is it rational that anyone should be afraid of the work they feel compelled to do?’  And this is the curse that many creative people are burdened with.  One suggestion is to create a protective emotional construct  - that genius is something we have, not something we are.  And the implication of this is that genius is both on loan and also that we cannot get too attached our marvellous creations because they are not entirely from us.

I don’t feel blessed with genius - I don’t draw or paint; I write a little but only in a purely functional working sort of a way.  But maybe it’s ok to keep playing with some of the things that interest me because it’s my job even though I might not be the most talented person in the world - or even on the second, third, fourth or lower teams.  Great talk!

Jacek Utko, through great design, has revitalised newspapers in eastern europe.  This talk reinforced the utility+significance equation for great products or services.  Jacek extended it further by combining strategy+content+design.

Who would have thought that crocheting could be compelling and scientifically revealing?  Even I enjoyed the maths in this talk and I now understand hyperbolic geometry - present in lettuce, sea slugs and crocheting.  What was extremely cool about this talk wasn’t just that we learnt about how Margaret Wertheim is crocheting coral reefs - quite frankly I think this would have left me cold - but rather the significance that she drew from this.  What’s at stake is:

• the importance and value of embodied knowledge
• the ability to make abstract concepts real
• the use of modes of play to help us deepen our understanding of the world around us.