Anti-Resolutions for 2023

 

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For several years, I would write a yearly Gartner blog post with my anti-resolutions on or about January 1. They were “anti” because rather than talk about what I intended to do, I would describe what I think other people should stop doing. I stopped writing them because I was afraid they made me sound too grumpy. They have all disappeared since I stopped working at Gartner, so it is impossible to judge. I felt like doing them again, so here they are for 2023. 

Stop Worrying About How AI Will Destroy Us

I started getting bored of SciFi books, movies and series where the AI or a robot decides to kill everyone soon after Colossus: the Forbin Project in 1970. Now that it looks like they really could do so, I still find most of these discussions boring. 

Figuring out how to use the amazing capabilities of AI effectively and safely is a far more interesting discussion. These discussions revolve around questions like who owns the technology and the answers it generates, how can we protect intellectual property when it sucks up content created by others to learn, and how do we know if content is created wholly or partly by an A. or do we even need to know?. These and 100 others are all important issues to debate, thrash out, and ultimately deal with. I purposely avoid the word “solve” here, as I don’t think there will be a single mechanism or innovation that will resolve any of these issues, much less all of them. But we can learn to control them if we resolve to do so. 

The boring discussions circle endlessly around how to stop the evil moguls behind these cursed creations from achieving their evil plans, or how to get this genie back in the bottle. Good luck with that. Those really are the wrong questions to be asking (or at the very least they are boring), so please stop it. 

Don’t Depend on Great Men to Save Us All

When I was a Gartner analyst, I always found it amusing to visit one of the tech companies led by one of the Great Men of Tech. I can remember a hush falling over the room when beefy bodyguards flowed into the room, signalling the imminent arrival of Larry Ellison at an Oracle event. I loved the look of awe that would come over acolytes when I would mention briefly meeting Bill Gates at an early Silicon Valley reception. 

By the way, I feel justified in saying Great Men because so far only males have accumulated the truly ridiculous baggage that I am talking about here. Carly Fiorina, Marissa Mayer and Elizabeth Holmes did their best but managed to avoid these levels of awe and expectations. I think that is a good thing. 

It is normal that the leader of a large organization will generate interest, even admiration; but the level of expectation and wonder around people like Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, and especially Elon Musk has grown beyond reason. There is too much evidence that shows that these are intelligent people who do smart things sometimes and also do stupid stuff. A great part of their success is inevitably down to luck. Yes, they have exhibited hard work, careful preparation and extraordinary insight. But lots of smart people work hard, plan ahead and analyze carefully without accumulating economy-busting fortunes. Everyone needs to stop assuming that they have some special god-like gift that transcends them beyond normal human experience. 

This extreme adulation also seems misplaced. Microsoft became an objectively better company after the super-sized personalities of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer left the stage for the more human-scaled Satya Nadella. As brilliant as he was at pushing product designs, it is unlikely that Steve Jobs would have led today’s Apple as well as the more even-keeled Tim Cook. 

I still think excellence and achievement should be rewarded, and don’t expect tech leaders to all be boring apparatchiks. I am just asking for a bit of perspective, is all. A dumb idea is not smart because it comes from a smart person. 

Gendered Articles Must Fall

This one is totally unrelated to tech. Gendered articles need to be recognized as unimportant in the languages I need to speak. There, I said and I mean it.  I try to speak Dutch, French and sometimes German. I adore languages and revel in the subtle differences between them. I love it when an idea is expressed perfectly in one language but impossible to adequately translate into another. 

But I have always struggled with those stupid hets, des, les, less, ders, dems, dies and dases. I made an effort to find a system, or memorize them. Sometimes I would just mumble my way past them and hope no one notices. I would feel embarrassed and inadequate when I got them wrong. 

I have now decided this is a waste of time and energy. They add nothing except stress, confusion and difficulty.  I am done with all that. I refuse to give in to this tyranny of gendered articles. Life is too short to devote energy to something that gets in the way of communication rather than encourages it. 

I encourage you to join me. If you know the correct article, by all means use it. Otherwise, don’t sweat it; just randomly sprinkle het, de, le, la, der, die, das, etc. If you are listening, let it go especially if you are a native speaker. You know what they mean. 

Avoid “Reply All”

I traditionally close this post with a request to never use Reply All, but I actually don’t feel as strongly about it as I used to. I rarely see abused distribution lists anymore. I am not sure if it is because I am outside of a big organization now (likely) or if people really are minding what they do more (very unlikely). So either keep up the good work, or get with the program. 

How Work Will Change Post-Corona

Life is beginning to look a bit more normal these days, at least in my corner of Europe. I went to a restaurant for the first time in three months last week and regional travel is looking more feasible. What will "normal" mean though as we come out of our shelters, blinking in the sunlight to see what the world looks like now? Certainly, a lot has changed. Some of those changes will stick. But an awful lot will remain the same. We will need wisdom to tell the difference.

The Obvious Stuff

Let me get the obvious ideas out of the way first. These are the things that everyone has been talking about as the first impacts of Corona on the workplace.

Working From Home Will Increase Substantially

The main surprise about the sudden move to work from home is how well it went. When I was an analyst, I spoke with many companies who kind of, sort of thought they should adopt a work from home (WFH) policy, but never really got around to it, citing how difficult it would be. If you looked hard enough, there was always a reason not to do it.

Well, it happened even if it was not always easy. Most managed pretty well; there was no choice. Necessity swept away all the usual discussions of policies. management styles and security concerns so people just got on with it.

Once employees get used to working from home, it will be hard to get them back into an office. Tech companies like Twitter have acknowledged this and proactively promised that employees can work from home forever if they choose. Organizations have been forced to change policies and develop processes that let people work from any location. Even if everyone does not stay at home forever, there will be many more taking advantage of WFH possibilities.

Business Travel Will Be Much More Rare

I live in Europe, but have always worked with clients in the US. When they wanted to do a longer meeting and I suggested doing it by video rather than sitting on a plane for 22 hours round trip, they usually reacted with surprise. "Are we not important enough to come see us?" I could sense them thinking. Sometimes they would say it out loud.

From now on it will usually be the opposite. Travel will not go away, but will be far less common.

Industry Events Will Be Hit Hard

In three months, events have gone from being an industry mainstay into something unthinkable. In February, I was mapping out which events I would be able to make it to this year. In June, it became hard to even contemplate boarding a plane to go spend a couple days in a hotel conference room with thousands of other people. I think events at the scale and prevalence we knew them will not come back.

No Handshaking, But Hand Sanitizer Everywhere

Maybe more people will use it now.

The Less Obvious Stuff

Looking a bit further out and a little deeper, some changes are not quite so apparent.

There Is No Such Thing as "Post-Corona"

Despite the title of this post, I don't think that it will make sense to talk about post-Corona anytime soon, if ever. The virus itself is not going away, although the rate of infection will go down with any luck. Even if researchers find a vaccine, the effects of the virus on how we live and work will not disappear. I will never look at a jammed concert hall or crowded economy class flight the same way I did before. Even if I decide to buy a ticket and put myself in those situations, there will always be a nagging disquiet in the back of my mind. An organization that assumes that they just have to wait for clients to come back could be in for an unpleasant surprise.

If you find yourself saying "After Corona is over, we can do XX," then you are doing it wrong.

Anyone putting off plans or implementing changes until after this "Corona business is over" is thinking in the wrong way. Even if governments ease social distancing and travel restrictions, the effects on how we travel, socialize and do business will not fade away. Instead of putting things off until we can get back to a normal that will never come, we need to redesign how we work. This post provides some ideas, but questioning assumptions about all of these interactions is a good way to start.

Digital Transformation Works

Companies that already had adopted digital technologies generally made it through this crisis much better than those which had not. Organizations which already made extensive use of the cloud, had renovated their applications, and used digital channels to communicate with clients, employees and suppliers were able to cope with the demands brought on by the virus much better than those which had not.

Those who relied on processes that involved moving a piece of paper from one desk to another to process orders or who managed by seeing who was at their desks at 8:30 every morning had a hard time. They were scrambling to modify their processes or get equipment issued to staff that would allow them to continue to work.

This should not be surprising. Better agility and resilience are among the most important benefits that digital transformation is supposed to deliver. Guess what? It does. There is no excuse to not go digital anymore.

People Will Be Harder to Find But Easier to Contact

The WFH imperative has made most people accustomed to more flexible ways of working, which means they cannot find each other physically they way they used to do. To accommodate working from wherever, effective teams have consciously or unconsciously developed a way to contact each other even if they cannot find each other.

I have worked from home since 1995, so no one can expect to wander down the hall to find me (except my wife). To make it worse, I split time between France and The Netherlands and speak with an American accent. Colleagues and clients would never know where I was, but know that they could contact me on IM, email, Whatsapp or my mobile phone. There is less need to find me if they can easily contact me.

Industry Events Need to Adapt

It is obvious that Corona damages the events industry severely. It is less obvious what event organizers can do about it. Many events have done an admirable job at quickly switching from in-person meetings to virtual conferences run over web conferencing. While this experience is usually... fine, no one has really cracked the code of making it great. It is OK in reaction to an emergency; for some occasions, it is fine. But sitting in front of a computer at my desk is no replacement for a good conference.

Good events are so much more than just hearing a speaker. I want to meet other people, gauge the reaction of the crowd, see which stand on the show floor is the most crowded. One of the main benefits is being able to get away from daily work for a couple days and really focus on a particular topic. Virtual events don't really provide any of this.

The business model is another barrier. We have come to expect that online events are free, which undermines the financing model for events. Unless you are a vendor pushing a product, it is hard to see how anyone could invest the resources needed to put on even a virtual event if no one will pay for it. Event organizers will have to experiment with new models that attendees might be willing to pay for, perhaps combining regional locations with a live feed from a central location, or enhanced technical experiences using AR/VR technologies.

So far, I am not impressed. One event I saw asks attendees to pay €99 to listen to a virtual panel discuss the future of work, while charging €249 if you want to ask questions or €399 if you also want a wine package and swag bag to enjoy at your desk. I am not sure what the right model is, but I doubt that this is it.

SPOILER-ridden post on my theory about the origins of Rey in Star Wars VII​: The Force Awakens.

I've now had almost two weeks to think about the biggest question left unanswered in the new Star Wars​ film.* Obviously, if you don;t want to see spoilers, STOP READING.







Really. Go back.









Last chance.

The Last Days of Rishi Antall

Note: This is a companion post to the previous one about a Nordic Larp I did in Sweden in March set in the world of Battlestar Galactica. To give a better feel for what went on, I wrote this one from the first person view of my character, Rishi Antall. I stole this idea, er... was inspired by Thomas Be, who did a much better job with his character's writeup. 

I have no idea how Rishi is writing this from beyond the grave. That kind of thing happens a lot on the Celestra. I have to warn you: Rishi is not a very nice person. 

I spent last weekend in space. How was your weekend?

Last weekend (March 8-10) I had the geekiest, most fun and rewarding experience I can remember doing, pretty much ever. For three days, I was in space on a spaceship in the Colonial Fleet. Let me tell you about it. 

Ship's insignia

I am a fan of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (BSG), one of the best shows that has been on television in my opinion, up there with The West Wing and Star Trek: TNG. I follow a BSG forum on Facebook and in January noticed an item that looked interesting. A group in Sweden was creating a real life game based on the BSG universe. They would create costumes for participants, rig a 1950s Swedish destroyer to look like a space ship and come up with the story line to be played out over the course of a weekend. 

That sounded pretty cool. I wavered about doing it, but my wife encouraged me. Hennie said "You have to do this. You will regret it forever if you don't." As usual, she was right. 

Initial briefing outside the ship

This is called a larp (live action role play). I had never heard that word before, and googled it, expecting it to be some Swedish term. It turns out that larping is a huge scene pursued by thousands of people, with all sorts of sub cultures (black box larping, fantasy larps, medieval larps...). I had heard of medieval fairs or war re-enactors but that kind of thing never interested me. This sounded, and was different. The group organizing this event did a huge amount of preparation to create a realistic, involving and engaging experience. I really feel, no I know, that I was in space, fighting Cylons and finding a way to live together with refugees from the other colonies. 

A prop notebook 

This would be a Nordic larp, which emphasizes improvisation and emotional involvement more than winning or competition. One of the Italians I met on the boat described their preconceptions about Nordic larping as "People crying in a corner because their character is so sad." Most people were shocked when I said that this was my first larp. Most have been doing it for years, and treated this one as the ultimate experience they had been building up to. 

A few weeks ahead of the event, I got a short overview of the character I would play: Rishi Antall, a sublight engineer on the Celestra crew. I was encouraged to fill in more details myself within the guidelines of the character sketch. A week or two later I received a more detailed outline which also described the political and social environment I would be in. 

I already knew most of the background from watching BSG. In the BSG timeline, this event would start just after the mini series and before "33" for those who know it. A lot of the Celestra story deals with Tauron culture, so I ordered the Caprica series on DVD. Caprica is a far inferior prequel to BSG, but it has useful information about what it is like to be a Tauron. 

Me and my fellow sublight engineers. 

I got to Gothenburg on Thursday March 7 and met up with some of the other sublight engineers. The next morning, I got my costume and we set off of the ship.  We got some final instructions and went aboard. 

Torpedo console

 The organizers had done a marvellous job kitting out an old Swedish destroyer to be a ship in the Colonial Fleet. Many of them were game designers I found out later, so they built custom consoles for helm, navigation, torpedo control, power distribution and damage control. The atmosphere on board was exactly how I expect an interstellar space ship would be. 

Engine room

Galactica and Celestra officers in Ops/CIC

I would spend most time in the engine room and at the power distribution console. We quickly figured out the tradeoffs of which function (helm, communications, damage control, weapons...) should get how much power, how hard to run the reactor, battery charge level and waste buildup. The engine room had lots of satisfying levers to throw and knobs to twist that we associated with various ship operations. 

Ladder to engine room

From the time we entered, the organizers made sure there was plenty to do, with military officers from the Galactica coming on to our civilian vessel to "help" us (that did not go down well), Cylon attacks, religious fanatics uprising and a corporation seizing control of parts of the ship. 

While some events were initiated by the organizers, each participant (there there 120 of us aboard) chose what they wanted to do. There were suggestions and some expectations derived from your role on board, but each person created their own story. 

Aftermath of the shootout

And there were LOTS of stories. Rishi got involved in a Holoband session with some cousins he didn't know he had where he found out why his mother left her clan, a rebellion where the engineers took a politician hostage, and later on in the game a bloody shootout associated with a criminal organization that was on the road to becoming a force for good. Those were just the ones I was involved in. 

While the broad outlines of the story were defined ahead of time, each character's story arc was completely up to each individual. There were at least 20 other story lines going at any one time. I didn't hear about most of them until the after-party. There were Cylon interrogations, religious rumblings, a (possibly) fixed election, execution of a Tauron sympathizer, sacrifices and love affairs. I learned about many of them afterwards at the after party or reading the discussion forums for participants. 

Damage control console

The overall story is too complicated to describe (if you are familiar with BSG, you know that nothing is ever black and white, and it is always complicated), but it was masterfully done by the organizers. It fit perfectly into the BSG world and enough surprises to amaze the participants. Another participant did a great write up on his blog both from the character's perspective and from his own as an experienced larper. I copied that idea to write a blog entry from Rishi's point of view.   

Me, post-game. The bandages indicate where
I got my ultimately fatal wounds. 

The biggest revelation to me was the idea of larping. Everyone was committed to creating a great, believable experience even if it meant something bad for your own character. It felt like an extended theatrical improvisation, except it was aimed at us, not at an audience. I saw and experienced deep and moving emotions as participants discovered things about their characters and themselves. I was able to get totally into a character who is very different from myself, taking actions instinctively that were right for him, but I would never do. 

Some larps are built around a quest (Free the princess, defeat the dragon...) but we were encouraged to "play to lose." If everyone wants to win, the game gets boring. It is far better to make your character lose if it makes for a good scene. 

I am not sure that I will be pursuing the larper lifestyle after this because I am not sure I would be interested in most of the subjects they explore. It would also be hard to top this experience. But I would highly recommend this particular one. 

Thanks to the photographers I linked to in this. Most of them are mine, but I borrowed some from a communal photo board. I am not sure who took them. 

Marvelous Idea from Australia

I came across this picture this week from a trip I took to Australia about a year ago. I was so struck by what a marvelous idea it was that I had to stop and take a picture. That black rectangle is a rubber mat, like you sometimes see on children's playgrounds. This mat keeps the roots from the trees along the road from buckling the sidewalk. In Amsterdam (where I live),the city solves this problem by cutting down trees that get big enough to push the sidewalk up with their roots. I find this solution far preferable.

I took this picture when walking to an ex-colleague's house in St. Kilda near Melbourne to have dinner. I found out later that he and his wife had moved to the country, and lost everything to the recent brush fires while going to the grocery store. The devastation of these fires has been unimaginable, in a magical part of the world. The Australian Red Cross is accepting online donations for victims.

From my Gartner blog

Why I Tweet

Summer Camp in January: Lotusphere 2009

Kickoffs, but not as we know them