All change, please

The end of an era After 4+ years of working, playing and generally wallowing in the digital world with some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met, my time at Fjord has come to an end. I’m proud of all I was able to be a part of – countless client engagements, launching the strategy/business design practice, redesigning the …

People are people (and data is data)

[Update: NB: this post only addresses one side of big data – the more commercial one – and doesn’t touch on the enormous wealth of other applications of huge data sets (environmental, medical, etc.). I’ll try to cover those in another post soon.] There’s been an enormous amount of talk across the whole of the business world about Big Data. …

The myth of productivity

Pretty much as long as there have been ways for people to interact online, there have been articles written about how that kind of thing is killing productivity. Email and MUD/ MUSHes were killing productivity when I was at University, then Email and the Web and IMing were killing it at work in the 90s. Lots of employers went to …

What price success? (a note on corporate ethics)

Last week I spoke at FOM12, and the closing question was a proper BOOM. The questioner asked whether I think it’s inherently wrong for businesses to use personal data to target products, ads and content. I found myself saying, “It comes down to ethics.” It felt a little weird to say that, although I was gratified to see a few …

The hero with a thousand faces (thanks, Joe Campbell)

[I’ve recently been re-reading some of the work of my hero Joseph Campbell, which inspired my talk on Monday at Next Service Design in Berlin, which you can watch here. Below is (more or less) what I talked about…] What is the soundtrack to your life? Even if you don’t have an answer, you understand the question – because every …

The heart of the system

I spend a fair amount of time at events and in meetings where people talk about innovation – theirs and others – and try to uncover new ideas for business and technology. One of the questions that’s asked rather a lot is, “Where do the best ideas come from?” There’s a preconceived notion, it seems, that these things come as …

Blinded by the light

This is the less selfish post that accompanies my previous one… and in many ways, the more important of the two. As I mentioned, I spoke at both Picnic and MEX last week. As a result, I came home with a head jam-packed full of awesome, and am only just now able to start sifting through the highlights. The overarching …

Me and my (data) shadow

I’ve been on a bit of a speaking tour the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been growing more vested in and impassioned by my current topic every time I talk about it. What I’ve been talking about is how we can become more human, better at being human, using all the richness of data and technology that we are …

Creativity vs. Design (a Q&A)

Every now and again, a student comes to Fjord asking for input for their dissertation. Sometimes, I’m the one they end up talking to. Today, I had an e-chat with a lovely young lady who’s doing her dissertation at Goldsmith’s. She had some questions that made me think, so I thought I’d share an excerpt here (with her permission, of …

Benched. (does anyone do speech-to-Illustrator software?)

Today was going to be the day I wrote about my latest soapbox/speaking topic and invited commentary/argument, but I’m not exactly typing well, because of this stupid finger of mine. I’ll be here, swearing at Illustrator and my uncoordinated efforts to use it, if anyone needs me.