š Reading a book that comments on what people were doing with their increased leisure time in the late 19th century. With this new information, it now feels as though my beloved Berkhamsted Cycling Club just isnāt trying hard enough in the name stakes.
The day had come to re-open our office following all of the mechanical, engineering, technology and decorative works that had been done over the past three months. At the start of last week it felt very touch-and-go that we would be ready on time, but the team were incredible. The office looked, felt and smelled great; the final carpet clean had given the whole place a ānew carā smell.
The stakes were high as we had our new CEO in town as well as our Group CEO, and a special breakfast organised by our Marketing and Communications team. In last weekās Steering Committee meeting, we agreed that as Programme Manager I would say a few words to everyone in the office to welcome them back. Iād written and rehearsed a short speech but was conscious of trying to make it look organic, so in the end I printed it on an A5-sized sheet of paper and just used it for reference while I held a mic in my other hand.
As I packed up to leave the office on Monday evening, I checked in with a member of our Helpdesk team to find out how his day had been. His response of āIāve had busier Mondaysā left me smiling. I donāt think the reopening could have gone better.
When I hit a big milestone, I always find it difficult to get straight onto the next thing. Thereās definitely a āpost-launch depressionā that lingers for a couple of days. It was interesting to hear Paul Forde and Rich Ziade talk about this phenomenon on a recent episode of their podcast:
Rich: ā¦I gotta tell you, Iāve launched a lot of products, like full products, that the world was kind of waiting for. The day after the euphoric day of launching and things went okay? Itās kind of quiet. Why? Because people are living their lives and your productās not that important. It is a very depressing day. Itās actually really hard. You canāt believe there isnāt a ticker-tape parade down the street after you launch. And the world doesnāt work that way. And it feels very deflating.
Paul: This is real. Iāve often advised people on sort of post-launch depression. Itās veryā¦
Rich: [laughing] Itās a real thing.
By the middle of the week Iād started to make good inroads on the fifteen other priorities that have been neglected over the past few weeks as we hit our big programme milestones.
Itās amazing how quickly hedonic adaptation takes place. By the end of the first week, most people will be used to their new desks, new chairs, and the new functionality and decor of the office. In some ways, Iām glad that we still have some visible enhancements to complete and that we didnāt get everything done ahead of our move back.
This was a week in which I:
So yeah, definitely, I donāt want to say never use it or itās not useful. Itās definitely useful, but itās 1% to 2% more productive over the course of a week rather than really transformational.
Next week: A four-day week packed with meetings from beginning to end, and a visit to the physio.
Iām enjoying the Openvibe app. It lets you view a consolidated timeline across multiple platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky, including the different feeds from each service. Really well done.
š· Debating whether to clean up the tonne of leaves that have already come down, or to wait for the others to join the party. It makes no sense to do the job twice, right?
š¶ 50th anniversary box set arrived last night. I canāt wait to play this. Itās a lovely thing. Still remains my favourite album of all time.
The busiest, most stressful week Iāve had in a long time. On Sunday evening I flew to Barcelona to attend the annual Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. Iād booked the trip months ago, and at that time it was due to take place after our last major programme milestone of the year. But our timeline had slipped and that milestone moved to the Monday following the event. So I found myself at the conference while the project team navigated a variety of last-minute issues without me.
It was very difficult to focus and concentrate while things were happening back at home. At one point I left a session as I needed to make a phone call, and later squirmed in my seat as a keynote overran into time where I was due to be in a project meeting. Added to this was the drama of the US election; I went to bed on Tuesday night after watching CNN for a while, had a restless night, and then woke up to find that Trump had walked it. Iām still having random moments of shock, disbelief and despair peppering each day.
Last year I went to the conference by rail, but my need to get back to the office and my experience of trying to work on the train put me off doing the same thing again. The catastrophic weather system in Eastern Spain was persisting, which meant that we were kept on the ground for two hours after boarding our plane at Heathrow as they waited for the area around Barcelona to clear. The delay meant that the in-flight food cart was in high demand; it never made it to where was sitting at the rear of the plane before we started our final approach to land. I ended up at my hotel just before midnight, having to find something to eat from a little shop nearby.
The first keynote presentation of the week always has maximum attendance. Like last year, the main auditorium was full, so I ended up watching it in a second giant room via a live video feed.
Ten minutes in to the presentation, it sounded as though the fire alarms were going off. I wondered how the presenters would cope, but they just carried on. It turned out that the noise was the collective sound of thousands of smartphones, all of which had received a government alert that warned of torrential rain that was heading our way. As I sat in sessions throughout the morning, I could hear the thunder outside the conference centre. Later I learned that rain flooded the airport and roads around Barcelona, but we seemed to dodge the worst of the impact.
This year our subscription meant that I had access to the CIO Lunch on the first three days. These lunches are held in the giant overflow hall. You wander in and get directed to an empty seat by a small army of staff with illuminated marshalling wands, say hello to your immediate neighbours at your table and then tuck in. It was an incredible operation; setting this many places and switching people from their starters to their hot main courses was amazing to watch.
Each day, as people tucked into their desserts, we settled in to hear from a guest keynote speaker on the stage in the room. The first of these was Carla Harris, who ended up being my favourite speaker of the entire event. Her talk was called Lead to Win: How to Be an Impactful, Influential Leader in Todayās Environment, but the title didnāt really do it justice. She weaved a wonderful narrative about her time at Morgan Stanley, where she continues to work, and what she has learned about effective leadership.
Versions of talks from most keynote speakers are usually available on the Internet, and Harris is no exception. Here she is talking to an interviewer in December 2022 at the Wharton School:
Most of each day at the conference is filled with short presentations, in rooms of all shapes and sizes. Some of these were really valuable, such as Laurie Shottonās presentation on a framework for evaluating emerging technologies, Tom Scholtzās 3 Essential Tactics for Mastering Board-Level Cybersecurity Presentations and Kevin Smithās How New CIOs Can Accelerate Their First-Year Impact and Value as an Executive and Functional Leader. Others, not so much.
Last year, ahead of my first Symposium, I spent ages agonising over which talks to sign up to in the Conference Navigator app, trying to avoid any timeline clashes. This year I took a completely different approach, adding everything that looked even remotely interesting to my personal agenda. Typically I would then have a choice of three or four sessions to attend at any given slot throughout the four days. Iād make a just-in-time decision based on downloading and skimming through a copy of the slides for each of the sessions in the app, making a call on what I thought would be most valuable one to go to.
I also had access to some āCIO Roundtableā sessions, which were peer-based conversations led by a Gartner facilitator. These were valuable but too short, particularly one on the use of Generative AI in Banking which was just getting warmed up by the time we had to stop.
At a Roundtable session on AI Governance we were deep into a fascinating conversation about ethics when, ironically, I spotted that the CIO sitting next to me was recording the audio of the conversation on his phone. I spent the rest of the session wrestling whether to say something about the ethics of recording without peopleās consent, versus the fact that anyone could be recording any of us at any time, and it being incumbent on us to not say anything that we wouldnāt be happy sharing in a public forum. I didnāt say anything at the time, and Iām not sure that was the right thing to do.
In another lunchtime keynote we heard from Martha Lane Fox on Strategic Leadership in the Digital Age: Driving Innovation, Inclusion and Impact. She told us that McKinsey had published a report on how long it will take for different industries to reach parity between the sexes. For technology, the answer was āneverā ā weāre actually standing still or going backwards.
Some of the sessions felt as though they were there just for the āwowā factor as opposed to being actually useful. It was amazing to be in the same room as Arnold Schwarzenegger (and to hear him quote lines from Kindergarten Cop), but I donāt think he offered any insights that I will take back to my day job. Gartner had originally announced that Jensen Huang would speak ā which would have been great, and very relevant ā but Schwarzenegger replaced him in the build-up to the event.
At Monday nightās drinks reception they brought Ruud Gullit in, simply for the purpose of having photos taken with him. I posed for a photo without us speaking a word to each other, and wondered if he even knew where he was.
I was excited to hear Malcolm Gladwellās keynote talk, but a few days after the event I find it difficult to recall the key points.
Mick Ebeling gave an inspiring talk on the work that he has done to āmake the impossible not impossibleā, including 3D printing low-cost prosthetics in Sudan, enabling an artist with locked-in syndrome to paint again, and helping a jazz pianist with Parkinsonās disease to be able to play the piano.
The final keynote of the week was by digital anthropologist and author Rahaf Harfoush, talking about āwellbeing in a constantly connected worldā. None of what she said was revelatory, but it was a good reminder to look after ourselves and our teams. As she discussed burnout, I was thinking about another blogger and weeknoter who has been writing about his own experience of this.
I spent most of Thursday working and in meetings instead of attending sessions. Iām hoping to catch up with the recordings of anything significant that I missed. (But Iām also hoping that I donāt encounter this song1 again, which was played in the countdown to the start of each keynote.)
Iām glad I went, but it wasnāt as impactful as last year. Iām sure that thereās much more that Gartner can do to foster communication and collaboration between CIOs, which would be extremely valuable. They do provide a āPeer Communityā app and website, but from my experience most people just want to be in a WhatsApp or Signal group. You need to build trust and friendship, which isnāt easy to do. At dinner on Tuesday evening I spent time talking with an account executive about the WB-40 podcast Signal group and how invaluable it is to me, wondering what the special sauce is that makes it such a successful forum.
One last thought is that Gartner really should start sharing the secrets of their own technology. The conference looks and feels absolutely stunning, with incredible Wi-Fi, breathtaking audio/visual setups and apps that just work. Iād love to learn how they do it.
Aside from the Symposium, this was a week in which I:
Most of the time when we talk about AI today, we talk about what it can do and not really so much about what it’s doing to us. And when people talk about the harm of AI, of course there are many harms that we talk about like misinformation or deception and many things, but the psychological harm of AI I think is a really, really important topic.
It pains me to report that yesterday the voting women of America, and many men too, adopted her as a role model as well, but not as a force for good. They have no intention of having other womenās backs. They want Savita as an exemplar of what can, and should, happen to women every day, everywhere.
They want more dead women, they are already getting them, and they are not going to stop until no one knows their names because there are too many to count.
Next week: Returning to the office, and getting to see Magdalena Bay again.
š· Blackwellās book store in Holborn has gone. I misread the sign at first, thinking that the nearest store is in Oxford Street. Itās actually quite a bit further away than that.
š· Seen on my walk to the office. This story seemsā¦implausible?
A tough, busy week. Weāre now just a couple of weeks away from the final big project milestone of the year and things are ramping up. On Monday I felt as though I was being put through the wringer a little bit with a couple of difficult situations; things got significantly easier after that, but no less busy. We have everything and everyone in place to be successful, we now just need to get it over the line.
At long last, we finally got to the week of the budget announcement by the government here in the UK, almost four months after they won the general election. Their plans to borrow more, tax more and spend more on investment are things that need to be done given the state of the country. It has amazed me ā but not surprised me ā how little coverage there has been on Brexit as a root cause of some of the trouble we find ourselves in today. It has cost the economy Ā£140bn so far.
I have my fingers crossed for Harris to win next weekās election in the US. The idea of Trump getting in for a second term is stomach-turning.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Symposium, and final checks before project go-live.
š Sounds like Charles Sloman was the original Harry Mack.
A typically busy week. On a couple of days I finished work and felt good about all of the things that Iād completed. This was short-lived as I then took a look at the still giant āto doā pile.
Our clocks went back by an hour over the weekend. Half of our meetings are scheduled from London-based diaries and the other half from those in Johannesburg. As only one of us changes our clocks, Iām expecting the usual diary bumps for a few days.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: A four-day week and a short trip.
š Finished reading Where The Light Gets In by Kimberly Williams-Paisley. The author is best known for playing Annie Banks in the 1991 version of Father of the Bride. This read as a very honest narrative of her motherās diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia and her subsequent decline. It was a useful, insightful and easy read. The book ends with a section of useful references and brief guidance for anyone dealing with dementia, or the potential of it, in their lives.
This is an incredible discovery. Peanut butter infused with mince pie filling. I was skeptical, but it was an unexpected lunchtime delight.
I spent the first half of the week walking around like an old man, tentatively tackling stairs and taking an age to move between sitting and standing positions. Itās been a while since Iāve had delayed onset muscle soreness from running and I wasnāt really expecting it after the half marathon. This was me:
I was grateful for an early morning meeting on Monday that meant I would be working from home; Iām not convinced that I could have tackled the walk to the train station as well as all of the stairs at the tube stations.
By Thursday the stiffness had passed except in the calf muscle that caused me the problems during the run. I get the feeling that thereās something else going on in there as it still feels very tight and sore when I move any faster than walking pace. I decided to skip running this weekend and give it a bit more time to sort itself out.
This was a week in which I:
My latest haul from our local Oxfam Books and Music store
Next week: Starting the annual review cycle, joining a conference from my chair and heading to the cinema with a friend.
Big. Huge.
š¶ At Album Club #164. Surprising even to me, Iāve never heard this album. Which makes it a perfect occasion.
I recently finished reading Monsters: A Fanās Dilemma by Claire Dederer, a wonderful exploration of the question of āwhat do we do with great art by bad people?ā
Itās a perennial topic. It comes up in conversation at our monthly Album Club all the time. Is there something about society ā us ā somehow weighing the quality of the work against the wrongdoing of the artist, reaching a verdict of whether the art can still be enjoyed?
The book explores different angles through a number of public figures: Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, J. K. Rowling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wagner, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Vladimir Nabokov (wrote fiction about monsters, with no evidence that he actually was one), Carl Andre, Ana Mendieta (died after falling from her apartment window during an argument with her husband, the aforementioned Carl Andre), Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell, Valerie Solanas, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver and Miles Davis.
As much as the book is about problematic characters, it is also about the audience and each personās response to an artistās work:
Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art. This occurs in every case.
For me, wrestling with the question of whether you can separate the art from the artist has mainly been in the context of listening to music. Artists Iāve enjoyed, artists Iāve loved; when I read about something that they have done, hearing the music will never be the same experience again. Ryan Adams is someone whose work I had been enjoying exploring over a long period of time. His album Cold Roses contains an incredible set of songs which I had been playing a lot back in 2018. Around that time, according to Wikipedia:
ā¦The New York Times reported that seven women (including Phoebe Bridgers and ex-wife Mandy Moore) said Adams offered to assist them with their music careers, then pursued the women romantically. They also claimed that Adams retaliated when they spurned his advances, hindering their careers and harassing them in text messages and on social media.
BBC News has a broader summary:
Several women have accused alternative rock star Ryan Adams of emotional and verbal abuse and offering career opportunities as a pretext for sex.
A report in the New York Times, external outlines a pattern of manipulative behaviour, including accusations of psychological abuse from his ex-wife, Mandy Moore.
Another woman said Adams sent explicit texts and exposed himself during a Skype call when she was a teenager.
The star, who rose to fame in the early 2000s, has denied the allegations.
I donāt think Iāve played that record since. I canāt hear the music without immediately thinking about the artist, and then about the stories surrounding him. I get annoyed that I canāt enjoy the music that I loved, but then feel guilty as I know that the pleasure that Iām denied is petty relative to the experience of the people that he has hurt and damaged.
A similar thing happened a little while later with accusations against Mark Morriss, lead singer of The Bluetones. The bandās music had been very important to me since my university days. My weeknotes tell me that Iād bought a box set of their first album in October 2021, a few months before these accusations appeared. I read the accusations with a sinking heart. Given how the scales of society are tipped, my instinct is to believe the womanās side of the story. Morriss eventually posted a response. Who knows what actually happened? Again, I havenāt played their records since.
Despite not reaching for these albums, I find myself playing mind gymnastics with what would be ok. If I have a vinyl record and I play their music in my own house, just to myself, is that better than listening to them on Spotify where the play counts get registered and they receive a teeny bit of financial reward for my listen? Does it matter if my plays are recorded on last.fm for the world to see? What about records that they recorded at the start of their career, before the alleged offences?
Dedererās book introduces the concept of āthe stainā, where something that someone has done at a point in their life colours to everything before and after it.
The stain begins with an act, a moment in time, but then it travels from that moment, like a tea bag steeping in water, coloring the entire life. It works its way forward and backward in time. The principle of retroactivity means that if youāve done something sufficiently asshole-like, it follows that you were an asshole all along.
I loved the exploration of āthe stainā through a text message from the authorās friend:
These shortcomings of the word āmonsterā were clarified to me one day when I was messaging with a historian and music critic friend about the Michael Jackson problem. He wrote (in a telegraphic message-language that seemed elegant to me): i am currently trying to do the aesthetico-moral calculus thing re. MJās music, like, is the Jackson 5 stuff okay? oh but then in a different sense that also involved child abuse or exploitation tooāmichael himself. how about the ādonāt stop til you get enoughā, ārock with youā eraāsurely he wasnāt at it then? but does the stain work its way backwards through time? I expect in practice itāll be hard to resist the pull of the music when you hear it out and about.
Whether the stain seeps backwards and forwards in time through an artistās work depends on the individual that is experiencing or interacting with it. Many people will hear Michael Jackson on the radio and not give it a second thought. Conversely, Iāve also been at an event where people have shouted to have his music turned off when it turned up on a playlist.
Jacksonās case fascinates me. From what I can make out, the release of the documentary film Leaving Neverland in the first week of March 2019, in which Jackson was accused of sexual abuse of two young boys, resulted many radio stations around the world removing his songs from their playlists. From Wikipedia:
Leaving Neverland led to a media backlash against Jackson. Commentators suggested Jackson’s music could fall from favor, similarly to the work of convicted child sexual abuser Gary Glitter. [ā¦] All Cogeco-owned radio stations in Canada pulled Jackson’s music from their playlists [ā¦] NH Radio in the Netherlands and MediaWorks New Zealand, New Zealand Media and Entertainment and Radio New Zealand also pulled Jackson’s music [ā¦] A 1991 episode of The Simpsons guest-starring Jackson, “Stark Raving Dad”, was pulled from circulation; the co-writer, Al Jean, said he believed Jackson had used the episode to groom boys for sexual abuse. A London concert produced by Jackson’s collaborator Quincy Jones removed Jackson’s name and album titles from its advertisements; the organizers said the modified artwork reflected the show’s inclusion of Jones’s repertoire unrelated to his work with Jackson. “Weird Al” Yankovic dropped his parodies of Jackson’s music from his Strings Attached Tour.
Lawsuits between the Jackson estate and HBO, the distributor of the documentary, followed throughout 2019 and into 2020. Putting aside whether the allegations of the film are true or not, I find it interesting that the popularity of Jacksonās work increased at the time of the filmās release. Wikipedia again:
Despite the negative publicity, Jackson’s honors were not rescinded, as had happened following sexual assault allegations made against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, and there were no mass calls to stop playing his music, as had happened following allegations against Gary Glitter and R. Kelly. Jackson’s combined music sales, including his work with the Jackson 5, increased by 10%. Streams of his music and videos increased by 6%, rising from 18.7 million between February 24 and 26 to 19.7 million between March 3 and 5. His videos were viewed 22.1 million times, an increase of roughly 1.2 million from the week prior, and three of his albums re-entered the UK iTunes chart.
Is there something about the collective perception of the quality of the work that repels the stain? Can we āseparate the art from the artistā if the art is good enough to warrant it?
Dederer discusses how the public perception of someone ā usually male ā as a āgeniusā is sometimes sufficient for them to have their stain diminished or ignored. Some of the acts described in the book, such as Picasso stubbing out a cigarette on his partnerās face, or the details of Hemingway being āa hitter, a beater-upper, an insulterā, are shocking to read. I had never heard about them before, perhaps because the stains had been sufficiently erased by the perceived weight of their respective works.
The author then spends time examining herself. She asks whether she is a monster, even in part, mainly for working while she has children. āThis is what female monstrousness looks like: abandoning the kids. Always.ā I read this part of the book in my hotel room when I was on a two-week business trip, having left my wife back in the UK to run the household. The circumstance was not lost on me.
My friend was intimating something about the continuum of abandonment. Thereās a spectrum. Here are some ways to be judged an abandoner of children:
Shut the home office or studio door against the child
Depend on the other parent to do the lionās share of the childcare
Let a grandparent or a nanny or a babysitter watch the child
Put the child in day care
Go away for work for days or weeks or months at a time
Get a divorce and let the other parent have majority custody
Give the child to your parents to raise
Flee the family home
And perhaps: give the child up for adoption at birth
Add your own! The thing is, each of us can draw a line across the page at any point on this list, and say: Here. Here is where abandonment begins. Where is that line for you? Day care? Surrendering custody? Flight? Why is that the line, for you? Is it an ethical thought, or a moral feeling?
Please note that none of these behaviors count as abandonment if practiced by men. This is extra-true if the men in question are artists. As Jenny Diski so rightly points out: men do this all the time.
There is definitely truth to this. Generally, I get to go to a room and work without being disturbed. This isnāt a luxury afforded to women in equal measure.
I love the authorās writing style, which made the book a joy to read and contemplate. Itās stuck with me since I finished it and sparked some interesting conversations with friends.
Although the book focuses on artists, similar questions can be raised of monsters in other fields. If you think Elon Musk is a monster, should you never buy or use one of his products? Will you never own a Tesla or use Starlink as your Internet service provider? Perhaps the choice is more clear-cut when there is a financial transaction involved. Buying another Bluetones or Ryan Adams album feels like a bigger step than listening to records that I already own.
It was interesting to hear my two favourite information security podcasts talk about Cloudflare. In March 2019, Risky Business had an episode that was literally called Stop giving Cloudflare Money, protesting that the company was continuing to help keep an awful website live that had been used to post links to the live stream of a mass shooting in New Zealand. Fellow antipodean Troy Huntās weekly podcast had mentioned Cloudflare many times; he had also written extensively about how he has used their technology to optimise his services in fascinating, clever ways. From memory, Hunt made no mention of the story on his podcast. I donāt know what the right answer is ā drop the Cloudflare service and do things a different way or continue to use it ā but I remember at the time being fascinated by the contrast between the two podcasts.
What about the people you work with who have done something terrible in their personal lives? What about family members? Dederer asks this question and answers it:
Weāve all loved terrible people. How do I know this? Because I know people, and people are terrible.
[ā¦]
What do we do about the terrible people in our lives? Mostly we keep loving them.
Back to the point at the start of the book ā it is always two biographies meeting, in every case. How we feel about a particular person and their work isnāt just about them alone, but about us as well.
An exhausting week. Despite getting a big sleep on Saturday night, it took me a couple of days to get over the jet lag from my New York trip. I found myself barely able to keep myself awake on the trains home. I hadnāt planned to spend four long days in the office, but as the week unfolded it was clear that I wouldnāt be able to work from home. Our divisional CIO came to town for a couple of days and then our new regional CEO hosted a welcome event with drinks afterwards. Friday was a very busy day, but it was good to work from home again for the first time in three weeks.
On Sunday I ran the Royal Parks Half Marathon. This was my first competitive half marathon event and only the second time that Iāve run this distance. A friend had an entry but could no longer make it, so he kindly offered me his place. The entries arenāt officially transferable this late in the day, so I raced without a name on my race number and he ended up getting the text message with āhisā official time. I was in the first wave and got sucked along with the crowd at a fast pace. This was fine until around the five mile mark, when my right calf started complaining and feeling stiff. I adjusted my style so that I didnāt put too much pressure on it and managed to hobble my way through the remaining eight miles. Itās now very sore and Iām hobbling around, but Iām hoping it will pass in a day or two.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Recovering from my run, giving my AI presentation to a board of directors, and relaxing at a couple of Album Clubs.
