Here's where I spent yesterday...
Not at the Labour Conference in Manchester, but at silicon.com's
CIO Forum.
"You? A CIO?", I hear you cry... "Who are you trying to kid?". Well,
no-one... I freely admit that's not my role, but the folks at silicon
do like to sprinkle a few non-CIO delegates into the mix, and who am I
to turn down a free lunch?
It was a fascinating day, about which I'll say more soon, but three of
the speakers deserve a quick one-liner before I add later detail:
-
Peter Cochrane,
whose opening keynote challenged the delegates to recognise the vital
importance of capitalising on the skills 'at the edge of the network' -
particularly those of young people, with their very different take on
how technology ought to be exploited; very much in tune with Sun's
'Participation Age' theme.
-
John Suffolk,
UK Government CIO, who gave an articulate description of how he sees
his new role after three months in the job. Without any song-and-dance,
he did a great job of balancing the popular conception of the public
sector as having a poor track record on IT, with a calm statement of
some of its often-overlooked achievements in terms of scale and
throughput.
-
René Carayol,
who facilitated the interactive sessions and led the 'CIO Leadership'
break-out. A great facilitator, highly skilled at drawing the best out
of everyone in the room, and an absolute master at "owning the space".
Fascinating to see him in action.
There was a lot more, but I'll come back to that later in a bit more detail.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 12:45 PM GMT+00:00
Fascinating to watch Bill Clinton in action at the Labour Party Conference today.
He had to start his speech with a section on Labour's achievements, and
it was interesting to see some of the delicate political footwork that
necessitated. For instance, what term does a US Democrat use to refer
to a UK Labour party which has re-defined the centre ground of British
politics, in a room full of delegates some of whom are still bitter
about the party's move away from the traditional Socialist Left? The
answer? "Progressive".
And what does a US Democrat say to a Labour party seeking a fourth term
in office, about the prospect of a Conservative government? Answer:
without ever naming the opposition party, he referred to the danger of
"putting in a whole other bunch of people and trusting that they would
keep what you did running right"*.
He highlighted the risk of allowing an opposition party to say that the
electorate's choice is between "change, or more of the same", and spent
a good deal of the speech on the current government's record as an
agent of change.
He also negotiated the minefield of internal Labour animosities,
singling out Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone for individual praise
based on specific joint work he has done with them - on education in
Africa, and urban polution reduction respectively. It was, I have to
say, deftly done.
Noticeably, though, this opening segment of his speech was more
scripted and less flowing than usual, and did not showcase his
characteristic oratorical skills. As he moved to the more 'global
statesman-like' assessment of Britain's role in the world, though, he
visibly relaxed and started to show the charm and ease for which he's
famous.
From a non Party-political perspective, his comments on Kyoto and employment were extremely interesting:
- "A successful economy depends not just on creating new jobs, but on creating a new
source of new jobs every 6-8 years."
- "Doing the high-minded thing [on climate change] turns out to be, practically, the right thing to do."
He covered a lot of ground, and I don't claim these brief impressions
are anything approaching a representative sample, but it was an
engaging performance and the full text might be worth a read; if it
gets posted I'll add a link to it.
*This and the other passages in double quotes are not quite verbatim, but probably not too far off.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 12:31 PM GMT+00:00
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