Graham Chastney

There are a few tools that are crucial to the working of the information addict.

In order to understand the information addict you first need to realise that information research and pursuit isn’t some kind of aimless pastime, it’s a very serious business. There is a purpose to all of this activity and that is to find really useful information and in so doing to gain insights and knowledge that others probably haven’t seen. But the real join is in the hunt.

You might think that Google was the main tool for the information addict, but it isn’t one of the primary tools. it’s a good secondary tool for finding further information on a given topic. But it’s not a primary tool because it required a question and this information addict doesn’t normally know what the question is before he gets started. The really useful tools are the ones that provoke a question that might lead to a new discovery.

The really useful tools are those tools that provide information without being asked a question, while still prompting a question.

For me these tools fall into two discrete areas:

• Statistics
• Feeds

There are so many statistics around that there is always something new to be gained from them. The statistics on this blog are a case-in-point. These statistics serve two purposes. They allow me to gain insights that I know are unique to me; there’s only me with access to them. These statistics also allow me to branch out into all sorts of other discoveries. “Why is that blog popular?”, “Why do I get visitors from…"?”. I have access to all sorts of statistics, and they provide all manner of stimulus.

Feeds are different. Feeds provide a constant stream of provocation; they are streams of information. Blogs, facebook, linkedin, twitter all provide a constant flow of things that may, or may not, be interesting. The “may not” is important, if the information was always 100% relevant there wouldn’t be any joy in the hunt. Addiction always has some element of “pursuit” to it, even if the result, once caught, isn’t worth bothering with.

Google, and other search methods support these two information provoking methods by allowing a chase to continue. It often doesn’t even matter where the chase is taking you, it’s the chase that is the important and the addictive part.

"My name is Graham and I’m addicted to information."

There I’ve admitted it, and as they say admission is the first step in the recovery process.

A little while ago I wrote a blog making a joke of how I could waste a while day doing absolutely nothing at all. There’s another saying: "many a true word said in jest" and, as you’ve guessed, there is a good sized dollop of truth in that post.

I could, if I allowed myself, waste hours scanning for information, feeding on it, searching it out, getting to the end of a chase.

I don’t think I’m alone in this issue, so I thought I would share some of my journey and why I’ve got to the point where I call it an addiction.

This morning was a wonderful example of the issues that I face. Today I had two presentations that needed to be completed for sessions later in the week. I knew how long they would take, and what needed to be done. Did I sit down and get on with it – did I heck – I fed my habit, scanning blogs and emails and enjoying a trip down a few information rabbit holes. I did eventually get the presentation sorted, but just in time, and with just about enough effort.

But is addiction too strong a word for it, aren’t I just doing my job. Well I  also know a good deal about addiction. One of the things that I do outside of work is to help with a group that supports people in need, some of them struggling with addiction. There are a lot of parallels, but I’ll leave that for another time.

I’ve been looking for a new series for a while now; sometimes the obvious answer is the one directly in-front of you.

Lud-dite – noun

Definition:

a member of any of various bands of workers in England (1811–16) organized to destroy manufacturing machinery, under the belief that its use diminished employment.

I work for a technology company. We do all sorts of non-technology things like process reengineering, project management and business change, but fundamentally we are a technology company.

At our core we believe that technology can, and does, make a difference. And yet, we also have our fair share of luddites.

I’m not talking here about the sceptic who doesn’t see any value in the latest innovation; I’m talking about the person who fundamentally disagrees with the premise that technology can make a difference.

I have to profess that this is something I don’t understand. Why would you want to work for an organisation that delivers a product that you don’t believe in?

When I visit customers I find the same thing; people who are working within the IT organisation who don’t believe that they are making a difference to their business customers.

Why would anyone choose to work in an organisation, or within a position where you are responsible for something that you hate?

I’m not expecting any answers, I’m just intrigued.

It’s not often that I write blog posts while I’m mobile. If I’m going to write anything I’ll normally twitter. But there are times when a thought comes to me that is more than a tweet and is worth writing there and then rather than waiting until I am home.
It’s not always a good thing to be too immediate about things, but there is a time and place for it. It’s at those times that I turn to Wordpress for Blackberry, and to prove the point I’m using it right now.
If I got more comments I’d probably also use it for keeping up to speed with the stream.
We have only just started the mobile revolution even. We’ve been working at it for some time now. In years to come we will do things while we are mobile that we can only imagine today. The devices that we have today are going to change radically as the computing power, storage and connectivity capabilities accelerate.
Writing a few words into a simple app might not be that radical, but it’s a signpost of the things that are to come.

This is a note to self – use fewer words:

If this sounds a bit rambling and off-message then it probably is, but I’m experimenting.

One of the reasons I write a blog is that I find it cathartic – it helps me to construct my thoughts, analyse them and then, if necessary, spit them out. In writing this I am expressing a set of feeling, the feelings don’t necessarily relate to real issue or problems – feelings are like that.

Today I am wound up. This particular thing has been winding me up for weeks and this thing is a document.

This document is a long very document -  160 pages and 31,000 words at the last count., that’s almost half way to being a novel. I’m currently responsible for the editing of this document.

The problem with this document is that it can never be finished. As soon as we get one version signed off there’s another set of updates ready to be incorporated. Some might regard a document like this as a good thing – I struggle to see it that way.

Every time I open it up for updates, there are a set of people ready and able to “help” us update it. I am inundated with a thousand opinions some of them specific and useful, many of them are just opinion. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting in the stocks with people to throwing rotten vegetables at me.

Although it takes a lot of words to say it, this document, in my opinion, has a very simple scope. Within this scope, it has a purpose, it’s going to make a difference to something. I struggle, massively, with doing things for which I can’t see any viable outcome. What’s the point in doing something if it’s not going to result in anything.

Having written the document I want to get on with the outcomes, I want to do something with the information that the document makes available. I want to put the document to bed and then go and build something, fix something, create something. But that’s not how it seems, I’m here, updating this document, again with few perceptible outcomes from the last time. I feel like a train on a track with no station in sight.

But why do I care? I’m being paid aren’t I? It’s just part of the job isn’t it? Someone has to do it don’t they? And that’s when the non-conformist in me comes out.  None of these answers have ever been sufficient, and why should they be. If something isn’t fulfilling its purpose – why bother doing it. We already do too many things in life because they give us “a tick in a box” so I’m not sure why I should do any more of them.

As I said at the beginning, I’m just expressing feelings here, and those feelings don’t necessarily reflect upon the reality of the situation. What I need to do is to turn these feelings around and writing them down helps to expose them to the cold light of day.

In that cold light of day I can realise things about this situation:

• I can realise that I don’t need to carry this document on my own, I don’t think I’ve actually been asked to, and even if I have, I shouldn’t.
• I can see that I need to set myself a target with a purpose attached to it. This target can give me something to aim for and give the revisions to the document something to live for.
• I can start to assess the opinions of others as another set of opportunities to be filled. If people want this document to do something different to what it’s designed for it’s because they have a need for that kind of a document.

It’s necessary to change the way I see the situation before I can make a change to the situation. That’s the point of writing it down, changing me so I can see things differently and make the necessary changes.

I’ve been blogging for nearly 5 years now. It will be 5 years proper in April, but I’m likely to forget then, so I’m commemorating this event now.

Actually my first post was on 04/04/05 and sometimes I wished I’d posted a day earlier so it could have been 03/04/05, but I wasn’t that fortunate.

The first words weren’t very profound, but we’ve been on a long journey since then:

Welcome to my new home for Oak Grove.

This site will continue to focus on my work-type related stuff. I’m also planning something new for more general information and musings.

Graham

The description of “work-type related stuff” has probably been quite fair. My work is quite broad and increasingly focussed on concept and ideas rather than on technology products. The change in post topics has reflected this – I don’t think I’ve written about a technology product for some time, and the most popular posts at the moment are on team dynamics and rich pictures.

I continue to be hugely interested in how technology can add value to peoples day to working life – and the massive void between the technology available and the technology being exploited. Businesses move at a pace that is a mystery to me and I have to admit that I am still perplexed by what it takes to influence people to change. Someone once said “when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change – you will change” but that seems a bit negative.

Writing about concepts is much more difficult than writing about products, the audience is smaller too, but I’ve always written about things that I find interesting and will continue to do so.

The work on rich pictures has lead to some great conversations with my peers and customers. Much of this conversation has been carried out behind the firewall, as we move forward with our own internal social and enterprise networking exploitation, something that wouldn’t have happened 5 years ago.

Over these last 5 years my working life has changed massively, but there are yet more massive changes ahead. I think I’ll leave that for another post though. One of the things that I do intend to do in the coming months is to revisit the subject of the brain mainly to assess how this changed the way that I think personally.

Back then I wrote under the name “oak grove”, there’s some history to that name, but I’m not going to get into that today. One thing that has changed has been the lack of Jimmy and Grandad. I’m not sure why that happened, it just seemed to come to a natural end. Perhaps it’s time to bring them back. What do you think?

I’ve also been writing my Blessings posts for most of that time too; these posts come less often mainly because I find they need a bit more work and for me to have the time to be creative. Some of the responses that I receive to these posts are wonderfully profound and often a privilege to receive.

To those of you who have been with me on this journey – thank you for your input. To those of you who are a little newer on the road – welcome.

A wry smile came across my face when I saw this from Geek and Poke. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

In our kitchen we have a Brabantia bin and it might sound sad, but we really like this bin. It’s really well designed – practically and aesthetically.

It has a really nifty push lid that lifts up when you press it. When you are working in the kitchen you don’t really want to be fumbling about lifting a lid. To close it you just press it shut.

The other week, however, we came to press the bin lid down to close it and it wouldn’t stay down. When I looked at the lid action part of it was broken.

This bin wasn’t cheap and we’d had this bin for a couple of years so I wondered whether it was possible to buy spare parts for it. While searching around the internet looking for a spare I discovered that Brabantia bins come with a 10 year guarantee. Having had a quick look through the drawer where we keep this kind of information without any luck I thought I would see what they said if I sent them an email.

The next day I had an email with a couple of questions. Having replied to the question I was sent another email with a PDF file containing a shipping notice for me to send the old one back. A few days later I had an email telling me that  a new one was being shipped. This morning, early and with a startlingly loud knock on the front door from the postman, a new one arrived.

I had no proof of purchase, I couldn’t even remember the purchase date to anything more accurate than a couple of months.

This was really good customer service.

The process was a simple straightforward one that resulted in me being a very satisfied customer.

In customer satisfaction terms people talk about promoters, neutrals and detractors – in the case of Brabantia bins you can count me in as a promoter.

Some of you who read this blog know my quite well, others of you who only read about me here are starting to know me.

So I thought I’d ask the question.

What would you like me to write about?

Not sure why I’ve never though to ask before.

I’m writing this post sitting on a full train using a Blackberry while reading an article that states "within the next few years as many as 20 million people will be choosing to work one or more days a week in third-place facilities – that is, public or private spaces built specifically for the temporary or semi-temporary business purposes of companies and individuals".

And I’ve spent most of today in a meeting in a hotel lobby…it’s a changing world of work.