I grew up in a world of science and business where everybody thought the way to work was to have a policy.

Once upon a time I worked in a company where we discovered new things about writing and how people worked, and how words in excess were brittle, and wasted on the task of getting people to live or work well. So I took that learning into the world of cash poor small businesses who felt they had to have a policy and I said “You don’t need policy manuals and stuff like that. What you need are clever ways to present information at the right time so it is embedded in the work”. And those businesses that made buckets and bolts said “thank you very much” and “we have never seen so clearly before”, and “look how much we can do with so little – we are world class’.

So then I got another job with a company that wanted to be the best in the world, not at buckets and bolts, but at the very sort of stuff I was best at. So much so they wanted to invent a new kind of corporation. So I took all my learning about how not to have a policy and presenting information at the right time so it is embedded in work, and added a whole lot of new learning about Web 2.0 and social networking and emergence and creativity and recruiting and retaining world class talent. But it turned out the company didn’t really know what it wanted. It didn’t really want to be world class, or novel, or leading edge. Because what it really wanted was to be too busy. And it was certainly too busy to learn and implement or build clever new things. So the day came when they felt they had to have a policy…….

Uncontrolled grief

It seems to me there is a sociological research work waiting to be done around the role of roadside memorials (like the one shown) for traffic victims. I call the phenomenon "uncontrolled grief", because that is what it is. there are no rules for the expressions, no rituals no ceremonies, no cloistered gardens or solemn spaces. Without those controls, the tombstone text is a colorful memorial, perhaps better and more widely tended than the official burial site.

You have to start somewhere...

I've tried. Yes I've tried. But the web site just won't do it for me (see justknowledge.com.au). The provider* say's its an intuitive interface for self administration. For me its the Great Wall of China and I'm a Mongol infant futiley challenging the rocks. Both are impenetrable. I've had a website since 2003 and although it says I'm a devotee of visualisation, there are VERY few pics.

So here I am blogging, because I can't maintain my own site without frustrating the heck out of myself.

I understand there is a technical name for that blankness we get about a person's name - nominal aphasia, if I recall correctly.

Well I'm waiting for someone to give a name to my particular form of web based paralysis, so that I can get sympathy, not just suspicion that I'm an idiot....

*(I do have to appologise to my web builder - he's very sucessful, and has plenty of evidence from others with more malleable minds that his interface is actually the right stuff. )