Author Archives: Martyn Jones

Consider this: Huawei, Google and the USA

20 Mon May 2019

Posted by in anthropology, Economics, Inform, educate and entertain., Philosophy, political science, Politics

≈ Leave a comment


Huawei2Martyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles 20th May 2019

Listen up!

I have just read Simon Jenkin’s article, published in The Guardian, on the current barney between the USA and China – “Google’s Huawei ban is good news: tech giants shouldn’t always get their way“.

This is one of those rare occasions when I don’t agree entirely with what Simon has to say, but, the piece still carries a lot of good sense and finely tuned criticism.

For me, this quarrel isn’t fundamentally about security or reining in big-tech. This is essentially about trade wars, base protection, maintaining power and imposing influence. In short, it’s about hubris, intimidation and violence on the global political stage.

But, at the bottom of all of this is the Trump administration’s Homeric ignorance and epic ability to simply fanny-around.

Continue reading →

Consider this: Clueless in IT! Can‘t listen. Aren‘t learning. Won‘t win.

19 Sun May 2019

Posted by in Inform, educate and entertain., IT Circus, IT fraud, IT strategy, IT World, listening, Philosophy, Polemic, Politics

≈ Leave a comment


OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Aranjuez, Spain

Martyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles 19th May 2019

Listen well

I am a big fan of listening well and in continually improving listening skills. Yes, there are times when we can over-listen but this is also linked with skills of diplomacy and politics. How we listen should inform us a lot about what we and others really are.

So, whilst I am a big advocate of listening well I see that the world of business, and especially the sub-world of IT, is plagued with vain, impulsive and badly informed vote-takers who stubbornly resist the need to listen well and who will attempt to deftly fill the whole of the available time bashing their gums in communicating what are to all intents and purposes vacuous inanities and long litanies of meaningless clichés, full of terms that they either abuse or misunderstand; or even a bit of both.

And, as anyone who has worked with IT will know, I am not making this up. We used to call this charlatanry now we simply call it consulting. It still isn’t turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse, no matter how much people insist. But, there it is, in all its magnificent mediocrity.

Some people tell me it’s because IT attracts people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome; whatever that is.

I tend to put this refusal to listen down to other things; my money is firmly on arrogance and ignorance.

But, they just don’t get it, do they? Continue reading →

Agile@Scale is Corporate Terrorism – Discuss

15 Wed May 2019

Posted by in Inform, educate and entertain.

≈ 1 Comment


cropped-afi.pngAfilonius Rex

Madrid 15th May 2019

If terrorism went full in your-face digital it could do no worse than adopt the tactics of those management consulting companies and IT laughing academies who are encouraging corporations to fully embrace Agile at Scale, a short, succinct and precise term for labelling a sure fire way to turn your decent, reasonable and western liberal oriented business into a failing totalitarian corporate hell-hole of an enterprise gone awry.

Just think about it for a moment… Continue reading →

Faking It – Data, media and manipulation

12 Sun May 2019

Posted by in Big Data, Big Data 7s, Big Data Analytics, Cambridge Analytica, Inform, educate and entertain., media, Social Media, The Big Data Contrarians

≈ Leave a comment


DSC_0023_2

Martyn Richard Jones

Brussels, 12th May 2019

It has recently been revealed that political campaigns are taking the unprecedented step of hiring the services of consulting companies that will assist them in reaching, convincing and influencing voters.

This is a scandalous abuse of power, privilege and technology.

Big Data and data science are being used on a massive scale to manipulate political elections, control voter behaviour and to undermine constitutional democracy and the rule of law.  There is no doubt about this; I read it on the internet. Continue reading →

Learning to hate Agile-at-scale

11 Sat May 2019

Posted by in agile, All Data, Architecture, business, business strategy, Inform, educate and entertain., Methodology, Process, project management, scrum

≈ Leave a comment


StupidToScaleAfilonius Rex

Cordoba, 12th May 2019

Ladies and gentlemen, the performance is about to start!

In 1998, as Programme, Product and Competence Centre manager at Hewlett-Packard, I signed the Agile Manifesto.

At that time, I had been using elements of the Agile-method mindset for the best part of sixteen years.

Previously, in 1995 I was trained and certified in Iterations, an iterative and agile-like methodology for building, maintaining and expanding data warehouses and data marts. Continue reading →

CEO BRIEFING: Deep learning and shallow understanding

11 Sat May 2019

Posted by in AI, All Data, Big Data, deep learning, Inform, educate and entertain.

≈ 3 Comments


OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Martyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles, 29th April 2019

To begin at the beginning

In spite of or perhaps because of the many years I worked in artificial intelligence I believe that the current long-distance love affair with AI and what is also euphemistically termed ‘deep learning’ to be somewhat irrational in its exuberance.

In the eighties I was experimenting with automatic feature extraction, pattern recognition and parallel distributed processing (see Rumelhart and McClelland), which led me to adaptive neural networks.

As a result, my research and development in this field showed me that automatically mining nuggets of gold or automatically gaining real insight from data is not easy, far from stable and frequently not achievable.  Interesting experiments, but frequently impractical in a business setting. Continue reading →

IT’S POLITICS: Labour’s Brexit Strategy for Idiots

23 Sun Dec 2018

Posted by in Assets, awareness, behaviour, Best principles, Brexit, ethics, goodstrat, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Offshoring, Outsourcing, Politics, Remain, statistics, The Guardian

≈ 2 Comments


big ben bridge castle city

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Martyn Richard Jones

Madrid, Sunday 23rd December 2018

What’s all this fuss about Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s Brexit strategy?

Despite Liberal Democrats, Blairites and most of the national media ramping up the righteous outrage about Corbyn stating the bleeding, bloody obvious (see e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/23/labour-remain-jeremy-corbyn-brexit  ) nothing has changed.

So, what are the facts?

Continue reading →

IT’S POLITICS: Brexit and the Will of the Woolly

21 Fri Dec 2018

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Brexit, goodstrat, Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Politics

≈ 1 Comment


Picture6Martyn Richard Jones

Madrid, Friday 21st December 2018

It feels like Brexit is in the lap of the gods. But, I hope that eventually (and that’s very soon) it will be dragged kicking and screaming to an almost certain fate. Meanwhile, as it faces the dying of its light it continues to bring out the best and the worst in our politicians at Westminster, those who work in the media and those with strong views. Continue reading →

Big Data Predictions for 2017: How did we do?

05 Fri Jan 2018

Posted by in Inform, educate and entertain.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,


landscape-shore-sunset-clouds.jpg

Martyn Richard Jones

Gif sur Yvette, 5th January 2018.

It’s that time again.

However…

I forgot to send festive greetings cards. I forgot to buy presents. And, I forgot to do my usual festive time articles on times past, times present and times future.

But, I’m getting there.

This is a look back at my Big Data predictions for 2017 (Big Big Big Data predictions) and how I did. There are ten predictions so it’s not a Norse Saga… Okay, give me a break already, it’s only the 5th of January… Continue reading →

Three really stupid things you can do with a Data Lake

28 Thu Dec 2017

Posted by in All Data, Ask Martyn, Big Data, Big Data Analytics, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Good Strategy Radio, goodstrat, Inform, educate and entertain., Martyn does, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

≈ Leave a comment

Tags


OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMartyn Richard Jones

Gif sur Yvette, 27th December 2017

To begin at the beginning

First, a thought.

Just because it’s there, it doesn’t mean it has to be done. Just because you can, it doesn’t mean that you should. Just because you believe you are right, doesn’t mean that you are not wrong.

Continue reading →