From The Editor
“Fat, lazy Arts dropouts … advisers — or “snouts” — have spread like myxomatosis, says bureaucrat-turned-MP David Speirs.”
This quote is from a 15 April 2016 article in The Mandarin by David Donaldson, who gives an entertaining account of the David Spiers speeches on 13th and 14th April and points out that “The theatrical language was to draw public attention to a more serious point about a loss of expertise and the recession of frank and fearless advice.” See below, ‘Adviserous horribilis’: MP unloads on political staffers.
Bad political advice also features in a 21April 2016 article in The Mandarin, this time by Angus Taylor, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister with special responsibility for cities and digital transformation. Taylor quotes Jay Leno “When you type in your age, it’s not clear if they want the age you are right now, or the age you’ll be when you finally log in,” to illustrate the political and public relations disaster caused by the failure of the Obama healthcare website. He then gives “Two very simple ideas” for moving forward. See below, Angus Taylor: big data, big benefits, big savings in digital, for an extract and link to the full article.
“With our population of 23 million and labour force of 12 million, there’s no other industry that can deliver long term productivity and wealth multipliers like technology. Today Australia’s economy is in the stone age. Literally.”
The above quote is from a speech by Matt Barrie, Chief Executive, Freelancer.com at the 14 April 2016 Knowledge Nation summit. Barrie was asked to be controversial and he pulled no punches. See below, This is what it’s like trying to attract and retain tech talent in Australia, for an extract and link to the full transcript.
The University of Adelaide has developed “An easy-to-use online tool to help build people’s trust in the cloud”. They report in a 22 April 2016 ScienceDaily article that “We’ve tested this with and without our credibility model — without the model, some cloud applications receive a maximum score of 100; but with the model, that score might only get to 50 or 60,” See below, Trust in the cloud could be pinned to online scoring system.
Makes you wonder if this approach could be used for Trust in Politicians?
Current Issue
Articles in the current Issue cover:
‘Adviserous horribilis’: MP unloads on political staffers
“I will use parliamentary privilege to describe and for the first time name (because I have not done that to date) the people who bullied and intimidated me during my time as a 23 year old in the Premier’s department.”
Angus Taylor: big data, big benefits, big savings in digital
“It is little wonder that voters throughout the developed world are increasingly cynical about government.”
This is what it’s like trying to attract and retain tech talent in Australia
“If there is one thing, and one thing only that you do to fix this industry, it’s get more people into it.”
Trust in the cloud could be pinned to online scoring system
“How do we cut through comments that are designed as a malicious and systematic attack against a product, and also those that are well-executed self-promotion?”
QESP Blog
The QESP Forum has now been replaced by a Blog which will welcome contributions from Members and non-Members, via the Editor. We have an Apr 11, 2016 contribution, Reclaiming the Entrepreneurial & Innovation Ecosystem, from Anne-Marie Elias, Chief Disrupter Design Innovation, UTS. Anne-Marie’s presentation at the QESP, ACS, PMI Sydney Chapter after-hours networking event on 7th April was very well received and she has agreed to speak at ACOSM16 in June, see Events below.
Events
ACOSM16 Australian Conference on Software Management
The QESP 2016 Australian Conference on Software Management (ACOSM16) will be held in Sydney on Thursday 23rd June 2016. ACOSM16 is conducted in partnership with the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the PMI Sydney Chapter. For more details and to register, see ACOSM16.
Quotes
Quote of the Day
“ Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.” – Archibald Putt
Quote from Yesteryear
“Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we’re not going to buy your product.” – Joe Keenan, President of Atari (1976), responding to Steve Jobs’ offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak developed
Ted Smillie
QESP Chairman