Weeknotes

An intentionally browseable set of weeknotes for my previous week1. I worked: Cynefin, the sense-making framework, was covered in a personal introduction by Greg Brougham, which I was able to access as part of my membership of Liminal. While I’ve read or watched introductions to Cynefin before, to get a rough idea of the core concepts, this was more of a personal view. It covered the origin of the concept, and what appealed to Greg about it, some of which I understood, some of which I needed to read up on. But - as with much other systems thinking, and conceptual advances in general - I was struck by how much of the knowledge and theories were attached to their main creator, or to a single book or other piece of work. Personally I’m both aware of how much those concepts, and their authors, must owe to the team around them - and also I tend to be far more interested in the concepts than the people, so the strength of that link feels like unnecessary baggage. ...

I worked: I attended DSET - an online military training conference. It was good to see them go hybrid, although I found their chosen platform Hopin disappointing. The event was well handled by Ruddy Nice Limited, especially the issues such as intermittent connectivity and an emergency alarm in the middle of the very first session. Similarly I was at CPCF 6, the Cyber Physical Convergence Forum. I was particularly impressed by Helen Sutton of Dataminr and their presentation, and the emphasis on selling through demonstrating knowledge rather than hard marketing. And also impressed by the overall aim of the event to be hybrid, even with a relatively small space representing the physical side of the event. CTG Intelligence is worth keeping an eye on if you work in any part of security. ...

As fifty percent of my readership complained about the breathless bulleted format I’ve been using, which is a very fair point to make, I’m experimenting with different formatting this “week”, although I’ve much less material. Considering how I create these blogs I should be able to generate an index easily, so it’s trivial for people to see if there’s something of interest each time. ( A newsletter that does this really well is the tl;dr sec newsletter, the format actively encourages picking and choosing the sections relevant to you, I aspire to do the same. ) ...

A summary of what I’ve done over the last month or so. I attended: I went to a Sarah Le-Fevre event where Nick Kellet demonstrated some aspects of his new product, Deckible. It’s an interesting idea, putting card decks on your mobile device, especially the aspect of making card-decks as accessible to everyone in the same way that Spotify does for music. Using an app doesn’t replicate all of the functionality of a card, but there were good demonstrations of the audio and video capabilities. It was interesting to see what the technology is capable of, but I’m not sure these are card-decks now, but also I’m not sure they’re not. Also I was reminded of this tweet thread, and many recent conversations about interfaces and form factors. As per the military trainees in the picture below, while surrounded by laptops, sometimes you need a pen and a shared map to make sense of the environment: picture courtesy of Jim Dawson on Twitter I was in another meeting of the PlaySecure organisers. We decided on ticket prices and discounts and some other administrivia. Follow this for the conference details and we’re using Papercall for content submissions. Ostensibly the conference is about game-based methods to improve decision making in cyber security, but anything related to game-based methods for training or planning will be welcome… especially anything half-complete that would benefit from audience feedback, or something unusual that won’t fit in elsewhere. ...

The last three… threeish… weeks… I played games I finished Untitled Goose Game - well, the main storyline anyway. It’s a fun game, about being a goose… if you’re a gamer looking for something different, or a non-gamer who thinks video games are all Call of Duty or Super Mario, do look it up. Sometimes it was a little perplexing, so I had to “research” solutions online, but mainly this was really enjoyable and relatively gentle puzzle game based around an engaging concept. There’s a whole set of one player games waiting for me once I’ve stopped my Xbox360 being so noisy, so this was a welcome diversion while that task sits on a “to do” list. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I do enjoy online multiplayer games but due to financial limitations I can only play the fun but weird but twitchy Fortnite; or Rocket League - where I’m facing Real Madrid one match, and the Rose and Crown 2nd XI the next. I would imagine a multiplayer “Untitled Geese Game” would be fun, but I’m trying to think how competing gaggles of geese would work. memeable I did work The usual collection of promising and interesting conversations, but with a poor hit rate. I choose not to wonder “is it me, or is it everybody else” most of the time. ...

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks or more. There’s a war on, and I’ve a few relatively well informed opinions… but so does everybody else it seems. I say relatively because the online dIsCoUrSe is horrible, misinformed, and over-simplistic. If you want to watch one thing to understand why this is happening at all then I recommend this video from the Real Life Lore YouTube channel. A very 2022 war More personally, my favourite sports team, in the space of 24 hours, has either traded or cut two of their best players - leaving no players from their Super Bowl victory of just over eight years ago. Similar to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I’m cautious of spending time on more commentary when there’s so much of it online already; I’ve all sorts of half-formed thoughts on apparent issues with the team - how it treats its players and how it plans ahead, when there’s so much expertise and money on hand… another time perhaps. Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images Even more personally, I GM’d a role-playing game for the first time in decades. While I facilitate or co-facilitate exercises or megagames, running a small game is much more difficult. Thankfully the one page RPG The Witch Is Dead gave me all I needed, and the game went reasonably well - the pacing was variable and the experience was a little obtuse for the players playing animals in a human world, but it reached a spectacular conclusion and the players mostly had fun most of the time I think. Definitely something to keep to hand should the need ever arise again. Barely one page of rules and a lot of imagination As always, looking back I realise how much media I consume, and I find it useful to look back and consider what I did or didn’t like, and what made me think. In no particular order… future work thought exercise Severance is intriguing, maybe makes no more sense five episodes in that it did at the start - and will either be a wonderful spark or will give me a new found understanding on why so many were disappointed in Lost; I’m particularly enjoying the world it’s in, which appears to be our own, but without familiar anchor points. More adult themes, but cartoon peril, The Owl House is delightful, recommended if you’ve children, or just want to watch something with a magical theme and endearing characters. To enjoy it you’ll need to have some empathy for people not like you - I’m guessing this blog isn’t often read by teenage girls; the same applies to the film Turning Red - which is similarly well made, and well paced, and certainly accessible if you’ve got a little empathy to flex and interested in seeing someone else’s experience of the world. Meanwhile nostalgia quilt Picard is very… very something… I won’t be surprised if we forget to watch it every week - not for you unless you’re a trekkie, the trailer tells you far too much, but is fair warning. If you’re interested in video game design then hbomberguy’s three and a half hour treatise on the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is extremely well argued and edited, easy to watch in a single sitting - and with insights if you’re in an obviously related profession like game design, but for me the analysis stretches to any creative endeavor, or even to related disciplines like general project management. “science fiction action horror film” Underwater was good but not great - but far better than its online ratings would suggest; unfortunately I suspect it’s a one-off, when actually it would be interesting to see where creators would go with this if it was positioned as a franchise. I finally watched MoneyBall, being a big fan of sports analytics and the kind of insights that approach can generate and the myths it dispels - I’m only really familiar with this from the NFL side, but I did particularly like the clash of computer based analysis against the comments of the agents on prospective players. And lastly, the recent series not the older film, High Fidelity is very well executed which makes it even more puzzling that so few episodes were made, if you like smart dialogue and cool characters, and a surprisingly effective breaking of the fourth wall, make the most of it. Inexplicably just the one series Everything else I’ve been doing is designing incident response exercises for work, or just trying to make my life more organised. Still.

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks. I finally made time to attend an online meeting of Liminal again, a provider of and example in and experiment with Collective Intelligence. As usual thought provoking conversations and quite weird challenges… for example, think of your two favourite things, then split into randomised pairs and mash one of your favourites with theirs to come up with something new. That was quite forced, a little uncomfortable, but also different, which makes it stimulating. As with analytical red teaming, for all sorts of reasons I think there’s all sorts of benefits in engaging in, and thinking about, collective intelligence… but also I think most organisations that need it won’t be willing to try it, choosing to fail slowly in known ways. obligatory graphic alluding to complexity As per my last weeknotes my disappointment at the lack of innovation was shared by a couple of people attending that Liminal meeting too. I see no way to improve this situation except through persistence. ...

The edited highlights for me over the last twenty days or so. I’m still catching up on email and Twitter bookmarks and other backlogs or overdue business development. I still think I’m “winning”, but also it’s all still still taking much longer than I envisioned… you’re familiar with Hofstadter's Law aren’t you? Looking at everything I’m working through, even when “necrobumping”, it all feels too interesting and useful just to declare a total “inbox zero” to start again. Especially as I’m working and thinking in varied areas, so I’ve no strict criteria to judge what I should or shouldn’t concentrate on. ...

Highlights from the first few weeks of January I finally missed writing up a week of weeknotes, so here’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks or so… I watched Eternals … well, I liked it. I think I’m far less critical of the MCU than most because of how much time I’ve invested in the stories while having read so few of the comics, and who I tend to watch the films with. Also I’m more intrigued by how the film-makers keep such a large universe coherent, than in finding plotholes or other issues. I tend to overthink, relative to other people, a lot of the time, but counter-intuitively I find Marvel films relatively relaxing. ...

Edited highlights of week 1 of January 2022 Putting together more thoughts around a series of impasse-breaking strategy cards, to prompt people on stratagems to deal when they’re stuck. I’m probably going to use tarot as inspiration for the format and layout of the cards, while being very conscious of all the negative connotations that comes with. I’m inspired to do this by attending Cardstock and especially working with Indy Neogy on some ideas. I believe Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies is one of the OG decks on inspirational cards, along with the work of Marshall McLuhan A particularly interesting discussion on helping another company write a paper and presentation, and maybe some game design too. I would say a “failed” catching up, but I’m slowly working through a backlog of people to contact and things to read and ideas to get down… I don’t think I’m winning yet, but no longer feel like I’m losing. Some concentrated thinking around a planning game, where between five and ten players are given a role in a fantasy context, with a set of resources and aims, and given a short deadline for a plan to conquer the Dark Lord’s forces. I think these kind of games can be really engaging and revelatory; but convincing stakeholders before the event, and participants during the event, to take away abstract lessons from a fantasy scenario can be a challenge. I lost a few more times at Tharsis. I’m wary of games that make me feel stupid, especially with my increasingly personal emphasis on strategic decision making and problem solving, and I find Tharsis exasperating. We’ll see, hopefully there will be a victory screenshot on here at some point soon… In space no-one can hear you sigh disappointedly at your dice roll This presentation from Eva Summerfield of Unusual Systems was an interesting watch - mainly for me because someone considerably different to me, in age and cyber security industry experience, had come to roughly the same conclusions on issues with the industry in a much shorter space of time. In particular this presentation is worth your time, as is are BSides rookie tracks in general… and also check out this presentation by my occasional co-conspirator James Bore on future threats from bio-engineering. Through various means I watched A Time To Die, Fast and Furious 9, and Matrix 4 in the same week… more or less. As very short reviews I’d describe them as “involving but perplexing”, “fun but undemanding”, and “better than expected, and thought provoking” respectively… and also it’s useful to think of if and when I’d rewatch a film, which is “rainy bank holiday, as is traditional for Bond films”, “channel hopping when I should have gone to bed”, and “yes” probably applies. Sometimes you just lean back in your seat, stop thinking too much, and enjoy the ride...