Moore of the same... or something else entirely

Sorry. I'm a sucker for pun.

I was at a think tank/discussion forum yesterday where I learned that Intel are currently claiming a 2% advance per month in processing speed. To those who are interested, if you compound this rate you get a doubling of processing speed every 36 months or so.

Moore's law originally said 24 months but it is still pretty impressive that close to exponential growth has been maintained since he introduced the concept in 1965.

The gentleman who shared the information with me also claimed that this will lead to better decision making as more data can be processed more quickly. But I wonder whether more data actually means "better decisions" or rather bigger decisions which in turn means more risk.

Which suggests that the next crash will be even bigger the last....!

When you're ready...

A number of things over the last few weeks have caused me to reflect further on the nature of change in people.

Two of my friends, less than 24 hours apart, said to me more or less verbatim,

"Of course, I've heard it said hundreds of times, people have told me again and again over the years but it wasn't until I experienced [insert perspective changing experience] that I finally understood"

Like the old joke about how many therapists it takes to change a light bulb... "One, but does the light bulb really want to be changed?"

In the current revolution that is social learning, maybe we should put the word, "training" quietly to sleep.

"perspective changing", "experience facilitating", "reflection forcing"... too convoluted?

Or just stick with, helping learning happen.

Maths from scratch

I was recommended a blog on Maths by a colleague that I am thoroughly enjoying. The author Steven Strogatz is taking his readers through mathematics from 1 + 1 = 2 to as far as he can go. It is engaging, charming and stimulating. Here are the first three articles:

From fish to infinity

Rock groups

The enemy of my enemy

Enjoy!

While I'm at it, an interviewee recommended a wonderful blog about teaching in an inner London comprehensive, To Miss With Love. Equally brilliant

Relativity

Last week, it being half-term, I took my daughter and her best friend and family to well known amusement park near Paris.

I feel like I ought to pause to allow the magnitude of this fact to sink in. I am not someone who ever thought they would allow themselves to be mugged by a grinning rodent and I have caved in before my daughter is even six.

Needless to say the experience was an unpleasant one. While standing in a queue for over an hour for a roller coaster ride that lasted less than five minutes, I found myself calculating how much it was costing us to wait. The answer was about £50 an hour, which gets even more interesting if you add that to the cost of the (and I hesitate to call it this) "food" that they served.

Much as I would love to continue moaning about the experience, the point is that my daughter and a large number of people in the park loved it. And I mean really loved it. They didn't notice the queues, weren't worried about the absence of nutrients, they were just having fun.

I am forced to wonder if my obvious prejudice against the place created my reality. And this leads on to wondering about whether the same is true for other areas of my life. Am I really a sceptic?

Still haven't got it

I am beginning to feel a little left out. I still haven't managed to "get" Twitter. I know I ought to throw myself into it to be able to really benefit. But I can't. It just seems to demand too much time. And I can't just leave it on in the background as it starts to annoy me like a television left on in a room when you are having an interesting conversation.

I like RSS. I like the fact that I can make time to read things that I am interested in without extraneous noise.

Occasionally I'll spot something go by on the Twitter Gadget on my iGoogle home page and follow the link. But generally I go to Reader first. I like the more considered pieces rather than the instantaneous.

I will accept that Twitter is good for asking questions that are not answered by search engines.

Maybe it's me. But Twitter just strikes me as too needy...

How not to run a bank

Today we launched a new learning programme for Bankers called SMART CB. Together with the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland, we are offering a fast track route for senior managers to obtain Chartered Banker status. Below is an excerpt from my speech at the launch event.

"I should like to tell you a little story to underline the importance of professional standards in banking that is a little closer to home than you might expect.

I want to tell you about my great-great-grandfather, George.

From the early 19th century the Greenways were bankers in Warwick. Although initially very successful, the bank was taken over by my great-great-great-uncle Kelynge Greenway after the death of his father. Under the terms of his father's will, £25,000 in capital was removed from the bank leaving just seven pounds to the remaining partners. That the bank survived the withdrawal of £25k at all, is a testament to its strength up to this point. What happened next is an object lesson in how NOT to run a bank.

Kelynge asked his brothers, Thomas (a Colonel in the army), George (a solicitor and my great-great- grandfather) and Charles (an architect) to join him in the bank. Now, you would have thought that with only seven pounds to their name, they would take the opportunity to recapitalise the bank.

But no, they decided instead to run the bank with NO CAPITAL WHATSOEVER! According to the British Banking History Society in December 1886 of the banks £278,000 of assets, £210,000 were the partners' overdrawn accounts and this included extensive tramway speculation (grandpa George was also the Chairman of the Magdeburg Tramway Company).

The bank failed on September 6th 1887 after their agents in London, Glynns, refused to honour their cheques and the trial of the partners began on October 27th. George was sentenced to five years' penal servitude and Kelynge to 12 months' hard labour, Thomas escaped sentence due to his "almost complete ignorance of banking" and Charles had died five years previously.

My grandfather Walter told me that his father Cate (who had been 11 at the time of the crash) never spoke of the affair. One can only speculate on the impact it would have had on a young boy but he overcame it, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the army, serving in India and China ultimately winning the DSO at Gallipoli. Indeed you will be glad to hear, my family has steered clear of banking since; sticking almost exclusively to the things it knows about namely teaching and the military.

I think it is safe to say that neither George, Thomas or Charles knew of the canons of lending; still less of how to properly assess credit risk. It is clear they knew absolutely nothing of best practice in capital ratios.

I think it is also safe to say that my family knows the fundamental importance of professional standards in banking.

Mark Twain once said, "History never repeats itself but it often rhymes". I don't think you need me to point out the parallels between my ancestors' short-comings as bankers and the factors which contributed to our current economic situation.

There is a wealth of knowledge in the path to Chartered Banker and knowledge is, I believe, the only long term way to profit. I hope it is a path that you join us on."

I thought I'd share this here as it was only through working with CIOBS that I found out about this element of my family history.

Objectives

Janaury blog posts are often about resolutions. Big, sweeping, ambitious pieces. But I haven't made any resolutions this year. I shall simply state two objectives:

1. To simplify wherever possible
2. To have fun. Or more specifically, since I don't think one can simply will happiness to exist, to try not to miss opportunities for enjoyment

That latter one sent me on an enjoyable five minute diversion. I was sure that there is a Samuel Johnson quote about happiness along the lines of, "Any plan for merriment seems doomed by its own nature". I eventually found it as:

"Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme for merriment."

But not before I had throughly enjoyed his wit and 'resolved' (eek) to try and read more of him.