How many times have you been on a conference call when the moderator comes on the line and asks the question: "Who do we have on the line?" This is just about the most ineffective question to ask for several reasons but yet it is asked over and over again. With no visual queues, the attendees come off mute and announce themselves stepping on each-other, stopping, starting, awkward pauses, and it is just a mess. The only question worse that could be asked is "Who is not on the line?"

The right thing to do is for the host or moderator of the call to perform a quick role call of the attendees. Each attendee is called by name and when everyone has been called, the call can begin.

When we are in the same room or have the same visual queues, the most common practice is for the moderator to ask: "Lets go around the room and introduce ourselves.". Obviously, we can't do this on conference calls because there no notion of a room to "go around'" . It would be great if there was a shared protocol or etiquette where everyone got a list of the attendees and knew that if there was a broadcast message put out there like "Who do we have on the line?", the way to answer is to honor the order of that list and you would follow the person before you on this list. In the end, it is just simpler to not ask the problematic question in the first place.

At an extreme, this same pattern is like testing for a gas leak with a match: there is no way to predict the size or order of the subsequent responses. It is a pattern that has a useful place in the universe, just not on conference calls. :-)

--tk

Over the past 2 years, I've been researching the sciences associated with the brain. This includes books like:

Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"
Temple Grandin's "Animals in Translation"
Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error"

My latest discovery is "The Naked Brain" by Richard Restak, MD. There are patterns in this domain that I find fascinating and useful in analyzing the large enterprise in both its productivity and its security.

When the sciences associated with the brain began, it was all about structure. The domain of physics/biology dominated and all of the explanatory devices had to do with the physical interactions and locations. There was another camp which was interested in the non- physical aspects of the brain: the functions. Before psychologists came in to the picture, if you had a mental illness, you were sent to a philosopher for these were people who understood the function of the brain (thinking of thinking and the knowing of knowing). Later, the social sciences were born and you now see a shrink if you are loco in the cabesa. Both of these camps did not collaborate much and for the most part, the structure and the function of the brain were not integrated in to a whole. Sound familiar?

I'm going to make the case here that this is where we are with Information Technology in the Enterprise: The technologists are concern with the wires, firewalls, routers, servers, while the business leadership is concerned with the functional thinking of the enterprise. Integrate both the structure and function and you have the enterprise as mind: the notion of a set of mental processes that are continuously adapting within their social and physical environment. As both the biological and social aspects merge to form a neurosociety, we must develop a discipline that brings together both the technical and the social or the techno-social analysis of the enterprise: The Mind of the Enterprise. It is at this level that we can finally address the productivity and security of the whole.

To be clear, I'm not claiming that I have found the answer to world hunger, I am just saying that there are patterns in the domain of social neurology and neural plasticity that are extremely helpful in a designers understanding of a healthy Information Technology-based enterprise.

One pattern worth mentioning given that this week is the RSA conference in wonderful downtown San Francisco is that like the early research done on the brain, the primary focus is abnormality and diseases. Ask any expert at the conference about dysfunctional systems, weaknesses, and related exploits to IT systems and you will be able to fill book after book. Ask them how the IT systems of a successful enterprise differs from one that is less successful and the conversation might stall until you can get back to the realm of dysfunction. I'm not saying this pattern is wrong, I am just pointing out a parallel pattern common in how we approach very complex systems. We always begin with the shorter or more statistically evident list.

I'll make one last claim before I get back to my daily life in Austin Texas: the only information technology designers who understand the techno-social mind of enterprise are gamers. In particular, those that have been involved in the design of early text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDS) and todays MMORPGs (Massively Multiuser Online Role Playing Games). By designers, I don't mean just the author of the program, I mean everyone on the system. In these environments, everyone is a designer and is contributing to the overall well-being of the system. It is what Alvin and Heidi Toffler refer to as the "prosumer". All that the initial author needs to do is to make sure that he/she is creating a fertile environment to grow connections between everyones prefrontal cortex and then get out of their own way.

--tk

As a proud father three wonderful children, I've been collecting these over the years.
Enjoy,
--tk

Top Ten Signs That Your Kids Are Being Influenced By Your Geekness

10. All of your children prefer to count from zero to nine rather than one to ten.

9. Your child's science project involves a mag strip reader and is entitled "Is Identity Theft really child's play?"

8. Your kids friends know you by your IM/IRC nick.

7. You overhear your 5th grader trying to explain the difference between the name of something and the thing named.

6. Instead of watching movies on long car rides, your kids are trying to get an WIFI adhoc network going with other DS-lites in nearby automobiles.

5. Instead of playing cowboys and indians, your kid is organizing the neighborhood children for a few rounds of Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist.

4. Your 10 year old son invites you to play a video game and he has named the server "I GUNNA OWN U!!!!11"

3. Instead of a magician or clown for his birthday party, your son asks if he can host a LAN party for 7 other friends.

2. Your daughter has her boy friend meet you by sending him a link to your mySpace page.

And the biggest sign that that your kids are being influenced by your geekness:

1. Your 1st grader brings home a creature he made in school for you and asks you to put it on your head because it is a headcrab from Half-Life2.

Son: Dad, where were you last week?

Father: I was at a conference called RSA.

Son: What does RSA stand for?

Father: These three dudes that invented some cool encryption: Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman

Son: Oh. Was it about encryption?

Father: Not really. It was a show about information security in general.

Son: Sounds boring.

Father: Not at all. I was super busy with work but I got to see one of my heroes speak and he rocked!

Son: I thought most of your heroes were dead.

Father: Most of them are but a few remain. His name is Ray Kurzweil

Son: I bet mom would think he's a dork.

Father: I bet mom thinks I'm a dork. Regardless, Mr. Kurzweil is an inventor as well as a dork.

Son: What did he invent?

Father: Computers that can scan books and turn it in to text as if you had typed it in with your hands, he created software that can take this text and speak it, he created electronic instruments that mimic the real instrument, but most of all, he can determine the future.

Son: What!? Predict the future - I thought you told me no one can do that? You always say that prediction can never be absolutely valid and science can probe but can never prove.

Father: Notice I said determine the future and not predict the future. Big difference.

Son: Whatever, same thing.

Father: Being predictable is very different than being deterministic but we can get in to that when you are up to the task.

Son: So he can determine the future. Don't you mean he can determine future events better than others?

Father: Yup. But here's the deal: at RSA, Mr. Kurzweil shows us over and over how he has determined things to come by measuring at a high enough layer to where you have a better chance of being right. Remember, knowledge at any given moment will be a function of the thresholds of our available means of perception.

Son: You lost me. Can we talk about something else?

Father: No dude, check it out: what Mr. Kurzweil and a few others have tried to explain is that if you measure something and it seems to be very chaotic or a better description would be "analytically indeterminable", you are at the wrong level in the system. You need to bring together a bunch of things which is called synthesizing and these systems no matter how complex can become 'synthetically determined"

Son: Bzzzzzt! Still not understanding. How about an example?

Father: You had pasta with dinner and in preparing that, I needed to boil some water. You and I can determine with the notion of temperature that the water will boil as soon as it reaches 100 degrees Celsius...

Son: Wait, what is that in Kelvin..ummmmm....373 Kelvin!

Father: Wonderful but hear me out: we all can determine that water will boil when it reaches 100 degrees Celsius but no one would be able to determine which particle in that substance will move first to begin that boiling process.

Son: I get it. So if you are at the right level, you have a better shot at determining future events.

Father: Right you are. Mr. Kurzweil is able to bring together the parts of a larger system and find trends that make him extremely good at synthetically determining future events.

Son: Dad, why would someone like Mr. Kurzweil be at a security conference?

Father: I'm not sure why RSA invited him to speak but I can tell you why I appreciated him. If I am protecting my network from the bad guys and I:
1) have a more precise and timely understanding of my systems than the bad guys;
2) and from a synthetic understanding of all the factors I'm able to determine future events;
then I am able to apply just enough security to the game to have the advantage.

Son: Do they ever ask you to speak at these conferences?

Father: Sometimes, but I rather go there to learn and I have a hard time doing that when I am speaking.

Son: Well then, you should stop speaking now and learn some Battlefield 2142 from me.

Father: Cool, but I get to be the PAC this time.

Son: Deal!