It's not about the people

I'm not the fastest person in the world. I get delayed reactions to things. At the KM in the Public Sector event I attended a couple of weeks ago, speaker after speaker said: "It's all about the people".

And it has generated an allergic reaction. They're right. But also wrong. It's not really about "the people" in the warm, fuzzy, humanistic way that phrase implies. Increasingly it's about how people work with and against sociotechnical ecosystems. And to many of us, these ecosystems are monstrous.

City folk (and for all the stories they tell themselves about their bush heritage, Australia is an urban society) have a tendency to venerate nature (provided it's neat & tidy &doesn't burn down your home). But the natural world is a disturbing place. And the world we have created to work in is no less disturbing.

Sometimes I wish it wasn't about the people.

What other people are doing

This is one of those posts where I don't have to think, just point towards the wonderful outputs of other people:

• James Dellow's Intranet 2.0 slides
• Andy Piper's Social Media @ IBM slides
• Stephen Collins' Love in an Elevator slides
• Viv McWaters on having a solution focus in Armenia
• Johnnie Moore on shadows & anxiety
• A whole bunch of people on the Cognitive Edge Guest Blog (incl. Gary Klein)

There are doubtless others but that's it for now. I haven't felt like writing much for the past couple of weeks. But that could be about to change.