Only Dead Fish

Post of the Month - July 2016 - The Winner

Another close run vote this month but happy to say that the winner of Post of the Month for July is Graeme Douglas' brilliant post on Life Out of Balance. Well done Graeme - well deserved, and you're entered into the hall of fame. My thanks to everyone who took part.

Post of the Month - July 2016 - The Vote

Thanks for the nominations all. So our vote this month is between:

61 Glimpses of the Future from Jan Chipchase

Stop Problem Solving by Gareth Kay

Life Out of Balance by Graeme Douglas

The Attention Economy and the Demise of the Middle Ground by Patricia McDonald

You Can't Move Forward When You're Looking Through the Rear View Mirror by Rob Campbell

I'm Having a 'Digital Transformation' Right Now by Tim Malbon

And you can vote below:

Post of the Month - July 2016 - Nominations

I can hardly believe we're at July Post of the Month already but hey, as Ferris Bueller said, life moves pretty fast. So it's time to nominate posts that you have read in the past month and thought were particularly good, either direct or via the comments below. I've got a short starting list below but please do add to these and as soon as I've got a good list I'll stick them all up for the vote. My starting list is:

61 Glimpses of the Future from Jan Chipchase

Stop Problem Solving by Gareth Kay

Life Out of Balance by Graeme Douglas

The Attention Economy and the Demise of the Middle Ground by Patricia McDonald

And do add to these with your own nominations. Thank you.

Dots Conference 2016

This year I'm working again with the lovely folk at Brilliant Noise to help curate the third Dots Conference. Dots always thematically focuses on innovation and transformation but this year we're concentrating particularly on stories about turning ideas and inspiration into action, and the behind the scenes details that create brilliance. The last two conferences have both been enormously inspiring and successful, with some amazing speakers. And this year should be no different. Already in the line up we have:

Caroline Webb:- Caroline is author of the brilliant How To Have A Good Day which has been named as one of the top business books of 2016 by Forbes, Fortune and others. She's also CEO of Sevenshift, a company that shows people how to use insights from behavioural science to improve their working life.

Dan Shute of Creature London, who've done some amazing work, including those genre-busting films for the Green Party

Dr Becky Parker, who has pioneered revolutionary work to teach children science and astronomy, and bring real world research into schools. She is now Director of the Institute for Research in Schools. 

Will Hudson, Founder and Director of ItsNiceThat

Juliet Scott-Croxford, Chief Delivery Officer at The Guardian, responsible for driving their digital transformation programme

Nina Jones, Global Owner Experience Director at Jaguar Landrover

Andy Whitlock, who is the Head of Brand at the brilliant LostMyName, who recently had one of their books read out in space by Tim Peake

Dots will be taking place in Brighton on Friday 16th September. It's the best one day conference of the year IMHO (but then I'm biased). As an ODF reader you can qualify for a discount of £40 off the full ticket price of £175 - just use the code 'neil' when you buy your tickets here. See you there.

Dr Samer Attar

It's not often I post about stuff like this but every so often something just stops you in your tracks and really touches you. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Samer Attar lives and works in Chicago but has made several trips to Aleppo in Syria to work in the hospital there. The story he tells in this Radio 4 interview is truly humbling and deserves as wide an audience as possible. Unusually, they devoted half of the PM programme to it (the interview starts at the 24 minute mark).

I was driving in the car when I heard this. I had to pull into a car park and sit in the car to listen to the end of it. It was astounding radio.

There's also a short NPR clip here, and Alistair over on Twitter was kind enough to point me to the Desert Island Discs with surgeon Dr David Nott who is mentioned in the Attar interview.