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The Weekly Round-Up: 05.01.07
Feel the funk...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 05 January 2007

The Round-Up thought for about 30 seconds about how to begin this week's Round-Up and then hit upon the lazy and obvious notion of New Year's resolutions as something of a theme.

This year the Round-Up will be giving up drinking and gambling and taking up smoking in order to quit that too next year.

And when it comes to these seasonal broken promises (you're only lying to yourself... and your loved ones in some cases) there are a great many which could benefit us all in the workplace.

One trend that has been singled out this week for much needed improvement is the use of jargon in the workplace.

No doubt we've all worked with individuals who have inexplicably risen high up their organisation's pecking order armed with little more than a well-ironed pair of underpants and a few choice phrases of 'business speak' - you know the kind, those individuals who find great traction with their key synergies in order to harmonise on their core objectives.

Or, as the Round-Up calls them, 'bullshitters'.

The results of a survey published this week by one recruitment agency confirmed what most of us already knew - those of us without a key to the executive washroom, or a brown-nosing disregard for common sense and clear communication, can't stand meaningless business speak.

In fact the majority of us hate it.

So while that unpopular breed of business speakers may still be hoping to find some traction in 2007 with their organisation's blue-sky mindset, who'll want their 'thought grenade' to cascade down the corporate food chain into a mutually beneficial win-win scenario, the days of such 170-words-per-thought speech could be numbered.

Although the research warns that new phrases are evolving all the time, 2007 is expected to see the end of people 'thinking outside the box' and 'parking that thought'.

Which sounds like progress.

The Round-Up's advice: start slow-hand-clapping during any meeting, or 'information touchpoint' as they are apparently now known, which becomes dominated by such verbose jargon.



Also hoping 2007 might be a little more promising than 2006 are a number of university graduates who have struggled to find employment in their chosen fields.

Amongst the most unemployable it would seem are... wait for it… IT graduates.

In fact, IT graduates boast the worst rate of employment in full-time positions according to the Higher Education Careers Services Unit - twice the national average for UK graduates.

Putting that into jaw-dropping perspective, IT grads suffer even higher rates of unemployment than history students, who in the Round-Up's opinion have the most pointless degree this side of media studies, or - worse still - performing arts.

That's right, worse than performing arts (which in the Round-Up's day was called 'music and movement' and was beneath even a room full of infants pretending to be an acorn growing into a big tree).

Unemployment among IT graduates is at 10.3 per cent whereas art and design sees 10.2 per cent of students end up on the jobless list, compared to 8.6 per cent among media studies students and an incredible 6.6 per cent among performing arts students (and the Round-Up though McDonald's was always hiring?)

But the Round-Up can't help thinking this research only tells half the story.

IT graduates are possibly - call them crazy - hopeful of actually getting jobs in IT and some may be, perhaps misguidedly, holding out for that job whereas the Round-Up is pretty sure grads who did history, media studies or performing arts degrees will realise very quickly they have to take a job from the very first person who says "here's your uniform, name badge and mop".

In fact, going off on something of a tangent, the Round-Up can't help suspecting there may well be a strong correlation between the surprisingly high employment among performing arts students and news this week that B&Q has recently been asking job applicants to dance for bosses before their job interview.

Several jobseekers at a Norwich store were asked to dance to the Jackson 5 hit 'Blame it on the Boogie' while bosses photographed them.

Seriously.

Perhaps being able to dance is regarded as an essential skill for B&Q staff.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the perfect complement to looking surly and moaning to your colleague on the next till about how many breaks you get (which in the Round-Up's recent doing-too-much-DIY-over-Christmas experience seems to be all B&Q staff do).

According to the BBC, B&Q has said the dance sessions are not a part of its formal recruitment procedure - no, really? - but added that managers were advised to ensure all candidates are "relaxed" before their job interviews.

Nice interpretation.

Have they not heard of giving somebody a glass of water and a newspaper to read while they are waiting?



Is it really worth it? And how many B&Q employees have gone on to great things? The Round-Up has no idea but is pretty certain it's not as many as the IT industry which is becoming a veritable who's who of decorated worthies.

Andrew Hopper, a co-founder of Acorn Computers way back when, was this New Year appointed a CBE by Her Majesty for services to the IT industry (and we suspect he never once had to dance for her).

silicon.com caught up with Hopper, now working at Cambridge University, this week and asked him how he felt about the accolade.

Unsurprisingly he was pretty chuffed but admitted he had no idea how big the tech industry was going to become when he first got involved back in they days when some of us were still in short trousers.

However, Hopper told of how he wasted little time before he started 'living the life' - even in the modest earliest days of home computing.

"We thought we were doing great and we thought we were big but we were deluding ourselves," said Hopper, admitting the power and the glory he enjoyed at the time pales in comparison to the real giants of the industry who emerged from those gold rush days.

"But I did go round in a helicopter, so it was easy to delude yourself," added Hopper.

Way to go!

And if anybody thought for one minute Cambridge and the UK's so-called Silicon Fen might not be an exciting place to live, compared to the high-tech heartland of sunny California, think again.

Hopper told us: "Cambridge is a funky old place and I've had the good fortune to take advantage of the funk."

Whatever next. James Brown is not even cold yet and already Hopper is speaking as though he has designs on the Godfather of Soul's crown.

'Get down with your decorated self.'

Or perhaps:

'Papa's got a brand new CBE.'



And speaking of the 'who's who' of IT, Apple vice president Jonathan 'Honorary Geordie' Ive, designer of the iPod, has made it into this year's Who's Who book of notable worthies... him and just 30,000-odd other people.

No, the Round-Up isn't in there. And nor would it want to be.



Of course the New Year is a time for looking both forward and back. And the silicon.com editorial team couldn't help noticing some similarities between a news story which broke this week and an April Fool story silicon.com wrote all the way back in 2004.

Almost three years ago silicon.com wrote about a made up organisation called Con-Nections which was looking to give all UK prisoners laptops, wi-fi access and email accounts so they could communicate and transact freely with the outside world.

At the time readers poured scorn on the idea and MPs even joined in the debate.

Richard Allan, then a Liberal Democrat MP, wrote: "What a wonderful idea! I take back everything I've ever said about our Home Secretary being the most right-wing since Genghis Khan. He is clearly an enlightened man who understands that access to the internet can turn even the most hardened criminal into a worthwhile member of society."

Well, three Home Secretaries later (via scandal, paternity battles and general incompetence) and the Home Office has announced a plan to give - you guessed it - all UK prisoners access to email.

But don't worry - the government is promising all emails will be scanned and any inappropriate content will be deleted.

So no problems there - after all they've done a great job before, when 140 police in Hertfordshire were punished for successfully circulating offensive images, or when Liverpool police punished seven staff for exchanging racist emails, or when the Department of Work and Pensions had to sack 16 and discipline more than 200 because of the offensive nature of emails they were exchanging, or when the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency dismissed 14 staff for similar offences.

The Round-Up does wonder why the UK government, given episodes such as these from its own staff, is so confident it can control those serving time at Her Majesty's pleasure.



Another New Year's resolution for many this year appears to be to do more for the environment. Green is the new black it would seem.

Nowhere is this newfound eco-friendliness more apparent than within the IT industry (with the possible exception of among the ranks of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and many other walks of life which we'll ignore for the sake of conciseness) - which appears to have undergone something of a Damascene volte-face in recent times.

Although many commendable vendors have long had an environmental agenda, others, who couldn't consume power quickly enough until recently, are now adopting a more eco-friendly stance.

And all this just in time for the introduction of the long-delayed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive in the UK which has finally, finally limped into effect (well, almost) with all the responsible timekeeping of a British builder, with a broken watch, who'd forgotten the clocks had gone back and has to take the public transport to work.



And finally, another New Year's resolution for some might be to avoid doing interviews with virtual people in Second Life - the rapidly growing online world which is now populated by around 2.4 million people (strange but true).

Many companies have already set up headquarters in Second Life and some media outlets have even taken to interviewing some of this alternative world's 'stars' such as Ailin Graef - better known in Second Life as Anshe Chung, owner of virtual business Anshe Chung Studios.

Graef, or Chung (the Round-Up's getting confused now), who employs a staff of 30 to work in the alternative world and has become a Second Life millionaire, was recently interviewed in the virtual offices of silicon.com parent company CNET by a virtual colleague of the Round-Up.

Clear so far? As mud, right?

However, because Second Life is pretty much open to all and any Tom, Dick or Harry can go where they want (particularly Dick it would seem, in this case) the interview was interrupted for around 15 minutes by other inhabitants of Second Life who had chosen to gatecrash the party in the unusual guise of giant flying male 'members'.

David Frost never had to put up with such distractions.



Until next week, get involved with our latest caption competition - the first of 2007 - which this week involves the Amazon boss and a rather large bottle of champagne:.

And check out the winning entry from all the way back in the last week's of 2006.


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