Names Not Numbers
This time last week I climbed aboard a coach to travel to conference called Names Not Numbers held at Oxford University. Now in its 10th year, it is a remarkable conference with a remarkable group of people. It is both professional and personal, about networking and connections.
The conference theme was 'Judgement' and each speaker or session incorporated the concept in some way. As the conference began, I soon found myself instinctively jotting down notes - pithy sentences, profound points, startling facts and emotive thoughts from the various speakers. My intention was to able to reflect on them at a later date.
However, I've changed my mind and I have set out some of them here. That’s a risk as it might be a case of 'you had to be there'... how can they have the same impact in a blog when compared to hearing them from the person’s own voice, in the context of the rest of their talk? Worryingly, such excellent speakers might be a tad unimpressed that I've filtered down hours of their work to a sentence or two! My hope is that they don’t mind this nor that their wit and wisdom is shared with you.
I've put a link after the person's name so do look them up and check out their work in greater detail. If I have made a mistake, please do let me know.
Authenticity and facts are not the same. You can have your own opinions but you can’t have your own facts.
Sir Mark Walport @UKRI_CEO
Look at the body of research not just the latest research.
Sir Mark Walport @UKRI_CEO
What is an authentic painting in the mass production and collaboration of today?
Alice Sherwood @AliceVSherwood
Checking facts has never been easier. Authentication is harder.
Alice Sherwood @AliceVSherwood
Neat shortcuts help our mind misjudge people.
Mary Ann Sieghart @MASieghart
Unconscious bias isn’t so unconscious with women.
Mary Ann Sieghart @MASieghart
Cognitive dissonance, if you voted to remain then someone who voted to leave must be shallow and ignorant, and so we justify our belief that they are wrong.
Michelle Baddeley @mcbaddeley
We are in need of mavericks and contrarians otherwise group dynamics kick in and it becomes the same. With mavericks and contrarians we explore more.
Michelle Baddeley @mcbaddeley
What gets more research, a man's orgasm or a woman’s? There's 8000 nerve endings in woman's clitoris and 4000 in man's penis. That actually refer to a ewe's clitoris and ram's penis. And that needs to be verified.
Stephanie Theobold @stephotheo
When I was a child, my dad said, 'If you want to say something important and serious you need some entertainment in it."
Sir Simon Schama @simon_schama
I wrote The Story of the Jews book as increasingly I felt they are seen as victims or bullies. The book is about vitality not mortality.
Sir Simon Schama @simon_schama
Allow people to make mistakes without other people knowing. Then they can correct them and learn. That’s hard with modern management and the speed of communication.
Charles Handy
We need to teach for uncertainty. Not certainty.
Charles Handy
Business schools are teaching an orthodoxy that is fading.
Charles Handy
On authenticity, 'If I may quote myself.'
Peter York @PeterPeteryork
Surfeit of a safe space can be awful. We still need to get out there and experience the rough and smooth.
David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch
Populism is about flattening things out, exclusionary, as you must fit it.
David Aaranovitch @DAaronovitch
When you wake up in bed one morning and you are content and think everything is right...then it is time to change and get that mild anxiousness back, to show you’re alive and progressing. Charles Handy
Photographer Liz Handy would get her subjects to gather five objects that represent their life. Can you get five objects to do that? Photographic work by Liz Handy
There is the 'golden seed' the thing that is special inside of you. You might not know what it is, indeed it is unlikely you do. Often others identify what it is about you. So, not as analysis, but go and ask fifteen people who know you what one thing they think you're really really good at. It might be different to what you think it is!
Charles Handy
A life line might be long line with peaks and curves. It dips before it goes up which is where there's a change, you re-train, something alters in your life and it stops climbing for a while. That’s the investment before you hopefully head up on a second curve.
Charles Handy
I was told, "Do the best at what you're best at, for the good of others."
Charles Handy
Much of online chatter, Facebook or tweets becomes digital dust. Some of it however becomes huge and then we have large outfits that become significant players in our political world.
Helen Margetts @HelenMargetts
Everybody is able to do everything. But some are magnificent at it.
David Fickling @DFB_storyhouse
We know what good writing is even if we can’t explain it.
David Fickling @DFB_storyhouse
I worry that there might be thirty or so, 40-year olds making huge decisions about our lives in a boardroom.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt @Nigel_Shadbolt
Technology is too often presented as too difficult to understand.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt @Nigel_Shadbolt
It's good to know many hundreds of years after the earliest of the libraries was first built, it remains a place of learning, of quiet reflection and students are increasingly coming back to it.
of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Richard Ovenden @richove (From my memory, not a direct quote)
Some people I would like to mention, who I enjoyed speaking with in the in between moments and are worth you checking out too:
My co-speaker, defence journalist and consultant, Alexander Woolfson @DasWoolf
Digital and people person, Matt Ballantine @ballantine70
Funny person, a poet, Mr Gee @mrgeepoet
Has philosophy at her fingertips and is immensely articulate about it, Professor Angie Hobbs @drangiehobbs
Thoughtful and with some great questions of me, author, Ziyad Marar @ZiyadMarar
Funny, always thinking, writer and performer Rohan Candappa
A former advertising exec, now a creative person, a fine person, Marcus John Henry Brown @MarcusJHBrown
Names Not Numbers at 10 28 - 30th September 2018 #NNN@10
And what is this all about?
Names Not Numbers is one of several activities its parent organisation, Editorial Intelligence provides. It is the work of the amazing Julia Hobsbawm @juliahobsbawm and her excellent team. Their mission statement is "Editorial Intelligence is committed to helping individuals and corporations seeking personal and professional excellence, by developing deeper personal connections and having a more profound understanding of today’s information overloaded landscape."
The conference theme was 'Judgement' and each speaker or session incorporated the concept in some way. As the conference began, I soon found myself instinctively jotting down notes - pithy sentences, profound points, startling facts and emotive thoughts from the various speakers. My intention was to able to reflect on them at a later date.
However, I've changed my mind and I have set out some of them here. That’s a risk as it might be a case of 'you had to be there'... how can they have the same impact in a blog when compared to hearing them from the person’s own voice, in the context of the rest of their talk? Worryingly, such excellent speakers might be a tad unimpressed that I've filtered down hours of their work to a sentence or two! My hope is that they don’t mind this nor that their wit and wisdom is shared with you.
I've put a link after the person's name so do look them up and check out their work in greater detail. If I have made a mistake, please do let me know.
 |
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
& Charles Handy. |
Sir Mark Walport @UKRI_CEO
Look at the body of research not just the latest research.
Sir Mark Walport @UKRI_CEO
What is an authentic painting in the mass production and collaboration of today?
Alice Sherwood @AliceVSherwood
Checking facts has never been easier. Authentication is harder.
Alice Sherwood @AliceVSherwood
Neat shortcuts help our mind misjudge people.
Mary Ann Sieghart @MASieghart
Unconscious bias isn’t so unconscious with women.
Mary Ann Sieghart @MASieghart
Cognitive dissonance, if you voted to remain then someone who voted to leave must be shallow and ignorant, and so we justify our belief that they are wrong.
Michelle Baddeley @mcbaddeley
We are in need of mavericks and contrarians otherwise group dynamics kick in and it becomes the same. With mavericks and contrarians we explore more.
Michelle Baddeley @mcbaddeley
 |
| Sir Simon Schama interviews Sir Martin Sorrell. |
Stephanie Theobold @stephotheo
When I was a child, my dad said, 'If you want to say something important and serious you need some entertainment in it."
Sir Simon Schama @simon_schama
I wrote The Story of the Jews book as increasingly I felt they are seen as victims or bullies. The book is about vitality not mortality.
Sir Simon Schama @simon_schama
Allow people to make mistakes without other people knowing. Then they can correct them and learn. That’s hard with modern management and the speed of communication.
Charles Handy
We need to teach for uncertainty. Not certainty.
Charles Handy
Business schools are teaching an orthodoxy that is fading.
Charles Handy
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- The Summer Day, a poem by Mary Oliver
Peter York @PeterPeteryork
Surfeit of a safe space can be awful. We still need to get out there and experience the rough and smooth.
David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch
Populism is about flattening things out, exclusionary, as you must fit it.
David Aaranovitch @DAaronovitch
When you wake up in bed one morning and you are content and think everything is right...then it is time to change and get that mild anxiousness back, to show you’re alive and progressing. Charles Handy
 |
| L- R Angie Hobbs, David Aaranovitch, Hannah Crabtree, Julia Hobsbawm |
Photographer Liz Handy would get her subjects to gather five objects that represent their life. Can you get five objects to do that? Photographic work by Liz Handy
There is the 'golden seed' the thing that is special inside of you. You might not know what it is, indeed it is unlikely you do. Often others identify what it is about you. So, not as analysis, but go and ask fifteen people who know you what one thing they think you're really really good at. It might be different to what you think it is!
Charles Handy
A life line might be long line with peaks and curves. It dips before it goes up which is where there's a change, you re-train, something alters in your life and it stops climbing for a while. That’s the investment before you hopefully head up on a second curve.
Charles Handy
I was told, "Do the best at what you're best at, for the good of others."
Charles Handy
 |
| Julian Hobsbawm (centre) is congratulated by Alice Sherwood (L) and Sir Simon Schama (R) |
Helen Margetts @HelenMargetts
Everybody is able to do everything. But some are magnificent at it.
David Fickling @DFB_storyhouse
We know what good writing is even if we can’t explain it.
David Fickling @DFB_storyhouse
I worry that there might be thirty or so, 40-year olds making huge decisions about our lives in a boardroom.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt @Nigel_Shadbolt
Technology is too often presented as too difficult to understand.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt @Nigel_Shadbolt
It's good to know many hundreds of years after the earliest of the libraries was first built, it remains a place of learning, of quiet reflection and students are increasingly coming back to it.
of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Richard Ovenden @richove (From my memory, not a direct quote)
Some people I would like to mention, who I enjoyed speaking with in the in between moments and are worth you checking out too:
My co-speaker, defence journalist and consultant, Alexander Woolfson @DasWoolf
Digital and people person, Matt Ballantine @ballantine70
Funny person, a poet, Mr Gee @mrgeepoet
Has philosophy at her fingertips and is immensely articulate about it, Professor Angie Hobbs @drangiehobbs
Thoughtful and with some great questions of me, author, Ziyad Marar @ZiyadMarar
Funny, always thinking, writer and performer Rohan Candappa
A former advertising exec, now a creative person, a fine person, Marcus John Henry Brown @MarcusJHBrown
Names Not Numbers at 10 28 - 30th September 2018 #NNN@10
And what is this all about?
Names Not Numbers is one of several activities its parent organisation, Editorial Intelligence provides. It is the work of the amazing Julia Hobsbawm @juliahobsbawm and her excellent team. Their mission statement is "Editorial Intelligence is committed to helping individuals and corporations seeking personal and professional excellence, by developing deeper personal connections and having a more profound understanding of today’s information overloaded landscape."
