Cognitive Edge News
Cognitive Edge Guest Blog
Having had a practitioner perspective on the Accreditation Course, we now move to an academic one. Professor Kathleen Mosier PhD is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at San Francisco State University. An active member of the naturalistic decision making movement which includes Gary Klein (an early guest blogger) she organised the 8th International Congress in Monterrey last year. She helped arrange the recent Cognitive Edge accreditation programme in San Francisco which she also attended.
20 July 2008
Story databases
I’m not sure what my guest blogs are going to look like – it’s hard for an academic to let the thoughts flow, so to speak, without thinking about what the reviewers will say…
As I said earlier, I’m excited about using the Cognitive Edge techniques in my research. As a first crack at it, we’re going to look at the very large database in the Aviation Safety Reporting System. If you don’t know what this is, check out http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ . Anyone involved in aviation - pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, maintenance personnel – can file a report of an unsafe incident. The incentive for pilots is protection from penalties associated with their own actions (e.g., if they ‘bust’ an altitude, or do not follow an ATC directive). The incidents are de-identified and catalogued, and are searchable by keywords, dates, type of aircraft, etc. The reporter tells what happened in his/her own words. Seems like an idea story database to mine – but the authors are not available to answer any new questions on their reports. Any tips on indexing/signifying someone else’s stories after the fact are greatly appreciated.
14 July 2008
Reflections on San Francisco
Last month I spent 3 days with a diverse and interesting group of participants in the Cognitive Edge Accreditation Course led by Dave Snowden and Michael Cheveldave. I felt a bit out of place because most of the participants were consultants or practitioners, but quickly focused on the research applications of what I was learning.
7 July 2008
Complexity - okay, but how?
Feeling my way through the material from the April CE London course, my main concern at the moment is ‘how’. Working in a world of simplifications, averages and fear of emergence (see Floor’s Thirtysomething blog) contrasts with a strong post-workshop awareness of patterns amidst colourful diversity, the need to cater for weak signals amidst over-standardised information systems, and the potential of tagged narratives. But how to translate this into practice?
6 July 2008
Thirty something
This week I read an article about people in their thirties and how they don’t like to think for themselves ( here in Dutch). They prefer to receive cut and dried concepts and ideas. In Cynefin terms: they function well in the known-domain, where rules and unambiguousness are effective. The explanation offered was that this thirty-something generation, the first to be confronted with choice, hasn’t learned to cope and deal with the myriad of choices and possibilities a) the previous generation didn’t have, so the thirty-plus generation didn’t have that problem; and b) the next generation, that has indeed learned to deal with this myriad. Although I haven’t seen the questionnaire, my guess is it was a list of items and alternatives. Gives to think: present closed options and then find the respondents don’t like to think for themselves. Isn’t that inherent in all questionnaires, where people are invited to respond instead of cocreate?
Floor Basten