William Heath’s blog

Radio4 Today is a programme I find it hard to listen to because of all the posturing and trenchant interrupting. For listening, I prefer programmes that practise measured self-expression and deep respectful listening: the Most Revd and Rt Hon Rowan “Beardie” Williams FRSL FBA is my ideal and favourite presenter.
But if the phone rings [...]

Highlight of what may be my final Vann Fest, “el Gordo” 2010, with 280-odd people in the field to the south of my landady’s house, was a hot-air balloon tethered to a tree and two cars. Here’s a link to Karl’s photos (thanks Karl!)

Dave Birch asked me to talk in a panel about “Identity and the Consumer” at the Digital Identity summit on 9 June. I kicked off with yet another introduction to buyer-centric commerce, customer-managed relationships or vendor-relationship management (VRM)…

Attention conservation notice: this is a write-up I said I’d do for an informal Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) session on “engaging with the political process” today.

Let’s get the election out of the way so we can get on with the Four Lions launch. I’ll be at the Barbican this Friday, and in York Saturday.

This felt like a great way to spend a Friday night, in a local place I didn’t know, among many people I didn’t know (and hald a dozen I did) all trying to work out for whom to vote at the next election.

A year after Godalming Friends adopted the “database state” as a corporate concern, the main party political manifestos published this week suggest the tide may have turned over control of personal data. On Monday we had:
We will explore how to give citizens direct access to the data held on them by public agencies, so that [...]

We’re all good at some things and rubbish at others. I’m pretty useless with technology, which is ironic given my business and voluntary work is almost entirely with geeks.
But, the grindingly slow journey of learning continues.
This weekend I learned how to use C-Panel and to upload more photos, correctly sized, for this blog. [...]

From my perspective in Sweden (where I just spent last week) the proposed new UK Digital Economy bill looks decidedly ill-advised.
Our concern should be for the issues, of course, not based on personal reservations about the people involved. It’s tempting to dismiss Lord Mandelson as a twice-disgraced now unelected somewhat sinister political schemer eternally [...]

I’m on a very steep learning curve doing an e-government unConference in Malmo. I’ve been to a couple of unConferences, one with Doc and another with IdentityWoman (aka Kaliya). They made it look easy (which could, I suppose, mean that it really is easy but I suspect means they are pretty damn good at [...]