Let's change people's minds!

Don't you look at my research!

In June my hometown Gothenburg in Sweden will host the ECIS 2006 - the European conference on Information Systems - obviously an academic conference where papers covering a wide area of the IT sector will be presented.

As I am quite into IT/IS and also have a huge interest in new knowledge I looked into previous conferences held in Regensburg, Germany and Turko, Finland in hope of finding some interesting papers. Did I find anything? Nope. From the German conference there were only pictures from the gala dinner and some other events. From Turko som titles could be found, and some e-mail addresses to the researchers behind the papers.

And pictures like this one.

Is really anybody wondering about why research never comes into use?

Knock knock, anybody out there?

In a British survey of taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers - those who often are considered as the real grassroots opinion leaders - nearly 90 percent had no idea of what a podcast is. More than 70 percent had never heard of blogging.

That's something to consider before you put too much effort in trying to reach the mainstream audience with your corporate or expert blog.

I would like to see the survey made for public relations officers, marketers and CEOs. In fact i don't expect a significant improvement of the results. Especially not if you would ask: Have you ever read a blog or listened to a podcast.

To me corporate blogs, expert blogs, or podcasts with similar content are like conferences. You mostly meet people just like yourself and it's among them you can improve your company or personal brand. But as these people often are gatekeepers to extensive networks you finally will reach the mainstream anyway. Even if they don't consume either blogs or podcasts. If you have something important to say, that is.

See also "Everybody is still very few"

Blaming Katrina on....yes who?

There are usually two major problems in the diffusion of scientific knowledge:

1. It's too complicated
2. It's too simple

In the first scenario politicians and business leaders don't dare to make decisions based on the presented facts, because they are not feeling fully confident. In the second scenario, the decisions will come much earlier but may cause actions going in a completely wrong direction.

Global warming is such an issue.

A few days ago, Boston Globe readers could learn that the real name of the terrible catastrophy in New Orleans is not Katrina but Global Warming. According to the writer, Ross Gelbspan, that was also the name of the recent fires in Portugal, floodings in Central Europe and the storm in Scandinavia.

On the other hand, Yesterday, WSJ readers could learn that climate change is nothing but the new religion of the West. Politicians think that if we only can solve the troubles with the human caused global warming we can continue living in our eternal garden of Eden. As you can expect the writer, James Schlesinger, thinks  different. Even if there may be a human caused greenhouse effect, he argues, temperature over time always will change.

To me both of these articles, any many other with the same amount of self esteem, are troublesome. Locked positions and high prestige is fighting against panic and populsim. The result:

No or bad actions.

I have a question to both of theses guys:

Mr Schelsinger: if global warming isn't only human caused, but part of nature: Why wouldn't we anyway do everything we could to slow it down, as it in fact can cause hugh catastrophies.

Mr Gelbspan: Isn't it a little too easy just to say every catastrophy is caused by us and can be prevented by a new lifestyle. Isn't the risks rather high that we miss important actions that could be very important on the way.

My own solution is this:

• Admit there are human actions that cause an increased global warming
• Admit also that recent natural catastrophies have caused severe damage not least because our society can't handle them. It's not built for flooding, falling trees or power shortages.
• Build societys that are less grid dependent and more autonomous: Solar cells, wind power, home farming, water collection with purification......

Then people are not only doing well for the enviroment, they are far better prepared next time a power shortage takes place. Caused by a storm that may be the result of human actions. Or not. Who cares when they are in trouble.