Good morning from a very wet eastern Caribbean as I write this on a Monday morning in my office.
Last week was full of tying up outstanding things and preparing for the later part of the year. Yes, it really did pass that quickly!
I wanted to share a few real-world issues for those embarking on or already on the Digital Transformation journey. Off the bat, you know I don’t like the term Digital Transformation at all, but I am constrained to use it for the time being or until I come up with a better description that is accepted by the world.
In trying to solve some basic digitalisation problems for small businesses, we are often constrained by budgets, training, and other systemic issues that small businesses have to deal with daily. For example, for many internal tasks and processes, small businesses cannot just throw money at the problem, purchase a software platform, or pay a developer (open source or otherwise) to build an “app for that”. So, they are forced to use some of the products and services they ordinarily use to provide a digital backbone for their operations.
One such tool that is both amazing and amazingly dumb is Microsoft’s SharePoint. It can provide a basis for developing sophisticated and simple-to-use digital process software in any organisation. I’ve been working on getting a customer to use it to manage invoices. Overall, it has provided the client with an excellent tool that is in testing and provides the client with just what he needs for a small outlay. However, some basic things are just missing or operate in a really odd manner for absolutely no reason I can determine. One example is a handy way to calculate the values in columns. For example, if you have an invoice amount and the tax rate is 8%, you can calculate the total amount in a separate column. Neat. But, you cannot add an automatically calculated total to the column as you can for numeric columns. Why Microsoft, why? Why snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? The workaround? A hidden calculated column and a convoluted automation to copy the value from the calculated column to a numerical column so you can add a total. 🤦‍♂️
There is a better workaround, but it strikes me as odd that something so basic hasn’t been implemented as base functionality!
Reading
I’m still reading Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up, and as I get deeper into it, I realise that the absolute horrors around the crypto market are very disturbing and sickening. Currently, I feel like those who ply crypto and those who hold crypto are complicit in all sorts of dreadful crimes like slavery, torture, murder and many more. I really hope this bubble bursts, but I fear that it won’t, as greed is a powerful motivator.
Meta has been up to its old tricks again and has been ordered to pay $1.4 billion (yes, b) to settle a lawsuit over what? Violating personal data, specifically facial recognition data, used to pump shitty ads to the world.
Brett Solomon is leaving Access Now after serving for 15 years. His goodbye article is a good read on digital human rights and the role of digital authoritarianism, which is gaining ground worldwide.
If you haven’t already read Wendy M. Grossman’s blog, I recommend it. She has a good take on the CrowdStrike debacle. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last.
Over in Malaysia, things are going to get very rough very quickly:
… the country’s Law and Institutional Reform Minister Azalina Othman Said, seeks to hold social media and messaging platforms accountable for content disseminated through their services.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because governments worldwide are starting to use excuses like this to take control of the Internet without proper consultation, scrutiny and accountability.
I wonder if a “pirate Internet” will become a thing, like the old days when pirate radio stations were popping up in urban areas to serve communities, but mainstream radio stations didn’t.
As promised, this will go out as a newsletter each Tuesday morning. Sign up here to get it by email if you haven’t already done so. No tracking, no ads, and no creepy stuff.
Have a great week.
