The Texas Society of Association Executives has printed my article, Nine Issues for Not-for-Profit Executives in 2004 (and beyond). 
Read the article (PDF)
Why is our world more complex?
I’m doing a talk on change this morning for an environmental government ministry — specifically, how to lead and manage change. One of the key points I will be getting across to them is that to successfully manage change, you must help people understand how relentless change will continue to be.
Some change results from rapid scientific advance — and in that context, consider the statistics I obtained from a chemical journal on the rapid evolution of knowledge/data in that field:
- “To be up-to-date in all areas of chemistry you would currently have to read about 2,000 new publications every day”
- “If you prefer to screen only the short abstracts, you must read 200 pages per day or about 70,000 pages per year.
- “Furthermore, since the number of chemistry publications increases also exponentially, you need to double your reading capacity within the next 15 years. “
- “You must read 20 publications every day in order to grasp only 1% of the overall chemical publications!”
The result of this rate of advance is an spiralling increase in the number of chemical substances:
- “…The number of known substances has been growing exponentially since 1800, from some hundreds then to about 19 million today….”
- “…. the number constantly doubles every 13 years….”
- 2025: 80 million substances
- 2050: 300 million
2100: 5 billion……
“The End of Retirement”
“Are you ready for a world in which the concept of “retirement’ has come to an end? If not, you’d better be, as this is likely to rapidly emerge as the most significant issue for every organization through the next ten years. That’s because right now, we have a “perfect storm” brewing that involves three succinct but inter-related trends that will see the ongoing involvement in the workforce of people well past the age of 65.” Read my latest article and think about what it might mean to your organization “
(PDF)
Not Your Father’s Telephone
“Ten years ago, I spoke to 300 telecom engineers …and made the observation that within 10 to 20 years, most of the world’s telephone systems will have moved to Internet technology. You might imagine that my remarks were met with derision, if not outright anger, perhaps because the idea of an accountant explaining the future of something like the telephone system just seemed too bizarre at the time. Fast forward to 2004 — telecom industry prospects are looking up and there is much talk of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. It seems I have been proven right.” Read my latest article, Not Your Father’s Telephone. 
(PDF)
Reinsurance and the future of risk
This week, I’m keynoting the Canadian Reinsurance Conference in Toronto. This is the third insurance event for me this month, after previous talks to senior management of Towers Perrin Reinsurance, and an opening adddress for the annual meeting of The Cooperators, a multi-billion dollar insurance company. A common theme in all of these talks is my unique insight into “the future of risk,” a look at the complex, surprising, new and challenging types of risks that society might be faced with in the future. It’s a good example of the type of customized talk that can come from my “What Comes Next? (and What Should You Do About It?)” keynote. 
(PDF, 800k)
My time came — I got hacked!
A year ago this month, my Profit article noted that “unfortunately, most entrepreneurs continue to ignore computer security shortfalls that leave them vulnerable to system crashes, hacker attacks, virus outbreaks and even internal sabotage. My point? Companies better pay attention to security issues, or they’ll find things getting increasingly ugly.
Fast forward a year. Wow! Today I got an e-mail from Rogers Communications — they’re my high speed provider — notifying me that an attempt had been made to break into a computer — and that the attempt came from my Internet address.
Whoah! Obviously, I don’t spend my time hanging around trying to hack into systems; indeed, I’ve long been warning companies about the risks of neglecting security.
Not only that, but through the years, I’ve taken the time to understand security from both a high-level and very-technical level. Given the complexity of my home system, I don’ take security lightly.
Needless to say, the message struck my immediate interest … and so I sent it on to the head of PR for Rogers, asking what’s up!
A short time later, the answer came back — it looked like my Web server on my inbound connection, which I use to access e-mail while on the road, had been compromised — it appeared on a list of “public proxy servers” on several Russian sites. Sure enough — I’ve been hacked…..
I’m digging into it further, and I’m really none too amused. What this involves is less any type of sophisticated “hacking’ and more simple negligence on my part — it looks like someone took advantage of what is known as an “open proxy server” on a Web server I run here. That allowed people to travel to other Web sites anonymously, using my Web server as the launch point. I could have sworn I took the time to ensure that all such features were turned off … but somehow did not.
Needless to say, there was all kinds of nefarious activity underway, I’m red in the face, and there are some big lessons learned.
I imagine I’ll have quite a bit to say about this — quite a bit more to learn — quite a few articles to write — and quite a bit of guidance for those who might be overly confident about their own security!
Harrumphh!
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