Dr Laura James's writings

I’m looking for work.  My experience doesn't neatly fit standard job titles or sectors, and I've got an eclectic set of criteria for what I want to do, so maybe you can help me find a job which brings them together. I've got a broad set of management, tech and sustainability skills. I've experience with products, operations, organisations; with open stuff and non-profit stuff and systems engineering and shared infrastructure and communities. I'm great at coordinating and supporting people and projects, especially across different specialisms or sectors. I can figure out how to explore and make progress on complex challenges. My work is usually with newer technologies and ideas, before they become mainstream, so the path is not clear. Maybe you've got a problem to solve that I could help with?  Or do you know someone who has? Then get in touch . I’m an empathetic interdisciplinary engineering leader and I’m looking for work. Specifically, paid w...

The metaphors we use change how we think about things. Benjamin Santos Genta writes for Aeon about this, and in particular how many of our metaphors relate to war. Might an argument be better as a dance than a battle? (I've been trying to demilitarise my work language for a while; it's not always easy. You can, though, feed two birds with one scone, but that works less well with international colleagues.) ReliefWeb reports on research into the value for money of recent humanitarian innovations . It was good to see my old colleagues at Field Ready featured. Field Ready piloted a new model of localized medical product manufacturing in Syria, involving healthcare worker training, enhanced digital technology, and partnership-building between local medical device suppliers and medical facilities. Their pilot significantly reduced the time, costs, and carbon emissions of medical device production and repair without compromising product quality. TripleLine found that the aggreg...

Thanks Luis Villa for this write up of the current Vizio case (GPL enforcement).  The head of the National Audit Office, Gareth Davies, gave a thoughtful speech to Parliament on why good governance matters, especially for the UK's public sector, now.  Trust and AI was the topic of Bruce Schneier 's September talk at the Harvard Kennedy School: Trust is essential to society. Humans as a species are trusting. We are all sitting here, mostly strangers, confident that nobody will attack us. If we were a roomful of chimpanzees, this would be impossible. We trust many thousands of times a day. Society can’t function without it. And that we don’t even think about it is a measure of how well it all works. In this talk, I am going to make several arguments. One, that there are two different kinds of trust—interpersonal trust and social trust—and that we regularly confuse them. Two, that the confusion will increase with artificial intelligence. We will make a fundamental categor...

The wise Alex Deschamps-Sonsino organised a climate unconference to coincide with COP28. It was a lovely thought-provoking event with a lot of rich conversations, of which more below. What with this, and Barcamp London a couple of weeks ago, it feels like the indie/punk/grassroots approach to convening is reviving, and about time too. There is a lot going on in the world - on so many fronts - and connecting different folks to explore more radical ideas and catalyse new thinking and work is a great way to bring some positive energy and hope - and hopefully action, too.  The unconference started off wondering whether we actually need more data. We were hosted in a UCL building - very new, packed with 4000+ sensors, but is collecting all this data worthwhile? Even with BMS (building management system) access the occupants couldn't tell how the building works, and so couldn't make good choices around the heating and ventilation controls for instance. It wasn't clear whether ...

It's always satisfying when projects you have been involved with demonstrate great results: https://twitter.com/ResearchEssex/status/1504867213840420870 Cofarm is in our third growing season, and starting to think about how best to grow - we're getting quite a lot of interest from people interested in creating Cofarms locally. The tricky bit as usual is having the time (or money) to properly plan how to scale up, and to support potential new sites, and writing up the playbook.  Now Play This 2022 was a lovely hybrid festival of experimental game design exploring play and democracy, and much of it is now on YouTube .  If you missed earlier editions, such as 2021's climate-themed festival, you can catch up on those too. https://twitter.com/chris_m_h/status/1504533322986369030   Working at Field Ready I learned how not all 'maker' (or humanitarian) interventions are helpful - something is not always better than nothing. I was reminded of this by Tarek Loubani's ar...

Clearing out old tabs...  Another amazingly thoughtful and insightful article from Rachel Coldicutt: Conley’s framing seems revelatory because care work is often characterised as a bundle of physical acts and emotional feelings, but in reality it involves predicting eventualities, mitigating the mitigatable, and softening the blows of the unavoidable. Care work is the anticipation of grief is a beautiful articulation of care as a thoughtful and a thinking practice; a constant loop of recognising and managing risk. Taking care involves noticing and remembering, writing lists and prioritising; doing the right things in the right order to get to the best outcomes in the circumstance. When I remind my son to put a jumper in his school bag on a sunny day, it’s because I’ve looked at the weather forecast and know it will be colder later. Likewise, when we reply to a government consultation, it’s because we’ve looked at the proposals and know the outcomes will be unjust or unworkable. Bo...