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Pete, this is some of the most helpful stuff on AI that I’ve read; thank you!
Thanks. I always recommend Professor Hannah Fry as a great source if people want to know more. Easy to find her materials on Radio 4 and youtube.
I’m spending evenings teaching SCAA-GPT to find relevant PENs – hope to have something I can put in the newsletter by the end of the month.
I just thought I should give you some of my personal impressions of the Centenary Conference, on the primary basis that I am probably the least qualified attendee to do so. For sure, no one can accuse me of having any particular vested interest in the politics v humanitarianism debate.
If you don’t know anything about the conference at all, please check out the programme here: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/gb/reports/policy/phcr-conference-programme-april-2019.pdf.
First, on a practical level the event itself was very well organised, hardly a hiccup in sight. As someone who in the commercial sector routinely puts on comparably sized conferences around the world (I’ve done Heathrow, Bangkok and Hyderabad in the last 6 months), the logistics from venue choice to feeding to lighting and seating are themselves all ample opportunities to mess up, before you get anywhere near the content and speakers. But all bumped along splendidly.
I think one important message to the alumni as a collective is the genuine and heartfelt respect they are held in by current staff and the academics involved. ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ was a phrase used more than once. And though of course individuals were singled out, there was much appreciation for the overall level of thought and analysis that had gone into our work over the years. Mistakes there were along the way of course, but so much of which to be proud.
The conference kicked off with a review of the ‘creation story’ or perhaps ‘myth’ might be a better phrase. Dr Emily Baughan, Lecturer in Modern History, University of Sheffield gave an insightful and engaging analysis of what we did and didn’t know. She framed the sororal debate not in terms of personalities, but rather the politically focussed Dorothy working with the more broadly humanitarian Eglantyne. Politics v humanitarianism from the outset; a recurring discussion of the last 100 years, and the theme for the conference.
There were 6 open plenary sessions, which picked particular periods from our history, starting with Biafra and moving right through to Yemen. The quality of the panellists ranged from very good to outstanding. I think the primary challenge was that some of the panellists simply knew too much. How can you possibly sum up huge chapters of work in a few pithy sentences? The acronyms flew. When we were rushing from the TPLF to REST, some wit next to me whispered ‘TPLF. Weren’t they the splitters?’ in true Python-speak.
There were also a series of workshops. I particularly enjoyed ‘Aid in the Archives’ and on a personal note it felt so right that the late Rodney Breen received a high number of name checks.
I think for the alumni this was one of the most important sessions, and it set me thinking on what we could do with the archive. More on this to follow, but perhaps as a group we could focus on specific events in turn starting with maybe Biafra and find a way of improving the archive for that period? With the huge collective knowledge of the Alumni Association, there must be something we can do? Thoughts appreciated
If that workshop was essentially retrospective, the other workshop I attended was looking the other way, the future of innovation in the aid sector. We did spend time looking at the past to see what lessons could be learnt. One of the things that emerged was simply how much innovation there had been. The look on the faces of some current staff when they discovered we once had an aircraft was worth the admission price! But lots of forward looking too. Climate change. internet 5g. Different donors.
The second day of the conference was I think even stronger than the first. It ended up with another panel which really clicked. All the panellists were good, but particular highlights were Shaheed Fatima, a barrister from Blackstone Chambers who was as outstanding as her CV (teaching law at both Oxford and Harvard). She and the alumnus Lewis Sida both received well-earned spontaneous mid-session applause for their insights. And one delicious moment right at the end when current staff gave each other more and more confidence to speak out. They were particularly frustrated at the current Trustees who they didn’t think added enough. They expressed their views forcibly – not realising that Charles Steel, the interim chair of the Trustees, was in the room. To be fair, he took the criticisms exceedingly well with a ‘judge me by my actions’ position.
And then there were thanks. Lots of thanks. All very well earned.
The great news is that if you want to watch it (again?!), the recordings are here:Monday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGx3YKaNNC8&feature=youtu.be
Tuesday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F45d9HgXAw4
And some pictures courtesy of Juliano Fiori – click on them for a better view:
@Mike Aaronson said:
The centenary conference is now just a few days away and I am getting quite excited about it! It’s taken us four years to get to this point, and inevitably there is a lot of last-minute activity.The conference programme is available here: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/conference100
You might also be interested in my blog post on the LSE website here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/04/01/childrens-rights/
There will be a live stream of the conference; we are just finalising the details of the link but it will at the same location where you currently see Sky News on this site.
Mike
Just to say 27 registered alumni are attending the main event and the Streams tab is now set with 3 links, showing exact times:
Day 1 Monday 8th April – day session
Day 1 Monday 8th April – evening session
Day 2 Tuesday 9th April – day sessionPete
1st newsletter of 2019 issued 23 rd March 2019 SCUK-Alumni-Association-March-Newsletter.pdf
Mike. Sadly Mary passed away in 2002. Here is her obituary from the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/05/guardianobituaries@Nick Kavanagh said:
Hello allI was with Save the Children UK from 1996 to 2009 and it’s lovely to see familiar names on the site. A huge thankyou to Pete, Mike, Leonie and all the others who have obviously put a lot of time and effort into making this work for all of us.
Since Save the Children I have very much enjoyed working for smaller charities, lecturing and being a Trustee. Recently we have moved out of London, to West Oxfordshire and started to retire though I am keeping the lecturing going.
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas
Nick
Great to hear from you Nick. Do post from time to time. It’s surprising quiet on these boards. i think when just a few people start it will take off.
Festive newsletter issued 21st December 2018
December-2018-Festive-Newsletter.pdfJust got the full text of the SC official statement:
Save the Children UK today announced that Peter Bennett-Jones is standing down as Chair of the charity in January.A spokesperson for the Board of Trustees of Save the Children UK said: ‘We on the Board are grateful for Peter’s passionate commitment to our important cause and his unwavering dedication as Chair over the past three years in steering the charity through some difficult times.’
Mr Bennett-Jones said: ‘It has been a privilege to work with the staff and supporters of Save the Children UK, helping millions of deprived and marginalised children to survive and thrive in some of the most hostile environments in the world. After three years as Chair, I believe a change will help the organisation best tackle the complex challenges it faces.’
Mr Bennett-Jones had planned to step down later in 2019 but brought forward his departure after an independent investigation into complaints about remarks he made during recent discussions with staff about the charity’s future direction.
The charity found his remarks could have been perceived as being at odds with the organisation’s response to a review of its working culture earlier in the year. Mr Bennett-Jones recognised this and has apologised for any upset he caused.
The Board of Save the Children UK said: ‘The Trustees do not doubt Peter’s support for – and commitment to – the charity’s continuing efforts to strengthen its culture.’
An interim chair will be appointed next month.@Steve Steward-Kirby said:
Started sometime back in 1985, worked in Covenants with Beryl Class as my boss, moved to Purchase ledger with Raymond Humphries as my boss.
Great times in the Kerfield pub across the road…..
Had Jason Custance and Rodney Reid work for me within Purchase ledger team.
Moved over to trading accountant, don’t recall who i worked for!!!!.
Left in 1996 i think.
Still keep in touch with Tony Gow, Jason and Rodney.Great to hear from you, Steve. Interesting how many times the Kerfield pops is in people’s memories. Have a look at ‘Nostalgia Central’
Second newsletter issued 24th November 2018. Alumni-Newsletter-November-2018.pdf
Welcome Tim. Do use the PM facility to reach out to any of those old colleagues – no one else but you and them will see. As yet, people seem a little shy of posting here in public. I am sure that will change as the membership increases.
I couldn’t agree more with you about the history point. I know some events are being planned but it does feel low key at the moment.
From my perspective, the events leading to SC start on 12th November 1918. It’s one thing to argue for an economic blockade when two countries are at war, but however dubious that case is of targeting a civilian population, it crumbles once the war is over.
There are 188 days to campaign from 12th November 2018 to 19th May 2019. Maybe start a social media campaign on 8th February 2019 to count down the days from 100 ….
I think the change that is happening is the type of code people are writing. It is less and less old style al-Khwarizmi ‘if this, then that’ algorithms, which as you rightly say can be fairly easily quality controlled.
We are seeing more and more machine learning. So sure, ‘politics’ is defined initially with a series of synonyms and related words which it is easy to control, but then the programme itself looks at a few million posts, and says ‘in that case, i think these posts are political – do you agree?’. It will start fine tuning the word list; adding and subtracting words and phrases, but also looking at patterns of usage that it sees which we didn’t define. It will change its view over time based on changes in usage. The purpose isn’t to get to a formal definition of ‘politics’, but to get to the point where a machine would make an assessment that couldn’t be distinguished from that of a human. To do that, it has to have advanced syntactical analysis. Bad meaning good etc. How it actually assesses a single post then becomes incredibly complex – there isn’t a simple piece of code that you can QA traditionally.
Does FB care about this? The only thing FB cares about is shareholder value. If it impacts advertising revenue, it cares about it HUGELY. The good news is that advertisers want brilliant algorithms. Disney needs to know on a town by town basis how adverts for its new ‘princess’ movie are being received, so real time it can adjust stock holdings in stores. That a 13 year old kid might tweet ‘it’s really bad’, Disney needs to know how to count that tweet accurately. And of course, a 13 year old tweeting that is highly likely to have a different meeting than a 63 year old tweeting the exact same words.
I don’t think we are doomed at all, but I do think control over data is changing. Leadership and high standards don’t change of course, but the ability of leadership to control standards is getting more and more complex. (And al-Khwarizmi is of course one of my heroes!)
