Learning Log

Personal reflection

This was the first time we had a course split in half during a semester. We knew what to expect for the first half, the strategy part, because there was a course outline available. However, we did not know what to expect for the second part of the course, which was both concerning and interesting at the same time. The concern turned to a slight worry when we had to obtain a massive reader for a course we knew basically nothing about. It would seem ambitious, to say the least, for us to work our way through this reader in under six weeks. However during the first few minutes of the first lecture all these concerns were laid to rest and, to some extent replaced with others, but more on that later. Mister Daniel Erasmus turned out to be a very extrovert type of person, which is exactly the kind of character trait you need in order to give a course like this and stimulate students to try their very best. Interesting stories mixed with exciting anecdotes, coupled with Mr. Erasmus’ uninhibited laughter made for motivating and exciting lectures. A far cry from the usual dull and one-sided lectures we had become accustomed to.

The topic behind all the lectures was scenario thinking. A term, I believe, for most people to be obscure and vague; something people did to describe crazy stories about the future. I would have been one of those people I’m sure, were it not for the fact I had worked a year for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. There, although not directly involved with scenarios, I came into contact with this concept. So I knew what they were and what they were basically used for, but I had no idea how one would go about creating a credible and convincing view of things to come. This course would hopefully establish an understanding. Our way of working, a lecture followed by a workshop, turned out to be very active and fruitful. Moreover I especially liked the fact that we would have to keep progress on a special website called a wiki, for the whole world to see. I had never used a wiki, but it turned out to be an extremely quick and handy tool for exactly the type of work we were doing.

Our group was quickly formed and we decided on the topic of grid computing as our subject. Now the people in the group knew each other well, as we had been in the same group for quite a few other courses, and we are usually on the same level when talking about a certain subject. This unity would be turned upside down by this course as we would go beyond the surface of subjects and discuss in detail what we thought would be the future of grid computing. Especially when making the systems map I was surprised at how different our group actually thought. We had never had this issue before, and it was difficult to reach a consensus. Imaginations about the future ranged from continuing the current future to the most elaborate and farfetched futures you could think of. This is because there is not one future; there are many possible futures, all evenly likely given the right circumstances. Thinking up futures was relatively easy, preparing the plausible circumstances which made this future turned out to be quite a bit harder. Mr. Erasmus had warned us about this stage and had said that once a group starts to have near-physical fights you know you are close to the solution. In our group no one was afraid of expressing his or her opinion, which is why I like working with this particular set of people, however it was looking exceedingly grim and because of this trait it seemed we were headed towards a stalemate. In fact Mr. Erasmus’ prediction turned out to be exactly correct and following right after our heated discussion there was a sudden calmness and ideas started flowing from then onwards, in surprising harmony I might add.

Lastly we created our scenarios, which for me were the most enjoyable part, as you are basically left room to do what you want, within bounds of course. However if we did not have the framework for making the scenarios, based on a matrix of the two most important driving forces giving you four different scenarios, I believe it would have been far more challenging to come up with plausible stories. During one of the lectures we were shown some slides from the Vodaphone scenario project done by the Digital Thinking Network. I was truly impressed by how correct the scenarios were. Reading them was like reading today’s newspaper. It was then I truly understood and appreciated the function and purpose of scenario thinking. If you can figure out what will happen in 5 or 10 years from now by examining and scrutinizing clues in the world of today, you will be one step ahead of competition. Unfortunately, because the course lasted only 6 weeks, we did not have enough time to properly investigate every possible aspect which could have an effect on grid computing. We had approached three authorities on grid computing for an interview, but only one was able to schedule a meeting before our deadline. This single interview was regrettably cancelled one day before we had the appointment. So we had to give body to all the scenarios ourselves, where we would have really liked to run them by some professionals. All in all I believe they turned out quite well considering the little amount of time we had.

Looking back on the course I feel a sense of accomplishment, our team worked hard and long hours to come up with what we hope are good scenarios. However this accomplishment is only temporary, I also feel I will take something more lasting away from this course. And that is the fact that the future is not set in stone, it can go in many directions. Moreover we should not believe there is only one possible future, but multiple which can happen simultaneously. Lastly, I do not blindly believe news items about the future or articles on the internet about the next hot thing anymore, I feel myself second-guessing these statements and wondering what it would take, or which roadmap would have to be followed in order to take us to this future. I am convinced this will be invaluable in my later job, where you should not blindly accept everything for a fact, and challenge them when necessary. Challenging things has nothing to do with being pessimistic or having a negative outlook on the world, for I am certain that it will give you a different outlook on a subject, which might set off a chain of other events.

In short I am extremely glad to have been offered this course, and found it unfortunate it was on such a tight schedule, as I would have thoroughly enjoyed the full program. In my opinion the success of the course is not least due to the positive and energetic attitude of Mr. Erasmus, inspiring students to deliver quality results.