Weekly RSS Review

Technically these articles may not have come through this week, sometimes there is so much good stuff to bring to your attention that it just takes a while to catch up and process.

I have been at a number of events lately talking about the subject of cloud computing. Very timely to see this post from Ivanka Menken, founder and CEO of  The Art of Service (an ITIL training and consulting company).  “Stupid Cloud Computing – why don’t you work?” – which is a first hand account of how her company lost their cloud applications and had to work around it. A case of business continuity in action.

A couple of posts from Jan Husdal are also worth a look, especially as a contrast of models to look at risk and uncertainty.

“Risk Society” is a must read for sociologists (like me) – rarely do we find quality posts about the project of modernity and risk!  The uneducated (aka non-sociologists) may say that is a good thing.

“Modernity” in sociology refers to the modern, industrial, capitalist civilisations. It differentiates modern culture from previous eras on a number of dimensions – especially interesting here is that modernity is often characterised by a loss of certainty.

Interesting model that Jan is exploring here, talking about the idea of risk as being related to an event and vulnerability as a function of our ability to handle the event.

In contrast, take a look at “A new and better way of classifying and managing risks?“. In this post Jan is exploring a different model of risk – the 6 types of risk are named for characters from Greek Mythology. This model goes beyond just assessing risk in terms of probability and impact – there are eight criteria defined here.

Always something to challenge your thinking from Jan’s blog.

Enjoy your weekend, I hope you can catch up with some good reading.