New home, who dis?

For those of you joining me over here (Ghost), you might be wondering what on earth is going on. Fair.

The thing you should know about me, as a taxonomist, is that the right word or words is really important to me. It is, after all, how I make my living. So I'm going to take you back on a little bit of a journey of the last 18 months.

Start at the beginning(ish)

In 2023, I unexpectedly lost a contract that I was expecting to last until the end of that year. It was completely without prejudice, they couldn't find any work to put me on so they cut me loose.

To be fair, I hadn't really added a huge amount of value to the org in the just over 12 months that I'd been there. Well, other than almost causing the agency I was contracting through to loose their contract for something seriously shady (but that's a story for another day).

I was, for lack of a better description, feeling really lost.

And I was exhausted, and burned out. To say I was a hot mess is an understatement.

But, I also needed to earn money. Not just to keep a roof over my head, but also to pay off a messy debt sitch I'd gotten myself into. There were some seriously legal ramifications of not paying it. It was causing me a huge amount of stress and worry. The impact of which I'll save for another time.

I, thankfully, picked up a small piece of work that ran over Christmas and into the new year. But Christmas 2023 was not fun in the slightest.

New year, same old you

I entered 2024 flat broke, frightened and exhausted. I lacked direction and not a lot of hope.

The consequences of being in a serious amount of debt meant I'd isolated myself. Not only had the light gone from my world, I didn't go anywhere, and I didn't see anyone. And it had been like that for four years.

I genuinely don't remember a huge amount of the first few months of last year. I had some little bits of work. But it was a couple of truly lovely people who believed in me (way more than I believed in myself at that point), who gave me some work.

It was the second bit of work which really made a difference to me, and helped me to believe in myself.

To those two people, I want to say thank you. Sometimes you need others to show you what matters to you, by letting you be you.

Taxonowhatnow?

While I am resigned to knowing I will always need to explain what taxonomy, ontology, and (to a slightly lesser extent) systems thinking is, I know what it means to me to have something I can wrap myself around.

I know there are people out there who will think my job can be done by AI. But let's be honest for a sec, the only jobs that can't be done with AI are the ones where people physically create things. The argument is going to rage on until they darken the skies. So it's just noise.

A human understands how humans use technology better than a, copyright infringing, bias laden, bro-built knowledge graph with a bit of machine learning* on top ever will.

It's also become reasonably apparent that while every SaaS org out there is sticking some flavour of AI onto their products which don't do much more than clippy ever did. There are still a lot more orgs who are still using paper forms or processes to run their businesses.

We're also at a point where orgs that went through digital transformation a decade ago, have grown a garden that are getting overrun with brambles, stinging nettles and weeds. Too much information without structure is useless. And as yet, I've not seen any AI that can unpick what the orgs themselves don't even understand.

So, I'm feeling more confident that I have a unique set of skills that truly equip me to help orgs unpick the pickles they find themselves in.

I am not interested in the design side of things. I've outgrown UX and I'm definitely not a product designer or service designer. I'm too old to deal with the hyper-competitiveness that those industries find themselves in.

My lane(s) are taxonomy, ontology and systems thinking. I understand, and can play with the structure of all things. I see patterns where you don't (because that's the way my brain is wired). I live and breath, cause and effect.

Murmuration era

I've walked into this year with a strange, calm, confidence. I am in my confident, classy era. After feeling afraid, uncertain and riddled with anxiety, it's genuinely a nice feeling to feel quietly confident in my own skin. To be cognitively aware of what's gone before, what's coming now and where I'm going.

Which is sort of where the name comes from. My legal business name is Murmuration Systems ltd.

The business focus came first, the name came second. A bit like a murmuration, when you can see a shape out of lots of little details.

If you've ever experienced a murmuration, you'll know it can take your breath away with its beauty. It's not made up of one thing and there's not organised structure to it. As the murmuration takes flight, it seems both living and chaotic. It really does represent what I do and who I am.

You see the mass the starlings create, you appreciate its beauty, but you don't understand what it takes to create it. Whereas, I see all the birds that make it. I see the possibility of the structure and fluidity that it creates. I see the little details that make that big picture.

If you need help getting to grips with your own murmuration, let's talk.