Joe Feltham
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joefeltham.bsky.social
Joe Feltham
@joefeltham.bsky.social
Discovering jazz.
1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 14, 2024 at 9:36 AM
Politicians and managers like to think they’re in control, but mostly they’re not, the engineers (and other techies) are. Otherwise things wouldn’t work and accidents would happen far more often than they do. Just look at Belgium.

caw.ceu.edu/other-activi...
How did Belgium Manage to Survive without having a Government for 652 days? A case study of the Complexities and Challenges of the Federal State of Belgium  | Center for Academic Writing
caw.ceu.edu
November 14, 2024 at 9:36 AM
It’s just a hypothesis, but I suspect that the real world will overtake political targets due in part to the use of standards and the inherent desire of technical decision makers to make things better.
November 14, 2024 at 9:35 AM
While politicians set high level targets, standards encourage and often require progress towards “better”. Maybe that progress isn’t fast enough, but it is made up of billions of technical decisions by those who apply standards, e.g. engineers, scientists and other experts (the techies).
November 14, 2024 at 9:35 AM
… , albeit not in the public domain until drafts are published (DPCs, drafts for public comment).
November 14, 2024 at 9:35 AM
This results in something between the cathedral and the bazaar of ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’, with the standards organisation (e.g. CEN) providing the management and the volunteers providing the “many eyeballs”…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat...
The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 14, 2024 at 9:35 AM
The standardisation process relies on volunteer technical experts, who tend to be either academics or industry representatives who know what they’re talking about, e.g. engineers for the manufacturing and construction sectors, scientists in others.
November 14, 2024 at 9:33 AM
They also define industry best practice (sometimes they lead it), so carbon reduction is baked in at every level because it makes good technical and business sense for many reasons, and the standards organisations explicitly support the UN SDGs.

www.iso.org/sdg
ISO - Sustainable Development Goals
Organizations and companies looking to contribute to the SDGs will find that International Standards provide effective tools to help them rise to the challenge.
www.iso.org
November 14, 2024 at 9:33 AM
Standards don’t lead to the setting of political targets but they do lead to the setting of organisational targets, ISO 14068-1 for example.

www.iso.org/standard/432...
ISO 14068-1:2023
Climate change management — Transition to net zero — Part 1: Carbon neutrality
www.iso.org
November 14, 2024 at 9:33 AM
If this didn’t happen, nothing would work for the end users.
November 14, 2024 at 7:45 AM
And many CEN standards are initiated in support of EC directives, adopted by the BSI as UK standards (BS EN standards), so keeping the UK (and other CEN members that act similarly) aligned with the EU.
November 14, 2024 at 7:44 AM
I agree that makes sense from a political perspective, but the reality on the ground is that the technical details are decided by CEN standards, so organisations are dragged into conformity whether they like it or not.
November 14, 2024 at 7:39 AM
Excellent thread, thank you. For future figures, please can you use the CEN member countries rather than the EU27? This would better reflect Europe and the countries that adhere to European standards.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...
European Committee for Standardization - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 14, 2024 at 5:17 AM
‘One night in the zoo’ by Judith Kerr. You can tweak your reading of it to pretty much any situation and it works for a wide age range.

www.booktrust.org.uk/book/o/one-n...
One Night in the Zoo
This rhyming counting book is set in a zoo and follows the antics of the various animal inhabitants once night falls.
www.booktrust.org.uk
October 14, 2024 at 4:43 AM