Jan 30 2010
J.E.B Stuart
Those of you who know me well will know that one of my interests is military history. As a young lad this developed and continues to this day. Those of you who know me well will also know that I am as far removed from a military person as you can get! Of all the ‘arms of service” it was the cavalry that appealed to me most, whether it was the dashing Cavaliers or the Napoleonic Hussars or just the ‘mistaken’ thought that it meant you didn’t have to walk – something just triggered my particular passion.
Until they were effectively rendered redundant and obsolete by those infernal flying machines in the Great War cavalry were best used as the eyes and ears of the army – roaming far and wide, checking routes, the best approaches, the most likely areas for foraging and for gaining advantage in a campaign. They were ‘high maintenance’ compared to the footsloggers – but their value was in their speed, their reactions and above all the information they could gather and bring back to HQ.
One of the most famous cavalry commanders ever was J.E.B Stuart, who during the American Civil War was the eyes of Robert E Lee as he successfully outmanouvred and outfought the Union forces. As the war moved on the Union got wiser to the use of cavalry and this, in part aided them to contain and overcome the ‘rebellion’. In 1863 the high water mark of the Confederacy was Lee’s invasion of the north that culminated in the battle of Gettysburg. In advance of the campaign Lee let Stuart and his cavalry loose on a wide ranging raid to disrupt the enemy and to provide intelligence on what they were doing.
Stuart set off and indeed had a fine old time, raiding, disrupting, tearing up rails, scaring the populace: however he neglected to send word to Lee of what he was doing – and Lee was therefore ‘blind’ for most of the campaign.
Yes I know you are by now probably asking, where is this going, what relevance does this have to me?
I run a City Learning Centre, I have done so for seven years now – there have been one or two changes in that time! Part of my role (and those of my colleagues) is to scout out new ideas, to introduce new approaches to others – to boldly go….. (ok, no Star Trek references). So, in many ways we have the role of Cavalry, wide ranging, scouting – and sometimes terrifying the local populace (joke honest).
For around 9 months now I have been a pretty regular twitterer. Twitter is amazing as a way of getting amazing information from an amazing network of eyes and ears.
I have also become a great fan of Diigo, both as a way of keeping my own discoveries and also of sharing, and having others share their discoveries.
So as a scouting cavalryman for the ICT army I think I am doing a pretty effective job of keeping on top of new ideas, new opportunities, new developments.
I do wonder though, am I so busy riding about doing this scouting that I am not getting the messages back to everyone, I am not passing the ideas and information back to the practitioners. Or if I am, they look at me, in my flash gear, with all my expensive technological garmentry -and they reject anything I say because its from me and I’m not one of them any more.
So the quandry is, how can I get my ‘despatches’ back to people who will read them and value them? Am I just prancing around on a fancy expensive technological horse?














