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Opinion: Should Guy Kewney go on holiday, or is this a stale idea?

Original ideas ... they seem to be jewels. And yet, if you analyse them, the jewels aren't the truly original ideas, but the derivative ones ... as is analysed in this week's IT Week column, archived here

Organising a seminar away from it all. Like so many daft ideas, it seemed really clever at the pathfinder-meeting. Why not get away from the phone, the Web, and the office, with all their distractions from coherent thought, and sit down with a group of interesting people, and plan the future?

The future, of course, is the future of mobile IT. "What's in IT for the mobile user?" we chorused, and picked a sunny spot on the South East coast of Spain, mapped out an agenda, and organised accommodation and flights. What else do you need?

Actually, what you need is distractions. Not just the "draw" attractions of sun and sand and sea but the business distractions of the phone calls. They inspire you. You think they distract you, but you're wrong.

You sit down in an empty room with a blank slate, and an hour later, what you emerge with is a blank slate, and a lot of dirty dishes. Somehow, the mind can't think of any pressing emergency which has future implications, like: "This time next year, if this carries on, we'll need 40 PDAs and a subscription to five mobile phone services ... "

Ideas in abstract seem not to exist. We organised two "blue-sky" keynotes - one by myself, one by a City finance expert. I can't answer for how my presentation went down - I wasn't listening - but the response at the end of both talks was much the same. "Interesting, interesting ... " said people. Or even: "Yes, spot on!"

But where was the feedback?

And a week earlier - in an impromptu meeting between two people, to plan a conference session (a different conference) - just the process of arguing about which people should be invited to be speakers, uncovered three hours' worth of intensive note-taking, about 15 "I didn't know that!" remarks, and a whole day of surfing to catch up with stuff which is established, but only known to a select few.

I think the problem is, the wheel is well and truly invented. One does better to bounce off the ideas of others, which cover more than anyone will believe possible, than to try starting from scratch. Especially, with a blank slate ...