Did you read last month’s column? I need to point out that I submitted the content a week and a half prior to the semi-finals of the rugby world cup. So it was only afterwards that I heard that the England coach, Eddie Jones, refer to those players outside of the starting fifteen who sat on the bench at the start of a match, not as substitutes but as finishers. This provides a superb illustration of the point I was trying to highlight: “substitute” carries the connotation that they are not first choice and will be called on only when needed; “finisher” emphasises the equally important role of those on the bench, which is key to the overall team achieving success. Would you rather be a finisher or a substitute?

As much as I would like to take credit for this corroborating example, I must admit that it was just serendipitous. ‘Serendipity’ was the word that came in to my head as soon as I heard about “finishers”.  I have used this word several times in this column and I have always understood it as an alternative word to ‘lucky’, ‘coincidence’ or ‘good fortune’ and as a result it has a feel-good factor about it. I also had occasion to think of serendipity when I was listening to a discussion on the radio about algorithms used by entertainment and social media. A listener was explaining that she was offered different programmes by a platform depending on whether she was using it in the morning or in the evening. It was the rider that she added to this that made me take notice. She was happy for the platform to offer such suggestions because it saved her time having to trawl through the myriad of options herself in order to choose a programme to watch.

This made me personally feel both concerned and sad. I was concerned that technology is potentially suppressing the ability of people to research information and to identify that which would be considered important, useful, entertaining or relevant to their particular tastes or objectives. Investigation and analysis skills are required in any number of professions and roles and if people are not developing them in their non-working life, it will be more of an effort to apply them in their work. The feeling of sadness came from thinking of what people could be missing out on, if they solely relied on algorithm-based choices, selected on past behaviour. They could lose the opportunity for serendipity in identifying a film, book, product or present.

This leads on to the revival of another word that has not been used very much in recent years, but is growing in importance: curation. My interest was raised back in January 2018 in a ‘thought for the day’ talk by Revd Dr Jane Leach. She marvelled at the skill of the curator in placing two different but connected items together in an exhibition, which produced a greater impact through their intersecting stories than if they had both been exhibited separately. In this instance, curator and curation are used in their traditional sense relating to a museum exhibition. The origins of the word come from the Latin – one who cares. The word denotes someone who has the care and supervision of something. So, in a general sense, curation is the selection and arrangement of objects, artefacts and, increasingly, information and data, to increase value. It requires the selection of a subset of the whole and presenting this subset so it conveys the meaning or story of the whole with extra impact and added value.

Two specific areas where curation is gaining traction is as a tool in leadership – to simplify and articulate core issues and messages – and in the management of digital media, to enable continued access and maintenance of assets for future use. In both these the ultimate goal is to add value. Curation is now playing more of a role in online activity. Instead of maintaining the online echo chamber, curators select and arrange information to provide access to new ideas and different people and viewpoints. Good curation provides opportunity for serendipity!

NDT is a curation activity. We select and arrange information, collected during an inspection, to tell the story of the particular plant component to the client in order to add value. To be able to do this, it is necessary to research and analyse the proposed inspection technique to establish its capability and inform the curation of the inspection data. Within the NDT community there are already curation activities being performed on our behalf: BINDT selects and peer reviews articles on selected topics to include in each issue of INSIGHT; workshops, seminars and conference sessions are all curated to meet specific objectives. Curation can provide future opportunities for adding value by building the body of knowledge and ensuring ongoing access to historic data.

 On the Job printed in the BINT magazine

I am struggling to decide how to start this column. If I am not careful, I could end up venturing into the periphery of politics, which is one of the subjects I have diligently and I think successfully, avoided so far. I need to be cognisant of how the article, or at least this introduction, will be interpreted and so I need to choose my words carefully. Here goes. I cannot avoid the fact that the recent, widely reported furore about the use of particular words and their impact on the audience who hear them, has been a key stimulus for this article. On its own this wouldn’t be sufficient, but it meshed with a number of other sources of ideas I had come across over time. So, I want to discuss language and its importance and impact. Every month I use language and words to convey a message with the objective of stimulating discussion and having an impact beyond just being a good read. Whether I achieve this objective, I will leave you to judge. Communication is a topic I return to on a regular basis, being fundamental to all aspects of life. I have discussed this in many ways: presentations; the extensive vocabulary of words available but the limited number in common use; text speak; pictures and emojis; the importance of backing up words with actions; and the use of stories. In reviewing previous articles to ensure I avoid too much repetition, I came across the following paragraph from over 10 years ago: “The technology has advanced considerably but despite the ease and speed of mobiles, PDAs, e-mails and instant messaging, the start and finish are always the interaction of mind and matter which have been around for 130 thousand years. To get this right requires effort.” This is at the crux of the recent furore referred to above and also has an effect on all parts of life: how does the mind respond to the visual or aural stimuli of words? In a letter to New Scientist, the correspondent highlights that it is impossible for us to think without language but goes on to state that much work is needed to understand how our language areas in the brain link to our intent areas. It is easy to see the results in a number of examples. The first time I came to realise this connection was in a discussion about innovation and the challenge to identify new products or services. A company reviewed its target market and decided that, whilst it had always seen itself as a biscuit manufacturer, what is was selling was fast/convenience food. This change in viewpoint immediately opened up a lot more options for new products. There have been a number of examples of changing a negative connotation into a positive one by replacing words: a “problem” saps enthusiasm, but if referred to as an “opportunity” (which takes some effort) it becomes a positive challenge; “disabled” replaced by “differently abled” immediately changes the view from restrictions to possibilities; if you want to see the effect on teamwork of replacing “them” with “we” look up ex-USN submarine commander David Marquet and read his book or watch his YouTube video. Language plays a key part in NDT. I have previously cited examples of confusion over terminology and highlighted that a perfunctory search identified approximately 20 NDT standards listing terminology. It is important that we all sing from the same hymn sheet, but I do think that there may be opportunities to modify our language to change perceptions within NDT and also within the communities that use NDT results. So, should we avoid writing inspection reports stating “No defects” in favour of stating “No defects detected by this inspection procedure”? And replace “defect size = X mm” with “defect size = X mm with uncertainties inherent in the technique”? On a more general level I would like you to consider “Reliability” and “Human Factors”. Whilst “Reliability” aptly describes the subject, it has become seen as sub topic of NDT rather than an integral part of any inspection. Similarly, “Human Factors” is a well-established discipline, but could we encourage more uptake of measures aimed at improving NDT application if it had a different term? We don’t talk about human factors in sports. I look to you to identify other examples. Printed with the kind permission of Bernard McGrath from his column On the Job printed in the BINT magazine