Welcome to 2024. Most of us are recovering from unusually harsh weather this weekend. The weather seems to correlate to some man-made events that are garnering a significant amount of editorial coverage. I will add to the coverage of the Boeing airplane door plug blowout. I should note that I have written several times about the Boeing 737 MAX culture, sales and training on its models, third-party vendors, and the lack of comprehensive regulatory oversight. To draw my conclusions and recommendations today, I’ve relied on articles by Dominic Gates of the Seattle Times (“Boeing’s Reputation Hits More Turbulence”), a Wall Street Journal article by Sharon Terlep and Andrew Tangel (“This Has Been Going on for Years”), a New York Times piece by Peter Coy (“The Scariest Part About the Boeing 737 Max 9 Blowout”), and a well-balanced analysis by syndicated columnist Zeynep Tufekci (“Two recent aviation incidents show the importance of regulation, training, expertise, effort and improvement of infrastructure, as well as professionalism and heroism”).

Looking back, we understand that the books we read as children may have glorified or misrepresented certain aspects of life in earlier times. Thanksgiving is the easiest example that comes to mind, where a story was woven over grim facts to make a pleasing explanation. But when I think back to grade school, it’s the biographies of famous people that made the most significant impression on me. Most of them showed us exemplary decision-making at crucial inflection points. Though I read biographies of Frederick Douglass, Sitting Bull, Jesse Owens, and Geronimo, I was taken by biographies of amazing women – Elizabeth Blackwell, Jane Addams, Maria Tallchief, Althea Gibson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Marian Anderson, and others. You could say that most of them had to experience painful struggles to get to that astonishing right thing to do, and that is probably why we remember their stories. 

No matter where we look, we find ourselves exhausted and pained by a range of situations in the world today. We hesitate to speak about the most volatile because there might be unintended consequences. Thinking about such matters can cause us to loose our mental bearings as we find ourselves on different sides of the questions the situations raise. I thought I would try to offer some tried and true advice about how to navigate the world at this time.

We seem to be surrounded by discord and impasses, both online and in the real world.  Whether it’s the insidious spread of disinformation in our current political climate, our inability to find workable solutions for homelessness or at our borders,  the impact that COVID has had on our society, or another hurricane or heat wave, we have lost confidence in our ability to manage daily conditions on the ground or to know which challenges are worth spending the time on to plan.

Tomorrow I’m doing a live one-hour broadcast with questions from the audience interspersed with questions from the host, EXP Technical’s Kelly Paletta.  The webinar is advertised as a look at risk and emerging cyber threats.  I’m anxious to see how the questions align with some of the ASA areas for investigation in the future.·       

Twenty-two years later, the sounds and images of that day reverberate. The 19-acre complex of buildings called the World Trade Center, considered to be the heart of the financial sector, was forever changed.

Many of you have already suspected that retirement from the fields of operational risk, governance, cybersecurity, or information ethics, policy, and law is just not in the cards for me. I am trying to manage myself and ASA by working fewer hours, but the world continues to present us with unprecedented challenges.

In spite of military standoffs, a deep sea disaster, pesky security breaches, and other operational risk failures, this month we celebrate ASA's 14th anniversary as we publish the 153rd issue of ASA News & Notes. The website went live on July 20, 2009, to announce a new risk consulting practice that had two divisions.

In the 1960s, a relatively new technology was able to record and broadcast as news the behavior of citizens and law enforcement in Southern states, in particular Alabama and Mississippi. The rhetoric matched the behavior, as protesters or voting rights advocates were beaten while the police stood by. One cannot repeat the names called, but can remember still the violent speech used by segregationists as they fought against the change that was coming. To be in the South was to be without the Rule of Law most of us had come to depend on in our lives. At the heart of the Rule of Law is the promise of equal protection under the law as we exercise our civil rights.

Last week, I was honored with a retirement party, hosted by the UW Information School, as well as a special profile iStory that appeared on the iSchool’s home page. I was deeply honored by both. My family came from other parts of the country to attend the party so, in the whirl of good company, I’ve hardly had a chance to take it all in.