The Governator - Arnold

I assisted a reception in the honour of the Governator yesterday at the US embassy. One heck of a property giving on the river, pretty impressive. I was truly impressed also by the American ambassador's M. Wilkins introduction of the governor, it was genuinely funny, and I had a few good laughs. As for the Governator himself still has the hollywood style and he knows how to work a crowd. I like his way of thinking green, and increasing trade, and I'm sure you guessed his wrap up quote by now - "I will be back"

Slow Outlook 2007

Since I have installed Outlook 2007, the one obvious thing aside from the User Experience changes is how slow the damn thing has become. It's slow to start - unbelievable- disable all add-ins aside from search, and it's too bad that one is so darn useful, because it does slow things down at startup. For the Send and Receive speed - one you've made sure RSS update is not part of the send-receive. If you want a good summary of things to try out see the roundtrip post. For me it seems that the upgrade process may have corrupted a small data file called "extend.dat" and it turns out could have slowed things down, the jury is still out. There is also the patch for large pst that you can find on MS knowledge base.

CGI and the lack of man power

It's good and bad to read the following story where according to CGI's Michael Roach, we don't have enough people here, and offshore's pricing is going up. Bad because we have failed at interesting more kids to enroll in engineering, good because it confirms what I have been talking about for a little while and why I'm volunteering to try to address the issue. I wonder how much effort CGI is putting into enrolling more kids in Universities for eng and cs programs. I was reading the same kind of story here at Eagles blog

On the flip side people/companies will have to look at offshore as an option to execute on their projects, not necessarily to save money. The options in Canada and the US are getting slimmer and slimmer as the years are going by. PEI University for example last year graduated 5 people in CS and Eng, you don't scale much with 5people across a province.

At Macadamian we've taken the road that a company must be global whatever its size, and a company has to go where the talent is. This is why we have our lab in Romania going through significant expansion.

When you do the math, India is 30X bigger than Canada, this means everything there - is a 30X factor. For every one man show company in Canada there are 30X30 people company in India, and the same thing in China. Yes our talent is scarce, but there are ways to get the job done - for us it's combination of our great crew here working hand in hand with other great people in other countries.

The way we work has changed over the years to work better within this distributed model. More and more companies are adopting this way of getting the job done, because they just have too much needs for the capabilities of the market. Yes it all started as a cost saving measure, it is still such for most, but over time it won't be anymore, it will be about getting the job done period.

cel phone take III - great news

More saga - so I got my cel phone back from apparently someone who was not going to be able to sleep until I had my cel phone back. The fellow was not the one who came to my house, is he working in tandem with the other guy? most probably. Why did they call me back to return it? Probably because it's very expensive to operate for a crook, and no pawnshop would want to take on a phone that could not possibly belong to my good Samaritan. One last detail we did agree on a very reasonable finder's fee!!

Talent pool take II

This morning I was presenting with Paul Swinwood from ICTC, and Julian Dolce of Fuel Industries to a couple of hundreds of high school students to demystify hi-tech as part of a pilot project. The presentation went well, Julian really turned the crowd on with his videos of animation and games. This was really popular with the kids. We still have to debrief all of the activities we've done this year as part of the pilot - but I have a good feeling we're making progress toward putting a more formal approach toward making kids embrace hi-tech again.

Talent pool

As part of OSC, I'm involved in trying to get more kids into science and technologies. We've done a very unscientific survey, the top three issues to enrolling in engineering for the students surveyed 1) No time for the additional work classes in computers bring, 2) no money in Hi-tech 3) Hi-Tech is boring. About 1) in Ontario they have eliminated grade 13th, which means they have one less year to take as many sciences classes as before, so students shoot for maths, and since they want to have high avg they don't take more difficult classes than necessary. About 2) the bubble burst is a possible explanation, the FUD about all jobs going offshore is also probably to blame. About 3) they picture all computer people working on a computer, not talking to anyone and typing away. On a more positive note where I relate more with them about their job in the future, 1) they want to work in something the will enjoy, 2) they want to have a job when they graduate and 3) they want to make more money. As for my assessment - We need to get more students in tech - between now and 2010, ICTC is evaluating there will be a need for 89000 people in the tech business, already now we're literally at full employment in tech from ictc and stats can, and we graduate about 1500 students with bachelor degrees in comp sciences and eng across Canada - we have a problem! - We need to get the students who are interested in eng to consider it - if they like solving problems and building stuff - engineering is for them, we need to find a way to reach out to them. Same thing with women - engineering is mostly a male populated field. The field is literally turning off 50% of the population, how do we open up?

Cell phone take II

Ok - now what do I know when something is stolen from you - one doesn't expect to have someone call you back to sell it back to you. Life is full of surprises. Sparing the details of who we got there, Wednesday night I get to speak to a guy who said bought my cell phone from someone, and now realizes it's a stolen item, or it's too complicated to use, or too pricey monthly for him - I can't say which one, because the story kept changing as the conversation went on. Any how the bottom line because he is a good Samaritan he wanted to return the phone to me for a finder's fee - you can't say sell back to me, because legally it's still mine I've been told. So the conversation hovers around how much etc, let me just say this is one pricy phone from my good Samaritan's stand point. He wanted me to go meet him as his house, apparently his, he had just moved in - so he didn't have a phone number, he was calling me from his friend's place. I didn't go - and I hear later on, because he called me back he wasn't there either. This is so convoluted - and at the same time it's so clear to me the two guys are in this together.

My Portable phone was stolen!

Not lost, stolen, and read on if you want to know how it was stolen. I'm at home it's about 7pm, we're wrapping diner up. I'm with my son downstairs playing a game, Manon is upstairs with our baby girl. Here comes this guy knocking on our door. "Good evening, I know you have a baby, my wife can't breastfeed, I need baby formula for my little 3weeks old, I went to familiprix, my credit card is maxed out, I don't have cash, and they don't want to advance me the money. Would you have some baby formula for me to take?" Sure I do - let me check, I turn around grab it and show him what we have for our little one, then he says "hmm! that won't work I need something or another brand." I say sorry I can't help you. He shakes my hand, says that " it's funny you say cheers! when in fact I mean bye." Anyway, a few hours later, it's time to go to bed, and out of habit I plug in my portable for the night, where is my damn phone, I did a call coming into the house hmm! So I call my cell number and it goes straight to the v-mail. At that moment I clue in - the phone was on the table in the entrance just next to the door, where the guy was standing! He shook my hand, thanking me for my help - and he left with my phone. During the evening I was feeling bad about this whole thing, I even discussed with Manon, maybe I should have given the guy money so that he could buy the formula - I felt guilty. I let the guy into my house, I was telling myself come one Fred you have to trust people a little more - well not a guy with a baseball cap, with a turtle neck and a long black coat when it's 20 degrees out I guess. Anyway I called Rogers and suspended my phone number for the time being. I've been deceived, the guy's act was really well done, and now I'm thinking where the heck is this all going.

Customer experience

This is a interesting thought that has been going through my mind lately. Every touch point in the organization interacting with our customer has to be part of our customer experience as a whole, all around it's got to be A-1, sales, delivery, news letter, presentation, interactions... To confirm the importance of this I was at a breakfast last Friday, Steven Beckta from Beckta fine dining was talking about customer service excellence. What I took away from that talk is that even if we are a software services business, there is a heck of a lot of things the hospitability business can teach us all in the tech business. The whole organization must be empowered to make the customer experience something our customers will rave about - and this is true for any types of businesses. Customers referrals are worth gold - they bring lots of potential business your way.

Creativity

As you know from yesterday's post we are exhibiting but our booth has been misplaced. Matt and I brainstormed about what we were going to do, at the end of the day we need to make the best of it anyway. We're at the show, we're here to generate leads, yes a booth is a nice to have accessory to say the least in a world class show, but we don't have it. We thought of various things - first thing was can we get stuff printed overnight so that we can at least have panels in front of those wonderful pink drapes to say who we are and what we do. If we can't get that - what else can we do - creativity, and innovation is key here. We came up with a new elevator pitch. See Macadamian is about Jumping right in at any point in time for our clients, and one differentiation is that we can get in at the earliest of time in a software project - when what our clients have is an idea, a problem, a pain, a hint of what they would like to do - basically not a whole lot to go with - well we decided this is what our presence here is all about, our non existing booth at this show is about us showing our clients don't need to have much when they come to us - We will work from a brainwave with them up to a market ready product. In the end we did get to have good quality printing and panels made overnight and they come across nice. This ordeal has actually been a good thing - it has helped us "crystallize" even more what we're about and what our value proposition is to our prospective clients. As the chinese saying goes - even setbacks are hiding opportunities.

The stress of exhibiting at a show

All right we're all pumped to be exhibiting at Software 2007 Now get this - the company responsible for putting up the show has mis-placed our booth. They run 12 shows at all time, we shipped our booth several weeks ago, we have a receipt stating they have received, and we're here now to put it up and they have lost the darn booth. To top it off, we had additional roll ups printed specifically for this show, they were sent directly from the company who produced them in Canada to the show - and, drum roll please... they are stuck/lost at the customs. I'm here with Matthew Hately our fearless Marketing guru - he is a happy go lucky kind of a guy, doesn't get frazzled easily - not now - all in all we're both very stressed, and we're working on plan B in case they truly don't find our booth, and rollups don't make it here - This is the kind of story you read in books, not in real life, you know it's possible but it doesn't happen to you kind of thing. The show is tomorrow! arrgh!

it's the little things : renting a car

Yesterday I was flying to SanJose, both flights were uneventful. The surprise came in when I went to rent my car at Hertz. The line up was huge, and slow. It's late, I have been in a plate cramped in an uncomfortable seat, so patience is not at the level it usually is. I waited for 50min to rent a darn car. Under staff counter will do that to you. On top of that two guys monopolized one attendant for the whole time I was in line, I couldn't believe it, then you have the preferred customers with there own line, who were cutting in my line, slowing things even further. It's the second time in two trips I end up stuck in a line to rent a car. Hertz is too popular for its own good. Next time it's going to be another company.

chicago airport

New part of terminal B or is it just that the california flights are now taking off from another gate? Anyhow it's the first time I get to see and experience the workstations around the terminal, it beats sitting on the floor to get the laptop juiced up! When you can find a spot that is. I was lucky enough for the last little while to score a spot with no wait. You can tell the difference between terminal B and C by the type of restaurants you find. B would then be for domestic flights - so you find the usual fast food restaurants and that's about it, the known brands. C is the international terminal, so you can find not necessarily better restaurants, but at least more type of foods, and darn place to sit! I guess International flights longer connections so they treat you to a food court style place to eat. The great thing about ottawa is that you get to fly out to all the hubs in the US, before going to where you want to go!