Karate

For some parents it's hockey, others it's soccer, with for now it's karate. It's no where as demanding as hockey for the parents. That is a good thing, as martha would say.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Ottawa high school technology program

I can't tell you how happy I am this morning. It's the launch of high school technology pilot program. It's been two years now I've been collaborating with kelly daize at ocri, Roxy at oce, and then the bigs guys started noticing and next thing you know we have marcellus mindel from ibm, rob from nortel all pitching in and getting things to fall in place. I probably forget tons of people who made this possible - thank you all!

It's the start of kids getting to be hands on with technology to program and do very exciting things with hardware and software. I hope this introduction will have the same impact the first time I wrote a basic program to convert miles into km will have on them. For me a light went on, I could do things with this beige box. Now they will be developing games and putting computers together or rip apart blackberries, different thrills for different times.

All in all I hope we can get some of those kids, boys and girls to discover how great sciences and engineering can be. the most interested ones will go to university and ultimately we will all be winners, students will have discovered a career they are passionate about and ottawa/canada will have a bigger innovators talent pool.

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Using Usability and End-User research to create great software

Image via WikipediaIf you have ever wondered what the role of End User Research is all about or what tools and techniques are helping figure out what a user really thinks, then this is for you! We all want to create more succesful products, and getting your users on the bus will go a long way - if you know what to look for, how to get it and how it integrates in your release cycle.

We're holding a seminar on October 1st from 1pm to 2pm eastern and it's free. Please join us to learn more about how Using End User Research can help you create great software for your company. We hope to help you Debunk common usability myths and UX common tools and techniques. Enroll here if you're interested.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Connecting UX to Real Business Value

i-centre

Interesting fact- 1percent in conventional recovery is 22billion gain. Talk about an incentive to improve!

Goal of alberta is to Go toward zero emissions for extraction. Just like conventional oil, alaska and others. The battle is that our oil is considered as dirty oil. The main culbrit is the open mining we're doing to get to oilsands that are on the surface. The treatement of the bitumen requires lots of chemical using the open mining concept and it leaves lots of residual waters that we can't do anything with - they are called the tailing ponds. Now unfortunately it's still how the bulk of the oil is extracted, in 5yrs in won't be the same, the new processes will be taking over. New processes that are much cleaner in terms of ecological footprint.

Water consumption even with the new and much cleaner processes are making extensive use of water. It's funny that water here is gold, it's the expensive resource used in order to get the byproduct - oil. So people, researchers are working at optimizing where water is used in the process in order to increase the roi. The interesting point to make about the roi in this case is that it factors the ecological footprint of the activities as a whole, and I think this is smart.

To give the right imagery about oilsand, the extracted or to be extracted resource viscosity is just like peanut butter that you would need to push through a straw. So increasing the viscosity in the extraction process is important so that it can go straight through the pipeline.

The new processes being deployed now are going to use between 20pc and 50pc less water, while others are not using water at all but are generation more emissions of co2. So it's all compromises for now. From the slides I saw it looks like they have a 10 to 1 improvement in water consumption to make overall process for our oil to not be considered dirty oil, or wasteful. The researchers seemed optimistic that the right things are being done and that it seems that this is an achievable goal. The question is how long?

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Want to make the ground shake?

Here is the device you need, let me tell ya! With probes all over in the ground they use this to get imagery of the soil.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Great customer experience

In calgary this week - there is an energy here in the air that I haven't seen in a while. Lots of construction. The weather is just fantastic.

At the hotel(hyatt) the people are on uppers - they energetic and it's contagious. Everyone from the manager to the support staff are spot on service wise, positive tone, ending their sentences with energy.

Just for the wakeup call I was taken aback both when setting it up, and this morning when the phone rang. First when I set it up, the operator was again extremely nice and professional at the same time engaging. Then when the phone rang, it was a human, not a recording, at the end of the line asking me if I wanted another call in 10min and what the weather was going to be like, and if I would be needing breakfast this morning. The whole thing is so natural, not forced, it's a work of art, it comes off so genuine.

It strikes me that in the hospitality business your energy and good spirit are essential, just like in the services business. Well here I know just after one day that every single one of the employees has gone through a customer interaction course and how to make us feel good. Or maybe people in calgary are just naturally super nice people!!!
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Google offline access and contacts

So I have switched a few months back to google apps. I mainly use the email client, and calendar. The spreadsheet, text processing are not nearly as useful, as I often get - can't open this file you will have to download it... The email client is very effective, fast, productive, name it, I like it. What I truly don't like about mail and calendar is that they are still not available offline.

It's mis-informed of google to think that I will always be online. I like to work offline, not only because sometimes I'm on a plane, but because I like to shut things off - cut myself from the world in order to get things done. I will make myself unavailable from IM, Skype and etc, and just plow through my to-do list(Remember the milk, which is available offline). I need just like in the physical world sometimes to shut my door, put on my headset, and hunker down to get stuff done.

With Gmail or calendar I can't do this, without being online and interrupted by incoming mails. My problem is if emails come in my inbox I will always find one that is important enough for me to stop what I'm doing now  and answer it.

• I would like Google to make gmail, contacts and calendar available offline. Google can you do this? I hope Chrome is a step in this direction and not just smoke and mirrors.
  

Now for the real rant... Can you say "address book" - no really what is this half baked implementation of contacts in gmail. Google are the champion of new generation of internet companies, yet they see themselves as an island when implementing the address book. Contacts need to be available wherever I am, using whatever device I want. Scream whatever you want about outlook, but you can sync your contacts with just about anything you want.

Outside looking my conclusion is google is an engineering driven organization. How many engineers in your organization really care about their contacts enough to enter them religiously in their address book and are willing to sync them regularly with their mobile for example? I suspect only a few - because they don't need to have access to their contacts when not in front of their computers.

If google was more driven paying attention the non-consummers of google products in addition to their target market, the former being always bigger than the later,  I don't think we would have the same features available in the gmail address book. Engineers at gmail are concentrating on making sure that the hot-keys are there, the emails are organized in a new and eleguant way, efficient and intellectually attracting.

My opinion is you see a lot of engineering prowess from Google, but not nearly the same energy in market assessment smartness. Google is about helping you find information - it's about time they get on the band wagon and live the motto in this case.

• I would like Google address book to sync with my Blackberry reliably.
  

end rant.

culture of fear

Image via Wikipedia Things aren't pretty in the financial industry in the US these days. Everyone is now getting very nervous. Market fluidity is at risk as nobody wants to lend money to anyone else for fear of not getting their money back.

I can't help but think again of the Michael Moore movie "Bowling for Columbine". "Culture of fear" among other things - is the message that resonates for me in this movie. When we're in fear, we're easy to control, that's the theory. The medias are pushing this motto to its limit in the spirit of keeping us informed. Everyone trying to outdo every one else with more and more impact full headlines.

So now this morning with the Lehman brothers bank going under banckruptcy protection. It's very bad 600B in debt will go nearly unpaid, so many banks will be left short.

Listening to the radio this morning - we're set for another 1929 depression. I don't know what the impact of Lehman brothers filling for bankcrupty in  long term will be. I know that the media have my full and undivided attention about the subject now.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Turmoil in Wall Street
• Purchase of Merrill Fills a Dream for a Bank
• Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy as credit crisis bites
• Financial turmoil as top bank collapses
• Stocks set for big selloff

email communications

Image via Wikipedia How many times do you send emails to your friends, colleagues, your boss asking them questions and you get an email back with some of the questions answered or ones you didn't ask. It's a problem, I do it, we all do it - consciously or unconsciously - we, as the email recipient, we decide on what is important to answer vs not in an email. Can you imagine doing this in a conversation over the phone or in person? We've all been raised to answer when somone asks us a question. In an email it's different, because we're in control of the keyboard, and no-body is there to remind us that it's important we answer all the questions.

I don't mean to make a thesis out of this but - here is my rule from now on - if I don't believe a question is worth answering, I will make it explicit I'm not answering it because:

• I have answered it elsewhere in the text say why, 
• if I'm not answering it for some other reasons, then it's the perfect excuse to pick up the phone.

 All our communication means are meant to work together. I have to remind myself that it's not one versus the other, but IM is good for one thing, then maybe it's a phone call to complete that IM. Email is good up until a point, then phone is best, or in person.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Yammer Wants To Bring Twitter To Your Firm
• Email Is Not Addictive If You Treat It Right

In bruges - movie!

A movie colin farrel. What is hell and what is heaven. What is hell to one can be heaven to someone else. This is bruge a nice city for tourist and mediaval buildings, but if you're a young irish with something on your conscience it ain't the place to be. And so the movie goes to treat a very deep subject with a good sense of humour. It's a dark comedie and we're dealing with dark people, whom once in a while have good conscience but in their own ways. I really liked it, go for it if it's available in your neck of the wood.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

IBM to Snap Up Nortel?

I don't know where he got this from - in any case my 2 cents - it's far fetch -
http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2008/09/04/ibm-to-snap-up-nortel/

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Business of software - mike milinkovich

Mike just took the stage to discuss ecosystem creation and best practices in building one. Mike for thos who don't know is big cheese of the eclipse foundation, he lives in ottawa when not traveling the world to evangelise eclipse. My bet is he is the only canadian speaker here this week. He is also a member of osef(ottawa software executive forum) - that's why I know him and the reason I'm going to ask him all those embarassing questions.... Not!
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Business of software - richard stallman

Imagine a root canal, no imagine a pain so bad that you look forward the root canal - this is how he started his talk, not what I think about his talk!

The guy has no slides, just him talking about patents without his shoes!

----------------------------
FMB on the BB

Business of software - YCombinator - Jessica Livingston

Image via Wikipedia Jessica wrote the great book founders at work, which I briefly talked about here. The bottom line when you start a business, - you don't have all the answers, get over it. They have made 102 investments up until now since they have founded Y Combinator. They are doing small investmentsabout 25k from what I understand. In there 102 investments, every single one of them had to adap, change their original ideas to get to release. startups are productive in part because there is no politics, no meetings, no comittees, no reviews. It's a theme I hear more and more and I'm thinking I will need to pay attention how addicted to meetings we are at Macadamian. Startups are also more productive because they have a culture of ask for forgiveness, as opposed to ask for permission. In a way I find this so right, and this is what I would like us to do, but somehow I don't think this is what we're doing. Ask for foregiveness is about empowerement, while ask for permission is restrictive. Some more thinking required for me there. Another conclusion she came back with - she mentioned she always wondered why people CEO at the top were so pig headed sometimes. After looking at so many startups and writing her book, she says that determination is so important when you strart a business, that ultimately the ones that are not determined enough are the ones which will die, as such it's a natural selection. Interesting supporting fact - lack of determination is the #1 reason of failure in the first 6months of startups they invest in.

Related articles by Zemanta

• DreamIt Incubator Holds Funding Day To Commemorate First Graduating Class
• Why Small Really Is Beautiful
• Is Y Combinator the University of Internet Startups?

Business of Software - SourceGear - Erik Sink

Erik has founded sourcegear, and has been at it ever since. The first product we used from them was source offsite. It was really useful in the early dasy at macadamian because it made our life much easier when using sourcesafe remotely over a single channel isdn line at the time we were 5 on that 64kb link, no jokes! Thanks to Erik - we didn't go insane because of source offsite. What I learned yesterday was that the only involvment he had in this product was trying to kill it. It's not his code, and he didn't think the product had any legs - 15M later in revenue, it's all water under the bridge. His presentation was about how parenting is similar to the life of a product in a company. All the stages of what our kids go through and the parallel they have in the life of a product. The presentation overal was good, but I can't help but think the metaphore was stretched a little too far. It's a problem I see in us techies doing presentations. Erik is a smart guy, a good software developer, and in his own smartness is pushing things too far to show the model holds up. Enough of the medium, the content was good. for take aways: 1)product manager are about defining how your product is a purple cow, unique and something people will want to talk about. Basecamp from 37signals, for every users they have bought in has gotten five more people use it - that's a strong virus spread! 2)once the product is out - don't be afraid to course correct - you will need to be successful. 3)to cross the chasm - you need to listen to what customers are saying, and non customers alike - they have crazy ideas, pulling you in all directions. One or two of those will be the one getting you across the chasm. 4)value peace and quit for programmers, encourage uninterrupted time, reduce interruptions, meetings.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The early days: How 37signals built buzz out of the gate
• Ask 37signals: How do you document code?
• Ask 37signals: How do you keep up with new technology?
• Nine Company Blogs That Are Fun For Anyone to Read

Business of Software - 37signals - Jason Fried

37Signals are very original guys. They do things differently, and their reality is allowing them to be very different. The question which is fueling which: is it because of their reality they are the way they are, or is because they are the way they are that they have this reality. Enough of philosophy. Jason shared with us some of his thoughts, some of them I want to point out because I connected with them.

• Decisions are temporary - meaning it's ok to change your mind when conditions are different.
• Focus on what doesn't change - what are the constants of your business, they should be the things you plan around. What's going to be the same thing in your business ten years from now, and how does this shape the decisions you have to make today.
• Follow the chefs - batali, flay and others, they are on tv outsharing, out teaching, out contributing. They are telling us this cooking stuff isn't that difficult, follow us. It's much cheaper to out teach your competition than out spend it, start sharing! I will have more post on the chef stuff because it goes further than that in my mind.
• Target non consumption, or non consummers. They are people with needs but not buying for one reason or another. The existing solutions are too pricy, too complex for the non consummers. The existing products are always getting more and more feature marching toward the stratosphere of functionality and complexity. This means they are leaving a big void at the low end, there are huge opportunities in delivering solutions that solves simple problems - look at basecamp.

Related articles by Zemanta

Business of Software - Reddit - Alexis Ohanian

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown You know there are kids you see and you just know they are going to go places. Alexis is one of them, he is the co-founder of Reddit. He was doing a presentation this afternoon, not really serious, and he proved he's a great presenter. His presentation's title was about "How to start, run and sell a web 2.0 startup" It was all fun and games. So here are two good clips:

• To describe what is web 2.0: you have one sentence to know - "It's like ____ but with ____". So it would go like, my startup is xyz, it's like YouTube but for accountant. I thought that was funny, or it was funnier live!
• on How to sell - first you're not here to save the world, you're about getting filty fucking rich, let the hippies save the world, when has a whale bough you a porshe anyway!

Business of software - seth godin

What a great speaker! Energetic and insightful. One of the few persons I have seen present who can get away with no words on his slides. This guy must be making presentations for a living!

As for takeaways - lots of the material covered is stuff he has written about, purple cow, permission marketing etc. Hearing it live makes a big difference, it's more insightful.

1)But here is how I would sum it up - as the consummer, we're all host, ready to carry a virus and spread it. The objective of my company thus has to be to create a virus so that it can spread far and wide. The virus is a prd a srv and the experience we create delivering it has a unique value proposition and it makes people want to talk about it, infect others. Your product must remarkable and people will talk about it.

2)Money or opportunities are at the edge of the spectrum, not in the middle. At the edge people wait in line to buy your product. To me it means you can't be all things to everyone. You can't be both a hummer and a mini at the same time. Both cars up until very recently made very good money because they are not middle of the road. Or another way to look at it is one can make money in scarcity or ubiquity. He then used the seinfeld example. Scarcity seinfeld - his shows in vegas, you want to see him, go to vegas, and pay 250 to go to his show, he makes good money filling up the place. The ubiquity seinfeld - the tv show - the advertisers are paying for us to see him on the tube. The is no middle of the road here.

3)The new medium must be used, blogs, social networks, the communities etc. Your prd must must work this new media to its advantage. It's not the new media that will fit your prd. Own your media channel and invest time and energy to develop it and build it.

4)Your customers have a voice now. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for a up or down - what is it going to be? Customer experience is so important.


----------------------------
FMB on the BB

Business of software 2008

I'm at business of software in boston. I'm meeting bunch of people passionate about creating great software with the intent of creating commercial success. The energy is very high - speakers are good, with good insights and great perspective - this is going to be a hoot! Follow on twitter for up to the minute thoughts. I will have more impressions and insight on the blog as I find time to blog, the schedule is back to back!
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

time for the funniest car reviewer quotes of all

Take two minutes and have a read, these quotes are just hilarious. My favorite is the Ethiopian Transvestite one or is it the one about cuba or maybe the cyclist one. All right just read them and let me know what you think!

google chrome - and the future of computing...

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The cloud's Chrome lining - it's nothing less than the future if computing is at stake brothers and sisters, hang on tight to your seat cause it's going to be a wild ride... I like the chicken little movie quote where chicken little's dad says "son I got to warn you in in 3seconds I'm going to start screaming like a little girl!" - because of the catastrophe looming for a bit of context. No not really, it's not going to happen this way. It's not going to be a bomb dropping on us, but we're going to progressively move more and more things in the "cloud" (to be one of the cool kids with the cheezy jargon!). Too often on the web the early adopters we all follow us techies just slam the ball out of the park, when really something is going to take years to happen.

I see myself in the future less and less dependant on the piece of hardware I use to access information(my laptop), and more dependant on the services delivering that information(google apps). I think it is good, it makes me more productive, I don't have to have my laptop with me all the time, I can use other devices to accomplish what I need to do.

MS and Google are coming at the internet opportunity from opposite ends. Each trying to leverage their assets so they can lock us in. I sincerely wish MS would move faster, for example with mesh, I have been a windows users since the early days, and for all the whining and bitching it's still the PC platform I feel most comfortable in, and mesh is proving very useful to me.

Google also needs to move faster, because with their web centric view, they don't sit well with the scenario where you're not always online. I don't want to settle for a lesser experience as a consumer. Gmail is great, although not quite there from both a functionality and stability perspective. On the other hand MS outlook and vista combined are so darn slow, that I have no choice to accept the google compromise.

anyway amen to Google's project, it's only going to be good for me - as it will rush MS to offer something better. I just hope MS gets going before I'm gone!