TED Talk: Purple Cows, and Being Remarkable To Those Who Care

Marketing expert and Author Seth Godin talks about the changing landscape of creative success. The old model was to spend millions on interrupting people with the message about your product, a product that is "safe" and appealing to the masses. The new model is to recognize that "the idea that spreads, wins" and that this idea must be remarkable ("easy to remark about"), different, not boring, and appealing to people who care ("otaku"). If you let these people work for you, you win.

(The R.I.A.A raises its hand.)

"But can't we sue them? I mean, come on. They're ruining our old business model, and this new one where we can bully them into paying up is pretty neat. And we save so much $$$ not paying artists--"

Seth Godin stands up, answering "Well you can, but you'll lose. People will either get their intangibles for free or they'll care enough to buy them, preferably from the source. And anyway, you're boring now."

"Aww man."

(R.I.A.A stands up, sulks, walks out as Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and I escort him out, consolingly)

"There there, cartel. It'll be all right. Have you ever considered a new career? Prison management maybe? Or smoking ban enforcement? I hear that's big in Europe now."

(R.I.A.A smiles hopefully) Ohhh!

To be continued...

The Dangers of Incompetent Consolidation

I used to work as a contractor for a small company (we shall call "AF") owned by a large company ("Exp"). While I was there, they were beginning the process of being merged with two other companies that "Exp" bought. Each had very different cultures, processes and technologies. "AF" was independent but soon after I left became under control of "LMB."

Anyways, I found out last week that a VP at "LMB" laid off a former "AF" co-worker of mine. But not just any... he was their guru, the one tech guy who had been there since the beginning, who had worn many hats including PC support, database support, programmer, and overall expert on the way the business worked from a technical standpoint. Apparently, in a cost-cutting effort, he decided that they had no need for a "PC Support" person. He never consulted with his boss, or anyone at "AF" as to whether the guru was someone who could be let go. No, the guru was unceremoniously kicked out (given 15 minutes to leave) without anybody at AF knowing about it until later that day.

Oops. Talk about a company shooting itself in the brain. Now the darling company owned by the big company is leaking their top people, abandoning ship. It pays to do some due diligence before you axe the wrong people, no?

So You Think You Can Swindle?

Very depressing Rolling Stone article about how the War in Iraq is being outsourced to rich friends of politicians and their own corporations. These "contractors" charge outrageous prices (which we taxpayers foot the bill for) and do largely nothing, and in fact threaten the lives of anyone over there who could cry foul. ("What? You don't like what we're doing? We'll stop paying for your security.") There's also the possibility that these contractors have supplied money and arms to the enemy in exchange for not being killed. Meanwhile, our government insists the surge of troop levels is working (by cooking the books and redefining terms) and that all this lovely money, er, freedom-spreading should continue.

[But] what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.

We don't have a truly free market or a Democracy once the government regulating it becomes just another business player, using its military might and media control to reap monetary benefits paid for by brainwashed taxpayers. What's really infuriating is that the Democrats do not seem capable or interested in Impeaching the whole mess of cronies along with Bush, whose crimes are against the American taxpayer, U.S. and other countries' troops, the Constitution, and the World at large.

Dilbert on Naming a Product

Computer Science = Not enough to solve production problems.

Some thoughts occurred to me today as I looked back over my career:

• My Computer Science degree taught me nothing about how to build great tools for actual people working in a production environment.
• Nor did it tell me how anything about how such tools get created in the "wild" -- neither ideally nor poorly.
• Small companies tend to build production tools from the bottom up, based on informal conversations between people needing tools and the developers.
• Once a small company grows too big or gets bought out by another company, a top-down approach takes over.
• This approach is a mostly linear flow:
  • Users complain about a problem.
  • Production or Management determines whether this problem is worthy. If so, it creates a ticket in the tracking system.
  • Developers see ticket and build tool.
• Seems logical enough, but I have yet to work for a company where this invading top-down methodology:
  • Improves the actual production for the people using it or the customers they support.
  • Doesn't waste time & money and actually cause lower production over time.
  • Isn't initiated by so-called experts outside (and with little knowledge of) the production wanting vague results like "accountability" and "return on investment" and other business buzzwords.
  • Doesn't discourage bottom-up ideas from going through the new top-down process, EVEN THOUGH the new system mantra is "Please, send us your ideas to improve the system."
• The top-down folks and the bottom-up folks tend to speak very different languages.
• Managers from both sides host meetings with minimal feedback from their teams.
• Hierarchy, a concept from the top-down folks, gets imposed to keep folks under the manager of the developers from going around and talking directly to the other teams they are building tools for.
• The flow from top to bottom results in tools built to specifications that are weak because the folks needing them:
  • Speak different languages amongst themselves and the developers.
  • Can't determine precisely what it is they need.
• The developers adopt a mentality of "Just build what is asked -- that way we are not accountable. It's their fault if they don't get what they want."
• Meanwhile, the experts in actually making the production work without decent tools get overworked.
• They finally burn-out and leave, leaving behind a gaping hole of lost knowledge.
• Sometimes, the original developers become "operations" and new developers called "engineers" are brought in to formalize the (mostly unknown) process.
• These engineers:
  • Have no understanding of the legacy system,
  • Often discourage feedback from the original developers
  • Make grandiose promises of a panacea for management.
• The panacea never happens.

Next time, I'll describe what has worked.

"Stovepipes" and Culture

Global Province is a management consulting group with an enlightened viewpoint. In its Letters From the Global Prince section of its website, there are often eye-opening observations about the world around us. Here's a blurb about culture and the lack of communication between subgroups:

Stovepipes. We emphasize that culture is a mosaic, a quilt of widely different strands running through society. It’s not painting, or music, or spices, or a night at the opera, or rap—but all of these woven together and more. Today it’s inextricably global, for culture of any merit no longer respects borders.

It is a catalyst because of ‘stovepipes.’ ‘Stovepipes’ is consultese-shorthand that describes the structure of old-style companies where the different parts or departments don’t converse with each other very well. It’s an American Express where you may have to talk with 4 people—instead of one—when you want to find out about travel, or hospital insurance, or about the points on your credit card, because the company is so compartmentalized that the left hand does not know what the right is doing. It’s every telephone company where you are lucky to be able to talk to anyone (all the telecoms are very understaffed in customer operations, maintenance, and several other areas), and you may talk to as many as 5 people trying to discover your service options if you need to telephone Paris a great deal. The consulting firms themselves are full of stovepipes, and knowledge is not shared well between different practices.

That said, the ‘stovepipes’ that really matter in modern commerce are not those inside companies but those strewn through society and scattered about the world. Neurologists understand very little chemistry—an impediment to research advances. Boutique businesses have a primitive understanding of internet commerce—without which they cannot survive. The U.S. knows little about Indonesia, the world’s major Moslem country, and even less about the Bandas where Ms. Alwi grew up. The more complex the society, the more numerous its stovepipes.

Culture weaves together the world as it is, bringing together spices, the Bandas, cooking, New York, a host of media, and much more. It provides the neural circuitry along which ideas can move. Culture knocks down stovepipes, so that a society can become interactive.

Apple Stores Succeed despite Predictions of Doom

Nice blog entry about an article about the surprise success of Apple stores.

From Signal vs. Noise:

The critics were way off…

“Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. “It’s desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.,” opined TheStreet.com. “I give [Apple] two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” predicted retail consultant David Goldstein…

Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy (Charts) stores turn $930 – tops for electronics retailers – while Tiffany & Co. (Charts) takes in $2,666. Audrey Hepburn liked Tiffany’s for breakfast. But at $4,032, Apple is eating everyone’s lunch.

The stores were prototyped like a product…

“One of the best pieces of advice Mickey ever gave us was to go rent a warehouse and build a prototype of a store, and not, you know, just design it, go build 20 of them, then discover it didn’t work,” says Jobs. In other words, design it as you would a product. Apple Store Version 0.0 took shape in a warehouse near the Apple campus. “Ron and I had a store all designed,” says Jobs, when they were stopped by an insight: The computer was evolving from a simple productivity tool to a “hub” for video, photography, music, information, and so forth. The sale, then, was less about the machine than what you could do with it. But looking at their store, they winced. The hardware was laid out by product category – in other words, by how the company was organized internally, not by how a customer might actually want to buy things. “We were like, ‘Oh, God, we’re screwed!’” says Jobs.

But they weren’t screwed; they were in a mockup. “So we redesigned it,” he says. “And it cost us, I don’t know, six, nine months. But it was the right decision by a million miles.” When the first store finally opened, in Tysons Corner, Va., only a quarter of it was about product. The rest was arranged around interests: along the right wall, photos, videos, kids; on the left, problems. A third area – the Genius Bar in the back – was Johnson’s brainstorm.

Hotel concierges were the inspiration for the genius bar…

“When we launched retail, I got this group together, people from a variety of walks of life,” says Johnson. “As an icebreaker, we said, ‘Tell us about the best service experience you’ve ever had.’” Of the 18 people, 16 said it was in a hotel. This was unexpected. But of course: The concierge desk at a hotel isn’t selling anything; it’s there to help. “We said, ‘Well, how do we create a store that has the friendliness of a Four Seasons Hotel?’” The answer: “Let’s put a bar in our stores. But instead of dispensing alcohol, we dispense advice.”...”See that? Look at their eyes. They’re learning. There’s an intense moment – like when you see a kid in school going ‘Aha!’”

The stores fight clutter in products and elements…

The most striking thing, though, is what you don’t see. No. 1: clutter. Jobs has focused Apple’s resources on fewer than 20 products, and those have steadily been shrinking in size. Backroom inventory, then, can shrink in physical volume even as sales volume grows. Also missing, at the newest stores, anyway, is a checkout counter. The system Apple developed, EasyPay, lets salespeople wander the floor with wireless credit-card readers and ask, “Would you like to pay for that?”

The interiors, too, have been distilled to a minimum of elements. “We’ve gotten it down so there’s only three materials we’re using: glass, stainless steel, and wood,” says Johnson. “We spent a year and a half perfecting that steel. Stainless steel can be cold if you don’t get the finish right.

Fun with Phone Automation Systems

A recent conversation with the US Postal Service's automated phone system:

USPSAPS: Hello, and welcome to the US Postal Service's Automated Phone System. Please choose... (two second pause) I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please choose from the following (two second pause) I'm sorry I could not understand you. Please choose from the following options. Press 1 to track a package. Press 2 to ...

ME: (Press 1)

USPSAPS: Please enter your tracking number

ME: (Press 20 numbers)

USPSAPS: I heard ... (20 numbers) Is this correct?

ME: ("May I help you?"/sarcastic) Yessssss?

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (normally) Yes.

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: No.

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (slowly) Y e s.

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (angrily) YES!

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (Press 0)

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, zero is not a valid option. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (Wall E Gator) Yay-es!

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (like BIT from Tron) yes.

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (opera choir) Yesss!

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (demonic) YESSS!

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (Igor) (breathing) Yessssh mashter

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: (German) Ja!

USPSAPS: I'm sorry, I could not understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No."

ME: *click*

Sony Imageworks India

From VFXworld:

Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) has purchased 50.1% of FrameFlow, the visual effects and animation studio based in Chennai, India, for about $5 million. FrameFlow worked on Sony’s CLICK last year.

As part of the deal, FrameFlow will become Imageworks India and will work with SPI’s main production facility in Culver City, California.

"Imageworks has taken 50.1% equity in FrameFlow and will be investing $5 million for the stake. We expect this would translate to about $20 million in revenue in three to five years," said Jenny Fulle, evp, production, Imageworks.

Imageworks will invest in infrastructure, technology and training in the new company. Imageworks India also plans a significant growth in its current talent base of 80 employees, as it continues to provide visual effects and animation services. It would be relocating to a larger office in Chennai with a seating capacity of 300, according to Hitesh Shah, ceo of FrameFlow and the co-md of Imageworks India.

Curious to see what types of projects they will handle, and how the communication flow will work. In other news, Industrial Light & Magic has set up shop in Singapore.

Start a scam in China? Die!

In sharp contrast to how America deals with Corporate Fraud, there's China.

From the BBC News:

A Chinese company chairman has been sentenced to death for running a scam involving giant ants.

Wang Zhendong promised investors returns of up to 60% if they put money into the fictitious ant-breeding project, the court heard. Wang, from Liaoning province, raised 3bn yuan ($390m; £200m) in three years, prosecutors said.

The ants are used in traditional medicines and remedies in parts of China.

Fifteen other staff members were fined and given jail terms of between five and 10 years. More than 10,000 investors signed 100,000 contracts with the company before the case was investigated in June 2005, Xinhua news agency reported.

Only 10m yuan was recovered before the case was brought to court, it said. One investor committed suicide after realising he had been duped, according to the court.

Wang's actions also caused huge economic losses for investors and many subsequently suffered from depression, it added.

Hazards of Unregulated Free Market Capitalism #17: Vulture Funds

Those of you (probably not reading my blog) who still have unquestioning faith that so-called Free Market economies (the particular variety with few if any regulations governing the behavior of entities within) will "regulate" themselves and play nice with the Earth, Nature, and Man-Kind should read this eye-opening commentary, a blurb of which is found below:

From salon.com:

Donegal International is a breed of investor known as a "vulture fund" -- though such an association is a foul slur upon a bird that never deserved such calumny. Surely, no living creature other than a human being could conceive of and carry through so insidious a business plan as buying up the debts of destitute African nations at bargain rates and then turning around and suing those same nations for vastly inflated sums.

The inspiration for this commentary is at documentarian Greg Palast's site.

Now I realize, buying debt is a common practice (at least in America) -- one can buy foreclosed houses, cars, property, etc. Given that we save -1% of our incomes on average, this would suggest there's a high risk of debt sales.

But buying government debts?? Who needs to invade a country -- if it's poor, just buy its debt and threaten to sue it out of existence with an army of lawyers. Settle with payments of property instead of cash.

Hmm, anyone want to buy New Orleans' debt after Katrina? Nothing illegal about it. It's a Free Market, after all. Would hurt the Economy if we stopped such a thing...
*petting* Poor little Economy. Silly regulators trying to hurt you. Oh, but what about the the Children! We must regulate regulate regulate! Nudity? Ban! Words? Ban! Evolution and other un-Godly ideas? Ban! Filthy World out there must be kept away from the Children! Filthy World tarnished by sinful Mankind, made by the Intelligent Designer. Oh, but Corporations -- those are good for the Economy. Good little Economy. There there. *petting*

Don't Feed the (Bad) Corporations

Public Corporate Beingz are the true top predators of the world's ecosystem. Though artificial, because of their Law-based DNA, far more powerful than individual people They also have tremendous life-spans, feeding on differences in value and shortages. Unlike people, they have specialized organs that can diffuse responsibility.

A large portion of humanity has a symbiotic relationship with these creatures, who give up time, energy, privacy, and sometimes individual beliefs in exchange for money to buy food, shelter, and health care. An even larger subset of humanity engages in trade with them, paying money in exchange for food, shelter, communications, entertainment, transportation, information, electricity, water, technology, and other physical items.

Some of these creatures are better than others -- less prone to "evil" activities like selling personal information, suing innocent people, eliminating other more benevolent corporate beingz, and excessively controlling lives of people who ought to be living in a largely free society. All of them live upon the money we provide, so we as humans can do our part not to feed the ones that misbehave.

The challenge though, is that corporations merge, creating fewer choices for us. What was once a tolerable corporation to work for or buy things from may now be owned by an intolerable one.

In my case, these are some corporations I am either avoiding entirely, or would like to as soon as it's possible:

• Comcast
  
• ClearChannel
  
• AT&T (which now owns SBC... my DSL provider.)
  
• Adobe (which unfortunately, bought its primary competitor, Macromedia)
  
• Microsoft (nearly impossible to avoid though)
  
• Verizon
  
• MCI
  
• Monsanto
  
• Sony BMG
  
• Yahoo
  
• Wal-Mart
  
• Exxon
  

Of course, even the most "evil" of corporations can benefit the individual if the individual and it engage in "investing", an unusual relationship in which the more the corporation grows (either through selling things, or by getting more investors), the more it pays money back. This can come at a cost though, such as the effect on other people's rights and health, the environment, other creatures, pollution, privacy, food quality, etc. Ultimately, these can all affect the existence of humanity itself down the road, so one must decide if this "investment" is truly worth it.