BUSINESS: First who, then what

[via Seth]

Good illustrations from Seth Godin of the "First who, then what" idea of Jim Collins.

I can't think of one world class service organization (whether it's someone selling million dollar computers to corporations or Starbucks) that has figured out how to replace great people with great systems.

The best organizations have principles and guidelines and even, yes, scripts. But time and again, they fall back to, "Use your best judgment" or "Do what's right for the customer" or "Make something magical happen" or "Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen."

When a hotel chain empowers a maid to spend up to $500 to make it right (using her own discretion), that's not a system, that's trusting great people to do the right thing.

The problems with systems?
1. if you rely on them too much, your people stop trying, and your hiring people realize they don't have to get such great people.
2. sooner or later, it's going to get copied by the competition. It's a lot easier to copy a system than it is to get great people.

Yes, if you can automate it in a way that increases satisfaction, do it right away. Use an ATM system instead of the front desk at the hotel. Use an automated wake up call system. But then put the money you save into wonderful people at the concierge desk.

NEWS: Google celebrates Van Gogh

Today, Google is celebrating the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh (30 March 1853) with this beautiful logo.

MUSIC: Springsteen debuts net-only single

[via BetaNews]

While some artists battle online file sharing networks, others have embraced the new market for digital music. Bruce Springsteen is launching the first single off his upcoming album, "Devils & Dust," exclusively on the Internet via AOL Music and Apple's iTunes Music Store.

"Devils & Dust" won't be available in stores until April 26, but will feature special content using the DualDisc format, which functions as a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. Apple isn't the only company shoring up exclusive tracks; Microsoft recently announced it had signed Mariah Carey to debut her new single on MSN Music.

BUSINESS: Google buys Urchin

[via BetaNews]

Google will acquire Urchin, the web analytics company. We are using Urchin for a while, really a great tool, very stable and performant, lots of functionalities, far better than WebTrends.

Google announced late Monday it will acquire Urchin Software, a developer of analytic solutions for Web sites. Urchin produces tools to track the performance of marketing, examine the user experience and optimize content. Google intends to offer the tools to Web site owners and marketers as an enticement to use its services.

"This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management at Google. Google expects that the acquisition will close before the end of April. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The press release of Urchin.

TRAVELLING: St.Barths (03)

The Beaches

Surprisingly, we found at St.Barths some of the most amazing beaches we have the chance to visit, including the ones of the Seychelles. There are 14 beaches on the island, all very beautiful and different from each others. We particularly liked two of them : le Gouverneur and Saline.

Accomodations

Generally speaking, no accomodation is really cheap on this island... On the other side, a very high quality of service and beautiful buildings. So it remains somewhat coherent. About half the beds which are available at St.Barths are privately held (villas and apartments). There are a very few number of hotels on the island, all very well integrated in the landscape and...very small. The largest hotel has 76 rooms, the others have half of that.

This destination is completely different as the other Caribbean places :-)

MUSIC: Mercedes Mixed Tape 06

After the great Mixed Tape 5 released in January 2005, Mercedes launched the sixth version of its Mixed Tape last week.

With Mixed Tape 06 Mercedes-Benz presents a brand new instalment of its hugely successful free music compilation: until the 17th of May 05 we invite you to explore, download and enjoy 15 exceptional new tracks by outstanding international newcomers at http://www.mercedes-benz.com/mixedtape.
The current compilation opens with Berlin's latest singing sensation Maximilian Hecker and his stunningly moving pop gem "Full Of Voices".

In view of the global music scene and true to our maxim "intelligent tracks from around the world" Mixed Tape 06 also introduces Japanese-American Nu Soul discovery Doob, four exceptional artists from the innovative Yosoy label (situated - spiritually and geographically - between Peru, Frankfurt and Malaysia), as well as Berlin's club favourites Jahcoozi, comprising members from London, Israel and Germany.

BUSINESS: simulating the whole Product Lifecycle

Dassault launched its new Falcon 7X mid of February 2005. This plane - really beautiful - is a very important milestone in the virtualization of the concept, prototyping, tests, model and production of the Dassault's airplanes. A very good example to my mind, how a piece of software can totally change the way an industry is working.



For the first time with the Falcon 7X, Dassault could save the required investment due to the first three prototypes which are normally used as validation and test platforms. The three first Falcon 7X will be simply....sold!

This fast complete virtualization of the conceptual process is based on a software developped by Dassault - Catia. Catia was developped at the beginning of the 70's by Dassault Systems as a simulation tool. All airplane producers are using Catia, including Boeing and Airbus. 65'000 clients of Catia around the world in 80 different countries. With the last version of Catia, the engineers have the possibility to work directly with the numerical models thanks to 3D-glasses, at a 1:1 scale! This allows for example to check if all the technical elements are accessible easily by the technicians during the maintenance phases.... You can imagine the kind of optimization you can bring in the field of repairing processes. Impressive.

How complexe is it to produce an airplane as the Falcon 7X?
- 27 different companies are integrated and associated to the production process
- the conceptual phase required 18 months, with about 400 engineers from 7 different countries
- they all used Catia (with a central database called Enovia) to work on the concept
- the airplane is made of 40'000 elements, 200'000 fasteners and....25 kilometers of cables

Dassault Systems, with Catia and Enovia, defines a complete Product Lifecycle Management system for:
- the conception of the plane
- the definition of all the technical elements in detail
- the definition of the production industrial process with all the integrated partners
- the management of the final "put-all-these-things-together"
- the definition of the maintenances for the coming....30 years.

The numerical model is also used in the selling process. The potential client has an acces to the virtual plane, can choose the color and leather of the seats, the type of crockery and toilets, etc.




Great example of a piece of software which is changing the complete production and conceptual process of an industry.

BLOG: ill....

Hi all, sorry for not having posted the last days, I'm ill since last Saturday, cannot do anything, beurk... See you in some days, I return to bed ;-)

Update: I enter slowly the normal world again....

TRAVELLING: St.Barths (02)

General atmosphere

Very safe, I felt as in some small towns in Switzerland. The children are always welcome, also in the restaurants. The service level and customer orientation (restaurants, hotels, shops, etc.) is quite high. There aren't a lot of people on the island and on the beaches, although we stayed in St.Barths during the high season. Local people are friendly and cool, also on the streets with their cars. The beaches are very clean. See the funny ashes they are using. Some tourists felt some kind of snobbish atmosphere. I don't agree at all: all the people are dressed *very* informal and casual, sometimes that was really too much, specially in some very good restaurants :-) I didn't see one tie during our whole stay. The local people and the tourists are really really very cool.

Getting to St.Barths

The principal gateway to St. Barths (SBH) is through Juliana Airport in nearby Dutch St.Maarten, where flights arrive daily from both the USA and Europe. International carriers arriving at Juliana include American Airlines, Continental Airlines and US Air from the USA, and Air France, Corsair and KLM from Europe.

From St. Maarten, WINAIR, Air Caraïbes, and St-Barth Commuter, make the ten minute shuttle flights to St. Barths(SBH).

Air France and Corsair also fly regularly from France to Guadeloupe.

From Guadeloupe, Air Caraïbes offers a few direct flights to St. Barths (45 minutes) and others via St-Martin departing at times meant to accommodate the arrival of the bigger planes from France.

Air Caraïbes also has sereral flights a week between San Juan and St. Barths via St. Martin. And new this season (03/04) Inter Island Express based in San Juan, offers two direct flight a week from San Juan to St. Barths.(SBH)

Locally based charter flights are also available. The airstrip in St. Barths is small, and pilots are required to have special training to land. For many, the landing, especially on a windy day, is an adventure in itself.

[via St-Barths.com]

NEWS: Mr Patrice Harmegnies, what for a dishonesty....

Laurent is actively participating to the Microsoft .NET community for a while through his very well-known French information portal "Tech Head Brothers". Microsoft has recognized his high competence and active participation to the spreading of the .NET technology with a Most Valuable Professional title since April 2002.

The management of this kind of community website is very time intensive, as you know. The content of the site is copyrighted in a simple way, not to generate money, but to keep the control of the content. A simple contact, a link to the original article and it's already over. Simple, isn't it?

Now, Laurent tells us in one of his post (English) that Mr. Patrice Harmegnies just copied one of Laurent's article (in French) on his own website, without taking contact with him, without mentionning the author, without linking to the original article. Sorry, but that really sucks!

Patrice Harmegnies seems to be an IT professional and a teacher in the field of web technology....

Mr. Harmegnies, what for a dishonesty and impoliteness! Please respect first the work of the other people... Be a little more respectful with professionals who *really* participate to this kind of communities, who *really* invest time in sharing their know-how and please avoid to make this kind of shitty copy... Definitely ridiculous.

BUSINESS: entry barrier

[via Seth Godin]

Being *just* good is definitely not enough today...

Customers don't switch for very good. What they've got is already very good! Google wasn't a very good alternative to Yahoo. It was something far bigger than that.

The only way to beat Google or Kodak or Fotomat or McKinsey or JetBlue or you name it is to be over-the-top better, to be remarkable, to change the game.

It's a great time to be a consumer. And it's harder than it's ever been to create stuff worth switching for.

BUSINESS: creativity self-assesment

[via Dragos via cph127]

How much are you creative? Try the self-assesment (about 10 minutes) of Creax.

I got a "creativity index" of 84.29 (typical: 61.46). Dragos got a 70.12.

No idea what does that *really* means. Anyway, it sounds good and the analysis of my profile is not bad for a "ten-minutes-test" ;-) What about you?

TRAVELLING: St.Barths (01)

So....to be able to prolong my last holidays in st.Barths a little bit, I will publish some posts and pictures of our travel. As a bridge, till the spring will come....

Where is St.Barths

History of St.Barths

Saint-Barthélemy is a French island located in the Caribbean at 17°54'N 62°50'W . Administratively it is part of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas department of France. The island is also known as Saint Barts, Saint Barths, or Saint Barth. In 2003 the population voted in favour of seccesion of Guadeloupe in order to form a separate territorial collectivity.

Saint-Barthélemy was first claimed by the French in 1648, and except for a century as a Swedish colony, between 1785 and 1878, it has remained in French hands. Located approximately 150 miles east of Puerto Rico, it lies near the islands of Saint Martin, Saba, and Anguilla.

Most hotels in Saint Barts are small and exclusive, but private villas are also a available. There are no timeshares. Saint Barts has a small airport (IATA identifier SBH) that is served by small regional commercial aircraft and charters. Most visiting aircraft carry less than twenty passengers, such as the Twin Otter, a common sight around Saint Barths and throughout the northern West Indies.

It is rumored that Jimmy Buffett wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise" at now famous Le Select, a restaurant and bar located in Gustavia. Gustavia, which is the main town of the island, was named after King Gustav III of Sweden, and remains as a reflection of the Swedish period.

[via Wikipedia]

NEWS: Montreux Jazz Festival 2005

Hey, some information about the coming Montreux Jazz Festival 2005!

39th edition of the Festival : some names

After a very icy winter, the whole Festival team is hard at work on the 39th edition, which is to take place from July 1-16, 2005, and is proud to announce the upcoming Auditorium Stravinski performances of Laura Pausini, B.B. King, Robert Cray, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Daniela Mercury, Brian Wilson, Alice Cooper, George Benson and Chic avec Nile Rodgers. The Miles Davis Hall will be playing host to Queens Of the Stone Age, The Hives, Audioslave, Zap Mama, Seu Jorge, Kraftwerk, Underworld and LCD Soundsystem, while the Casino Barrière will be opening its doors to Peter Cincotti, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Ritenour, Steps Ahead, Manhattan Transfer, Bobby McFerrin, Gipsy Kings, McCoy Tyner and Ray Barretto.

NEWS: Microsoft acquires Groove Networks

[via Laurent, who explained us for about 3 years, that Microsoft will acquire Groove]

We are using Groove very intensively since about 3 years. Really a *great* tool, nothing to do with Lotus Notes ;-) And, wow, what for a news! MS acquires Groove, Ray Ozzie, the CEO and founder of Groove (who created Lotus Notes), will be the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. VERY interesting!

Microsoft announced early Thursday that it will acquire Groove Networks and integrate Groove's Virtual Office collaboration software into the Office System lineup. Groove's founder, Ray Ozzie, will become chief technology officer of Microsoft and report directly to company chairman Bill Gates. [...]

Ray Ozzie, who invented Lotus Notes, is perhaps an even more significant catch than Groove's software, noted Wilcox. "Ozzie is an esteemed innovator -- and longtime Microsoft rival when at Lotus and later IBM -- whom I expect to bring much value to his new employer. From a technology and personnel perspective, the acquisition is a win, win. No doubt about it."

"Ray and his team are true innovators. Microsoft and its customers will greatly benefit from their experience," said Bill Gates. "After working with Ray for years as a close partner, it will be great to have him on our senior leadership team."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Microsoft was previously a major investor in Groove.

BUSINESS: again, a "10 things I have learned"

[via Seth]

Again, a great post from Seth Godin. This guy is incredible, so much to learn here :-)

Seth refers to a "10 things I have learned" from Milton Glaser, an American graphic designer. Have a look, the entire text is really very interesting and illustrative.

1. You can only work for people that you like.


2. If you have a choice, never have a job.


3. Some people are toxic, avoid them.


4. Professionalism is not enough, or the good is the enemy of the great.


5. Less is not necessarily more.


6. Style is not to be trusted.


7. How you live change your brain.


8. Doubt is better than certainty.


9. Solving the problem is more important than being right.


10. Tell the truth.

PICTURES: Sun, color composite

[via NASA Planetary Photojournal]

Color composite of solar features.

This composite image combines Extreme Ultravoilet Imaging Telescope (EIT)images from three wavelengths(171, 195 and 284 angstrom) into one that reveals solar features unique to each wavelength. Since the EIT images come to us from the spacecraft in black and white, they are color coded for easy identification. For this image, the nearly simultaneous images from May 1998 were each given a color code (red, yellow and blue) and merged into one.

MUSIC: On heavy rotation

Do you know Eva Cassidy?

If not, you HAVE to read this post....and to listen to one of her CDs ;-)

Eva died in 1996 when she was 33. I've listenned to an Eva's song (a cover of Fields of gold from Sting which is incredible) for the first time last year. It was a shock, definitely... I recommend two CDs of Eva: Songbird and Live at Blues Alley.

Songbird cherry-picks tracks from the three locally released albums of Eva Cassidy, whose hauntingly beautiful vocals went virtually unheard outside her native Washington, D.C., during her short 33 years with us. Lost to melanoma in 1996, Cassidy sang with an unaffected purity and an astonishing ability to make both classic and contemporary songs sound like they were written just for her. Sting's "Fields of Gold" finally lives up to its title through the alchemy of Cassidy's transcendent rendition, while other tracks on this anthology showcase her ease in the realms of pop (Christine McVie's "Songbird"), soul ("People Get Ready"), gospel ("Wade on the Water"), and traditional standards ("Autumn Leaves" and "Over the Rainbow"). Framed by understated jazz and pop arrangements, Cassidy's clear, soulful voice and exquisite phrasing make her that rarest of vocalists whose interpretations are a complement to any song. A fine introduction to a true talent. --Billy Grenier

When Eva Cassidy is swinging her way through "Cheek to Cheek" and getting down and bluesy on "Stormy Monday" on this live set from 1996, it's nigh impossible not to get swept up in her voice's vast, barreling force. Her full range, though, becomes most obvious--and soul-shaking--on the slower side, as with Paul Simon's "Bridge over Troubled Water," Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Tall Trees in Georgia," and "What a Wonderful World." On these latter tunes, Cassidy's mix of aching clarity and rich warmth has a melting quality, speaking through the body to some evanescent presence that she seems to know all too well. She improbably makes Sting's "Fields of Gold" an emotional powerhouse just as easily as she makes Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow" an offhand declaration of feeling equal to nearly anything in the jazz vocal canon. In doing so she earns her place among the great singers--artists who could take any song and stamp it indelibly as their own. What Eva Cassidy had in her short life was an unbelievably perfect voice and a musical soul that grasped gospel, folk, blues, jazz, and all points in between as if they were mere stops on a single train ride. Alas, her ride ended in 1996, tragically early. --Andrew Bartlett

NEWS: More than 60 million web sites on the Internet

[via Netcraft]

We now find more than 60 million web sites on the Internet, as the March 2005 survey received http responses from 60,442,655 sites.

The milestone comes just nine months after the survey crossed the 50-million mark in May 2004, as the growth of the Web continues to accelerate, approaching the dizzying pace of the height of the Internet boom. During the year 2000, the number of sites found by the Netcraft survey doubled from 10 million to 20 million in just seven months. More recently, it took 13 months for the Web to grow from 40 million to 50 million sites.

This month's gain of 1.34 million sites was the largest since April of last year (+1.7 million) and marked the 25th consecutive month of growth for the Web after a two-year shakeout to absorb the collapse of the dot-com and telecom industries.

Apache continued to take market share from Microsoft servers, gaining nearly 0.7 percent last month after gains the previous two months. After little or no change in server market share during 2004, Apache has widened its margin by 2.0 percent thus far in 2005.

TRAVELLING: St.Gallen, new ski resort?

It was incredibly cold yesterday morning, -14°C at home at 06:45 !! Surely the coldest night of this winter...



I was in St.Gallen - Switzerland, it was strange. I had the impression I was in a new ski resort in the Alps ;-)

NEWS: comics banned.....

[via Russell]

Oh my, that's good.
The morons at the Tribune and three other papers banned this comic. Not only is it hysterical, it's accurate (and we all know it).

It's also now being viewed by my 10,000 daily readers. Please post the comic on your blog so your readers can help counteract this obvious political censorship.

-Russ

Plus my readers (with all the requested humility), Russell ;-)

BLOG: 1st anniversary

Yeay, my blog is exactly one year old :-) I published my first post on March 1, 2004.

Some statistics, the last 12 months

Interesting to note that the number of hits per pageview and/or session is very low. This comes from all the traffic on the "atom.xml".

Evolution of the traffic

The last month (February 2005)

• 525 downloads of the Bootstrapper's Bible from Seth Godin


• traffic structure:
  
  
  
  • weblog: 78%, thereof about one third comes from the atom.xml (in January: more than 50%)
  
  
  • website: 17%
  
  
  • robots: 5%
  
  
  
  


• the two most requested web pages are the one about Fuerventura and the other about Belle Ile


• the most requested month from the weblog archive is July 2004 (12% of the overall traffic)


• some traffic surely comes from Mac users :-) => Safari browsers (about 1.5%)


• I can see readers from over 30 countries, who are on my weblog more or less regularly: Brazil, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Austria, Spain, UK, US, Australia, Greece, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Sweden, Slovak Republic, Israel, France, Latvia, Portugal, Ecuador, Hungary, Denmark, Taiwan, Poland, Romania, Ireland, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Norway, Colombia


• browsers which access my weblog