Tonight I did my ABC Radio Nightlife spot on Twitter with Mark Pesce.
The callers were an interesting bunch and they showed the diversity of users – older people, Christian and cat lovers to name a few.
It just goes to show how dangerous it is to make assumptions about who uses technology.
The next ABC shows will be the Nightlife nationally at 10pm on February 6 and the 702 Sydney Weekend at 10am on March 8.
The topic for Nightlife is using social media to find a job, but we’ll probably add some business orientated ideas to that as well.
Hope you can join us.
If the cricket finishes early tomorrow, I’ll be doing the Nightlife radio spot a week early. The topic is using social media to find a job.
It’s an excellent idea. If nothing else a LinkedIn profile makes an excellent CV and can demonstrate how wide your networks are while giving some fast testimonials and references.
Of course it’s still a good idea to keep your Facebook profile private.
Edit: The show didn’t go ahead and is now scheduled for February 6
Research In Motion’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie claims buggy software is the new reality.
It’s not. Rushing an incomplete or defective product to market simply meet some artificial management or stockmarket imposed deadline is the old thinking.
The IT industry got away with this while the market was immature and the credit boom meant embarrassing mistakes could be hidden under the rising tide.
In mobile phones the market is far too competitive. The poorly executed Storm sold 500,000 units is because Blackberry was using the better Verizon network rather than the patchy AT&T service the iPhone is tied to.
In Australia, the Storm sells at a substantial discount to the Bold or iPhone on the same networks simply because the market knows the Storm a substandard product.
This “nearly good enough” thinking from the tech sector is one of the reasons the world economy is in trouble now. It is really just contempt for the customer that has been common across many industries where fat, ever growning margins were assumed to go on forever.
If anything positive comes out of the Global Financial Crisis it will be the culture of mediocrity dies as big business becomes subject to the same pressures the rest of the economy has always lived with.
For the rest of us our products have to be 100%. We cannot afford to do anything less than delight our customers.
In a competitive market, if you are disappointing your customers with substandard products then your business won’t survive.
As usual, Sydney welcomed in the new year with a bang and we were lucky enough to be at Dawes Point to get a front row seat on the spectacle. A few of the better photos are on Flickr.
It’s a long night when you have three young kids and the seven year old was well and truly over it when we got home at 2am.
Funnily, it turns out we were standing close by to one of Sydney’s well known food bloggers. Helen has her own photos of the evening on Grab Your Fork.
Gartner Research has an article on selling IT services in an economic downturn.
There’s some good advice there which applies to all service businesses, not just the tech sector.
Probably the most important advice is the final point: Make your own opportunities.
Those who run with the pack and just try to compete on price or simply cut costs are going to be in great trouble.
The businesses that have a point of difference are going to be the ones who thrive over the next few years.
We need to be thinking about our products, our image, our pricing and the way we tell people our story and why they should use us and not the guy down the street.
I went along to the Sydney launch for Global Entrepreneurship Week tonight.
What an absolutely interesting evening! There really are a lot of great ideas out there and plenty of talented people making them a reality (many of them 20 years younger than me).
More on this when I’ve had some sleep (in three days times).
I also learned about the Kauffman Foundation. More on that later too.
I’ve long recommended AVG for home users. But since the release of version 7.5 there’s been a slow decline in the quality of both the support and the product itself.
Flagging a critical Windows dll file as a virus is a real worry. If that had happened to me, my first thought would have been that I’d stupidly infected myself with something.
The lesson when a result like this comes from the blue is to treat it with suspicion. If one virus checker flags a problem like this, hit it with a couple of others to confirm the problem.
I think I’ll have to change the free anti virus recommendation on the PC Rescue and IT Queries websites. It looks like Avast! is the best choice and I’ll keep AVG and Anti Vir as the alternatives.
I’ve always believed you shouldn’t say anything on the net that you wouldn’t like to be seen next to your photo on the six o’clock news.
Well you also shouldn’t put anything on your Facebook profile your boss might read. This is a message between a manager and an ISP tech staffer in Sydney last week.
From: The Boss
Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:35 a.m.
To: Kyle XXXXX
Subject: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008Hi Kyle,
Please provide a medical certificate stating a valid reason for your sick leave on Thursday 21st 2008.
Thank You
The Boss
===========
From: Kyle XXXXXX
Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:38 a.m.
To: The Boss
Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008Boss,
1 day leave absences do not require a medical certificate as stated in my contract, provided I have stated that I am on leave for medical reasons.
Thanks
Kyle XXXXX
=========
From: The Boss
Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:39 a.m.
To: Kyle XXXXXXX
Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008Hi Kyle,
Usually that is the case, as per your contract. However please note that leave during these occasions is only granted for genuine medical reasons. You line manager has determined that your leave was not due to medical reasons and as such we cannot grant leave on this occasion.
The Boss
=========
_____________________________________________
From: Kyle XXXX
Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:43 a.m.
To: The Boss
Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008Hi Boss,
My leave was due to medical reasons, so you cannot deny leave based on a line manager’s discretion, with no proof, please process leave as requested.
Thanks
Kyle
=======================
From: The Boss
Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:50 a.m.
To: Kyle XXXXXXX
Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008Hi Kyle,
I believe the proof that you are after is below
Whoops kyle is busted
This article originally appeared in Smartcompany on October 21, 2008. This is the unedited version.
While Canberra looks after the big end of town, smaller businesses are going to have to fend for themselves. Here’s six tips to harden your business against coming bad times.
Six Tips to toughen your business
It takes an economic crisis to get some really bad analogies going. A great example is Henry Paulson’s claim to Congress last July that he had a bazooka to use against the bad guys.
Now firing bazookas into storms is probably not a good idea. In fact, if the thing was actually loaded Hank might have bought down Ben Bernanke’s helicopter, which might not have been a bad thing for those worried about hyperinflation.
These silly and pointless parallels show how out of touch the US regulators and government have been in the last few years, unfortunately last week’s stimulus package shows things are little different in Australia.
If Canberra’s aim is to maintain employment then the stimulus would have been far better used to encourage investment, for instance increased depreciation allowances on new capital works or a payroll tax holiday.
Even better would have been money, not studies, into training, research, education and infrastructure. All of these are real investments that generate employment and have all been neglected by both Liberal and Labor, state and Federal governments for at least the past 17 boom years.
Instead, it’s business as usual in Canberra with consumption and property speculation being favoured over real, long term investment. From the assistance given to the banks it’s also safe to say that the big end of town will be looked after as well.
The message from Canberra is clear: Small to medium business can go whistle. If anything, we’ll be expected to pay the taxes once the surplus has been squandered.
To pay those taxes, our businesses are going to have to survive the downturn. We need to act early, firm and decisively to ensure this.
My business had a near death experience in the 2001 IT downturn, these are a few lessons I learned from that and the 1990s recession;
Watch your cash flow. It’s become fashionable in recent years to say “I don’t need a business plan”. That’s sometimes true when times are good but never when times are bad. Watch that cash flow spreadsheet closely.
Get your costs down. Eliminate anything unnecessary and look closely at how you can reduce your outgoings such as rent, vehicles, phones, computers, power and travel.
Don’t tolerate bad debtors. Tighten your payment terms and stick to them.
Eliminate the trouble areas. A small group of products, customers, suppliers and employees are responsible for 80% of your problems. Indentify them and get them out of your life.
Reduce inventory and product lines. Get rid of it anything that isn’t performing. The fact Coles are experimenting with this at the moment shows how important this is.
Reduce your debt. A lot of businesses have been kept afloat by debt and many smaller ones have relied on the proprietor drawing down on their home equity. Those businesses are about to go bust: Don’t be one of them.
There’s hard work ahead for all us and last week has shown our governments are going to be, at best, useless. You need to act decisively to guarantee the future of your business.
It’s also a good idea to steer clear of ministers and Reserve Bank governors wielding bazookas.
