SAA does it again: saga continues…

Some time ago I wrote about the way SAA dealt with delays on the Sunday night of the A1 GP out of Durban. No problem about the delays (after all who can control a thunder storm!) but rather the total lack of information to those impacted by a delay that in my case was actually 4 hours.

But there was another issue I had with SAA: On an international flight out of Jhb to Hong Kong the flight was delayed by 2 hours. This meant that the staff overshot their no more than 16 hour continuous service law. The compromise was to refuse to serve half of the evening meal and breakfast. As I had traded in 35 000 voyager miles to secure business class this response wasn’t good enough. I wrote asking that they reinstate my miles as I had paid for a service that in part I had not received. This is SAA’s response. The saga will not end here…

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North Country

A few years ago, Hollywood actor and Oscar winner (and nominee for 2006), Charlize Theron, returned to South Africa, the country of her birth, and shot an anti-rape advert. It was a hard hitting advert aimed at “the men of South Africa”, in which she berated us for not taking a stronger stand against rape. In her latest movie, North Country, she pursues the theme of abuse against women. The movie is inspired by the true story of the first major class action sexual harassment case in the United States — Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines.

Besides being beautifully filmed, and wonderfully acted by all the lead and supporting roles, this movie has a strong and important theme: the way women are treated in the workplace. Its a powerful reminder that even in these so-called enlightened times, we have yet to overcome our prejudices and abuses. Women are badly treated in countless ways, overtly and subtly in the world of work. This movie reminded me again how important the message of our “World of Women” presentation is, and inspired to tell it with even more conviction and passion.

The DVD is being released at the end of this month, and will certainly find its way into my collection. I have three daughters, and when the time is right and their ages make it appropriate, I’d like them to see this movie and understand the shoulders on which they stand. I truly hope that by the time my girls step into the world, the type of discrimination and victimisation of women depicted in this movie, will have been removed and stigmatised out of existence.

How to Lose Friends and Inflame People

When the Secretary-General of the United Nations makes official mention of your newspaper, its either very good or very bad. For the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, its very, VERY bad.

The paper is being protected by security guards and several of its cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of twelve cartoons about the prophet Muhammad (see them all here – scroll down). According to Islam it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. In response, Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper’s offices and kill the cartoonists. Around the world, Danish embassies are being picketed, and as of an hour ago, at least one (in Syria) had been set on fire (see CNN report here).

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The youth of today

I read TechCrunch. It’s a blog, wirtten by Mike Arrington, that documents and reviews newly released second-generation (Web 2.0) Internet companies. If you have any interest in the evolving relational Web, I’d advise checking it out.

Recently Mike did a feature on online file storage companies (read it here). This post is not about online file storage though, it’s about someone I discovered because he did the research for the post on TechCrunch. Mike was particularly complimentary of this paerson, so I thought I’d check out his site. This is what I found:

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How about doing an unconference?

We have all been to them, we all know what they are like and yet nothing changes. I’m talking about conferences in general and in some cases the strategy sessions and planning sessions that go on in the corporate world. They are generally, to use an analogy, like last weeks rolls that have been warmed up in the oven. They seem to be good, they look good, until you bite into them and then you know they are stale. The same goes for company planning sessions and conferences, they are generally stale and boring. So what is the fix. Well, according to Chris Corrigan, an Open Space Technology practitioner, an unconference based on Open Space needs to be arranged.

So what is Open Space Technology? Here is a definition from a practitioner of it in the States called Michael Herman:

“Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 15 years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity.

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The power of Beta

BBC News, 20 January, run a story on Google’s approach to releasing products “early and often”. “We want to try things out, lots of things. Our goal is to fail fast, get the product out, and see what users like,” says Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products. This approach flies in the face of traditional product releases, where Google release a product in Beta form, knowing that 9 out of 10 products will fail. So, “Beta” has become the new mantra of failure? Read the full article here. BTW, Google have underdelivered on market expectations for 2005, read here how rain is falling on Google’s parade.

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