A whole new meaning to High Society – Dinner in the sky

Just when you thought there could be no new trends, the high society (high being the operative word here!) have found a new way of spending their extra cash…..by having dinner in the sky. No, its not dinner in a plane, its not dinner on a rooftop, it is dinner suspended from a crane 50m above the street and whats more, you can have it wherever you want it or wherever a crane can be taken to.Take a look at Dinner in the Sky’s website for more info. For the measly sum of 7900 Euros (Thats over R 70 000.00 for us South Africans) you can have dinner with 20 of your closest friends and family, or even do a brainstorming session up there, the sky is the limit, literally! But hey, dont drop the cutlery….hehehhe amazing, great concept, wonder if it will take off (scuse the pun)

Virgin Mobile launches

Virgin Mobile South Africa intends to have 300 000 subscribers within 18 months from its joint venture with Cell C according to a business report article. So Richard strikes again, this time in the soft underbelly of the cell phone market in South Africa, a highly lucrative business if you look at the profits of the current incumbents. However we all know how he does things, in his usual casual attitude he intends to shake up the market and offer people a service that is useful and show them all the hidden costs and also bring in some innovative ideas like monthly contracts as opposed to the current 2 year ones. They wont be offering free handsets however, but customers will be able to pay off the handset over time. Of course, the handsets and service will be sold and distibuted through the current Virgin Active outlets and this will add yet another quiver to the growing Virgin empire in South Africa.

Bill Gates announces his resignation

Its true, Bill Gates, probably one of the most famous and richest boomers has announced his resignation from Microsoft Corporation. Whilst this will only take place in the next two years, it certainly is a significant time in the life of Microsoft and the computer and software world. In a Fast Company article, a Microsoft employee is quoted as saying it is the end of an era and this is certainly very true considering the impact Microsoft and more particularly Bill Gates has had on the industry. The article states that Bill will be focusing on being more involved in his Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and using its $29 Billion to accelerate vaccine development to combat malaria. So, who knows what Bill Gates will be better known for in 50 years from now.

Is print dead? – Long live Print!

In an interesting debate on the Fast Company Website, an email debate (not fax debate) took place between Jeff Jarvis (Former print editor, now blogger and consultant at BuzzMachine)  and John Griffin (President of National Geopgraphic Society’s magazine group) Both these men put forward interesting cases for whether print is dying or not. I wont go into the detail here, but take a look at the online debate here!
What do you think? is print here to stay or will it simply morph? What about newspapers in 20 years from now, will they be around? Interesting times and questions….enjoy!

Slow down on those fast foods

We all do it, our busy schedules and run around lifestyles mean that we eat more take away and fast foods now than we ever did…ITS TRUE. How many times after a busy day, do you just say ” I think I’ll just grab something on the way home”. Its jsut the way it is, but we will pay in time for this. According to a New Scientist Article, fast foods even in moderation are dangerous. Why? According to research done on monkeys, diets high in trans fats (the kind of fat found in fast foods) caused the subjects to grow bellies faster and to become insulin resistant, a first sign of diabetes. However, and this is the interesting part, other monkeys were fed the same amount of calories but the fat was from mono unsaturated fats and had gained significantly less weight. So, in this fast paced time, think twice before you stop off and indulge in some of that deep fried, fat saturated and sauce basted take away. It could mean the difference between diabetes or not.

Leadership – Madiba Style

I guess its a cliche now, but we all know Nelson Mandela in many ways embodies leadership and is one of the greatest leaders of our time, not only in South Africa, but worldwide. I recently finished reading a book by his personal bodyguard, Rory Steyn which tells about the many behind the scenes incidents that characterised Madibas time as President of SA. Some stories are quite funny, some are quite poignant, but mostly the anecdotes and stories tell of the depth of conviction that Nelson Mandela has to be a great leader. Having read the abridged version of his autobiography “A Long Walk To Freedom” and now having read this book “One Step Behind Mandela” a few things come to light about his leadership style and what made him a great leader. These are in no particular order and are simply my observations of a great man:

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Organisational DNA – its what your company is made of!

Thats right, its the thing that makes your company tick, its what makes you unique and what makes you the same, like human DNA, organisational DNA is unique, but in some cases make things the same. As humans, we all look alike (mostly, we have two arms, two legs etc) but there are such specific differences that tell us apart. The same is true in companies, or is it? Many companies tend to “clone” competitors. They tend to copy their market and guess what, dolly is reborn in the coporate world. So how does a company change this pattern. Well, they need to take a long hard look at their DNA, organisational DNA that is! In a great article from strategy+business this methaphor is discussed in detail, but to give you some insights, the article states that there are 4 areas that companies need to focus on to change their DNA. They are as follows:

• Decision Rights: How and by whom are decisions made in your company and who truly makes them, ESPECIALLY those decisions that go beyond the org chart
• Information: What metrics are used to measure your organisation? How is activity coordinated? how is knowledge transferred?
• Motivators: What objectives, incentives and career alternatives do people have?
• Strucutre: What organisation model does you company follow?

Seems simple right and guess what, it is! But get this wrong and you may wind up needing glasses to see the future of your organisation.

The five greatest lies in Business!

This is a great article from Fast Company. How many times have you heard “people are our greatest asset” when in fact management has no idea of what that means, evidenced by their actions. To quote the article “Paul LaFontaine left Bertelsmann Music Group in March 1997 to advise other businesspeople about radical honesty. He has lots of work to do.” “There are as many lies in business as there are people in business,” he says. Here are his nominees for the five most common lies:

• “People are our most important Asset”
• “This was a rational decision”
• “We judge people by their performance”
• “This is business, it isnt personal”
• “The customer comes first”

For more detail on why these are lies, go to the FC website here A good article…

A boomer Bust?

What will it mean when boomers start to retire? What will the impact be when the boomers liquidate their assets that sit on Stock Exchanges around the world and use this to fund their retirement over the next 5 – 10 years? The systemic effect is massive, and frightening at the same time. People are living longer and re-tyrement is one option, but how will the world cope with this. For some interesting comments, take a look at the Business Week article here.

Download the whole internet?

I am sure many of us have wished at times that we could have the “whole Internet” on our hard drives. Of course we know its impossible, the Internet in 2003 weighed in at approx 90 million gigs, a little more than most hard drives. So, to solve this problem, a company called webaroo has come up with a solution. The solution keeps a snapshot of useful info on your hard disk so that you can still search for info even offline. Obviously you wont get as many results as Google, but how many of us actually go to page 49 on a Google search anyway. An interesting service, so take a look at webaroo or to read more, read the New Scientis article here

Project Origami

Microsoft has been tight lipped for some time about its latest offering in the PC realm. They finally took the wraps off this week and presented the latest PC offering at CeBIT. The computer is called the ultra mobile PC, why you may ask. Well it is about the size of a paperback novel but runs full version windows XP. Weighing about 1 -1.5 kg, the 1-inch thick device sports a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen that responds to a stylus or the tap of a finger.

Device looks great, and it is expected to retail in the US for between 600 and 1000 US$, so it could feasibly be under R 8000.00 locally. What about the specs you ask, well it will have up to a 60 gig hard drive and battery power of up to 2.5 hours…it is being pushed as a replacement for lugging a laptop around. Note to self, must get one of these soonest, for more info, take a look at some of these websites and be careful not to drool on your keyboard!!

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS3801638897.html

Six Jobs that wont be around in 2016

In an article from Fast Company, they have cited six jobs that they think wont exist in 2016. Well, their list is interesting, but lets just think about this for a minute. How many jobs that were critical at the turn of the century, dont exist today. Much money and time is spent on getting people trained up to do these jobs and a decade or two later, all is lost. Think of what air travel did to the railways and sea travel, think of what home theatres are doing to Movie theatres and by 2016,will we still be going to movies? Maybe we can run a list on this blog of which jobs we think will be redundant by 2016.

So, the FC list is interesting, I have put it below, but click on the link to see the FC article:

http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/103/open_fast50-jobs.html?partner=rss

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KFC gets it!

I was fascinated yesterday while reading through my local Caxton newspaper to see a brochure from KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) on their latest offering….oven grilled chicken. WOW!!! In a world marinated (literally) in junk foods, fast foods, flavourants and the like, this is an interesting new strategy from the colonel. What I find most interesting is that they are punting the new option as “a matter of taste”. This may be a marketing faux pas, it does imply that their other offering (deep fried, cholesterol filled, artery hardening option..) doesnt taste as good, but whatever the case this is an interesting move on their part. So what would be the reasoning:

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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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Is pen and paper on the rise??

I’m not sure how many of you have walked into an Exclusive books or Estoril books recently and noticed these very smart looking diaries and paper based notebooks called Moleskines. I have often picked one up and almost bought one, but it kind of went against my “digital” approach to things. The marketing story is interesting, they claim on the front of the diaries that Moleskines were used by Hemingway and Matisse and so on, to scribble down ideas, poems thoughts, musings, almost like a mobile blog. So what is new? Well it seems that Moleskines are all the rage according to a FastCompany article. They are selling 4 million units worldwide annually and sales are on the increase. Even though I do pretty much most things electronically, there is sometimes nothing better than the tactile quality of hand drawn diagrams on quality paper…I think its time to buy one, will let you know what it’s like!

For more info, take a look at the Moleskine website, or read the FastCompanyarticle here:

Futuristic Qualification

While many of us speculate, comment and muse on the future, there is a 50/50 chance we could be right, more likely an 80/20 chance we could be wrong, who predicted blogging would be so big?, or that the web would become so pervasive or even, more sinister, who could have predicted that the 9/11 attacks would take place (Funny thing, Clem Sunter actually DID predict this in one of his books on scenario planning!!) However, being a futurist is not an exact science!

So what is it that everyone wants to be a futurist? We all probably like the idea of looking beyond the horison and feel somewhat proud when our trend reading ability comes true and our predictions manifest themselves.

The role of futurist has become somewhat common nowadays and it seems that most corporates have a resident futurist in their hallowed halls. According to a Fast Company article, the next step is to become a qualified futurist. It seems that there is a drive to make the field more formal in its qualification and it is hoped that by 2009, there should be a formal course and recognised qualification on the table.

So, to all of us armchair futurists, there may be some interesting future (no pun intended) for looking into the great beyond, but then again, I think if you are reading this, you will agree already.

What is Squidoo?

Seth Godin is undoubtedly one of the gurus of online marketing. His ideas never seem to age and he seems to often be one step ahead of the rest. In his latest move, he has set up a service called squidoo. In his words, this is what it is about:

“For a long time, the web has been about more. More links, more traffic, more hits, more choices. In the face of all that more, many sites (and most surfers) are not getting what they want. This free ebook, from bestselling author and Squidoo.com founder Seth Godin, proposes a different way of achieving your goals: less.�

The ebook outlines a technique that will increase PageRank, user satisfaction, clickthrough and the spread of your ideas, whatever those ideas are. It doesn’t matter if you use Squidoo or not… the idea of a lens makes sense whether you post it yourself or let us host it for you. And hey, it’s free. Once again, a great free offer from Godin, download his book here: http://www.squidoo.com/stuff/books/EveryoneIsAnExpert.pdf

Visit the Squidoo site here: http://www.squidoo.com/blog/

Amazing how the web changes, you gotta love it!

Writeboard….collaborative documents

In a similar vein to Jotspot, another collaborative tool is writeboard. The difference is that it seems that writeboard has quite a bit more functionality and it is completely free, no matter how many “boards” you put up. Also, it has some pretty good organising functions, so take a look around. The company that has developed this is called 37 signals and they have developed a few other collboration tools such as:

Basecamp – web based project management tool
Backpack – personal and small business information organiser
TaDa list – web based to do list

Looks pretty good, take a look at : http://www.writeboard.com and http://www.37signals.com.

Ungoogleable??

Wired News – The internet has become more and more pervasive, maybe to the point of us not even noticing it. This means that more and more people are leaving “breadcrumbs” on their internet trail for the likes of Google and other to vacuum up. This brings a whole new meaning to privacy and a host of new challenges for avid Net users like most of us are.

There are however a few people who are managing to avoid being “Googled” hence the name “ungoogleable” how do they do it? Well for one, they dont blog, they dont build web pages using their own name and so on. As we know, identity theft is becoming more prevalent in this more transparent digital world, so how do we protect it. Take a look at the article.

read about it here

Coaster detector whattie?

Fast Company – Two German students have invented a coaster that detects when the beer glass is getting empty and notifies the bartender. Talk about spending too much time in bars!! What it does highlight is just how much the new world of nanobots and microtechnology has added and can continue to add value. The interesting thing is that in general, retail hasnt yet caught onto this in a big way. This should be a no brainer, Pick n Pay could do stocktake in 5 mins as opposed to 3 days. BMW could be notified when a cars brake pads start getting dangerously thin and SMS the driver and tell him that a service has been booked, shoes could tell you when they need to be resoled or tossed and your fridge can keep inventory of everything in it and in time in the kitchen. So why is this technology taking so long to catch on? Is it cost? is it fear? is it lack of innovative thinking? What probably needs to happen is more everyday people like these guys need to come up with useful everyday ideas of how to harness and capture this kind if useful technology!

The $100 laptop from MIT..

Rediff – MIT has given an update on their progress on the $100 laptop that they are producing for emerging economy children. It seems that this is starting to gather momentum and it is a great idea. I mentioned this in one of my other blogs on FutureFast (http://futurefast.blogspot.com), but this could be the big break into the realm of bridging the digital divide. So the laptop basically is a functional device and has an AC adaptor for places where there is electricity and a hand crank for places without electricity (Hey, that would be nice on my laptop now!!) In fact, I am sure Barrie Bramley would have liked to have this feature on his laptop over the last few days!! … Continue Reading

Blogging on the up and up

Techweb news – Blogs are being read more than double from last year. According to Forrester research, 10% of consumers in the States read blogs once a week or more, that up from 5% who browsed blogs the previous year. RSS has tripled in the same period up to 6% this year. Watch this space, it seems more of you will be in future.

So what does this mean to businesses. Well in short, it seems blogs are starting to be positioned as a very real way to talk to customers and get insights into their thoughts and concerns. It also provides a great feedback mechanism for companies in real time, in short, a marketers dream or in some cases a nightmare, depending on the type of feedback you are getting. It seems blogs are picking up some momentum, so what are the views, should our big corporates in SA get started on blogs, and who will be the first to get them going, Herman Singh of Std bank has one, who will be next…I think we all need to remember that it is not a race, but a journey, blogging though is simply one of the routes..

India is coming…

For those of you who are unaware of it, India is on the rise. I saw this first hand when visiting there recently. Not only is the fact that on average, the Indian guys are reasonably well educated, the also tend to work hard. While chatting to some local Indian guys at the hotel I stayed at, they were saying that they earn on average R$7500 (Rupees) per month (Approx R 1200) However guys in the IT industry in India can earn up to R$ 50 000 (R 7800) per month, a marked difference. So there is huge incentive for these people to become qualified in IT and if that is so, it seems that the big Internationals are growing their footprint significantly according to a recent ITweb article. My question is, why cant we emulate this success here, we have similar challenges to India, here is where we are similar and how India seems to have solved these issues:

Diverse population: India has made English the business standard and accepts people from all backgrounds in general
Multiple languages: English has become the de facto standard
High Unemployment: Government has REALLY got behind job creation and has made it attractive for multinationals (Microsoft, Oracle etc ) to invest
These are just some examples of what can be done, I think we in SA could easily emulate the sucesses of India. So come on, lets try it! Who knows, it may just work

Innovation in the healthcare sector Please!!

My wife was feeling a little queasy over the past few days. After having been to India, we both decided that maybe it would be a good idea to get this checked out sooner rather than later (Malaria and Hepatitis being some of the nasties that one can pick up there) So we went off to the emergency rooms at Wilgeheuwel at 9pm at night. We arrived at the desk in the emergency are where the gent behind the desk asked us if we were on medical aid. The answer is yes and no. We are on a hospital plan with Discover for a few reasons.

We downgraded ourselves as we never used up the out of hospital benefits and were wasting money paying for it
We dont have children who “eat” through that benefit as many people who have children do
We have resorted to saving the difference on a monthly basis so that we can pay for any of our medical bills cash.
So, upon telling the gent that we would be paying cash, he informed us that we would have to put down a R 600.00 deposit to be able to see the doctor and then the doctors fees and other sundries would be deducted off this, but the bill could be up to R 900.00 – RIDICULOUS. We left and went to Flora Clinic where a far more reasonable R 270.00 was charged and the total bill was R 344.00 after seeing the doctor.

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