The insights of a Quirky Tech Enthousiast on his journey through the fast paced IT landscape.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.
A while back Garr Reynolds posted an article about the “Tips for creative success from Pixar“.
An interesting quote from this article is the following statement :
Accept every offer. Don’t judge it, you’ll stop it. It becomes a dead end if you judge it, but unlimited possibilities if you go with it.
To be honest, when being a junior engineer, you accept a lot more tasks without judging it. It’s a zen saying that one must approach things with the child’s mind. So approach it without judgement. Creativity & openness is something we have to maintain, as it’s something we loss over the year due to our prejudices & the context we’re accustomed too.
Source of inspiration : Wisdom from the principles of Budō: Lessons for work & life
The article from Garr states that the teachings of Budo are based upon the following pillars :
When going through this list, one can see that these points are also valuable for any business.
The Origins
Carbon copying is the technique of using carbon paper to produce one or more copies simultaneously during the creation of paper documents. A sheet of carbon paper is sandwiched between two sheets of paper and the pressure applied by the writing implement to the top sheet causes pigment from the carbon paper to make a similar mark on the copy. More than one copy can be made by stacking several sheets with carbon paper between each pair. Four or five copies is a practical limit. The top sheet is the original and each of the additional sheets is called a carbon copy. The use of carbon copies declined with the advent of photocopying and electronic document creation and distribution (word processing).
(source “Wikipedia”)
The Rules
It is still common for a business letter to include, at the end, a list of names preceded by the abbreviation “cc:”, indicating that the named persons are to receive a copy of the letter, even though carbon paper is no longer used to make the copies. The contacts that are listed as adressed “to” are required to read the mail and take further actions (if needed), where those listed in “cc” are only assumed to read the mail (when the time allows it). The aspect of the “blind carbon copy” (bcc) adds an extra perspective where one could be informed without any of the other contacts to even know!
Practically Spoken : Privacy
Need to mail a bunch of people? Add yourself in the “to” list and -all- the other contacts as “bcc”. This way you avoid to violate other people’s privacy by exposing their private email accounts!
Freelancefolder.com features “8 Ways Freelancers Can Survive In A Troubled Economy” ;
Next up some small reviews on some books I’ve read recently… Have fun!
Small is the new Big!
A book full of rants and ideas by Seth Godin. It had some good moments but I wouldn’t recommend it if you only had a few Euros to spare… 😉
Competitive Strategy
A lot of things where one would think that they are common sense. Yet I learned two wise lessons from this book. A company has to focus on building it’s brand, being low-cost or going for a certain niche. If you remain in the middle of those three areas, then it’ll lose in the long run. The second lesson is kinda basic; instead of growing, first think of losing the customers where you only have an uninteresting profit margin.
The Halo Effect
A good book for everyone who is reading a lot of management books! It puts popular management books (like for example “good to great”) in perspective by showing that statistics are affected by the “Halo Effect“.
12: Elements of Great Managing
Very good book! Yet another book where you’d think that it’s common knowledge, but all 12 rules are illustrated by “real life” examples. A very good read for every manager!
Good to Great
Probably one of the most known management books where researchers try to identify the reasons why companies make the leap from good to great. Put aside the comments made by the halo effect and you will find some good lessons in there. Just know that there isn’t a holy grail to management!
Presentation Zen
A MUST READ for everyone who gives presentations! Also check out slideshare or “death by presentation“.
The adventures of Johnny Bunko
I bought this book after reading Garr Reynolds his post about it and I found it amusing. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a manga fan. The slideshare presentation made by Garr gives you all the insight you need… 😉
About a month ago I started my own webdesign agency. So after almost 2 years of kvaes.be I’ve took the step towards entrepreneurship!
We focus on the “local” market, providing quality websites at an affordable price. It’s not “yet another high priced” bureau… The OpenSource world provides the means which enables us to provide a very interesting price.
I’m back after two weeks of Island Hopping in the Greek cyclades. We first arrived at Mykonos where we were greeted by very unfriendly prices (read: 6€ for a beer, 14€ for a very simple spaghetti, etc). Yet the island hasn’t goet much to offer, despite that they out themselves as an exclusive Island. They have some big party beaches that can be compared to Ibiza, but that doesn’t justify the negative price/quality ratio. The second island was Paros; a very small & nice island. We toured the whole Island in one day with a scooter! Next up was Naxos… seemly bigger than Paros (about 3 to 4 times). Cruising this island with a scooter proved to be harder due to the hills. Yet it was worthwhile as the island has a lot of nice panorama’s and several different vegetations. We closed our tour with Santorini. It’s essentially what remains of an enormous volcanic explosion, destroying the earliest settlements on what was formerly a single island, and leading to the creation of the current geological caldera. This provides some spectacular physical beauty.
In short
Karim Vaes 