Category: Ashes of Time

While most people think it is the right time to plan for year 2007, I reckon it is about time to think “what have I done in the last 10 years ?”. So I retrieved back the web site I did for myself 10 years ago (no kidding …). And I found this in the “Revision History”:

“Jan’ 97 – This is the third edition of the web site with simplified, but more graphical interface. No more frames, no more Java applets, no more GIF animations, and no more “all-look-the-same” colored left-hand-side menu bar …“

Geez … I keep revamping my web site for the last 10 years. And you know, I am not even a web designer …

In the past 15 years, every year hundreds of IT companies around the world want to show off their products in a show call DEMO. But each time only 60 to 70 companies are selected, and in fact many big names you know now attended the DEMO before. These companies will show their coolest hardware / software products to a group of 700 investors, venture capitalists, journalists and industry leaders, to attract the group to invest in them.

After you’re selected to attend the grand event, the next challenge is to demo your product … in 6 minutes to the 700 experts – and yes, it is the famous “6 Minutes On Stage”.

What will you do on stage, and present to the 700 audiences in just 6 minutes ? Will you tell them how hard you work ? Or how you re-mortgage your house to finance the project ? Or how you left your another half just to finish the project ? No … of course.

In that 6 minutes, you will only show the best parts of your product. After all the hard work, what matter most is the RESULT – your product.

Check it out … http://www.demo.com/. If you have good ideas, may be you can join the DEMO China 2007 – the only DEMO outside USA.

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The other day I read my first newsletter I wrote 5 and a half year ago, and I found the following quote still applies …

“There is some place where your specialties can shine. Somewhere that difference can be expressed. It’s up to you to find it, and you can.”

~ David Viscott ~

According to the Netcraft.com, there are over 100 million websites established in the world in November 2006. It is a 10 thousand times increase, mind you, compare to 10 years ago … 10 years ago, I could send a message via Gopher or Lynx (have you ever user / heard of it ?) to the world and someone in the net will answer me. Now, all of us are just a sand in the beach.

On the other hand, according to Alexa.com a couple of days ago, we are the world’s # 1000 web sites in terms of traffic rankings. In other words, we have only 999 web sites in front of us and around 100 million web sites behind us.

Of course all these are just “figures” and may not be true at all.

Not a small feast, but still, we all have to ask ourselves couple of key questions:

• Have we derived the best “business potential” from a site which is the top 1000 in the world, or one of the top two in the Travel industry ? If not, why not ?
• Or at least, is our day to day job can directly contribute to the business value of our web site / business ?

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We all know that,

• We shall deliver projects on time and with quality, because every single day of delay means loss of revenue and opportunities to the company
• We shall design good web site, ad banners, and jump pages; because every visit to our site leaves an impression to our demanding customers
• We shall maintain our system with minimal downtime and maximum performance, because now customers expect a non-stop surfing experience
• We shall fix bugs and recover system errors as quick as possible, as every bug and downtime turn our customers away
• We shall handle every single phone call nicely, as our customers need help and many of them are in fact telephone orders. So try link all you do to the success of the company. The job no doubt is tough, but we win together, we loss together.

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“For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?” – James Allen

It’s the 64th issue and probably getting old / slow … it really reminds me Beatles’ famous song – “When I am 64” ….

But on the other hand, we are really in an extremely interesting time in history as everything happens very very fast. And everything is very very new everyday. We have new ideas, new business models, new tools, new websites, new success stories and new failure stories every single day. It’s hard to keep pace of all these, isn’t it ?

I suppose that’s why we have Internet, websites and Portals. Everything is happening fast, the question to all of us is, of course – “Is it fast enough ?” and “Are those products / deliveries good enough ?”

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Not sure you aware of the news story – “One Red Paper Clip” or not … that’s the guy in Canada who posted a red color paper clip on his blog site and asked for something to exchange, July 2005. And in a year, he got a house in Saskatchewan, Canada … all started from a worthless paper clip. The guy is now one of the most famous men in Canada, Myspace.com and Facebook.com. And he’s going to have a tour to tell other people his story and Internet “business model”.

I am not a fan of him (Kyle MacDonald), yet. But if you read thru all his stories, news, articles in the Internet and you will find one word keep popping up again, and again, and again. And the word is “Inspiration”.

So … what is your “inspiration” ? And what is your “One red paper clip” ? … the web site http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/

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Most of you know that I am a book freak. So here are the three books I am reading (oh yes, concurrently) …

• Getting Things Done … if you think you are not efficient enough (I am), try the methods in this book. It is a big crowd in the Internet following this methodology (e.g. www.43folders.com)
• Head Rush AJAX … if you are interested to learn AJAX, but don’t want to go thru pages and pages of tasteless words. Buy this book. Great read.
• Once While Traveling: The Lonely Planet Story … if you are fans of traveling, the Lonely Planet and want to know how the two founders survive their trip with only 27 cents in their pockets; don’t miss this book … you can find this book only in UK Amazon.

And some books I want to buy … “iWOZ“, “The Long Tail“, “For One More Day” … let me know which one you will recommend …

Many new challenges ahead.

One thing that always puzzles me is how we all can deal with all these challenges, in that ever-changing world.

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One of the most popular videos in YouTube.com is an interview with Bruce Lee made decades ago and he said:

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water.
Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup,
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle,
You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash!
Be water, my friend.”

Sounds easy, isn’t it ? Just “be water” … In the old days (pre-Internet), work was self-evident. Programs had to be coded, bugs fixed, document updated, system installed, acceptance signed. You knew what work had to be done, and what had finished – you could see it.

Now for many of us, there are no boundaries to most of our projects. We have dozens things to achieve “right now”, we have dozens of mails to reply and many more work later. In addition, there are always queries like “how we can make it better ?”, “how effective was the previous stuff we rolled out ?”, “how functional is the tool we just delivered ?” … it’s never ending.

As many people say, “change is inevitable”. So it is not about how to stop or slow the change, but how to adapt the change … from within ourselves.

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All our work is now in a constant morph mode, with changing products, partners, customers, markets, technologies, and project owners. So how can we adapt to all these ? I have no solid solution, but I think one thing we have to do is to keep our mind open.

Open-minded for alternate solutions, timelines, and requirements … and even open-minded for complaints because every complaint means we are not changing fast enough in certain area(s).

Be flexible, and be aggressive to adapt change. Change yourself, it’s probably the most important tool and the only way to survive in this century.

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“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.“

– Johann Goethe