August is a great time to visit Switzerland. It’s not too crowded, not too hot and not too cold. More importantly, you can visit Switzerland just for the various events hold in August. One is the Lucerne Festival. The other is the Street Parade Zürich.
So, don’t miss it. Details in My Switzerland web site.
How’s your summer ? I have a pretty good one as I did some virtual traveling a week ago by picking up a dozen of traveling related books in the BookFair 2002. In that particular weekend, I traveled to Spain, Okinawa, Seoul, Greece and many other great places. Just wanna share a little secret with you all, I am dreaming that one day I will become a travel book collector � hmmm we will see.
If you do some serious travel planning, you would collect information, plan your itinerary and compare prices. You will probably ask a few friends, visit some travel agencies, browse a couple of travel web sites and buy a few travel magazines / books. And what you will probably notice is that there are tons of information in all kinds of media but never easy to sort out the details and get what you want, in a timely and accurate fashion.
These problems come down to one possible solution – Information Architecture. In other words, the knowledge of how to collect, sort-out, and present the information to the requesters, in a far better and intuitive way. Obviously, to master this skill, one needs to invest some precious time to study this school of knowledge …
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I bet you’re already bored by some of the updates, what about a quiz ?
You have an empty wine bottle. A 10-cents coin is placed inside the bottle and the cork is inserted in the neck of the bottle. Your job is to get the coin out without removing the cork or damaging the bottle.
How do you do it ?
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This month’s recommendation is “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity” by Alan Cooper (the father of Visual Basic).
In this book, Alan tells you why an IT professional shall make users happier, improve the process by which the users get work done and make their work hours more effective. Just in the first chapter, he quoted some very interested examples such as why a computerized car has (wrongly) designed to behave like a computer but not a car ? Why a computerized alarm clock has (wrongly) designed to behave like a computer but not a clock ? Same goes to camera, airplane �To us, we have to ask ourselves why our data entry forms were (wrongly) designed to look like a computer form, but not a user friendly paper form.
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No winter lasts forever; no spring skips it’s turn.
~ Hal Borland ~
Everything great and glorious begins with a belief
What’s your favorite moment of the World Cup 2002 ?
To me, it’s not Ronaldo’s golden double in the final last night, but it was the time I checked the transaction count right after the South Korea vs Germany semi-final game. I found that the transaction volume went down sharply during the game but went up again after the game. It’s the moment that I felt our services are not so high-tech but actually down-to-earth, it’s in pace with the heart-beat of people.
I have the belief that one day, all people will benefit from our services. One day they will share the same feeling of Issac Asimov – “I don’t fear computers, I fear the lack of them”.
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Have you ever wonder how the football team managers like Wenger, Houllier, Ferguson, and Eriksson motivate their football players ? How they manage a not-so-fit team to win a game ? You will find the answers in this book – The 90-minute Manager: Lessons from the Dugout.
If you believe in Internet and want to survive, you have to be an expert in
some technologies – XML, XHTML, and Web services. I found the following two
books are very readable – XML, HTML, XHTML Magic and Architecting Web
Services.
We will review our team structure periodically and seriously to find out the best mix of talents and skills. We are building a league of our own, be it a team of France or Senegal.
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I recently visited one eCommerce web site and found something enlightening in their “Culture Page”. I am sure we are not there yet, but hey, it’s good to learn something good from someone – especially it’s free. It says …
The Culture of XYZ Inc.
1. Openness
2. Ownership
3. Entrepreneurial Spirit
4. Fun
5. Win-win
6. Teamwork
OK, page up and read it again 😎 And ask yourself why we are not there yet.
Same as last month, a recommendation of a not-too-new book I read months ago – The Monk and the Riddle : The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur by Randy Komisar. A very interesting book about how one guy wanted to raise fund to set up a hypothetical web site – “Funeral.com”. All the guy wanted was to raise money, based on some superficial revenue projections, and get some quick money back. Eventually he had the site up and running not because of the money – he set up the site to provide grief support to the group of communities who have their beloved one passed away. And had the site renamed circleoflife.com .
The author is a master storyteller, the kind of guy you’d feel honored to share a bottle of wine with. And upon completing the book you will believe his conclusion: “When all is said and done, the journey is the reward.”
After all, it’s great if you’ve made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into.
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 