Working with a company, I was faced one day with the fact that they used Laptops for their management and sales people, but these laptops were not set up to work outside the company’s own cabled network. WLAN? A risk. UMTS? A risk. Internet? A risk. What they never considered was the fact that a road warrior, an employee meant to travel and not be in the office may need the laptop to access mail and files in the company’s environment. Instead to providing professional solutions, the company’s IT-manager shut down the network and opened Internet only with greatest reluctance. That was and is the one side of the issue.

In fact, being a road warrior, I am quite happy, to be once in a while “offline”. No mobile phone, no internet. Vacation, spend concentrating only on my company. Not the employer, but the two-legged walking, sitting next to and talking with me. Internet inflight? I know many road warriros hoping it will never truly work. It will, but it will also take of some relaxation out of the stressful enough business trip.

So sometimes, I dream of the good old days, when it was rather normal to reach the secretary, but there was no mobile phones and people were a little more patient about being called back And I hope that triggers quite some comments… Come on people, don’t you sometimes thing the same?

Food For Thought

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Remington_smoke_signal.jpg

Does it always have to be the expensive stuff? I think the success of the netbooks speaks for itself. And their success started when they used Linux as the small, effective operating system. Yes, many today are sold with XP, but if you do not necessarily need it, select Speed = Linux.

Food For Thought …

As I have mentioned in these posts before, there is a valid risk of corporate spying, data theft, etc. But… Trying to shut yourself out of the Internet is not a solution. Your consumers expects you as much to be on the Internet as they expected you 20 years ago to have a telephone or fax machine. Yes, the Internet is potentially hostile and it is not only reasonable, but also advisable to secure confidential data. But then I must refer to e-Mail encryption. There are other options, such as different file servers for internal data and external access to Internet and e-Mail, firewalled and secured.

A recommendation I lately read said to type off a URL when you get it by e-Mail. That is simply short sighted. Such an idea will simply be ignored by any user for convenience reason. If he does not understand the threat, he will not follow that requirement. If he understands, there is no need for such as the user will be aware and apply the necessary care. There is an impression in IT-support called PEBKAS - the “Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Seat”. The user is the “problem”. There simply is no 100% security in this world. It is a constant risk and value evaluation. So instead of trying to hold back the development of your company, evaluate your risks, reduce them by technical means, as well as by properly training your IT-users.

In 2004, I heard a presentation that questioned the normal user to be simply ignorant to viruses, trojan horses and the most basic other means of Internet security. To date, I get hoaxes forwarded with the best of intentions. What’s a hoax? A fake threat warning. The “best” one saying “There is a virus - to delete it do this and this” and if you do this, your Windows-PC is no longer operating.

Shall I use Internet Explorer? Why is it that even IT security experts keep that browser with known security problems as the standard company browser and not use alternatives like Firefox? There are sometimes good reasons, but that is the exception. Why is it that companies keep sending out Word- and Excel-documents and not PDF? If they’d use Open Office instead of Microsoft’s expensive commercial solution they’d not only save a lot in license fees, they could also immediately “export” into PDF (and with the free PDF import extension Open Office allows even to open and to some extend edit PDSs!). Why don’t companies incorporate S/MIME?

What truly frustrates, even agitates me is short-sighted if not even blind activism. Shut away the Internet, it is hostile. Yes. Don’t breathe, there’s all that dangerous pollution stuff in the air.

The solution is to be careful and increase user awareness. In a time of constant changes in IT, I run quite well when applying simple security measures. But it is part of our daily life and here to stay. Don’t restrict usage and application of new technologies, but emphasize your users to be careful and explain them the risks. But don’t try to shut out life, it won’t work…

Food for thought…

The publications that came along with the motto say we make the mistake to play it safe. Don’t we all know (what we call) the “egg-dance” of politicians, trying to avoid any decisions? I have too much of those to my liking lately.

Then I received a post by my dear friend Sapphire, called Orphan. About the missing link to god. I do not believe much in church. But in the wake of my father’s death, I also learned the truth of the saying “You can remove a boy from the bible belt, but you cannot remove the bible belt from the boy” (the bible belt is a very religious region in the U.S. midwest). I was raised Lutheran (a Christian variant). I believe in god. And as Yulia just said to me yesterday: It is the believe in god that unites us.

But this Food For Thought is a business blog, so why do I address something like god, the lent or Orphan here? Because of the lent motto. Decide! We cannot always play it safe. This is another recurring topic, in this case on LinkedIn Q&A: What makes a good manager. A good manager decided, stands to his decision (doesn’t blame others on failure) and reverses it quickly if needed. Not like a politician without an own opinion. First it is the decision. And no, not the decision not to decide

Especially in the crisis, the decision makers are likely to survive. They move.

Or to quote Barrack Obama: Change! Yes - We CAN !!!

Food For Thought. Thanks for sharing yours!

What I discussed with family and friends is actually the thought, why bureaucrats are that way. Why is it, that they require reports and statistics on obviously clear things? Why do they knowingly destroy instead of create? I will never truly understand it, but we are all facing them, so the bureaucrats are somewhat a part of life we got to live with.

Some discussions on LinkedIn address the same topic. What makes a “leader”? My first ever boss told me some basic rules:

1. Keep your supplier in mind. Only if you pay decently he will produce good work and only then he will remain your supplier. And suppliers are a small family always - they know each other. So once you go the cheap route, you will have trouble getting decent quality.
2. A leader decides. Get as much data at as short time as possible and decide. Sometimes you have no data. Trust your experience. Some call it “intuition”. It’s as good a guide than any made-up figures. Future holds no guarantees.

Thinking about the last sentense: We all learned that lesson well last year, did we not? But one sentence is also true and may make the bureaucrats happy. We do need the bean counters. They shall question us. We better have a good idea, what we are doing. But we are here to do something. Not to count the beans.

Matthias Köhn (GM) «» Susann Hörl (Ops) «» Jürgen Barthel (Mktg)

Addressing the necessity to give the airport a positive reputation and position it in its due place on the map of international aviaiton, the airport has received a new management in the past months: Matthias Köhn has been managing the Kiel Airport before, after a six months transition period he is now the General Manager at Erfurt Airport. The second key position, the Manager Operations (Verkehrsleitung) is taken over by Susann Hörl, before having been General Manager at Jena’s Air Field. With Marketing now in my hands, we have an excellent and competent team to properly address the necessary changes to position Erfurt locally, nationally and internationally as a reliable and valuable partner to airlines, travel managers, travel agencies and all other partners. As this is a long-term, full-time commitment, please see my address changes reflected on the website already and coming up. Pending jobs at Barthel.eu Consulting are taken over by excellent partners I have worked with for many years and who are competent in the required jobs. And I am sure that more news will be addressed before the end of the month.

I appologize to the readers, I have no real “Food For Thought” this week. If you have topics you think I shall address, please let me know!

So yes. Food For Thought: What do you wish me to address?

In addition, the Saratov project develops well, Russia is very well aware of the need of regional airports.

So no. I do not agree. I do see regional airports to prosper. Not with point to point traffic, but feeding into the international hubs. Time remains a necessity. Four hours ground travel time are about the maximum business allows before air travel becomes a business case. Some will find their niche, even maybe a major one as I suggested to the Saratov PTBs as part of my study on their situation. Which is a good example for other communities and their airports.

I also got the new figures of airport developments this month and I find quite interesting examples where and how airports position themselves. Globalization is here and air travel is vital to many businesses for sheer survival - may it be scheduled, charter or freight!

My example in the past years: Compare sizes of cities in the world with the existing of an airport and air travel. It’s a mutual development. But only cities with an airport having good flight connections nearby prosper. And I started in the business booking VIP passengers from the U.S. on the precedessors of Eurowings and other small airlines - flying little Cessna’s in scheduled service between Frankfurt and Paderborn, Dortmund and other such cities.

Food For Thought…

The Money Market

Currently the Money Market is a soap bubble. Anything is dealed, put into mass, dealed again and again and again. For any winner, there is a looser though, but no-one tells about the loosers.

Industry

You can only sell products. Money in itself is no product. Neither is “service” in itself. But did you know that Porsche made about five times more money on “financial market” than on building and selling cars?

Governmennt Funding

They are a very short-sighted remedy! Experts expect inflation to explode to 10% and more quite shortly, as all that money does not provide any additional value!

Food For Thought

Inflation will result in increased prices. So we will see another explosion in crude-oil price within the year, with a drastic impact on aviation and other industries dependent on crude oil! And we better all understand that the “financial crisis” is not over, until the markets value industry and industry products again and cut down on “services” to a healthy level.

Virtual Reality meet Real World. You got to produce (and value your producers) to be able to spend on secondary services. Cut that down to the old businesses: Farming, industry. I am educated in “whole-sale” and we learned that whole-sale is just the distribution of goods, but the goods is what it’s all about! It does not help to have streets or rails if you have no goods to ship!