26.09.2011 Religion, Values

You Don’t Have to Be…

“Our Heads Are Round so our Thoughts Can Change Direction” [Francis Picabia]

In 2009, I had the honor to be part in the handling team to prepare for the short visit by President Obama in Thuringia.

In 2011 the President was followed by the Catholic Pope Benedict XVI, also visiting ERF and Thuringia, the heartland of the ‘renegade’ Lutheran church. Being the ultra conservative he is, he rejected the offered hand of the Protestant church.

The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all of history. [Lazarus Long]

P.S.: God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent-it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. [Lazarus Long]

Food for Thought…

02.05.2009 IT

A Road Warrior’s Dream

These days, I just thought about all that new technologies and gadgets and why I use some and some use others.

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

21.12.2008 IT

Social Networking

As Blogs are a part of “social networking” and as I follow several blogs like the German Tourismuszukunft, I thought to share some thoughts. As usual, I do appreciate your feedback. This blog is meant to trigger thoughts and make you ask me. My statements are thoughtful, but not necessarily the only truth. Often enough, I do learn better from the exchange with you.

In November, I finally signed up for Facebook and Plaxo, finding old and new friends active in these networks. As of my “troubled history” with Xing and as a majority of my friends are international, I moved my private activities to Facebook and focus professionally on LinkedIn. Oh yes, and my reviews I add to Qype, though I did not have much time for that either lately. I publish once a week in this blog, try to think a bit about the philosophical blog on Sapphilosophy, try to answer on LinkedIn and communicate with my friends and update them on Facebook. Now I want to install WordPress on my website to move my blogs away from Big Brother Google, and my website needs some updating too… Information Overkill…

In an interview, I was just questioned that I do so much “business related activities”. But don’t we all have our hobbies? Business Development, Aviation and Hospitality are my business. And my hobby. My life. But we need to find the time first we can then invest into business and hobbies alike. On- or offline. And in honesty: I appreciate being a lot easier in touch with you than 20 years ago. And I appreciate a phone call (Skype?) and e-Mail. But isn’t a personal meeting definitely more valuable than any electronic exchange. Isn’t that, why we all appreciate opportunities like ITB to meet face to face with many in a short time? Isn’t that the same true for Sales? Yes, once a contact is established, e-communication is okay. But it does not forever substitute for personal meetings.

Food For Thought! (Share your thoughts with me)

14.12.2008 IT

Paranoid: Big Brother’s Watching Me

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) is requesting that the use of a controversial identification document reading device, being deployed at U.S. borders, be temporarily halted until thorough testing can determine if it is a potential source of traveler identity theft. According to published reports, the new device can remotely read highly personal data as an individual approaches U.S. border crossings. If traveling in a car, the device can read data on every individual in the vehicle, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips embedded in passports, passcards, and drivers licenses.

ACTE is concerned that unauthorized individuals could either resort to electronic eavesdropping at the border, or use similar devices that could extract data from RFID chips at other locations,” said the association’s Executive Director Susan Gurley.

Some of you remember my ASRA-presentation 2007, where Christoph joked about me being paranoid? Yes, I am! Not paralyzed, but careful. My life is largely “online”, I use Social Networks, have my own websites and blogs. But yes, I do consider who gets access to what and I do distrust companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo & Co. I have to use them. Some of their stuff is simply great (Google Earth + Maps), but these corporations have stronger power today than a president of the United States. Do I use Facebook or does Facebook use me?

Food For Thought!

23.11.2008 Values

Debugging Six Sigma

If you don’t know what Six Sigma is about, read this Wikipedia-article first.

I had some discussions lately about sense or nonsense of Six Sigma. Part of the information flooding today is that there are a lot more variations of “best practices”. So I do not disagree with Six Sigma, but there’s two points you should keep in mind with their or any other best practices. They are guidelines. Not a panacea. And with all such best practices, they are about what you make out of them.

For Six Sigma especially, there is a point I found far to strictly adhered to: The financial focus.
In most jobs I have done in my life, I was the fire fighter for managers who did not understand the value of a fire fighter. Because a fire fighter is paid like an insurance. You are happy if you never need it.
We call it the Saint-Florian-principle:

Oh dear holy Saint Florian,
Don’t burn my house
take the other one…

There are many such jobs in any company, but that’s the jobs, most often the first ones being cut by Six Sigma disciples. Service, support. They are cost factors, they do nothing but cover for the mistakes done up front. As there must be no mistakes, there’s no need for service and support. It’s a very typical trend for any company where managing responsibility is transferred from the entrepeneur to the finance, money driven folks.
Good ideas are declined as they are risky and you got to believe in the idea. Speaking to the financial guys, my experience is that you hit a brick wall. The same is true if you talk about “non-essential” services. Like service. And my experience is that the entrepeneur has a total different understanding of Six Sigma or other such best practice principles, than financial bean counters.

So it is not about Six Sigma or not, but what you make out of it! I think, we just learn, what bean counters got and get us into. I call it greed and fear. “CYA”: Cover your ass. I learned that from a CEO with finance background. I may live better if I would live their way. But I sleep far better trying something and standing up for my own mistakes.

What a chance the U.S. to have a president-elect who is creative and open to change = risk? I hope the focus of companies shifts from a conservatory play-it-safe back to a search for creative new ideas and do some trial. Sure, not everything will work out. But I predict: The survivors are the ones that move.

16.11.2008 Aviation, Sales

Business Development in time of crisis

Looking at the financial crisis, many companies reconsider their sales focus. What I addressed in my ASRA-presentation this year suddenly seems to trigger. Everyone can sell cheap. So if you are in sales, you need to focus your attention on the products that need sales support.

This week, I had quite a discussion about the validity of my sales strategy and business development. Interesting enough, my supporter was an airline that just recently anounced another increase in net earnings. Their German team has also exceeded sales targets. The offense was voiced by an airline sales manager, who’s company just published another loss for the last quarter and is expected to accumulate overall losses this year.

The focus of the successful airline is on the specialists: Tour operators, travel agencies, corporates.
Anyone not having a focus on their destinations is serviced with a lower priority. Effort is only targeted to the specialists who they pamper and invest time to visit and invite. The elephants (consolidators, internet portals) producing large but price-driven turnover are running aside.

What we wondered is the focus of many managers on turnover, volume and market share, not on revenue. That’s the managers impressed by “large numbers” and quick volume, not caring about cost or long term relations. How long has the sales manager been the same to the customer? How experienced is the sales manager? What is your strategy?

Food For Thought: Especially the aviation industry is in need for a reevaluation of values. If I hear IATA-secretary general Giovanni Bisignani anounced a drop in passengers by 4.8%, in Asia even 7.8%. The airline industry is predicted to accumulate losses of 5.2 billion dollars this year?!

So if passenger numbers are going down, a logical consequence is to focus an increase in yield!

Do I miss anything? Want to change? Interested in Business Development?
Contact me.

09.11.2008 IT

Information Overkill

FVW Blog just mentioned a senior travel industry manager asking, who has time to read all that information published “Web 2.0”.

In the good old times, we had no control on who said what. But it did not matter much, as the word was forgotten quickly. Today, thoughts are not voiced, but published. So word reaches more people. But similar as in the good old days, the word gets lost. In the noise of flooding information, to find the interesting part becomes valuable.
Consultants recommend to keep control on what is said and published about your company. But where do you start, where do you end? Inflation of the value of the written word. So the good old paper publishing companies recover their value. Not limited to the printed issues. But to have editorial teams that built a reputation of “quality”.

Shift Happens » It’s all about control of the information flood. Information overkill. If I seek one information, I limit myself before on how much time I invest in it. I use a timer. Usually the time is gone by faster than I anticipated…

Google was founded in 1998. Before Google, there was Yahoo. I do miss the old Yahoo. I do miss a solution that qualifies the information that I get. I get too much crap searching Google. So as Google revolutionized Internet search, what will come after Google? In 1998, Google started with 24 million indexed pages. In 2004 they had already 8 billion pages in their index. (Source: Wikipedia) That means: These pages existed. How many today? Google doesn’t tell…
[Update 2016, Wikipedia says: “In 2012, Google has indexed over 30 trillion web pages, and received 100 billion queries per month”]

So if a consultant recommends you to keep an eye on the information published about you in the Internet, better ask him/her how. To date, I have not received a decent answer. So I keep 10 web pages and 10 Blog Feeds as my personal maximum. You want me to read your blog? If I do, I ask myself, which other blog I delete from my RSS-reader (Thunderbird). Interesting, more and more friends tell me they do the same. The more IT-focussed their business is, the earlier they limit their monitored information to the valuable ones…
And on top of that list are: The company’s own website. The renowned, famous references. Blogs or independent websites? Only if I don’t find the information elsewhere…

Food For Thought.
How do you handle it? What’s your experience? I’m curious. Let me know 😀

05.10.2008 Russia

Web 2.0 and Modem 57.6 …

In all the euphoria for Web 2.0 I am lately traveling in “Modem-country” again. Oh no! Do you remember?! No high speed Internet, connections with 40K or even 33K (thousand) only, where a slow DSL is 768K, normal are 2M (million). Wow. It is relatively easy to use Google and many other websites, but then I stepped into “Web-2.0-content” and got into the World-Wide-Wait…

And I realized how many website developers add into “unclean” code, complex but unnecessary flash animations, large images that have not been optimized to quick loading times. I received mails with 2MB attachments, happy that we use an IMAP-server, so I did not need to download the attachments as in earlier times!

It’s also frustrating if you send me my entire inquiry back, as if I wouldn’t be able to remember what I wrote or look up my mail. If you quote, fine. If not, be so kind and delete the inbound mail. Ctrl-A to mark all, or Ctrl-Shift-End to mark from the cursor to the end. Then hit “delete”…
We became so quickly used to high speed, many just don’t care what the recipient uses to connect. And yes, I got a 20MB file attachment too… Lucky I use a decent software that did not automatically try to download it… Sorry, I will only read it upon return.

Best of all, I do like the Word.doc-attachments, they always look so funny when I open them with Open Office. Some even warn me of activated Macros in the document (which I usually disable) I know why I prefer PDF 😉 And sorry people, I will not click to auto-confirm reception, I find this rather annoying.

So my friends, you better think about all this gadgets you like on websites. Especially when you address an international audience, I may not be the only one who cannot use your site.

Mimizing to the maximum is my recommendation.

21.09.2008 Values

Are You Good At Selling Yourself?

A discussion on LinkedIn triggered thoughts about personal priorities in business. And keep in mind that it’s the (wo)man in the mirror that makes a change (or doesn’t).

I do think we far too much try “selling” and many people have forgotten the good old habits of reliability, honesty, trust and faith. We spend all our time making money to spend on luxuries and saving it for spare time we do not have. We forgot how to live.

Many managers nowadays aren’t any better than Ebenezer Scrooge and one just wishes the Ghosts of Christmas to visit them! What is important? The money you make? The money some unknown investor makes? Welcome to the Grey Gentlemen! If you are a manager, what are your values? Think about it!

07.09.2008 IT

Do you still enjoy privacy or do you Google already?

A German saying asked “Do you still have sex or do you play golf already?” (Hast Du noch Sex oder golfst Du schon?). Adapting it this week to “Hast Du noch Privatsphäre oder googlest Du schon?” (see title).

Following the general and naive media hype (can the media be truly that naive?!) about the new Google Chrome, German ZDF and some other more reputable news media took a closer look. Do you remember the public outcry when Microsoft was found “phoning home”? Google’s Chrome does not just call home. Your browsing history (aside others) is stored right on the Google servers. Interesting enough, despite ability to develop tools cross-plattform, the Chrome browser is only available for the Windows environment.

Another report did address the fact that Google builds “The Cloud“. As most my readers are travel industry related, you may recall that Amadeus Germany (“Start”) replaced the last “dummy terminal” in 1993 with a “PC”. Enabling storage of information locally. With “The Cloud”, you need to be always online, but you do not need a large hard drive any more, as all programs and data is stored on the servers in the web. The Google servers that is if you ask Google… Welcome back to our roots!

1 ½ years ago, at my anual ASRA presentation (4,1 MB), I addressed data security. The friends in ASRA joked about me being paranoid. Last weeks the “loss” and misuse of private government data (in large style) is all over media and politics in Europe, especially U.K. and Germany. In Germany even the official registration office (where any citizen must register one’s address) sells the data quite publicly. So paranoid? Or just realistic? Or underestimating the case?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reported to actually pick laptops from travelers without a particular security concern (“spot checks”). Too bad, if that happens to an Airbus official, who denies to give the passwords to access the encrypted data. And there is no official information, how the data is secured by the DHS. So the data may end up at Boeing quite “legally”. And yes, sure there are many ways to ensure the DHS not getting access to any privacy data. The Cloud Computing can also be set to communicate not with Google but with your own server(s) and a nice, unobtrusive special login allows you to invisibly purge (not just “delete” recoverably) all private data including server accesses in case that becomes necessary. Then you login in via VPN (access details not on the computer) and just restore your work environment. On this or just another PC… Details on request 😉

Hmmm… The DHS and politicians sure know that terrorists are not so stupid as to answer “did you pack a bomb” with “yes” (still “normal” question at U.S. airport check-in) or that they are usually organized good enough to secure their backs better. So if they know that, am I paranoid to believe them to not be interested in terrorists but to increase their control of us, their citizens?!
It is a radical change of the legal paradigm that one is innocent until proven guilty. Today we are all presumed terrorists and have to proof we are innocent citizens! All that under the argument that an innoncent person does not have to hide anything? What a complete farce!
George Bush, Wolfgang Schäuble, read my lipps: You will be going into history for having brought down freedom and established the surveillance state. Oh, sorry George Bush, you did better, you’ve become the president leading the U.S. into global wars being proven lier, using faked proof for “weapons of mass destruction”. Your “holy wars” have as much justification as the holy wars of the mideval ages! What was that movie? Wag the dog… Good to start a war to cover up the real business – such as to establish a surveillance state? The land of the free… The what? … Well done Mr. President!

So as a summary: Be careful with your private data and start to consider preference of non-commercial Open Source software, such as Mozilla, Open Office and Linux instead of Windows – it becomes increasingly a (vital) privacy issue! Not only privately, but increasingly also for corporations…