tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60813617800794347872020-11-25T10:20:47.206+01:00Business or Pleasure? - why not bothMartijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.comBlogger356125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-89107067960962854122020-03-19T20:46:00.002+01:002020-07-15T08:53:14.517+02:00Interactive Coptic-English translation of (the gospel of) Thomas<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I9JsgoLSKU8/XnPJojvOkZI/AAAAAAAACHI/ktMQ7toykeYSiTWSykEscIL1K8hrCykXgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Book%2Bcover%2Bv10.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I9JsgoLSKU8/XnPJojvOkZI/AAAAAAAACHI/ktMQ7toykeYSiTWSykEscIL1K8hrCykXgCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Book%2Bcover%2Bv10.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><br />The goals behind this translation are twofold: this is the most pure translation that can exist, and it is fully traceable: each and every word is accounted for and can be verified with one single click by everyone, as long as there is access to the Internet: that is where the full and complete <a href="https://coptic-dictionary.org/search.cgi" target="_blank">online Coptic Dictionary of KELLIA</a> is at.<br />If no access, click on any word and quickly verify it against the index where an excerpt of the thesaurus is presented<br /><br />This translation will let you breathe the atmosphere of over two thousand years ago.<br />Anyone can verify every word of this translation, anyone can deep-dive into the original Coptic text of Thomas.<br />And the translation is fully normalised: every Coptic word has its own English word, and vice versa. Doubts about a translated word? Click on the English translation and quickly verify it against the index where an excerpt of the thesaurus is presented. Still not satisfied? Click again on the Coptic word itself that leads you to the full dictionary; compare it to similar words, their shared root(s) and origin(s), and make up your mind<br /><br />The translation is available on Amazon in most countries: try <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B085DJ5QZ5" target="_blank">Amazon UK</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B085DJ5QZ5" target="_blank">Amazon NL</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/aw/dp/B085DJ5QZ5" target="_blank">Amazon US</a>, for instance.<br />Don't have 10 bucks or euros to spend? Pity, the Kindle has a fine search function although the orange underlines are hideous, unfortunately inherent to the Print Replica format .<br />But you can try your luck at academia.edu where my other publications are: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/42110001/Thomas_translation_-_literal_fully_normalised_and_interactive" target="_blank">the translation is here</a> and can be read online, or you can register and download it: no worries, there are no checks, all you need is an email address, or you can sign up with Google, FB, etc<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mD8BxzLczns/XnPOfA8jZOI/AAAAAAAACHg/GJREIZcAQskA51h50SjvcgwYMrjOVl3ewCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Preview%2Bv10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mD8BxzLczns/XnPOfA8jZOI/AAAAAAAACHg/GJREIZcAQskA51h50SjvcgwYMrjOVl3ewCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Preview%2Bv10.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />Enjoy. And may your house be forever destroyedMartijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-18602920208349772912019-12-15T14:14:00.001+01:002019-12-15T14:14:13.975+01:00Why I left, and the reason for my returnI pretty much left Twitter - and my blog - in 2013. Whereas I usually quit cold turkey, this time I lingered a bit, publishing a handful of blog posts in 2013, even one in 2014, and I'm sure that my Twitter activity followed much the same pattern; I've always said that the combination of the two is what upholds my 'Circle of Inspiration'.<br />Why did I leave? I became increasingly aggravated with the downsides of Twitter's going mainstream, and after 4-5 years on Twitter I also was fed up with all the 'social advocates', the 'social business revolutionaries'; evangelists in general who were little less than nobodies last week, likely fired yesterday, and today suddenly found themselves a new stage where they could proclaim whatever they wanted and thought that would sell - or at least would chime in with the hype(s) of the day<br /><br />So. What has happened in the past 5 years? A lot, most of which is private stuff, involving parents, Alzheimer's disease, and a lot of less pleasant stuff that simply is in the small print that you ignore when you sign the Contract of Life. It is what it is.<br />My dad died November 2014, fortunately, after 1.5 years in a nursing home. The good news is that, while he had to relive the war on his way down to the very depths of Mr. Alzheimer's pits, when he came out as a blank slate he was a very pleasant blank slate. While there is immense sadness and powerlessness in watching your beloved go down the Dementia Drain, it was comforting to see that the new Dad who was reborn (or is that de-dualised?) was a friendly, kind, happy chappy. He would talk for minutes or hours, to anyone or anything (he seemed to have a fondness for the curtains in the hallway), and while he did have a few moments of rage early on in the nursing home, those turned out to just be part of the deal.<br />It all changed when he got pneumonia. He was visibly in pain (I won't have to explain that communication had become impossible a long time ago, and had reached the level of general sympathy and empathy only), and it was terrible. Two weeks afterwards he got a 'mini' stroke, and became half-paralysed and confined to bed. There was little to no hope of him moving back to mobility, and we were all glad when a few weeks after that he finally died<br /><br />The funeral was great, as he had been a teacher for his entire working life, and many people showed up (newspapers do have purpose sometimes) to say goodbye and tell their story of him - every single one saying how he had made a great positive impact to their life, and how they never forgot about him<br /><br />So. After that there was still Mom, all alone in the house, fairly advanced in the barbs of Mr Alzheimer already, and the biweekly visits became weekly, the communication with the neighbours and community care almost daily, and it wasn't until 2017 that we managed to get her removed from the house with a court order - just like Dad. The first nursing home was hell, and we moved her to The Hague in the Summer. After a few months that appeared to work out well, and I directed my attention towards the house: neglected for 10-30 years depending on which aspects you look at. Ten cubic metres of clothes, 10 cubic metres of trash-worthy furniture, and 10 cubic metres of hoarding stuff like plastic cups, 'useful things for later', and so on. It took me hundreds of hours to remove all that, and then there was the garden, with trees and bushes 4-5 metres high just adjacent to the house. Mom would go nuts if we only looked at them, so we were somewhat glad that our agenda didn't have to make room for yet another topic related to the place where we grew up. Yes, I say 'we' sometimes, I have a brother. He was pretty useful for sharing the visits at first, utterly useless for cleaning out the house - it is what it is.<br />December 2018 is when the house got sold, and that was a fine excuse to also quit the job that I had gotten around there 2.5 years earlier, for obvious reasons - on both occassions<br /><br />This year I've taken a break, bummed out, spent to my own. I did have some odd errants (which made me decide to edit my LinkedIn and state that I only do audits - no consulting - for companies under 1,000 FTE), yet am back to full-time consulting since a month or so.<br />I have also started picking up my interest in the so-called gospel of Thomas again, published a few papers on it, and as it goes, whenever I have an appetite for something, I bite - and don't let go while still hungry.<br />This time, it seems that my plate simpy has no end to it, and while reading the so-called gospel of Thomas, for every bite I take two or three new spoonfulls are dumped onto it. I have made great and ground-breaking discoveries, published those among academics, and they are completely ignored. Knowing me, you might suspect that they're slightly out of the ordinary, and I can guarantee you that they are. And while you may have admiration or respect for scholars, academics, and more like those, I can tell that my experiences with biblical scholars in general are quite disappointing.<br />Of course I know, and understand, the principles of 'not invented here', but one would expect at least some interest out of supposedly 'brainy' people like scholars.<br />Well, tell you the truth, scholars are ruminants, and quite useless ones too. They either mindlessly parrot what the top shots say, or keep silent. Even when you poke them a little, and even when I poke them quite a little. It's turned out to be a no-go, everything moves at turtle space there, and given the six decades of useless non-research done on the gospel of Thomas by professors of Christianity, Theology, Egyptology and whatnot, it will take at least fifty years before mine kicks in - and it probably never will, because it stands squarely opposite to every single find on Thomas that the allegedly esteemed professors have made.<br />I have found that even all translations of Thomas are corrupt and bogus, and am now reading the original Coptic of the only extant copy known to mankind. Yes, this time I certainly have gotten myself into a wasp's nest<br /><br />Hence, drum roll, my return to Twitter - and oh boy was that a mistake! It took me a week or so, but the audience I have here doesn't give a damn about my findings, and, truth be told, neither should it, given the interaction in the five years that I was active.<br />So, here I am: come back to Twitter for the wrong reason, failing to apply the goal I had in mind, and even blogging again as if I don't have a pile of research to finish, papers to publish, and books to finish writing<br /><br />But I thought I owed you the story, so here it is. I think I'll stick around for a while, we'll see.<br />And I'll be my usual old me, and try not to bore you with Thomas, Coptic Greek, and predictions about how my novel will set the entire world on fire for decades, perhaps even centuriesMartijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-88354287186905039262014-05-27T22:52:00.003+02:002014-05-27T22:52:48.349+02:00The Roadmap to 'Hadoop in the Cloud'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ex2mx2OVVu4/U4T2wE8dA5I/AAAAAAAAB40/TZAF8MLRB_A/s1600/Vision+of+the+IT+Future.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ex2mx2OVVu4/U4T2wE8dA5I/AAAAAAAAB40/TZAF8MLRB_A/s1600/Vision+of+the+IT+Future.png" height="320" width="235" /></a></div><br />The Twitter ball started rolling again just now. <a href="https://twitter.com/mjasay" target="_blank">Matt Asay</a> posed <a href="https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/471304663879274496" target="_blank">an interesting question</a> about Forrester suggesting Hadoop isn't a great fit for the cloud. (Even) without context <a href="https://twitter.com/vijayasankarv" target="_blank">Vijay Vijayasankar</a> and I started firing off questions and answers which inevitable led to <a href="https://twitter.com/MartijnLinssen/status/471324719892160512" target="_blank">my promise</a> of writing down the transition plan for it<br /><br />Here it is<br /><a name='more'></a>I'll start bottom-up, from an enterprise perspective, detailing what needs to be done how and why to tackle my biggest beef with #bigdata: 1) getting all that fine data <b>fast enough and neatly fit into</b> that big number cruncher so you can 2) make split-second <b>market-making or -breaking decisions</b> based upon it. I'm betting a fine bottle of wine that Vijay will do at least a slightly better job on no. 2 than I will attempt, just as reassured I am that hardly anyone will be able to contest the solution I'll propose to no. 1<br /><br /><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/02/big-data-no-big-information-as-service.html" target="_blank">I ranted on Big Data's bottleneck over two years ago</a> but didn't provide much more than some blurry vision on what would <b>fix the problem</b>: it's all fair and square that you can crunch anything within hours, minutes or even seconds but that defeats the purpose if it takes you days, weeks or even months to input all that into that same number cruncher<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The issue</span><br /><br />What's the issue? The issue that all big data evangelists and protagonists try hard to evade?<br />It's the same issue that has prevented many TLA's of the past decade (ESB, BPM, SOA) from becoming successful and it's called <b>the Information Problem</b>: on a conceptual enterprise level you sell perfectly coherent services and products via solid processes but on the IT infrastructure level where all that resides, it's just disparate bits and pieces scattered across an endlessly diverse multitude of non-compatible databases, table spaces, tables and columns with different rules of entry for every single one of them<br /><br /><b>The owner of all that</b>? Gazillions of decisions and compromises made under the stress of go-to-market, 'Quick Wins' and anything else that in regular life qualifies as a one-night-stand without much, if any, afterthought. <b>The culprit</b>? You the enterprise, as you failed to control it. Once labelled legacy by cunning vendors and SI in order to try to establish a mutual enemy, you should have figured out by now that <b>diversity, differentiation and bending the rules is what makes a business tick</b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The problem</span><br /><br />So. How do you feed that evolutionary chaos into your smart number cruncher e.g. Hadoop without any hassle? The answer: not in a lifetime on a regular basis, unless you adapt. How? In stages, as we all know that the boat must be kept afloat while we plug the holes<br /><br />Imagine da Cloud. Pretty much like Gawd, it's one coherent single form (which it ain't of course, but we'll come back to that later). Now look at your enterprise IT landscape: hundreds and thousands of different shapes, colours, differences in ways of access paths, etcetera.<br />Is it gonna fit? Hell no<br /><br />Don't be fooled by appearances. The diversity in form is there, but <b>the real problem is the diversity in information</b>. Do you have enterprise-wide definitions of products down to the letter? Of course not, each department has its own. The marketing department is only interested in certain aspects, the complaints handling department likewise, the R&D department doesn't even have the name for the product, and the sales department might even club together a few<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The solution</span><br /><br />Your enterprise-wide coherent data model will never be reflected down into every single app that supports it - not ever. So you need to feed it by bits and pieces, slowly tweaking and tuning on the side, until it does. In the end, you'll have a single Data Ware House, probably a huge database grid with massive scale-up and scale-out and fail-over capabilities, that you can replicate via a very fat pipe to your Hadoop instance in the cloud - where everybody can go crazy analysing everything. [Disclaimer] That *is* my wet dream of the moment (no sponsors or partners yet, feel free to apply)<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The roadmap</span><br /><br />1) Take an application, preferably one of your most simple and static business processes. Whenever a transaction is completed, send it off. Send it off, to your central Data Ware House (DWH). This is probably the moment where you start your DWH, and it's only fit to absorb that single request.<br />2) Naturally, your DWH has a <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/00d7a6c2b2/Secretariat.html?tab=eParliament_secretariat_dgtrad" target="_blank">translation ring around it, much like that of the European Parliament</a>, where 24 different languages get 'un-languaged' by one single interpreter's department<br />3) Your DWH has its own data model, decoupled by the translation ring, that exactly fits your enterprise-wide data model on a business level. It probably starts with this one service, which is fine<br /><br />4) Repeat steps 1 through 3 for other applications. You'll find that some applications deliver similar process data, hopefully from other departments, and need to either adjust your enterprise-wide data model or the app(s) delivering the data, or both, or simply drop one of the apps delivering it, then replacing it by another. Doing so, you'll establish domains across your enterprise, singling out single sources of truth - and / or accept the (usually business-) fact that you need to keep supporting more than one version of that truth; small steps, remember? And evolution - remember that too<br /><br />5) Ignore the techies. Insult them. Scare them off. Kill them. Slaughter them. Keep them out of all this. This is a business exercise and don't let anybody tell you differently. If anyone does so, send them to me and I'll handle them for free, no bills sent. Scouts honour. It's all about the information, and whoever dares to mention XML and XSD should have been decapitated 15 years ago anyway - it's a clear indication that they are clueless about enterprise (machine-to-machine) information exchange<br /><br />6) Your first try probably resulted in synchronising information once a day, maybe even once a week. We old folks used to call this 'batch'. Over the past two decades, batch intervals have become increasingly smaller. Some (of those same old folks) confuse this with 'online' - which we same old folks used to indicate 'pretty fast'. Real-time is the goal of course, and implies that not a second is spilled between letting 'you' know what happened to 'me'. Don't go for that from the start, as it will hamper your progress<br /><br /><b>7) The ultimate and hardest goal is to get the information across by transforming it from a blue cube (the native app) to the green peg (your enterprise-wide business data model) - where transforming it is merely a minor tech effort because you simply convert what you functionally require from that same native app into pretty much any syntax you deem fit. Everything else is -really- an afterthought</b><br /><br />8) Take it easy. Take it slow. You will suffer from the benefit of hindsight a multitude of times but trust me, life's generally on par with evolution and this way you're at least not handicapped for the future<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The short version of the long version - which will last you a life-time</span><br /><br />You, dear CxO, need to get rid of the dependency on IT implementation. Whether you have a single platform / vendor or dozens or hundreds, you're still locked-in. You need to break free. You want to break free. You must. So you build your enterprise-wide data model that supports all your processes into the finest detail, let the apps supporting it all spit out what you functionally require, let a 2-5 people team take care of translating their odd dialects and accents into your business language, and you're done<br /><br />Then, and only then, you can replicate your own DWH to the Hadoop (hey it's what started this post but it's only an example!) Cloud and crunch all you can crunch<br /><br /><b><i>Of course, executing on the insights gained from all that BigData crunching will take old-fashioned days, weeks and months, but I'm confident you'll find a means to do so - that's not my cup of tea but I'm sure <a href="http://andvijaysays.com/" target="_blank">Vijay has some thoughts on that</a></i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-68313941188959105882013-09-08T22:03:00.002+02:002013-09-08T22:03:53.467+02:00Influence tools: the devil is in the details<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cj0DaKb0Mt4/UizJFirCkTI/AAAAAAAAByo/TBjWGJmtvHY/s1600/Klout+New.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cj0DaKb0Mt4/UizJFirCkTI/AAAAAAAAByo/TBjWGJmtvHY/s320/Klout+New.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />For those of you who haven't heard of <a href="http://klout.com/" target="_blank">Klout</a>, let me give you a brief history: they started back in 2009 with a lot of marketing, a so-so product and non-existent service. They had <b>two ways of handling criticism</b>: either shower the critic in increased Klout score, or ignore him (or her).<br />With criticism multiplying as Klout was not willing or able to tackle it, <b>Klout decided to take away the cause</b> for it: detailed data on the components making up the Klout score. If you look now, Klout consists of a single score - just a number. Surprisingly, <a href="http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/" target="_blank">Tweetlevel</a> has travelled the other way - or have they?<br /><br />The business case for obfuscating Klout details is strong: not anymore will I be able to prove that their figures are statistically impossible:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1c2xreh6GO8/Uiy-nAoAZMI/AAAAAAAABxg/xTUw2TKvs1Y/s1600/MeganMentions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1c2xreh6GO8/Uiy-nAoAZMI/AAAAAAAABxg/xTUw2TKvs1Y/s320/MeganMentions.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Or1zwXidjvw/Uiy-opOlxUI/AAAAAAAABx0/r1yoXZOj5Ag/s1600/MeganAtSenders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Or1zwXidjvw/Uiy-opOlxUI/AAAAAAAABx0/r1yoXZOj5Ag/s320/MeganAtSenders.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The above pics show Klout's former marketing manager Megan Berry's @mention count and people mentioning her for a 30-day straight period: every single day the exact same number<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wqP1YRcTl3M/Uiy-onnFxRI/AAAAAAAABxo/TDtNnb5ns7g/s1600/MeganFriends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wqP1YRcTl3M/Uiy-onnFxRI/AAAAAAAABxo/TDtNnb5ns7g/s320/MeganFriends.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sgEqgsv6Y0o/Uiy-o-jZ8CI/AAAAAAAABxs/WCe3MLOfKRM/s1600/MeganTwittercounter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sgEqgsv6Y0o/Uiy-o-jZ8CI/AAAAAAAABxs/WCe3MLOfKRM/s320/MeganTwittercounter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The two pics above show Megan's friend count according to Klout, and according to <a href="http://twittercounter.com/" target="_blank">Twittercounter</a>. I'm sure you can see a striking resemblance - between the 3 Klout pics.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/11/why-i-think-klout-is-krap.html" target="_blank">That was back in October-November 2010</a>. I notified Klout of my post, several times, but never got a reaction. It wasn't long after that when Klout decided to not show these stats anymore, and just put out a single number for "all-time" RT's, mentions, etc:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U4qgjw0WvWs/UizBGqOeNtI/AAAAAAAAByE/VtwOc49hl-s/s1600/MezMerrett20110524.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U4qgjw0WvWs/UizBGqOeNtI/AAAAAAAAByE/VtwOc49hl-s/s320/MezMerrett20110524.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/05/how-mezmerrett-became-twelebrity.html" target="_blank">That was back in May 2011</a>. You can see the poor attempt at incorporating Facebook into their stats as well, but the most important point is that you can't spot a rotten trend anymore - or can you? I found it odd to notice that no two daily scores ever were the same exactly, but maybe Klout did improve the quality of their code?<br /><br />Fast forward 4 months, <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/09/klouts-true-reach-simply-your-follower.html" target="_blank">when I investigate</a> the so-called <b>True Reach</b> and find that it's basically your <b>Twitter follower count multiplied by 2.6</b>, give or take 10%:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6gCxgJzGBYU/UizGRIGlE_I/AAAAAAAAByc/tFJqZLMSiiY/s1600/FollowerFriends_55.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6gCxgJzGBYU/UizGRIGlE_I/AAAAAAAAByc/tFJqZLMSiiY/s320/FollowerFriends_55.gif" width="249" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://blog.klout.com/2011/10/a-new-era-for-klout-scores/" target="_blank">Within a month, Klout decided</a> to recalibrate True Reach into something even I couldn't recalculate, and eliminate all other subscores except "Amplification" and "Network", which resulted in dramatic increases but mostly drops for pretty much everyone they kept a record on. Soon after, popular opinion forced Klout to enable opt-out for everyone which resulted in a <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/12/klout-o-calypse-25-million-people-cant.html" target="_blank">Klout o' Calypse where 2.5 million people opted out of Klout within a month</a>.<br /><br />Today, Klout is one measly single score without anything below to find out what it's made up of (see the picture at the top of this post). Now, on to <a href="http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/" target="_blank">Edelman's Tweetlevel</a>: I've always liked their service. They only had one single number with 3 subscores (yes, I know!) and those were steady. <a href="http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/About.aspx" target="_blank">They revealed their scoring mechanism to a good detail</a> and appeared to be a roch in the rough sea of Online Influence. Until November 2012, when they revamped the layout and look of it:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iNKUdY8p6hE/UizMCu0MMiI/AAAAAAAABy0/Vww50rRG6zM/s1600/Tweetlevel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iNKUdY8p6hE/UizMCu0MMiI/AAAAAAAABy0/Vww50rRG6zM/s320/Tweetlevel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />That's my Word Cloud right there, plus some stats. The quick stats seem accurate-ish, but the Word Cloud certainly isn't. Thanks to Twitter allowing users to archive their tweets, I can guarantee you that I used the hashtag #Irene 5 times, the last one dating back to August 28 2011. Needless to say, #e20 hasn't been on top of my tweets since roughly then either.<br />I contacted <a href="https://twitter.com/JonnyBentwood" target="_blank">Johnny Bentwood</a> of Edelman about this and other inconsistencies, and his <i>complete</i> response was:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Thanks – as we are in beta, we are implementing many code fixes so that would explain your 440 errors, please try again later</blockquote>I'd say he's <b>following Klout tactics</b> there. For completeness' sake, that conversation took place almost a year ago, and this is today's picture...<br />So I notice that I'm not that happy about Tweetlevel anymore, simply because I witness that part of the data used is over 2 years old - so how can the rest be even close to accurate?<br /><br />I wonder whether or when Tweetlevel decides to pull detailed sub scores like Klout did, in order to <b>evade simple questions that have no pleasant simple answer</b>. <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=klout%2C%20tweetlevel&date=9%2F2009%2049m&cmpt=q" target="_blank">Looking at the buzz around both</a>, however, I'm pleased to see that Tweetlevel is flatlining and not even <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/09/27/microsoft-bing-klout-investment/" target="_blank">Microsoft pumping money into Klout</a> raised any eyebrows whatsoever, with Klout attention being back to the same level when they still showed detailed subscores, no matter how ridiculously flawed they were.<br /><br /><b><i>The lesson learned? We're still very far away from measuring "online influence" or even Twitter use, and as long as we don't fully master semantics (perfect translation machines would be a proper indication of that), in stead of quality only quantity of interaction can be measured - and as far as we can check, both Klout as well as Tweetlevel stink at even that</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-45496875653655253912013-02-07T23:18:00.001+01:002013-02-08T07:07:25.913+01:00Speeding up hyperlinks: topics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S5uRcJw_r_U/URQi6_DJsWI/AAAAAAAABqQ/0EmGPcs8qEs/s1600/HyperlinkTopics.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S5uRcJw_r_U/URQi6_DJsWI/AAAAAAAABqQ/0EmGPcs8qEs/s1600/HyperlinkTopics.png" /></a></div><br />In a conversation with <a href="http://wirearchy.com/about-the-author/" target="_blank">Jon Husband</a> earlier today, we discussed hyperlinks - and how they've changed this world. In my view, <b>hyperlinks form zero-threshold access</b> to any and all information just a single click away. Whenever I scavenge the Web for info, I open up links in new tabs until there are 20 or so of them, and then scan the results, greatly helped by search, maybe jumping back and forth or drilling down deeper and deeper.<br />Compare that with the old fashioned way I had to gather information, which at best resulted in a day or so in one or more libraries where some or most books would be out on loan and I'd only have the<b> full result set after a week or two</b>, sometimes more - leaving me with a metre of paper books I had to plow through<br /><br />Scanning them was simple yet elaborate: read the index, pick the most appetising chapters, and from each of those carefully read the first and last paragraph. Mark in mind or on paper if worthwhile, and continue search - I used to write 10-page papers in a single night doing so<br /><br />Now, we have hyperlinks - and I <b>still miss something. I call it topics</b>, and here is how I envision them to work<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Whenever I Google or click a link, I end up at a site. Sometimes blogs, sometimes corporate sites, forums, whatever. As in the old days, I then use my browser's search functionality to look for the word or words I want to find. Too many times, I don't find them, or in little quantities - and it takes me a minute per page to assess whether it's a picking or not<br /><br />That should change - and it can. <b>Computers are here to automate tedious human tasks</b>, and this is one of them<br /><br />Imagine I search for enterprise and integration and common sense? I will get some 3 million results as of today, and when I click one of them, I'll be led to a website. End of story - it's the same as finally getting the book from the library, and opening one.<br />Now what if the <b>page will highlight the actual search terms I used</b>? It would spare me the effort to use browser search to look for them, and save me 30-60 seconds per page<br /><br />The hyperlink would need to be extended, and the browser would need to support the extension - and I would be really, really happy (and probably a few others too)<br /><br />Here's my proposal: I look for the words in the example above, i.e. enterprise, integration and common sense. One of the links returned would be (#humblebrag warning!)<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/09/how-and-why-common-sense-will-beat-rest.html/" topics="enterprise,integration,common sense">How and why common sense will beat REST</a><br /><br />which in fact contains:<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/09/how-and-why-common-sense-will-beat-rest.html/" topics="enterprise,integration,common sense">How and why common sense will beat REST</a></b></blockquote><br />The href would be the same, linking to the page as usual, with the user-legible <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text">anchor</a> displaying as usual. The topics would be new, telling the <b>browser to highlight those words upon following the link</b>, all of them at the same time.<br />Of course, colours would be much appreciated to <b>distinguish one topic from the other</b>, as this could end up in a brightly highlighted page that would give new meaning to the phrase "information overload"<br /><br />Colour range would best be simple following the binary colour scale, going from black to white (best leave both and their nearest friends out as that would not make distinguishing them very easy), handing out the darkest colour to the first topic, a less dark one to the next, and the brightest one to the last.<br />A convention on highest and lowest colour range would have to be worked out, as simply ordering colours by their numerical value will not give the desired result - but I'm sure someone with better math skills than I can come up with a good idea<br /><br />Of course, <b>anyone could add topics to links</b>. I might use the same link in different blog posts, choosing different topics in a different order even, depending on the context they're in at that very moment<br /><br /><i><b>What do you think? And could someone build a prototype please ;-)</b></i>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-50618437149111950482013-01-10T23:07:00.002+01:002013-01-15T08:19:02.034+01:00Capgemini NL: disruptive, desperate, or both?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vW3qis-xYbY/UO8UuOTWGnI/AAAAAAAABpA/eHrtFpodJvA/s1600/capgemini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vW3qis-xYbY/UO8UuOTWGnI/AAAAAAAABpA/eHrtFpodJvA/s320/capgemini.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Capgemini has made headlines in the last past months, starting July 2012. Dutch headlines, that is, as Capgemini NL decided to start a large reorganisation that involves laying off hundreds of people and restructuring the organisation so it can meet the current challenges any system integrator faces: a changing market, and shifting revenues<br /><br />This post will show you why Capgemini is desperate, and whether it is disruptive. <b>It is innovative for sure</b>, and maybe leading the way for others, or just postponing the inevitable in the longest way possible<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><a href="http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/it_group_capgemini_poised_to_s.php" target="_blank">In October some 400 people were laid off</a>, and this week <a href="http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/it_group_capgemini_poised_to_s.php" target="_blank">another 400 have heard that they are too expensive</a>, and should turn in up to 10% of their salary - or be laid off as well. The latter can up their market value by increasing their competences via a program called Diamond, but to which extend that will save them from turning in salary or be spared from being laid off, yet remains unclear<br /><br />The latest news (today) is that <a href="http://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/detachering/4634933/3484209/capgemini-start-detacheringsmakelaar.html" target="_blank">Capgemini NL will additionally operate via a broker (sorry, Dutch only)</a> in order to claim a larger piece of the freelance pie, via a separate legal and fiscal entity that will largely if not entirely offer freelancers to their customers where the rate is just beyond and below what Capgemini can afford for their own employees. Please the customer as an organisation and still make a buck, but without Capgemini personnel.<br />And the other news of today is that <a href="http://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/detachering/4635557/3484209/capgemini-ontwikkelt-geen-lokale-diensten-meer.html" target="_blank">Capgemini NL will cease to offer local solutions (sorry, Dutch only)</a> as those simply stopped being profitable, as their CEO claims. That does seem to be in contradiction to the previous paragraph, but I think the full message reads "offer local solutions via Capgemini personnel"<br /><br /><b>1 Let's first discuss the situation</b><br /><b><br /></b>Ever since the dotcom bubble, revenues and profits have declined. Demand decreased at first but increased shortly after, yet <b>rates fell hard</b> and sharp and didn't return to their initial level. As a second movement, <b>offshoring / outsourcing entered the IT arena</b> and regardless of the debate whether that has truly resulted in decreased costs for clients on a whole, it certainly is an important factor in attributing the loss of revenue and profit per employee.<br />System integrators have managed to <b>polish their figures by "going Indian"</b>, i.e. replacing some of their workforce by others who are a few times cheaper, and have less experience, education and company culture. However, the fact that they are x times cheaper (if memory serves me correctly, the average Indian cost $20 back in 2003) largely made up for the lack of the latter three<br /><br /><b>A general disclaimer</b>: I'm not treating anyone like cattle, or at least I'm not intending to do so, but I'm merely rephrasing the general perception of "a cheap resource may be not even half as good as his traditional counter-part, but he's so many times less expensive that we'll easily make up for that, and proper spray-painting will do the rest" that has ruled the field of outsourcing since the beginning<br /><br /><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/03/traditional-system-integrators-2004.html" target="_blank">Compare Accenture, Atos Origin, Logica and Capgemini</a> for the last 8 years and you'll see the drops in per-person revenue and profit. That is even true for <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/04/2004-2011-financial-analysis-non.html" target="_blank">their Indian counter-parts or the so-called pure players</a>. Although the latter have increased their workforce by a factor 4 over the same years, whereas the others only managed to double it. <b>Overall outlook: the system integrator sector as a whole has a year-over-year decline in revenue and profitability</b><br /><br /><b>In addition to this situation</b>, there's another (huge) trend in NL: Capgemini and others have been meeting stiff competition from IT personnel that used to work for "one of the above" but chose to continue independently as a freelancer. The trend for these is that self-employed in commercial services increased by 41% in 9 years, whereas perms did by 1%. In numbers: 88,000 over 35,000. Over those same years, e.g. Capgemini went up and down from 5,700 employees to 6,200 employees (and now stands at 4,700 - the same number of people it had in the year 2000).<br />Needless to say, <b>freelancers have a lot less cost</b> than the average IT employee: they usually have 10-15 years of experience, so not much need for training. Lease-car? They probably own their own, like me, and drive it privately - I even make money on my car year-on-year, in stead of paying 1,000+ per month for something I don't even own. Buildings, conference rooms, events, advertising? Yup<br /><br /><b>IT freelancers run their business at almost zero cost</b>. A laptop, a phone, and a car is all they need, and for less than 5,000 a year you can have that all.<br />Compare that with the likes of Capgemini, where training takes up 10 weeks on average in the first 3 years, and 2 weeks each after that. The cost of training sits around 500 euros a day, but the missed revenue is equally hurting, and 50-75% of that. Guesstimating that at 15 weeks and 750 euro a day, BAM that's <b>11,000 euros a year for training</b> in the first 5 years.<br />A company lease car? The trend to that is that people are leasing smarter, as the Tax department has been hunting them down, and smaller, cheaper, less fuel-consuming and more environmentally friendly cars are being leased. Still, where a mid-size car used to cost 1,000-1,250 euros a month, it's more like 900 now. And that is another <b>11,000 euros a year, this time for driving</b>.<br />Office cost? The general rule in NL is that <b>an office space costs 11,000 euros a year</b> (I'm not making these numbers up guys!), of which housing makes up 30%, Services & Means another 30%, and ICT another 30%.<br />Last but not least we have marketing and branding in the largest sense of the word. <a href="http://www.les-fontaines.com/en/whoarewe/presentation.html" target="_blank">Capgemini's Les Fontaines</a> is a perfect example of that although the usual advertising and conferences add to it as well. Big companies have their own travel agencies, legal departments, spokespeople, gurus, evangelists, and so on: I have no idea what that costs but let's just top it off at <b>7,000 euros a year</b> so we reach the nice round number of 40,000 euros a year.<br />Sickness, maternity leave, holidays, and being in between assignments deal another blow to billability (sic) and profitability. But let's just leave fixed cost at 40,000 shall we?<br /><br />All in all, we have 40,000 a year in cost for a greenhorn IT employee. Training need will become less over the years, but training expense and missed revenue will increase, as will leased car expenses. So, let's just stick to <b>40,000 euros a year in fixed costs for a traditional IT employee</b>, excluding salary, insurance, pension, benefits and Lawd knows what<br /><br />[Silence]<br /><br />Combine that with the dropped revenues. Get the problem? I sure hope so. The answer to the first question thus is: <b>Yes, Capgemini is desperate</b>. And it should be. Fixed costs like these and an average work year of 1,500 hours mean that your employee's rate starts at 27 euros an hour, which will still not put a dime into his pay check. With a starting salary of 30,000 a year, that means<b> a newbie without any experience needs to work 1,500 hours a year for a rate of 45 euros an hour excluding VAT, and you will break even</b><br /><br /><b>2 But is Capgemini disruptive?</b><br /><br />The measures currently taken involve 75 million euros. With the <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/10/labor-laws-in-europe-and-resignation.html" target="_blank">current labour laws in NL</a>, that allows for roughly 750-1,000 people being laid off, but <a href="http://www.capgemini.com/m/en/ext/investor/assets/Preparing_the_turnaround_in_the_Netherlands.pdf" target="_blank">the programme is wider than that</a>.<br /><b>Laying off people is not disruptive</b>, but in NL it's a long-term investment that can hardly be carried out by one country alone without the help of HQ.<br />Asking personnel to <b>turn in salary seems disruptive</b>, although this so-called recalibration also occurred when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgemini#Acquisitions" target="_blank">Capgemini took over Volmac in 1992</a>. Guesstimating that some will go all the way, some will be laid off, and some will manage to hand in less, the average savings here will be 3 million euros a year - that is 2.5% of per caput NL operating profit, or in other words will buy Capgemini NL (yet another) year of not having to increase salaries across the board.<br /><b>Extending your market across your own company's boundaries (via the broker mentioned above) certainly is disruptive</b>. A 10-15% margin seems feasible, looking at the traditional market, but under the new circumstances this will probably not be more than half of that. I'm being benign here as I know of some high-volume brokers that ask 1 to 1.5 euros an hour just for mediating the contract and pay.<br />Given the fact that the <a href="http://www.capgemini.com/m/en/ext/investor/assets/2011_Full_Year_Results.pdf" target="_blank">average Technology Consultant rate for Capgemini (worldwide) is 75 euros an hour (page 20)</a>, and that the people traded via this construction will be considerably undercutting that, let's take a rate of 50 euros an hour on average, on top of which Capgemini NL manages to make that 5-7.5% margin.<br />That translates to <b>2.50 euros an hour margin, possibly 3.75</b><br /><br />Again, a pause to let that sink in. 20 euros a day, averaging out on 25 euros a day, 500 a month, 4.500 a year given a 20% slack in billable hours.<br /><b>Yet, it's net operating profit, mostly</b>. Do 200 of those (and I'm confident Capgemini NL can do up to a thousand) and there's almost 1 million in operating profit - 4.5 million for 1,000. What will the broker take? Half a million in cost, I think, so that 5-7.5% margin is actually 10% less, but let's not fuss about that as these are guesstimations anyway.<br /><b>Disruptive, yes</b>. Life-saving? No. On average, given the Capgemini NL operating profit over the last 5 years, this will add 4.5% to that. But most importantly, it will extend Capgemini's market from traditional onto new. Question just is, will it be successful?<br />Capgemini NL is not unfamiliar with hiring third party personnel and deploying those at a client, yet it is not noted for its speed and ease of issuing payments according to contracted agreements, from what I hear of freelancers. In addition, freelancers hired via Capgemini will certainly rub off some Capgemini paint at the client, and be perceived as "those Capgemini hires" regardless of their relationship with Capgemini<br /><br /><b>3 </b><b>The verdict</b><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Update January 15th 2013 07:58: I forgot to give <b>my conclusion with regards to the measures taken above</b>. Here it is: the total impact of the measures taken will be that Capgemini NL adds 7% to their operating profit by asking 400 people to turn in 10% of their salary (4.5%), and when successfully deploying a broker who trades non-Capgemini personnel on the free market (2.5%). Laying off the 400 (some claim it's 500) people will save them another 25 million in salary costs, but the work those did will have to be done by others, and the revenue they generated (no matter how small) will be lost. Let's suppose that half of them generated 50K a year: that's 12.5 million lost, or 12.5% operating profit. So the measurements taken will add 20% to the operating profit, meaning that Capgemini NL will break even on this reorganisation after 4 years, maybe 3 if they get lucky</blockquote>The decision to cease delivering to local markets for local solutions <b>seems a big mistake</b>. Especially in combination with the news of the last week. However, what Capgemini NL really is saying is that, after dozens of years, it stops delivering local projects, and only will pick up the much feared project-glove in a global context where it can use its economies of scale.<br /><b>The underlying truth</b> appears to be that it has failed to turn its old-fashioned Time & Material approach around to a project-driven one, something that it has been trying for the past 20 years. It might also be interpreted as a confession that Capgemini simply can't deliver global projects from a local perspective, at least not when it concerns Capgemini NL. The harshest claim would be that Capgemini NL thus admits that it sucks at project management, but I certainly won't go as far as that<br /><br />It seems to be in direct <b>contradiction to the measures undertaken</b>: if rates for body shopping sink, you should cut cost and try to make money by delivering smarter - not cut costs period. Capgemini NL should use its decades of experience to outwit the competition like an experienced rally racer who knows each and every corner, ditch and tree on the track. Evading something that will be in your way is much less time- and money consuming than running into it and fixing it afterwards<br /><br /><b>The road ahead for Capgemini NL</b> that I see, given their current (re)directions, is one of outsourcing its own and even other employees at the lowest possible cost. The programme thus far is focusing on cutting cost, in stead of developing new ways of doing business. The aim at Infrastructure Services in stead of Application Services will be regretted in 3-5 years from now, if not already.<br /><b>If infrastructure weren't a commodity already</b>, it will certainly become one in this decade, with Cloud slowly eating large pieces of the pie. SAP and Oracle will lose ground ever faster, and small SaaS solutions will take over - that need to be integrated, managed, and maintained.<br /><b>The future for Capgemini</b> could and should be in Application Management from start till end, meaning that it should <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/08/si-is-dead-long-live-supplier.html" target="_blank">change its role from system integrator to supplier integrator</a>. The customer doesn't want 13 different people to call when there's an issue in his IT landscape in 2020, it wants one person to take care of it, and report back to him. It is the age-old story of why there are building contractors and site supervisors.<br /><br /><b><i>Capgemini NL seems to be making the mistake that it considers cost without considering profit. There is no cost, there's only profit margin. Increasing your profit margin by trying to deliver the same for less will go down like a lead balloon, given the average fixed cost of 40,000 K a pop</i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-26532664108971311492012-12-06T00:15:00.000+01:002012-12-06T00:15:30.740+01:0054% of blog posts contain pure facts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AamVRo_xX30/UL_GzwBtmBI/AAAAAAAABns/JidK5in3CKM/s1600/412px-INF3-256_Anti-rumour_and_careless_talk_Now_more_than_ever_-_forget_what_you_hear_66.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AamVRo_xX30/UL_GzwBtmBI/AAAAAAAABns/JidK5in3CKM/s1600/412px-INF3-256_Anti-rumour_and_careless_talk_Now_more_than_ever_-_forget_what_you_hear_66.jpg" /></a></div><br />A post by <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/the-leading-indicators-of-social-business-maturity-in-2012-7000008162/" target="_blank">Dion Hinchcliffe on "social business maturity"</a> made me laugh and cry at the same time. It's one of those misleading semi-analytical semi-research posts that will be joyfully accepted by most people as solid truth.<br />However, it ain't. <b>If it's anything solid, it's solid suggestimation</b>. Why?<br /><br />The post smacks the reader in the face with <b>impressive percentages</b> that most, if not all, are in the 50's, 70's or even 80's, seemingly showing that vast majorities of companies are "socially mature".<br />I'm not even going to dig around in the studies / research cited in every statement (truly <b>chapeau for Dion</b> for not only citing them, but also providing a link by the way - even if I got a 404 on 1 out of 9), I'm just going to show how the attempt to state<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Social media is now being used <strike>in</strike> en masse for marketing, sales, operations, customer care, supply chain, and amongst our workforces</blockquote><br />is doomed to fail as the post <b>combines two opposites</b>: on the one hand <b>perfect percentages</b> are presented, on the other hand those are related to <b>vague absolute truths</b>, such as "using social technology for marketing and related functions" and "use social media to engage with customers". <b>Any percentage of nothing is nothing</b><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>I might as well present a study myself that finds that 23% of online people engage in verbally abusive actions - how is that for a factoid?<br /><br /><ul><li>What are <b>online people</b>? How long do you have to be online, before being considered one? Per day, week, year? As a portion of your spare time, working hours, total time? Is that measured in time you spent in reading, writing, both?</li><li>What does <b>engage</b> mean? Send and / or receive? Once in a lifetime, a year, 50 times a day? What portion of your online "actions" does this comprise?</li><li>What is <b>verbally abusive</b>? Ho and nigga are common words among certain groups of people, among which they are not perceived offensive. However, if I were to call someone nigga, all hell would break loose. If it's not meant offensive by me, but perceived as such, does that count? What about vice versa?</li></ul><div>You see, that 23% suggests <b>very careful research, well-balanced analysis, weighted factors in a properly conducted study</b>. But 23% of what? The What there is terribly vague and obscure, and as undeniably quantifiable that 23% is, the What isn't at all. If you were to quantify the What down into perfectly objective pieces, that same 23% might as well quickly become 0.001% in stead.</div><div><b>Hence the title to this post</b>: every single blog post on this earth contains at least one single truth, half of all those presumably also a second one, or more. So, the title is true. Meaningful, helpful? You be the judge of that</div><div><br /></div><div>I invite you to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/the-leading-indicators-of-social-business-maturity-in-2012-7000008162/" target="_blank">read Dion's post</a>, quickly or carefully, that's all up to you. I'll run you by some of the hollow phrases in it:</div><div><ul><li>Two-thirds of businesses are now using social technology for marketing and related functions</li></ul></div><div>OK. So let's suppose social technology here means Twitter, and marketing-related functions means sales and customer service. How many people in all those departments? How many of those using Twitter? How many hours a day per average FTE? If 2/3 of business are experimenting with Twitter for marketing or sales or customer service, this is a "truth". With 5 FTE in marketing, 5 in sales and 10 in customer service, that one hour per month would divide that 23% by 20 people and 160 hours, being 3200, that they could spend on it in total. However, of those 3200, only one hour is spent, so it would become <b>0.007%</b> in stead.</div><div>Fair? Probably not, but it's a quantification. Should 100% of all those people use social media all the time? I don't think so, but who knows?</div><div><ul><li>79% of companies use, or are imminently planning to use, social media</li></ul></div><div>Let's say it's 50% using, and 29% planning to use - even though that could be the other way around, or 70%-9% or 9%-70%, or anything else. Again, how many people per company, how many relative FTE, how much of their time? One FTE, one hour a week? With 100 people per company, that 50% would get divided by 100 and 40 hours, being 4000, turning it into <b>0.01%</b></div><div><ul><li>27% of companies now have someone dedicated to social media in their company. Those that have dedicated departments, 83% are staffed with 3 or fewer people</li></ul></div><div>Hilarious. One person that spends a day per week handling Twitter? Divide that 27% by 5 into 5.4%. Could it be 5 people doing that in stead, for a full week each? Divide that 5.4% by 25, and into <b>0.2%</b>.</div><div><b>The 83% is a mean trick of course</b>, it's a high percentage of a negative statement. What it says, is that 17% of companies have 4 or more people dedicated to social media, which ain't much, is it? By turning that statement around to 83% having 3 or less, it seems a huge positive statement.</div><div>The real <b>dead give-away</b> however, is the fact that a percentage is missing here. Which is odd, for such a percentage-slinging post on percentage-slinging studies and researches - isn't it? Can you spot what's missing?</div><div><b>What is the percentage of companies with a dedicated social media department</b>? Don't you want to know? Don't you think it's a number that would be known regardless of how you ask the question? You either ask "If you have a dedicated department, how many people are in it" and the answer would vary from 1 to Lawd knows how many - and relating those answers to the total would give you a percentage, or you'd ask "Do you have a dedicated department? If so, answer question x34y" and you could also relate those answers to the total.</div><div>I can only assume that the number and <b>percentage of dedicated social media departments wasn't worth mentioning</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Watch out for the bogus, fake, suggestimative "research" posts that present you with so-called facts. These posts are nothing but textual Infographics, or like I call them, <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/08/another-infographic-bites-dust.html" target="_blank">InfoCrapPics</a></div><div>Apart from that, <b>all these researches and studies and findings only measure input</b>. None of them measure output - so all they show at best is how much time is spent on social business, without showing the return, aka the much-feared ROI</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Leading indicators of social business maturity? You must mean "antique 1.0 schmarketing tricks to flog the dying social business horse"</i></b></div>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-51354236918320111992012-12-04T17:57:00.002+01:002012-12-04T17:57:48.337+01:00On the insignificance of (Re)tweets to a post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B5PyDqLj-Jw/UL3Dg8rLx4I/AAAAAAAABlM/225ifbkZh_Q/s1600/MashableAutoTweets.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B5PyDqLj-Jw/UL3Dg8rLx4I/AAAAAAAABlM/225ifbkZh_Q/s1600/MashableAutoTweets.GIF" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In a discussion about <a href="http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/how-not-to-measure-the-value-of-a-like/" target="_blank">blindly ReTweeting</a> yesterday, I remembered that I once did a short analysis on auto-tweets.<br />An auto-tweet is a schedule you set up against an RSS-feed or any other trigger, which tweets the URL with a title, some of the post itself, a fixed word or hashtag, etc. Some "thought-leaders" use it to ditch all attribution and pretend the tweet originated from themselves. Usually, their Twitter bio then also says "<b>I tweet interesting links</b>" - well, now you know how they do it and how original and carefully curated these are...<br /><br />I wondered about the current state of affairs - and did a deep analysis this time, the results of which are depicted above<br /><a name='more'></a><br />As an example, I've taken <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/03/social-media-real-world-actions/" target="_blank">a Mashable post</a> from their Social Media / Facebook section, and counted the auto-tweets. Well, actually, I used a tool for that which searches Twitter and returns the tweets and stats for me. Use the tools, Luke! And then the proper ones of course...<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/mashsocialmedia/status/275708685492310017" target="_blank">On December 3 2012, 21:10:47 @mashsocialmedia tweets</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Social Media Use Leads to Real-World Actions via @<a href="https://twitter.com/bndarticles">bndarticles</a> <a href="http://t.co/rJQFIyUf" title="http://on.mash.to/TDXX1B">on.mash.to/TDXX1B</a><br />— Mashable SocialMedia (@mashsocialmedia) <a data-datetime="2012-12-03T21:10:47+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/mashsocialmedia/status/275708685492310017">December 3, 2012</a></blockquote><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br />which starts off a whole load of automated, fixed, scheduled RT's. Two interesting things can be noticed: <b>first, there are 450 tweets in the first 3 minutes, and then it dies out</b>. My stats comprise half an hour, and we're at 14 hours later now, and the 675 tweets in the first half hour have now become 895.<br />If you take the first half hour and add an extra column showing incremental RT-percentage per minute (which indicates the relative division of tweets across those 30 minutes), you get the following graph which says it all:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ewWBNQuViTo/UL3HCMHv2xI/AAAAAAAABmc/6bgbznxAtD4/s1600/MashableAutoTweetsGraph.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ewWBNQuViTo/UL3HCMHv2xI/AAAAAAAABmc/6bgbznxAtD4/s400/MashableAutoTweetsGraph.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br />Everything happens in the <b>first 3 minutes: 66% of tweets</b> that get sent in the first half hour, gets fired off then. After that, small hicks and coughs is all that remains.<br />Do any of those first 450 tweets involve <b>anyone actually reading the post</b>? Maybe 1 or 2, what the hell, maybe even 3 people. But less than 1% is a fair sugguestimation<br /><br />So, all those impressive tweet stats on blogs? <b>Half of them and more are auto-tweets by bots / schedules</b>. Probably a quarter of the rest are from people that haven't figured out yet how these tools work, and blindly RT such a post by hand. Probably half of the remaining quarter RT's it because it's from Mashable and about Social Media and fits their agenda. That would leave <b>7.5% of all RT-ers</b> that actually have thought about RT-ing this post? Sounds fair to me<br /><br />There is another disturbing trend here though: the utter lack of attribution. <b>How many tweets attribute this post to Mashable, do you think</b>?<br />63. Sixty-lousy-three out of a total of 675, that is 9.3% - that means that 90.7% pretends this to be their own smart find, in stead of something they highly likely read on Twitter.<br />What is the <b>attribution percentage of the first 450</b> guaranteed-to-be-autotweets? Well?<br />31. Thirty-one out of a grand total of four hundred and fifty. That is 6.9%, rounded, meaning that all these auto-tweets really put in an effort to make this appear as their own smart find.<br />Then, what about the currently remaining 220 that actually consist of real live people that read the post (I hope)?<br />52! FIFTY-TWO! Yay. That is a whopping <b>23.6% of real live breathing people</b> that attributes this post to Mashable<br /><br /><i><b>Well well well. Is Twitter mainstream? Undeniably so, at some points it's getting or already gotten as ugly as real life. Should you stand in awe for hundreds, even thousands of tweets on a post, and (over)value the author or blog for that? Just like you should stand in awe for the big brand new car of your neighbour...</b></i>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-60086554164071364102012-12-03T21:40:00.004+01:002012-12-03T21:43:59.164+01:00Why TwentyFeet is Total Twash<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FXozRX0gi34/ULz--E3kOiI/AAAAAAAABj8/KyMFEIrLfk0/s1600/TwentyFeet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FXozRX0gi34/ULz--E3kOiI/AAAAAAAABj8/KyMFEIrLfk0/s1600/TwentyFeet.png" /></a></div><br />Yet another Twitter analytic tool has made it into the spotlights: <a href="https://www.twentyfeet.com/">Twentyfeet</a><br />Like most if not all other tools that try to measure Twitter stats (Klout, Tweetlevel), <b>it horribly fails</b>. Apparently it's too much work or money to actually measure all tweets, and do they take a sample and extrapolate - or rather, sugguestimate - the rest<br /><br />That, or they really just can't count<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Let me show you a few examples: my fellow tweep Dick Hirsch tried the service. A week ago, <a href="http://twitter.com/rhirsch/status/272961141813153792">he tweeted</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">My week on twitter: 15 retweets received, 9 new followers, 43 mentions. Via: <a href="http://t.co/2My44y92" title="http://20ft.net/p">20ft.net/p</a><br />— Dick Hirsch (@rhirsch) <a data-datetime="2012-11-26T07:13:02+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/rhirsch/status/272961141813153792">November 26, 2012</a></blockquote><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/rhirsch/status/275497864048812033">Today, his TwentyFeet auto-tweet said</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">My week on twitter: 13 retweets received, 12 new followers, 7 mentions. Via: <a href="http://t.co/2My44y92" title="http://20ft.net/p">20ft.net/p</a><br />— Dick Hirsch (@rhirsch) <a data-datetime="2012-12-03T07:13:03+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/rhirsch/status/275497864048812033">December 3, 2012</a></blockquote><br />What's in between? Not a single RT, 15 mentions, and 4 direct @replies (and @reply is where your Twitter handle is at the very beginning of a tweet, a mention is where it's somewhere else, and not preceded by RT)<br /><br />So, accurate? Hell no, <b>this is so off that it is way beyond embarassing</b>. Zero RT's in stead of 13, and more than double the amount of mentions.<br />I decided to do some cross checks, and <a href="https://wiki.twentyfeet.com/display/TF/Testimonials+for+TwentyFeet" target="_blank">checked their advocates</a> to see how their numbers added up.<br /><a href="https://twitter.com/MariSmith" target="_blank">Mari Smith</a> apparently stopped using the service, or at least tweeting her stats. Too volatile and unpredictable? Who knows.<br /><a href="https://twitter.com/scobleizer" target="_blank">Robert Scoble</a>? Likewise. <a href="https://twitter.com/LarsHinrichs" target="_blank">Lars Hinrichs</a>? Dito. <a href="https://twitter.com/frischkopp" target="_blank">Stefan Keuchel</a>? Take a wild guess...<br /><br />So, on to other people then, to find out if anyone is proudly enjoying accurate stats?<br /><br />I decided to take the last 100 tweets in which 20ft is mentioned. 13% trumps their stats, averaging 1 tweet an hour - worldwide on Twitter<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="https://twitter.com/joonasl/status/275663781886062592" target="_blank">Joonas Lyytinen</a>: "1 retweets received, 9 mentions" - that could be exactly right, just about - I don't see the RT and only 8 mentions, but let's not be overzealous</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/Red_Educa/status/275498253674504192" target="_blank">Red Educa</a>: "65 retweets received, 1 new listings, 12 new followers" - this is odd. Apparently literal copies of tweets by Red Educa, ending with "via @Red_Educa", are counted as RT's? Even if I count all these and native RT's, I reach a total of 19 - the total tweet total is 45! Regular tweets, @replies, mentions and RT's all together</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/uchuks52/status/275633598676234241" target="_blank">Mr Lowkey</a>: "59 retweets received, 57 new followers, 165 mentions" - any good? I count 33 RT, 36 mentions, and 78 direct replies to Mr Lowkey</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/Eingang/status/275618900094357504" target="_blank">Michelle Hoyle</a>: "1 mentions" - I count none, only a few direct @replies</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/peoplewerx/status/275029625715974144" target="_blank">Peoplewerx</a>: "1 retweets received, 6 new followers" - I count none, and nothing else</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/FilmicaColombia/status/275397502973399041" target="_blank">Comision Filmica</a>: "1 retweets received, 15 new followers, 2 mentions" - I only count 2 direct @replies</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/israelproject/status/275392523822841856" target="_blank">The Israel Project</a>: "105 retweets received, 3 new listings, 105 new followers, 42 mentions" - I count 148 tweets in total... and 24 RT, 13 direct @replies, and 24 mentions</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/caprikorno/status/275590989148729344" target="_blank">Tanya</a>: "156 retweets received, 13 new followers, 215 mentions" - 320 tweets in total in a week, of which 220 by Tanya herself. But, let's finish this sordid task. Zero RT, 86 direct @replies, and 16 mentions</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dayliff/status/275558393907924992" target="_blank">Davis & Shirtliff</a>: "2 new followers, 2 mentions" - 1 tweet a day, no RT's or mentions or @replies whatsoever</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/xoxoLeilanixoxo/status/275553788398559233" target="_blank">Leilani</a>: "955 retweets received, 47 new followers, 420 mentions" - looks like a joke, given the #mwuah at the end. Leilani has 142 followers, let's leave it at that shall we?</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/nanda_oziel/status/275543022299664384" target="_blank">Nanda Oziel</a>: "12 retweets received, 27 mentions" - 13 RT, 18 direct @replies and 0 mentions</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/mounaea/status/275528858151825408" target="_blank">Moon</a>: "16 retweets received, 21 new followers, 118 mentions" - sigh. 2 RT, 104 direct @replies, and 29 mentions</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/farukh50/status/275528849335390208" target="_blank">Sir Farukh</a>: "197 retweets received, 1 new listings, 33 new followers, 200 mentions" - </li></ul><div><br /></div><div>The verdict? It's too bad that Twitter stopped showing the application that sent a tweet. There are clearly a few pranksters active around TwentyFeet, but even more clear is that their stats just don't make any sense at all. Their average seems to be off by 100-200%, and what they define as mention or @reply must remain a mystery for a while, as their FAQ page gave me a nice 404, sent by their Apache Tomcat/6.0.32.</div><div>Just as their About page btw, and their Features and Pricing</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Anyway. In other news, life goes on, another Twitter anal-yst tool bites the dust. Surprised? I certainly hope not. At least they got the Klout-message clear: avoid any and all transparency like the plague (that's where Tweetlevel currently goes wrong - more on that later)</i></b></div><br /><br /><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-79260017326049005902012-11-25T22:17:00.001+01:002012-11-25T22:17:14.148+01:00I still have all your commentsHey, just a short message<br /><br />I have uninstalled IntenseDebate as it was crap. Didn't work for me on mobile (couldn't sign in), didn't work on xtop depending on browser (10 lines was too much for IE 8, Firefox had cookie problems, etc) and I'm just thinking really hard to revert to native Blogger commenting<br /><br />Native Blogger commenting ain't sexy, but it works<br /><br />And I want my commenting system to work. On mobile, laptop, desktop, iPad mini, Mac, who cares - everywhere<br /><br />So, I'm looking for a way to convert my (and yours!!!) IntenseDebate comments back to Blogger comments. I will succeed, it might take me a day or two, but I've just taken down IntenseDebate immediately as I'm sick and tired of it not working<br /><br />So, no worries - bare with me please<br /><br />And yes, I do wild and crazy things sometimes. You should try that at home too ;-)Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-59299635726041009772012-11-25T12:54:00.000+01:002012-11-25T12:54:01.775+01:00The thin line between transparency and vanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qiGhWUC_j58/ULHpn80JlaI/AAAAAAAABhM/PCsGx77D3to/s1600/MirrorFace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qiGhWUC_j58/ULHpn80JlaI/AAAAAAAABhM/PCsGx77D3to/s320/MirrorFace.jpg" width="312" /></a></div><br />I had an interesting discussion with <a href="https://twitter.com/jjude" target="_blank">Joseph Jude</a> on the share buttons on my blog. In short,<a href="https://twitter.com/jjude/status/272239571499106304" target="_blank"> his opinion</a> was:<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="272238969725538304">@<a href="https://twitter.com/martijnlinssen">martijnlinssen</a> I don't c transparency in tat number. Just a ego push for author. Btw, u shd hv a share btn. Just not the numbers. No value<br />— Joseph Jude (@jjude) <a data-datetime="2012-11-24T07:25:46+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/jjude/status/272239571499106304">November 24, 2012</a></blockquote><br />which doesn't leave much room for interpretation, fortunately. I agree, and don't agree, as the bandwidth for numbers is so very, very wide: <b>most numbers are meaningless as mere numbers</b><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>In 2009 I put a Twitter share button on my blog, which included Tweet count. I started off with TweetMeMe, added the Twitter share button by Twitter to that, added the G+ button, and all had the share count in them - unsure you could even do without.<br />I have recently removed them all from my post, and aimed for more generic share buttons that are less prone to the dynamics of this social sharing world - <b>that is where the issues arise from</b><br /><br />I also had the <a href="http://www.clustrmaps.com/" target="_blank">visitor map from ClustrMaps</a> - it was interesting to see where my visitors came from. In 2010 I removed that, I think, and replaced it by the Blogger page view widget that is still on (and invisible if you're on mobile)<br /><br />I also have comments enabled, of course, and fiddled around with various comment systems, none of which I'm really happy with. I've tried Disqus, which was too error-prone, and replaced that by Intensedebate, which is less error-prone but gives me weird errors lately, going by various commenters. It also gives me problems on IE8, Mozilla, even when I'm logged in as myself, who has administrative rights of course.<br /><b>Admin always is in God Mode</b> - I shouldn't have any comment size restrictions or otherwise. So, Intensedebate is on its way out, and I will try out Livefyre.<br /><b>I would just go back to Blogger comments if I could import my comments from Intensedebate</b>!<br /><br />The comments show comment counts too of course.<br />So, we have <b>page view counts</b>, <b>share counts</b>, <b>comment counts</b><br /><br /><b>Page view counts</b> is a choice of mine, and partly transparency, partly vanity. I know of people who claim their blog gets 4 million visitors a year, where I damn well know that they don't even scratch 10% of that. I can check Alexa and cross-check that with a few other analytic sites to easily find out that they're lying through the back of their teeth.<br />So, to avoid any misunderstanding, I keep a (native Blogger) page view counter on my blog. And yes, seeing that stable around 6-7,000 views a month does make me feel good.<br /><b>Would I have it if I had 100 views a month</b>? No - no use; too insignificant to be squabbled about. Would people accuse me of vanity if I did? No, of course not.<br /><b>Had I 100,000 views</b> a month, would I have it? Not sure, I think I wouldn't, because it would look vain. Would people accuse me of vanity if I did? Surely<br /><br /><b>Share counts</b> can be a choice of mine now, and Joseph made me think. Of course I like to see that a certain post has been RT-ed over a 100 times. Of course? Well, yes. Depending on the topic, really.<br />My top post is the very solid statistical analysis (although Mark Schaeffer fiercely disagrees) on the <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/12/klout-o-calypse-25-million-people-cant.html" target="_blank">mass opt-out of Klout</a>. Whereas that is a very important topic, as I'm fiercely Don Quixoting the evil 1.0 opt-inners of this brave 3.0 social world, I would rather have liked to see an Integration post of mine being up there...<br /><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/04/resurrection-what-are-you-waiting-for.html" target="_blank">My Resurrection post</a> being on number 4 does make me very, very happy - that topic is most dear to me. What have both to do with share counts?<br />I do like to see and show share counts, as it will <b>help decide in sharing location</b>. If a post has been shared on Twitter 50 times, 1 time on Facebook, and 8 times on LinkedIn, where would you choose to share it? Depending on content and target audience, you might say "I'm going to share this on ... in stead". Or not, of course.<br /><br /><b>Would I have it if I had 1-3 shares per post</b>? Yes, I would. Some people might see the low share count and decide not to share it because it apparently isn't popular enough, so won't make them popular either - fine, I can do without people like that. Others might think that the post is rubbish because the share counts are so low, so the blog must be rubbish, and as a consequence I must be rubbish as well!<br />Perfect, if you want to live your life like that, then I beg you: don't share my post and never read my blog ever again. Please LOL<br /><b>Had I 1,000 shares</b> per post, would I have it? Yes, I think. The downside would be that it would probably attract people who share a post just because it's shared a lot, but the arguments above still apply: good to know where you can share a post if you know how much it's been shared where<br /><br /><b>Blog comment count</b> - I can't turn that off, and Joseph didn't answer me back on my question whether that was a sign of vanity too then. You still owe me that one Joseph! ;-)<br />This very fact sheds a whole new light on this matter, I think: as I don't have a choice here, I can't be labelled vain. Interesting<br /><br />Let me give you the lo-down for my top 4 posts:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-imYUB5CbwrI/ULIE3Erp3_I/AAAAAAAABik/_VQlmKsI4Ds/s1600/PostRanks.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-imYUB5CbwrI/ULIE3Erp3_I/AAAAAAAABik/_VQlmKsI4Ds/s1600/PostRanks.gif" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><b>What does that tell you, and me</b>? That Klout opt-out was not shared at all on Facebook, but a lot on Delicious, and got relatively few comments. Tibbr was shared relatively often on LinkedIn, which was to be expected. My Resurrection post got very many views but wasn't shared much (relatively very little, actually) on these networks, yet received the most comments<br /><br /><b><i>I promised Joseph - who has the honour of being the very first person ever to bring up the topic of numbers and stats relative to my blog itself - to remove all stats between December 1st and March 1st. Let's see what that does...</i></b><br /><br /><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-54964851824694999492012-11-19T22:26:00.003+01:002012-11-19T22:26:47.076+01:00Read before you share - otherwise it's gossip<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N7PzhNKA7js/UKqjEJ7ShBI/AAAAAAAABf0/Lwsrjdhc4sE/s1600/GossipEdited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N7PzhNKA7js/UKqjEJ7ShBI/AAAAAAAABf0/Lwsrjdhc4sE/s320/GossipEdited.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-users-plan-to-switch-to-apple-2012-11" target="_blank">A rubbish post by business insider</a> titled "This Survey Is Devastating For Microsoft: 42% Of Windows Users Plan To Switch To Apple" and a very <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/technology/which-tablet-to-buy-among-dozens-confuses-shoppers.html" target="_blank">dubious post by the New York Times</a> titled "The Tablet Market Grows Cluttered" drew my attention today - the latter claimed that <br /><blockquote>About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes from iPads, according to Onswipe, a digital publishing company</blockquote>The answer to the first riddle lies in the post itself, the other answer is just a few clicks away. <b>The verdict: bogus anal-ysis</b>. Which doesn't matter to the authors, because the shares came in by the hundreds of course. Amazing facts!<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Let's take a closer look at the business insider post first:<br /><br /><ul><li>Overall, 16% of those surveyed said they planned to buy a new computer </li></ul><div>The survey was done among 135K Windows-only users, which is impressive. Of those 16% that planned to buy a new computer, reasons for doing so are unknown - it is unclear whether that is a replacement for their current PC, or an addition to it.</div><div>You have to watch the video at the original site of USA Today to hear the phrase "of those <b>ready to upgrade</b>", where the question in the poll reads "<b>Purchase a new computer at all</b>?"</div><div><br /></div><div>That, if you ask me, is purposefully distorting the truth as hard and evil as you can. In fact, dear USA Today, the <b>vast majority of the people on this planet would label that as a lie</b>.</div><div>And that, equally dear business insider dot com, <b>makes you a liar as well</b></div><div><br /></div><div>What would the headline read like if you did a proper job?</div><div><b>"Less than 2% of current Windows users plans on buying a Mac. Less than 5% plans on buying an iPad"</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Exciting huh? How many clicks and views would that give you? For the slow calculists among you: 12% of 16% equals 1.9% - and 30% of 16% equals 4.8%. Got it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, onto the New York Times. <b>98% of web traffic on tablets comes from iPads</b> - wow. That is kind of hard to believe, isn't it? I have to give it to NYT that they don't scream this from the roofs, but just mildly mumble that halfway through the post. They even throw in some stats about tablet users:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">The iPad still dominates the market with a 50 percent share, according to third-quarter figures from the research firm IDC, but that is down from 60 percent a year ago. Samsung is in second place with an 18 percent share, Amazon is third with 9 percent, and Asus, which makes Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, is in fourth with 8.6 percent of the market</blockquote>Wait - wait?! Apple has half of the market, and the others share the other half? Isn't the big news then that <b>Apple tablet market share is down 30% from last year</b>? Hello? Do I hear an echo here?<br />Well, again, what a headline that would make hey?<br /><br />But let's investigate this survey then, because it's odd to have 98% of web traffic if you only have 50% of market share, isn't it? No, not really, if you just measure subjectively enough.<br /><a href="http://onswipe.com/" target="_blank">Onswipe</a> is a company with the mission "(...) to power the way the world experiences the web on touch".<br />It does so, by supporting specific devices - apparently <b>some devices are more touchy feely than others</b><br /><br />So, which <a href="http://onswipe.com/#devices" target="_blank">devices do you think Onswipe supports</a>?<br /><br /><ul><li>iPad</li><li>Nexus 7</li><li>Kindle</li><li>iPhone</li></ul><div>and that's it! Which Kindle versions? Only the Fire (fresh since June 2012) which even is Wi-Fi only. The Nexus 7 has just come out in June as well, so these two have to battle the iPad? What about all the other tablets out there, that make up the other half of the market? <b>Not supported by this company</b> that does some convenient anal-ysis on the side.</div><div><b>Comparing apples to oranges</b>, and concealing the hard truth that Apple tablet market share are going down hard</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>So, now you know this, and shared these "facts" in the blink of an eye, do you feel differently? I sure hope so, and also that you think just a little bit longer the next time you read an "amazing fact"</i></b></div><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-67024735594035399772012-11-19T20:31:00.000+01:002012-11-19T20:44:55.561+01:005+ garages to service your car? Sure<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3L65RBkY1uU/UKqIpatVy4I/AAAAAAAABek/b6lSVZ6es7c/s1600/a.aaa-Two-Year-Old-Mechanic_66.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3L65RBkY1uU/UKqIpatVy4I/AAAAAAAABek/b6lSVZ6es7c/s1600/a.aaa-Two-Year-Old-Mechanic_66.jpg" /></a></div><br />[Image by <a href="http://www.jokeroo.com/user/Expressive/" target="_blank">Expressive</a>]<br /><br />After a very lively conversation with <a href="https://twitter.com/holgermu" target="_blank">Holger Müller</a> I decided on "posting it up" - Twitter is fine for conversations but sometimes the 140-char limit just doesn't cut it.<br />We discussed Integration, within enterprises. Along the analogy of a garage, we found out that <b>every enterprise has more than a few garages "to serve their car"</b> - meaning integrating their applications<br /><br />Yes that can be true, but it doesn't need to be - some of the work I do involves "Integration rationalisation", meaning bringing back the number of Integration solutions to -preferably- one<br /><br />Holger told me what is happening, and has been happening, in his world - and I don't disagree with his facts. I just think that there are far, far better ways of using your time and money. "Free Integration Tools" you get with purchasing an application or ERP module don't <strike>always</strike> usually mean that they are<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Imagine you need to drive to garage A for your tyres, B for your regular service, C for your oil-check, D for replacing a light bulb, and E to fix your stereo? Would you love that? It's a fairly common situation in large enterprises where <b>Integration happens as an afterthought, and bottom-up</b><br /><b><br /></b>Usually these integration installations are <b>clubbed together in a point-to-point tech fest</b>, using it as a goal rather than a means. Central logging and monitoring, as well as a simple and usable canonical model usually lack. Messages make it across without envelopes, creating a hard-coupled environment. Documentation usually starts at a Process Start Architecture or very High Level Design, to be followed up (when lucky) by some Global Functional Design.<br />After that, <b>a big gaping void</b> is what remains. Maybe in the very end you'll find some outdated WSDL's and XSD's scattered over the place - the ruins of a $$$ consuming IT battleground<br /><br />Not all of these start out or end up like that. If you use the "free" PI you get with SAP, you'll probably give that some thought before you implement it. Then you might get SuccessFactors on board as well, and use their integration solution. Maybe you have some CRM as well, and before you know it, you'll be using <b>half a dozen lightweight integration "solutions" that just don't cut it at all</b> - even seasoned SAP Pi developers state that it's okay to map some XML, but as soon as it gets even a little bit complex, Java is the way to go. Not to mention the P-word of course: Performance. SAP PI architectures sometimes include 7 layers or more, and a web-call to the back-end might take a minute that way<br /><br />At long-term or even mid-term, what would all that cost? Handcraft together all those separate solutions, learn to master each of them at sufficient scale in order to be able to maintain them, for let's be honest: Integration is a means, not a goal, and a dynamical beast within an A2A (application to application, connecting your internal applications and systems) scenario<br /><br /><b>With the benefit of hindsight</b>, what would you do? Just not use any of these half-hearted fixes, but just get a serious Integration Broker on board, like TIBCO, WebMethods, Axway, BizTalk, Pervasive?<br />So many of those out there, and they're all <b>specialists at what they do: full-fledge integration of any-to-any, at Enterprise scale</b><br /><br /><b><i>Or would you get that "free" service left and right, and visit a couple of garages to service your one single car? If you do the math, you'll not only see that using proper tools is far more efficient in the long run, but even in the very, very short one</i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-89124833991136070912012-11-13T00:56:00.002+01:002012-11-13T00:56:25.661+01:00Big Brother? Sits right on your mobile<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7ebP4m3ZYgM/UKGFhle9dYI/AAAAAAAABdU/f0dfLwTKtnU/s1600/BBC_trust_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="91" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7ebP4m3ZYgM/UKGFhle9dYI/AAAAAAAABdU/f0dfLwTKtnU/s320/BBC_trust_logo.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />[The image above has nothing to do with this post, but it seemed to be fitting, given the latest developments. This post is all about trust]<br /><br />In this age of free(mium), it's common knowledge that <b>you pay with your privacy</b>. Facebook is the best (or should I say worst) example of the dance around your data, yet there are many more tools that you use, which have access to everything that you carry with you: all the data on your phone. Not only can they read that, they can also change it - and even "impersonate" you<br /><br />Some applications do need this very deep trust level, e.g. virus scanners and applications such as <a href="http://www.androidlost.com/" target="_blank">Androidlost</a>. Others absolutely do not do so, like <b>Skype, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Facebook</b>. Interested to see what they can do to the contents of your phone? <b>You'll be in for a surprise</b>, or should I say, shock<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Let's start with the virus scanner, e.g. Bitdefender<br /><br />BitDefender can access:<br /><br /><ul><li><b>Your personal information</b>: read browser's history and bookmarks, write browser's history and bookmarks, read contact data, write contact data, read sensitive log data</li></ul>Your entire browsing history is available, and they can change it too. Understandable if there's a bogus link to an malicious website. Read contact data? write, even? All that seems trivial when compared to<a href="http://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission.html#READ_LOGS" target="_blank"> what the sensitive log data gives away</a>: <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Allows an application to read the low-level system log files. Log entries can contain the user's private information, which is why this permission is not available to normal apps</blockquote>Well, fair enough, a virus scanner isn't a normal app. So let's just trust 'm, hey?<br /><ul><li><b>Services that cost you money</b>: directly call phone numbers, and SMS messages</li><li><b>Your location</b>: coarse (network-based) location, fine (GPS) location</li><li><b>Your messages</b>: edit SMS or MMS, read SMS or MMS, receive SMS</li><li><b>Network communication</b>: create Bluetooth connections, full Internet access</li><li><b>Your accounts</b>: manage the account list, use the authentication credentials of an account</li><li><b>Storage</b>: modify / delete SD card contents</li><li><b>Phone calls</b>: read phone state and identity</li><li><b>Hardware controls</b>: change your audio settings</li><li><b>System tools</b>: change network connectivity, change Wi-Fi status, display system level alerts, modify global system settings, prevent phone from sleeping</li><li><b>Your location</b>: access extra location provider commands</li><li><b>Network communication</b>: Google Play billing service, receive data from Internet, view network status, view Wi-Fi status</li><li><b>Your accounts</b>: discover known accounts</li><li><b>System tools</b>: automatically start at boot</li></ul>The last four are at the bottom of the list, and available via "Show All". <a href="http://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?showtopic=37450" target="_blank">Here's what BitDefender says their app can do</a>, and let's just suffice to say that they leave out a few. The most burning questions get answered; your account access is necessary for signing in into BitDefender via e.g. your Google Account (so much for oAuth, I guess). <b>Reason for write access to contacts? Absent</b>. Location access? "necessary to get the best possible location" - I bet ya! The SMS stuff is needed for SMS-controlled management of BitDefender, they say, along with making phone calls<br /><br />Let's face it: to be protected at all levels, you need read access to all levels. In order to be able to remove malicious software at all levels, you need write access to all levels. Still leaves a few questions unanswered, but hey<br /><br /><b>Let's check out what Skype can do, shall we</b>? Whatever is extra (yes, you read that right) to what BitDefender can do, is in <b>bold</b>. Whatever is duplicate, is <i>italic</i>. Whatever is not used, is in regular font<br /><br /><ul><li>Your personal information: read browser's history and bookmarks, write browser's history and bookmarks, <i>read contact data, write contact data</i>, read sensitive log data </li><li>Services that cost you money: <i>directly call phone numbers</i>, and SMS messages</li><li>Your location: <i>coarse (network-based) location</i>, fine (GPS) location</li><li>Your messages: edit SMS or MMS, read SMS or MMS, receive SMS</li><li>Network communication: <i>create Bluetooth connections, full Internet access</i></li><li>Your accounts: <i>manage the account list, use the authentication credentials of an account</i></li><li><i>Storage: modify delete SD card contents</i></li><li>Phone calls: <i>read phone state and identity</i></li><li>Hardware controls: <i>change your audio settings</i></li><li>System tools: change network connectivity, <i>change Wi-Fi status</i>, display system level alerts, <i>modify global system settings</i>, <i>prevent phone from sleeping</i></li><li>Network communication: Google Play billing service, receive data from Internet, <i>view network status, view Wi-Fi status</i></li><li>Your accounts: <i>discover known accounts</i></li><li>System tools: automatically start at boot</li></ul><div><b>And the following are extra</b>:</div><ul><li><b>Disable key lock, retrieve running applications, write sync settings, record audio, take pictures and videos, act as an account authenticator, read sync settings, read sync statistics, send sticky broadcast, control vibrator</b></li></ul><div>So Skype can pretty much do all that my deeply trusted virus scanner can? Granted, it can't access my browins history, nor SMS and MMS, nor bill me via Google Play.</div><div><b>But Skype has almost the same deeply trusted access to my phone</b>? Why? why on earth? To use the Internet in order to connect to someone else? That's ridiculous</div><div><br /></div><div>Even worse, it can retrieve all running applications, read my synchronisation settings, and even impersonate me! Here is what that last fine setting really can do:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Allows an application to use the account authenticator capabilities of the AccountManager, including creating accounts and getting and setting their passwords</blockquote>What?! Skype has access to my password?! And can even change it?!!!<br />Yes, Skype has access to my password, and can even change it. It can also create accounts on my phone. <b>Do you use Skype? Happy with it? Still happy</b>?<br /><br /> How about google Plus then? We'll run the same exercise as before: bold, italic and regular. This time, I've added the full permissions that Skype has as a baseline<br /><br /><br /><ul><li>Your personal information: <i>read contact data</i>, <i>write contact data</i> </li><li>Services that cost you money: directly call phone numbers</li><li>Your location: <i>coarse (network-based) location, fine (GPS) location</i></li><li>Network communication: <i>create Bluetooth connections, full Internet access</i></li><li>Your accounts: <i>manage the account list, use the authentication credentials of an account</i></li><li>Storage:<i> modify / delete SD card contents</i></li><li>Phone calls: <i>read phone state and identity</i></li><li>Hardware controls: <i>change your audio settings</i></li><li>System tools: change Wi-Fi status, <i>modify global system settings</i>, <i>prevent phone from sleeping</i></li><li>Network communication: <i>receive data from Internet<span style="font-style: normal;">,</span> view network status</i>, view Wi-Fi status</li><li>Your accounts: <i>discover known accounts</i></li><li>Disable key lock, retrieve running applications, <i>write sync settings</i>, <i>record audio, take pictures and videos</i>, act as an account authenticator, <i>read sync settings</i>, read sync statistics, send sticky broadcast, <i>control vibrator</i></li></ul><div><div><b>And the following are extra</b>:</div><ul><li><b><b>Read subscribed feeds, </b><b>write subscribed feeds,</b> read your profile data, write to your profile data, read your social stream, write to your social stream, set wallpaper, download files without notification, control flashlight, read Google service configuration, receive data from Internet</b></li></ul><div>Needless to say, the permissions are similar, yet go even deeper. Google plus apparently doesn't feel the need to retrieve my running applications, nor to read my synchronisation statistics, but lo and behold, <b>even Google Plus doesn't need to act as an account authenticator</b>. But I guess that the access to Google service configuration, along with reading and writing to my profile, make up for that. Hard to tell, really, from the tech documentation they provide.</div></div><div><b>Who's in charge here</b>? I most certainly am not. All my personal data is up for grabs, all my friends, all private messages, everything - p0wned by Google. Download files without notification? Who cares about that when you've granted access like the above...</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you up for the last one? <b>LinkedIn - let's see what they require, or at least, acquire</b>. Again, Skype is the baseline</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><ul><li>Your personal information: <i>read contact data, write contact data</i> </li><li>Services that cost you money: directly call phone numbers</li><li>Your location: coarse (network-based) location, fine (GPS) location</li><li>Network communication: create Bluetooth connections, <i>full Internet access</i></li><li>Your accounts: <i>manage the account list</i>, use the authentication credentials of an account</li><li>Storage: <i>modify / delete SD card contents</i></li><li>Phone calls: <i>read phone state and identity</i></li><li>Hardware controls: change your audio settings</li><li>System tools: change Wi-Fi status, modify global system settings, <i>prevent phone from sleeping</i></li><li>Network communication: <i>view network status</i>, view Wi-Fi status</li><li>Your accounts: <i>discover known accounts</i></li><li>Disable key lock, retrieve running applications, <i>write sync settings</i>, record audio, take pictures and videos, <i>act as an account authenticator</i>, <i>read sync settings, read sync statistics, send sticky broadcast</i>, control vibrator</li></ul><div><div><b>And the following are extra</b>:</div><ul><li><b>Read calendar events plus confidential information, receive data from Internet</b></li></ul><div>Well that's all folks! Glad to see that it is default for these three applications to not only read, but also write to your contacts. And access your profile data in some intrusive manner, one way or the other. And identify you by real name and number, by accessing your phone identity. Oh, and manage your synchronmisation settings for you, that really is required for all these apps, isn't it?</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Facebook</b>? Same as the others. In fact, not nearly as bad as I thought it would be - but just as bad as the others</div><div><br /></div><div>Listen up. You might be upset by what goes on in this world. You might be protesting new government laws, so-called anti-terror ones, or you might be standing on the barricades for who knows what request for information on your private life that you just don't deem necessary.</div><div><b>But do you give applications like these even more than a mere glance?</b></div><div><b>Don't you just install them, without reading what they do?</b></div><div><b>Or do you read what they want, but don't read the fine print?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm sure you'll do much more than that, after this post. Let me make a prediction: mobiles and phones are becoming, and have already become, so darn cheap, that people will carry two of each in the very near future: within the next 2-3 years. Not all people, but those who can afford <b>an extra $100 for a burner phone or burner tablet</b>, will get one. Burner meaning that it contains nothing private.</div><div>Then, still, the question remains which apps to use. Well, I predict that the app usage will quickly diminish, actually. Why download an app for an application that you only use online anyway? Why download an app to actually use an application that you only use via a browser when you're sitting behind your laptop?</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>The answer is simple: you might (and highly likely do) not need to, but it's given to you for free. How's that hey? Marvellous... isn't it?</i></b></div></div>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-3127700945912044992012-11-12T17:29:00.003+01:002012-11-12T17:30:38.619+01:00Why I only watch blind auditions of #TVOH<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_7W38L3xa7Y/UKEhZksZvRI/AAAAAAAABcE/35pdV63work/s1600/Voice_holland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_7W38L3xa7Y/UKEhZksZvRI/AAAAAAAABcE/35pdV63work/s1600/Voice_holland.jpg" /></a></div><br />It was an intention I had after the first season of The voice Of Holland had ended. After the second season, it was a firm agreement I made with myself. And yet, as it's aired on Friday night, it's become a tradition for me and my women to watch TVOH with a proper fire in the fireplace, drinks, potato chips, and lively discussions<br /><br /><b>No more</b>. I tell you, no more<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />I love the turning chairs of The Voice, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roel_van_Velzen#2010-2011:_The_Voice_of_Holland_and_Third_Studio_Album" target="_blank">invented by Roel van Velzen</a>. Unless the jury is told who will appear on stage (and I'm fairly sure they aren't), the only criterion to turn around for someone is his or her singing (and maybe the reaction of the audience).<br />It is perfect objectivity! The first few blind auditions in season 1 gave me goose bumps all over, the second also, and in season number three, this hasn't changed. There sometimes are perfect naturals with a radiant voice, who audition their song so immaculately that it comes close to heaven.<br />As a bonus, the <b>coaches do their best to flatter the singers</b> (and themselves), all with tongue-in-cheeck, to join their team. It really is the icing on the cake to this upside-down song show that so brightly shines at this very stage, next to the outdated model of X-Factor and the like<br /><br />Then, <b>after the audition, the battles come</b>. Two contestants from one team, picked by their coach, have to sing a song together, picked by the coach. Sometimes that song is more to the advantage of one of the contestants than the other, but that happens - although I'd think that there are plenty of songs in the world to pick from, but then again I'm not a coach.<br />What has been surprising me, was the fact that sometimes those battles were clearly won by one, yet victory was assigned to the other. That is a lot <b>less objective than the auditions</b>!<br /><br />Then, those who survive the Battles, have to perform in <b>the live shows</b>. Just as during the Battles, the participants are actively coached. The song they sing is a compromise between what they want, and what their coach wants.<br />These live shows have more often than not a quite chilling effect on me: the performance is either bland or simply horrendous - to only occassionaly throw me off my feet. Sometimes I even think "Gee, I could have sung that much better" and believe me, you don't want to hear me sing<br /><br />I really don't understand how such very good singers, with such very good coaches, being coached so closely, can perform so bad sometimes. Is it all to make the show more exciting, less predictable? Of course the audience has a vote now too: theirs and the coach's determine who stays and goes. But give your favourite pupil a good song and he or she is guaranteed to make it - right?<br /><br /><b>Then come the finals</b> (after the sing-offs) and in the end there's a winner.<br />In general, during all of the shows, I often find the music too loud, the act too distracting, or the jurors too subjective. Songs sometimes hardly match, or are too challenging, and when the singer does give a brilliant performance with a good to perfect act, the coach / juror denotes the entire performance as "too much inside your comfort zone"<br /><br />I'm not an expert in singing, worse, I can't sing at all. But as the show advances, from audition to finals as well as from season 1 to season 3, I can't help but think that other motives come into play than just to find a bright and shining Voice. Voting now costs 90 eurocents per vote, and there are other equally unpleasant signs (the tinkering with the Swarovski crystals, the loud presence of Bose, etc) of an extreme commercialisation that outbalances the joy and beauty that I experienced first<br /><br />I understand that everything around shows like these is about money. I sometimes suspect that people get booted on purpose so their negotiation position simply isn't as good as it could or would have been, or maybe it's just to win a bet, I don't know. I pretty much stopped worrying about whether this happens on purpose or by accident - it just happens, and fairly often too.<br /><b>What started with great objectivity and beauty, seems to end up in obscure subjectivity</b>; for me, the entertainment level and perceived quality pretty much go down like a lead balloon<br /><br /><b><i>What I do know, is that during the blind auditions I almost only hear beautiful voices and songs, and am very amused by the fun attempts of the coaches to flatter the singers. During the blind auditions of The Voice Of Holland, I'm having an excellent time.</i></b><br /><b><i>After that, it all goes downhill. Fast</i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-61831880422150782472012-10-30T23:01:00.001+01:002012-10-30T23:01:50.178+01:00The Netherlands exit the rusty labour market<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0MXfTb8k2HI/UJA9fzYgWlI/AAAAAAAABa0/WFNniXReLXU/s1600/800px-Rusty_anchor_50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0MXfTb8k2HI/UJA9fzYgWlI/AAAAAAAABa0/WFNniXReLXU/s1600/800px-Rusty_anchor_50.jpg" /></a></div><br />Yesterday, our new government finished negotiations. The two parties that together form a majority, VVD and PvdA, have reached agreements on their mutual policies for the next four years. It's a challenging combination of right-wing (VVD) and left-wing (PvdA).<br />Even though these definitions vary considerably across the globe, I think I can suffice by saying that VVD generally favours the rich, while PvdA favours the poor<br /><br />But, all that doesn't matter. The topic for this post is the definitive decision that <b>severance pay will be maximised at 75 thousand euros</b> - period. Where it currently would be double, triple or even more of that<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/10/labor-laws-in-europe-and-resignation.html" target="_blank">I wrote about this before</a>, way before anyone thought this would even be feasible or acceptable - in our current society.<br />Well, it's a feat now<br /><br />The impact of this can't be understood unless we consider median income, do some calculations, and go back in time. Or I could just give away the punch line: this will make firing people so much easier, and <b>improve the Dutch economy</b> in such a big sense, that it will ensure its overall health and make them a leader of Europe as we know it<br /><br />Why? Because the current labour laws we have protect the employee too much. Yes, too much. It's not as bad as in Denmark, where employees get severance pays if they quit their job voluntarily, but the current formula used is ensuring that <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/06/how-often-does-your-company-plant-get.html" target="_blank">old roots dead-weight the company down into mediocrity</a>, or even beyond.<br /><br />The <a href="http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLNL&PA=70843ned&D1=a&D2=0-18&D3=0&D4=l&HD=080523-1711&HDR=G3,G2,T&STB=G1" target="_blank">median income in the Netherlands</a> is 31,000 euro before taxes for a one-person household. After taxes, that is 19,000 euros (I'm conveniently rounding figures at thousands of euros).<br />Working for the government? 44K / 33K euro (before / after taxes).<br />CEO / board? 64K / 41K.<br />Self-employed? 39K / 30K.<br />If you work in IT services, your average income will be around 65K / 42K when you're a senior with 15 years of experience. 25 years? That could be double that, given the fact the fact that you started out around 1985 and surfed the IT wave. With 30 years or more, you may have floated on top and earn 150K before taxes, or even 200-250K<br /><br />You see the workings of our progressive tax system there, but nonetheless. Let's take a few examples here, and see what it would use to cost to get rid of an employee - let's be honest about that please, you don't fire people because you want to keep them, do you?<br /><br /><br /><ul><li>20 years on 44K? Severance pay of 80K</li><li>30 years on 44K? Severance pay of 100K </li><li>20 years on 65K? Severance pay of 115K </li><li>30 years on 65K? Severance pay of 140K </li><li>20 years on 100K? Severance pay of 165K </li><li>30 years on 100K? Severance pay of 210K </li><li>20 years on 150K? Severance pay of 250K </li><li>30 years on 150K? Severance pay of 310K </li></ul><br />I'm taking these long terms because here in NL, <b>after the war, you would get married twice</b>: once to your wife or husband, and another time to your work. We are not used to job hopping - the Boomer generation that is. Even thought pension is kicking in for the early Boomers, there are a lot left that even hopped more than once, but working for a company for 20 to 30 years is certainly no exception<br /><br /><b>The severance pays are huge</b> in some cases, hefty in most, for those. 40 years of service at a gross income of 65K? A severance pay of 230K is all yours.<br />Would you like that, as an employer? Of course you wouldn't. You'd try to change someone like that into an asset again, for his / her and your own sake.<br />If that would fail, you'd try to scare or bully him away. But that would usually result in the person himself being unhappy, thus treating his environment in an unhappy way<br /><br />The effects of the current system would usually be that collateral damage would occur at several points in time and space, which would fall under <b>OPEX, not CAPEX</b>. A company would not notice this at first, but overall suffer from it anyway. High attrition rates, short-term customers, failing projects and many other manifestations would be obvious to an outsider, but not the company itself<br /><br />The agreement reached by our new government will be a very unpleasant surprise to a few, unpleasant to some, but welcomed by most, if not all, companies. I'm willing to state that it will bring back common sense and reward and punishment. <b>And we all need reward and punishment, because that's how we got <strike>domesticated</strike> raised</b>. We often wonder why business and professional events occur as they do, because they sometimes are so contradictory to what we would expect<br /><br /><b><i>The Dutch government is bringing back common sense into doing business. And on the side, it will greatly fuel entrepreneurship, or at least self-employment. Because where else will these people go?</i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-65399520828357340602012-10-26T21:03:00.002+02:002012-10-26T21:03:49.434+02:00Innovation and inclusion - a matter of space and time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7xyRQgaE2mQ/UIrCB7_JGjI/AAAAAAAABZk/dkNsDmY6sWM/s1600/Salim_Virji_-_Monkey_with_cat_(by-sa).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7xyRQgaE2mQ/UIrCB7_JGjI/AAAAAAAABZk/dkNsDmY6sWM/s1600/Salim_Virji_-_Monkey_with_cat_(by-sa).jpg" /></a></div><br />[Image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/44124427152@N01" target="_blank">Salim Virji</a>] <br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">I am not sure anymore on relationship between innovation and inclusion . Need to think through it during the long flight to India tomorrow<br />— Vijay Vijayasankar (@vijayasankarv) <a data-datetime="2012-10-26T14:34:17+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/vijayasankarv/status/261838161242644480">October 26, 2012</a></blockquote><a href="http://andvijaysays.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Vijay Vijasankar</a> and <a href="http://esjewett.com/" target="_blank">Ethan Jewett</a> dragged me into a conversation on innovation and inclusion. Well of course they didn't, I butted in as usual<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/MartijnLinssen/status/261857818431336449" target="_blank">My answer was</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="261848552018436096">@<a href="https://twitter.com/vijayasankarv">vijayasankarv</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/esjewett">esjewett</a> that can't be true. They mean the extent of inclusion in space and time - I sure do hope<br />— Martijn Linssen (@MartijnLinssen) <a data-datetime="2012-10-26T15:52:23+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/MartijnLinssen/status/261857818431336449">October 26, 2012</a></blockquote><br /><a name='more'></a>Innovation disrupts - <b>there can't be any innovation that doesn't</b>. Disrupting means ripping apart - of the status quo, no matter how big or small either of them.<br />Let's stand at a distance, shall we? Imagine you are an oil company, and I am an employee. Maybe even an distinguished employee. Maybe even your best and biggest biz friend.<br />I find a way to power vehicles solely on solar energy, or wind - free power sources, that in the next few years would put you and your competition completely out of business<br /><br />Would you like that? Even appreciate that? Or, on the outer end of the scale lovingly embrace that? No. <b>You'd dissuade me, pact up against me, ignore me, fire me, haunt me for ever</b><br /><br />What would other people do, once I took my ideas public? The tree huggers (sorry, I love trees too, but this is the popular word I'm afraid is used to ridicule you) would carry me on their shoulders. Your competition? They'd behave fairly the same-ish. Can't have a traitor among the ranks, even if it's on the other side - <b>we have to uphold the system and close ranks even across enemy lines if it's threatened as a whole</b><br /><br />So, that innovation doesn't really rub on so well now, does it? - to those in my immediate vicinity.<br />Let's fast forward a given amount of years, decades or centuries, when my idea has become so blatantly basic, natural and afterthought-less as can be - pretty much like water coming out of your tap, electricity out of your wall, etcetera.<br />If my boss / company and its competition were still around, how would they behave now? Needless to say, <b>they'd have become the poster child of my idea they persecuted so feverously at the moment it was born</b><br /><br />That is <b>what time does to innovation</b> - it includes the vast majority. Or, of course, if not innovative enough, or disruptive enough yet opposed enough within due time, it won't. Acid rain and global warming are the most recent examples of the opposites of that, by the way - but let's not lead me astray for this post<br /><br />A less extreme example perhaps, to show <b>how space can and can't propel innovation</b>. Social networks such as Twitter, Yammer and Facebook come to mind. Imagine you are ye old-fashioned enterprise, and I'm the usual silly self-proclaimed evangelist, oh noes, strategist. Of course I'm starting this in splendid solitude and isolation, and you aren't aware of that, as I am a humble <strike>grunt</strike> servant out in the fields.<br />Then, more and more people adopt, and all of a sudden <b>you find yourself confronted with a minor majority</b>, or major minority, which ever perception suits you best, of people who engage in something you're absolutely clueless about, unfamiliar with, and unlikely to like.<br /><a href="http://euansemple.com/theobvious/2010/5/21/trojan-mice.html" target="_blank">A perfect example of Euan Semple's Trojan mice</a><br /><br />What's the way forward then? Well, as usual, it's all about the immense shades of grey in between black and white.<br /><br /><ul><li>Are you, or your business, looking for innovation in a serious sense of the word? You'll find yourself in a warm bath, and if you have to worry about anything, it's probably other people taking credit for your ideas</li><li>Do you pay servitude to an Enterprise? Maybe it would be best to take your innovative ideas, including yourself, outside. The best way would probably be the Trojan mice way. Or, if you're into the Inner Circle, your innovative ideas might resonate when you've won the support of your peers and the people they please. Or you are not part of the Inner Circle, and will have to rely on Time to be on your side</li></ul><div><br /></div>The shades of grey in between the two kinds of companies above - and your role - determine the Space and Time of inclusion.<br />Are you part of an<b> inherently social business</b> because it's small-scale enough, where every employer knows every customer and vice versa? Include everyone, or don't even bother, as any good innovative idea will automatically do so. Time is no factor, your ideas will either get fast forwarded immediately, of forever forgotten.<br />Are you a member of a <b>droid factory</b> where people 9-to-5 their way through life? Highly dependent on what your ideas innovate on, you'll very likely start with inclusion of a small group, your own inner circle, and run into the glass ceiling at some point. Your ideas might simmer beyond that, and surface from time to time, and might even get successful - but those chances are slim, and chances of you being credited or even slimmer, as in non-existent<br /><br /><b><i>The goal of every innovation is of course to include everyone, starting with the very top, right now. But not too seldom, the goal of that very top is to either kill or own any innovation. That is where you should stretch your Space, and aim for Time to close the gap - or simply take your ideas outside</i></b>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-28550488714284208832012-10-23T15:00:00.000+02:002012-10-24T09:04:03.743+02:00Android? Car mode? Speakerphone auto-on? Bluetooth volume fail? Micro-USB design-flaw!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WUrOe9xBw-M/UIaIgQ256HI/AAAAAAAABYQ/50WvCHcUMrM/s1600/micro+B+USB.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WUrOe9xBw-M/UIaIgQ256HI/AAAAAAAABYQ/50WvCHcUMrM/s1600/micro+B+USB.JPG" /></a></div><br />[Disclaimer: this information is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind. Use at your own risk]<br /><br />Are you -that is, your phone- <b>suffering from the following symptoms</b>?<br /><br /><ul><li>weeks or even months ago, "<b>car mode</b>" started to seemingly randomly get enabled</li><li>ever since, that seemed to happen more often</li><li>at some point, when you made or received a call, the <b>speakerphone</b> would sometimes be automatically turned on</li><li>since a while, when you make or receive a call, the speakerphone is always automatically turned on</li><li>since then, when connected via <b>Bluetooth</b> to a speakerset, you can change the <b>volume</b> on your phone up or down but that won't have any effect</li><li><b>it drives you crazy</b></li></ul><br /><a name='more'></a><br />If any of these apply, I probably have <b>the solution</b>. I've had this exact problem since months now, and tried a few things that the interwebz suggested, but none of it would help. Understandably so, because it has nothing to do with Android, nor HTC, Samsung, or any other phone selling company, or software maker.<br /><b>It is a design flaw in the micro USB architecture</b> - and at that level is where you can solve this problem within 5 minutes<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Mini_and_Micro_connectors" target="_blank">Micro A or B USB</a>, commonly known as micro USB, is the official name for the connector on most non-Apple phones. A picture of mine (a micro B USB) is on top of this post.<br />What is <b>inside</b> the phone is called <b>receptacle</b>.<br />What <b>plugs</b> into that, is called a <b>plug</b><br /><br />If you use your phone heavily, you might end up charging it (perhaps not completely, but at least plugging it in in order to charge it) 5-10 times a day; I know I do. It all depends on how many locations I am at on a daily basis. Being somewhere near a power outlet for a while? Plug it in!<br />So, <b>after roughly a year</b>, I had plugged a micro USB connector (we have many) into my phone <b>roughly 2,000 times</b>.<br />What happens when you <b>rub iron against iron</b> over a prolonged time period? Look at the hinges of your doors, and you'll probably see those <b>little black specks</b> on the side and below them. If you put your finger on them, you'll find that they feel - like oil, greasy.<br />You can rub them between your fingers, and leave a <b>black smear</b><br /><br /><b>Well, the same thing has happened inside the micro USB connector on your phone - it contains little black specks of what I call iron smear</b>. The iron smear acts as a conductor and somehow gives your phone the idea that it has a connector plugged in into its micro USB receptacle - and more<br /><br /><i>If you remove the smear, you'll have your old phone back. No more speakerphone, no more car mode, you can adjust audio volume over Bluetooth, and you'll be a lot less reluctant to either make a call or receive one</i><br /><br />Now, if you take a close look at the micro USB receptacle, <b>you'll see that it is of a very fragile nature</b>. The very thin piece in the middle actually connects to the 5 wires inside, so <b>if you lose that, you lose it all - including your phone</b>. So be very, very careful (and read the disclaimer on top of this post again)<br /><br />How can you clean the "iron smear"? With an ordinary piece of paper. Let me just tell you how I did it, and you be the judge of what you'll do next<br /><br /><ul><li>I took a blank sheet of paper</li><li>I folded it, flattened the crease by using my nails, and tore off a piece the size of my pinky finger</li><li>I folded one side of the bottom, flattened the crease, and did the same to the other side: I got myself a "phone-pick" (see below)</li><li>I powered off my phone, took out the battery (one can never be careful enough) and started "picking my phone" very carefully by sticking the paper into the receptacle and gently moving it back and forth</li><li>After 10-15 seconds, I took it out, and looked at the paper: it had black smudges at the very top!</li><li>I tore off the top, did some folding and crease sharpening again, and repeated the process</li><li>I repeated the last step until the piece of paper wouldn't get black smear on it anymore</li></ul><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kF3E4CQ2c3Y/UIaIfadrSRI/AAAAAAAABYM/VMrFJ1_Y8pc/s1600/USB+pick.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kF3E4CQ2c3Y/UIaIfadrSRI/AAAAAAAABYM/VMrFJ1_Y8pc/s1600/USB+pick.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My phone pick</td></tr></tbody></table><ul><li>I put the battery back in, powered on the phone, and made a call. <b>The speakerphone didn't turn itself on automatically!</b></li><li>I connected it to a speaker over Bluetooth: <b>I could adjust the volume again!</b></li><li>I plugged in the adapter to see what happened when charging the phone. <b>The car mode didn't get turned on!</b></li></ul><br /><i><b>I was happy. I now clean the micro-USB receptacle on my phone every 2-3 months - and stay happy!</b></i>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-87825114732709561562012-10-22T10:17:00.003+02:002012-10-22T10:17:54.409+02:00A pyramid scheme is bad form, Cloudwork<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SP0kb1L6RjU/UITyK33CdCI/AAAAAAAABW8/L5dBRXRN98s/s1600/logo24_shadow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="54" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SP0kb1L6RjU/UITyK33CdCI/AAAAAAAABW8/L5dBRXRN98s/s320/logo24_shadow.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />As some of you might know, or rather, should, Integration is my middle name - you might even call me a one-trick pony and I'd take that as a compliment. So, when I saw that Cloudwork offers unprecedented integration (cough), I signed up immediately! I was even so enthusiastic, I even forgot to <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2011/11/why-im-using-fake-identities-to-sign-up.html">use a fake identity</a> - and very much regret that now<br /><br />Cloudwork didn't have me sign up. No, Cloudwork baited me into giving away my email address, so they could decide themselves when to send me that valuable invite to their beta:<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Thank you for signing up for CloudWork private beta!<br /><br />To get access to our beta, you need to share our unique URL with your friends:<br />http://beta.cloudwork.com?lrRef=foobar<br /><br />If one of them signs-up, you´re in our beta. If three of them sign-up, you will enter into a draw to win a free annual Premium access. Check the CloudWork beta incentive program conditions.<br /><br />As an example, you can share the following text on Twitter (or email, or FaceBook, or LinkedIn, wherever are your friends!) "@CloudWork promises to integrate my cloud business apps together to automate tasks. Sign up for the beta http://beta.cloudwork.com?lrRef=foobar "<br /><br />We'll let you know by email as soon as we're ready. Hopefully during the week of September 10.<br />You can always find out how many people you have referred by coming back to http://beta.cloudwork.com/ and entering your email address again.<br /><br />Thank you,<br /><br />CloudWork Team</blockquote><br />[Reference foobar-red by me] <br />Mind you, this email was sent on October 16th - would that September 10 there mean September 10, 2013? Or is Cloudwork running behind its own schedule? That wouldn't surprise me in the least, with such a pyramid scheme.<br /><a href="https://twitter.com/bduperrin/status/258153203479232512" target="_blank">It was Bertrand Duperrin who drew my attention to this overpromising company</a> (thanks Bertrand), which made my eyebrows rise very highly because of its "We connect your business apps to make them work harder" false promise.<br /><br />False? Well, the <b>"business apps"</b> on that same page aren't exactly business apps. Here's the full list:<br /><br />Asana<br />Base CRM<br />Basecamp<br />Campaign Monitor<br />Capsule CRM<br />Chargify<br />Desk.com<br />Dropbox<br />Evernote<br />FreeAgent<br />Freshbooks<br />Gmail<br />Google Calendar<br />Google Contacts<br />Google Drive<br />Google Talk<br />Highrise<br />HipChat<br />MailChimp<br />Pivotal Tracker<br />RSS feed<br />Toggl<br />Twilio<br />Twitter<br />UserVoice<br />WordPress<br />Zendesk<br />Zoho CRM<br /><br />(half of these are greyed out btw)<br /><b>Business apps hey</b>? What kind of business would I be in then? Would this be considered core business? Then you'd probably be out of business very soon - unless you're Twitter themselves of course (but what integration would you need then?)<br /><br />So, I wanted to find out how attractive Cloudworks integration was, before judging them and passing a premature verdict (which was challenging, after that "invite" email). <b>Apparently, the beta is over and anyone can just sign up</b> so I apparently do get a chance for that, without having to participate in the pyramid scheme?! Maybe they did see the light then?<br /><ul><li>There are 10 ways to integrate in total. Out of the entire list above, you get to choose 10</li><li>4 of those integrate into Zoho CRM, and almost all others are involved with Mailchimp and Evernote</li><li>That's all folks! I followed the remaining active links, and found out that "CloudWork automatically pushes new contacts from any app to your CRM" actually means only Zoho CRM and Capsule CRM. Any app, of course, means one out of 3-5 apps on average</li></ul>Well, that was it. I couldn't be more underwhelmed. I understand that you have to start somewhere small, but don't use big words like that if you do. <b>Customer expectation is all that counts</b>.<br />I do like the idea that this easily connects basic functionalities between cloud applications, even if the definition of those is very broad in this particular case.<br />If this were targeted at SMB, it could be a nice start for your business if you happen to have the exact combination of apps offered (of which chances are slim for more than 2 or 3).<br />But it doesn't address the burning issue of changing API's, API management, version control, monitoring, logging, archiving, reporting, etc. Well maybe that is because it's all in beta?<br /><br /><i><b>@Cloudwork, stop the stupid pyramid scheme (an apology would be nice), change the word business to cloud there, start thinking about the point-to-point mess you seem to be getting yourself into, and how to protect your customers from volatile API's and API changes</b></i>Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-73065554060858425582012-10-21T17:50:00.000+02:002012-10-21T17:50:12.559+02:00How and why common sense will beat REST<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y2N6AmeuL4M/UFsRs6APeRI/AAAAAAAABSs/7gYnyHCQl3o/s1600/CommonSense.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y2N6AmeuL4M/UFsRs6APeRI/AAAAAAAABSs/7gYnyHCQl3o/s1600/CommonSense.JPG" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/09/how-and-why-rest-will-beat-soap.html">In my previous post</a> I described how REST would replace SOAP. If you paid close attention you will have noticed that I actually didn't say anything in favour of REST, but everything at the expense of SOAP.<br />Because it indeed seems like REST will be the new SOAP - <b>which is in contradiction</b> with the idea that today's Enterprises that have any form of Service Oriented Architecture will replace their current implementations by those fit for the future<br /><br />Because "REST" just doesn't make any sense in that context. Mind you, I'm talking about the REST that the low-level techies hijack; exactly what I described, i.e. JSON with the four HTTP verbs. Not the REST as Roy Fielding intended, i.e. a verb-independent style. Apart from all the heavy caching on every side of any connection, which really enabled the scale he was looking for. Without cache, there would be no Internet. Period.<br />And in case you want to know what Roy thinks of the current hijacking of REST, just <a href="http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/specialization">read this</a> <a href="http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven">and this </a><br /><a name='more'></a><br />REST is meant for hypertext-based <b>client-server interaction where the uncertainty is high</b>, i.e. where client and server have little to none knowledge of each other and eachother's intentions. It is excellent to handle unpredictability such as which piece of information will be requested or presented next, and when I compare it to the context of Enterprise Integration, I must say that they compare to each other as day and night. Or night and day - which ever you prefer. Where <b>an Enterprise is straight-jacketed into business rules </b>and really doesn't like exceptions to those, <b>even the entire concept of rules and exceptions is absent in REST</b>. REST is all about state, and doesn't care where a resource resides or comes from, or even which version it is: its identifier stays the same.<br />In Enterprise Integration on the other hand, an order from client A can (and usually will) look entirely different from an order from client B, and must be treated in a completely other way. Resource representations without knowing what lies beneath? <b>Version numbering is of the utmost essentiality in Enterprise!</b><br /><br />So, REST and Enterprise Integration have nothing to do with each other, regardless of the hordes that embrace and adore contradictory notions such as REST-based SOA, or SOA-REST, or use REST API's to describe pretty much anything that exactly resembles JSON over HTTP without anything else (or that while including the four HTTP verbs). All those people are either <b>ignorant</b> and choose to stay so, or <b>malign</b> and intentionally hijacking the term REST "just cuz it's hot" to fit anything they happen to be able to sell at that very moment. Is there any grayscale in between? <a href="http://scn.sap.com/community/technology-innovation/blog/2012/06/03/restful-apis-from-scratch-lessons-learnt-so-far">I'm not so sure that there is much</a><br /><br />In this context, an <a href="http://service-architecture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/thinking-is-dead.html">interesting and spot-on post was written by Steve Jones</a>. I'll just take one quote to sum it up:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The focus of shiny technology over business outcomes and the focus of short term coding over long term design will ensure that IT departments get broken up and business folks treat IT as a commodity in an ever growing way</blockquote><br />Steve describes how shouting has come to replace thinking in IT. Facts, reason and experience have been replaced by debates, emotions and loudmouthing. It worries me that especially IT professionals take this course in a growing fashion; I can't wait (trust me, I can) to be told again that I got REST completely wrong - my answer will again be: "Please show me the right definition of REST and I might change my opinion on it", which will highly likely be met with either silence or one of those famous counter-questions.<br /><b>There are exceptions to that rule</b>, but it's the rule and those are the exceptions, als - not vice versa<br /><br />Where I see "REST API's" being particularly popular is among coders who now can hard-couple applications together with just a bit of Java and not much else - instantly connect to the outside world with just a few clicks and ticks. Yes, they now can build point-to-point interfaces on an increasingly growing scale, a few times faster than before! They break more than a few REST rules in order to be able to even do that, but, they manage.<br />Which is a <b>costly, inefficient and unwise approach of Integration</b>, and that was proven decades ago - which highly likely precedes their experience or knowledge. It is a short-sighted approach that will give us all a future where we can replace the "RESTful services" of today and tomorrow in 2-5 years from now. It will certainly keep the profession alive and guarantee me (among others) a big flow of income, but it's a waste of time and money and hurts business continuity.<br />The point is not to write code to get what you want, the point is to write code so you don't get what you don't want. <b>What if such an "interface" breaks down? Functionally, technically? Temporary?</b><br />Not wanting to repeat myself, let me point you to my answer to that <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2012/05/enterprise-integration-interview-by.html">right here</a><br /><br />The addition of the zealous use of the four HTTP verbs and the extreme focus on it bothers me most though: to me that is so obviously wrong (<a href="http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2009/it-is-okay-to-use-post">to Roy as well, by the way</a>) that I'm just going to have to explain that here:<br /><br />If you have any database experience, you'll know of CRUD: Create, Read, Update and Delete. I compared that to HTTP's PUT, GET, POST and DELETE. You'll know that these database commands are entirely different (forgive me the pseudo SQL, I know pseudo code is a evil incarnate mortal sin):<br /><br /><ul><li>INSERT INTO EMP (EmployeeID=2745, EmployeeLastname="Linsen")</li><li>SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE EmployeeID = 2745</li><li>UPDATE EMP SET EmployeeLastname = "Linssen" WHERE EmployeeId = 2745</li><li>DELETE FROM EMP WHERE EmployeeId = 2745</li></ul><br />See how these commands are different?<br /><br /><ul><li>In order to <b>Create, you need values</b> - enough values to satisfy the mandatory conditions given the requirements in place</li><li>In order to <b>Read, you need to identify</b> what you want to read. You need an identification key, range or keys, or wildcards</li><li>In order to <b>Update</b>, you need a <b>combination of what is required for Create and Read</b>: you need to identify what you want to read, and enough values to satisfy the mandatory conditions given the requirements in place</li><li>In order to <b>Delete, you need to identify</b> what you want to delete</li></ul><br />It is obvious what you want, just by looking at the parameters you provide. The words itself are there merely for legibility, or fun as some would say. Because basically these commands could be:<br /><br /><ul><li>EMP (EmployeeID=2745, EmployeeLastname="Linsen")</li><li>EMP WHERE EmployeeID = 2745</li><li>EMP EmployeeLastname = "Linssen" WHERE EmployeeId = 2745</li><li>EMP WHERE EmployeeId = 2745</li></ul><br />The first one is obvious: you provide values and no identification, so this is a Create method<br />The second one is <b>not so obvious</b>: you provide an identification, but do you need retrieval or deletion?<br />The third one is obvious: you provide values and identification, so this is an Update method<br />The fourth one is <b>not so obvious</b>: you provide an identification, but do you need retrieval or deletion?<br /><br />So you would need a way to distinguish between Create and Delete, but other than that, which ever method you want to use is blatantly obvious if you look just at the parameters supplied.<br />Let me rephrase that: which ever method you want to use becomes blatantly obvious by looking just at the parameters supplied<br /><br /><b>So no need for the HTTP verbs or methods</b>. I'll make an even better case for that:<br />Suppose, that you goof up and mix the methods invoked with parameters supplied. Here goes:<br /><br /><ul><li>INSERT INTO EMP (EmployeeID=2745, EmployeeLastname="Linsen") WHERE EmployeeID = 2745</li><li>UPDATE EMP SET (EmployeeID=2745, EmployeeLastname="Linsen")</li></ul><br />The first one seems to be a Create statement, but has an identification as well - which is totally wrong of course, because you can't reference something before it's been created. That one could go either way: if the reference exists, the record will be updated with the values, if it doesn't, it will be created - although technically there should be an error if you want to Create something that already exists, just as when you want to update something that doesn't.<br />The second one is an obvious Update statement, or is it? It's lacking the identification. The record could be inserted if it doesn't exist. Hack, it could even be updated if one of the parameters sits on a unique key field - but that would be sci-fi databasing so let's just ignore that option<br /><br />So the verb or <b>method you use isn't really leading in execution</b> of a method: it's the parameters instead that determine what can and will happen, or could and would.<br />Which is good of course, because as your web server will highly likely pass these requests onto the back-end applications (which most of the time will not support HTTP, but another transport protocol, usually some queueing system), it would be a shame if their beautiful method had to somehow be glued to the request, now wouldn't it?<br /><b>Never, never ever, write content-sensitive stuff on an envelope - it will get lost in the process</b><br /><br /><br />Where has common sense gone? <b>What really is the great business value of REST, if any</b>? The hijacked REST I mean, with its focus on the four verbs - which isn't in Roy's dissertation, the focus on JSON - which isn't in Roy's dissertation, its lack of use and disregard for caching - which is in Roy's dissertation, and gross neglect of resource identification by using API versioning<br /><br /><i><b>If you want a cat, go buy a cat and treat it like one. Don't call your dog cat, make it act like a cat, and then say "well it's not really a cat you know, so it's okay".</b></i><br /><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">Stop hijacking REST</span>.</b></i><br /><i><b>Whatever it is that you do, just call it scribbling, tinkering, fiddling, dabbling, doodling, messing around. But not REST</b></i><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-83116502775238969752012-10-16T22:54:00.000+02:002012-10-21T17:48:08.547+02:00I'm sorry, you're just not incompetent enough to get it<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6hTtHETNic/Td1OnYG_P9I/AAAAAAAAAjo/c8UXki6DMmI/s1600/CompanyHierarchy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6hTtHETNic/Td1OnYG_P9I/AAAAAAAAAjo/c8UXki6DMmI/s320/CompanyHierarchy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Olivier Blanchard made me do it.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="258251767001788416">@<a href="https://twitter.com/martijnlinssen">martijnlinssen</a> :D As far as I can tell, incompetence isn't a driver of failure. It's a driver of advancement.<br />— Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) <a data-datetime="2012-10-16T17:03:56+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/thebrandbuilder/status/258251944571834369">October 16, 2012</a></blockquote><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></blockquote>And it is. <b>Definition of advancement</b>? Coming up soon. But this is the driver for most, if not all, of your life: work, life, religion, politics, social media (sic) and last but certainly not least successful Enterprise products.<br />Come again? Yes<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Incompetence is what one needs to grow from big to huge. <b>Incompetence is the driver for all the systems around us</b>. Without incompetence, they'd stop working. Functioning? Now that's a whole different kind of verb<br /><br />For a definition of incompetence, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle" target="_blank">Peter Principle</a> is very well suited.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Although humorous, Peter's book contains many real-world examples and thought-provoking explanations of human behaviour. For example, he pointed out that Adolf Hitler was a consummate and superb politician due especially to his charisma and oratorical skills but reached his "level of incompetence" as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht because of the rigidity of his decision making (not allowing retreats when necessary according to the tactical situation).Similar observations on incompetence can be found in the Dilbert cartoon series (such as The Dilbert Principle), the movie Office Space, and television shows the BBC's The Office or NBC's Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock</blockquote>It's all there. Read <a href="http://dilbert.com/" target="_blank">Dilbert</a>, read the <a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/" target="_blank">Gervais principle</a> - or just look around you.<br /><b>Your political system</b>? You're not allowed to ask questions, and when you do, you'll get vague answers. Will you get a "Well I'm not sure, but..."? or will you be satisfied with the answer? Then it's just one incompetent interacting with another.<br /><b>Your religious system</b>? The same broadcast system where you never get to ask questions, and even if you do, you'll get vague answers at best.<br /><b>Your work system</b>? Again, the same hierarchy decrees messages onto you. Dare to ask for an explanation of those? At the very best, you'll get to keep all your limbs, not marked with an "X" and either get ignored or sent astray with "orders from headquarters"<br /><br />Your life system? You be the judge there. But let's move onto the most interesting one (for me): Enterprise software. After that, we'll address the <a href="http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/smmworld/" target="_blank">social media gurus</a><br /><br />Enterprise software is expensive. It is so, because enterprises have money. Obscene amounts of money. You can't walk into an Enterprise and offer them a simple, effective solution for a reasonable amount, because they simply won't believe (you) that it works. <b>Enterprises have been bred into the belief system that expensive equals good</b>. They do so, because they lack knowledge of prior events, and because they are afraid to let go of their mental models unless forced to do so.<br /><b>A proper crisis</b> now and then could manifest itself as one of those forces - or maybe even the main one. But herein lies the catch: (traditional) Enterprise software isn't bought by Enterprises, it buys its way in itself.<br />Enterprise software wiggles its ass into an Enterprise via the golf court. Via "good friends". Via flashy, content-free PowerPoints is how it settles itself onto their hosts in Board Rooms, or Ivory Architecture Towers<br /><br />It uses the same <b>system of putting oneself into debt</b> that all our other systems do:<br /><br /><ol><li>Feel bad about yourself, or get that feeling imposed onto you (thank you, dear Church, manager, political party, spouse, competition, or who- and whatever)</li><li>Choose the opposite of what you feel right now, image-ine him, her or that, and aspire him / her / it</li><li>Do whatever it takes to achieve your goal</li></ol><div>In a nutshell. Right in between point 1 and 2 is where havoc gets created. <b>You get influenced</b>. You know what you want (of course you don't, but let's ignore that fact for now), couldn't possibly convene why that is so, and you hand yourself over to advisors. Those come for free for a very short while, and once they're on board, they advise you for money</div><div><br /></div><div>From then on, the <b>system of putting-oneself-into-debt starts to kick in</b>. You have invested an amount, which keeps growing - you need return! But in order to make sure you will make the right decision, just a little bit more investment is needed. That vicious circle repeats itself until someone decides to cut your losses, or a contract gets signed.</div><div><b>That point is crucial - the signing of the contract</b>, that is. At that very point, it is decided that enough requirements have been gathered on a high level, and that enough trust is established</div><div><br /></div><div>We all do that. Maybe we don't jump onto the occasion, but at a certain point we feel <b>we have passed the point of no return</b>, and need to move forward. Yes there may be obstacles left, but those will be moved out of the way in due course - we think. And hope. And don't know for sure</div><div><br /></div><div>What happens next, can go either way:</div><div><ol><li>You draughted (sic) an air-tight contract with no escape clauses and lean back into your hammock</li><li>You somewhat-ish jotted down general requirements, gathered in perfect isolation among separate work streams that did the requirements analysis, and lean back into your hammock</li></ol><div><b>Pun intended</b> of course. But anyway, what happens next is that you get confronted with "Oh well we really like to make that happen for you, but it's not in the contract" and <b>you end up paying Time & Material</b> for working out the details. And there's where the slippery slope really kicks in, and doesn't end anytime soon, if anytime at all</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Fast forward millions, tens of millions, sometimes even hundreds of millions, and weeks, months and years. After go-live, you get to pay 20-25% annually for "support" and have to pay for the effort of testing and implementing upgrades and patches yourself. What that will cost? Who cares you pay that bill too</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The system-of-putting-oneself-into-debt really works</b>. It works marvels. It's how the SAPs and Oracles of this world have survived for this long. Make a company pay e.g. 1 million for buying a system, another 7 million for adjusting it to his needs, another 0.25 million each year for support, and you have the best lock-in ever. Whatever sold, has become so expensive that even trying to get rid of it is discouraged by everyone</div><div><br /></div><div>So, SaaS friends of mine, I wish you luck - and I really do. I really do hope that we can rid the world of these clumsy user-unfriendly 5-years-to-market crappy systems sooner than later, and boot their 150-200 an hour consultants <b>who never would pay that amount for their own services if they had to foot the bill themselves</b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Now, onto Social Media</b>. There are roughly three different groups right there. One of those I'll dub "<a href="http://www.chrisbrogan.com/price-points/" target="_blank">The Chris Brogans</a>", the other one I'll dub the in-the-knows, and the remainder will be labelled as "formerly unsuccessful and probably fired sales- or marketing- men and -women who live in their mutual Twitter echo chamber and perpetuate in ReTweeting their own and their buddies' nonsense".</div><div><br /></div><br /><b>The same principle applies</b>: what if you were to invite someone to chat you up at a daily rate of 35,000 dollars? You better have some results after that. What if you don't? You'll ask them again, or get less obscenely expensive people to "advise you" on the direction you think you want to go in.<br />Do you see the pattern here? I do<br /><br />The system-of-putting-oneself-into-eternal-debt (eternal being a rather flexible concept, it might "only" mean the end of your career) works. This so-called social world? It's being invaded by 1.0 losers trying to prey on 3.0 hopeful, or worse, 1.0 sharks who are very successful in preying on 3.0 hopeful<br /><br /><b><i>If you don't get that, well, maybe this would be the time to re-read the title to his post</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-77844352057386705142012-10-09T23:06:00.000+02:002012-10-21T17:48:33.698+02:00TIBCO's Silver Fabric - a golden lining<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-846WG4mw-n0/UHSKjKOlPjI/AAAAAAAABV4/s6TVNPp66XQ/s1600/TwoSecondAdvantage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-846WG4mw-n0/UHSKjKOlPjI/AAAAAAAABV4/s6TVNPp66XQ/s400/TwoSecondAdvantage.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><br /></div>I attended TIBCO's PaaS workshop, where they showed and demoed <a href="http://www.tibco.com/products/cloud/private-cloud/silver-fabric/default.jsp" target="_blank">Silver Fabric</a> - the product that has come forth from the DataSynapse acquisition in September 2009. <b>Erik Hageman, Mario Invernizzi and Steven van der Kroft</b> lead the session.<br />The location was the Radisson Blu near Schiphol, a fine location with excellent service and food & drinks. After we had those, the session started at 1 PM<br /><br /><b>Silver Fabric is a middle layer between the OS and application</b>. It sits right in between, so it can allow for upgrades, scale up or down, and failover and failback - without human intervention (hold your horses please)<br /><div><a name='more'></a>The <b>man in the middle</b> is the Silver Fabric Broker - you'd usually have one of these per environment, seconded by an identical copy of course, and it's the central agent - an environment would typically be the development environment, test, UAT, production.</div>Whether your machine park consists of physical or vertical machines, it's divided into Engines - rule of thumb is one Engine per core<br /><br />Each <b>Engine</b> has a <b>Daemon</b> to it. The Daemon controls deployment and operation of <b>Components</b> such as e.g. a service or web application, which is always wrapped inside an <b>Enabler</b>. There are different kinds of Enablers, such as a Tomcat one for J2EE, a Command Line one for starting components from script, and additional ones are available from TIBCO, or you can create them yourself.<br />The Components that run inside an Enabler can be created with a wizard, that will guide you through the setup steps of assigning it a name, Features and Options<br /><br /><b>Features</b> are optional behaviors such as capturing, logging, and start condition checks / schedules, Component <b>Options</b> e.g. are the maximum activation and deactivation time, activation delay time. Components can have dependencies on other Components, e.g. when component A depends on B, A doesn't get started (or remains active) unless B is running. This dependency also enables inheritance of runtime context variables from B to A<br /><b>Allocation constraints</b> can be set that limit the number of CPU's or Engines that can deploy and run a Component (group) - think of licenses per core or CPU that you want to respect. Runtime variables are set per Enabler, and inherited by the Component(s); typically these are paths, URLs, ports, etc<br /><br />After you've edited a Component, its status will change. There's a very neat option that lets you <b>Compare with Published</b> so you can simply edit (for instance, upgrade) a running Component, use that option to see what's different, and <b>Publish Changes</b> or <b>Cancel Changes</b> to move the new Component into production. Of course you'd have to restart that particular component within the Engine before the changes become effective<br /><br />As a Component is a relatively simple (albeit highly extensible and configurable) reflection of an application, Components can be grouped into <b>Stacks</b>. Those stacks can be subjected to allocation policies and visibility, all serving one and the same user, account and / or role.<br />Even Schedules can be set to policies, allowing for different sets of allocation policies based on time, day or date<br /><br />The <b>most important part of policies are Rules</b>. They can adjust Component allocation levels based on e.g. load, dependance, and pretty much any other condition. There are <b>Resource Preferences, Component Dependencies, Enablement Conditions, Threshold Activation, and Engine Group Rules</b> give you control over e.g. OS and memory. Want to run on at least 4GB? Or maybe maximum 3GB? The preferences can vary from required to prohibited.<br /><b>Component Dependencies</b> allow to set shutdown preferences, enforce other Components to run on the same host, etc. <b>Enablement Conditions</b> enable you to make the depend the running of some Component on a condition, such as statistic values from other Components or an external condition - you can set a sampling window during which these are evaluated. Another way to trigger on- or offload of Components is Threshold activation. Total CPU greater than 80% for 2 minutes? Automatically add an Engine. Last but not least, <b>Engine Group Rules</b> allow you to set minimum and maximum instances for Components running on a specific subset of Engines<br /><br />Once every minute, the Silver fabric Broker will evaluate all Engine allocation and Component Enablement, and decide whether to add or remove either one - or leave everything just as is<br /><br /><b>The beauty of this all</b> is the fact that it can "slip and slide" anywhere you want. The Silver Fabric is the middle layer on which everything rests. Engines can run on the same physical or virtual machine, location or more: you could scale within an entire datacentre or even across datacentres.<br />Imagine running this in the Cloud? Yes that would mean it's not vanilla out-of-the-box Cloud, but why should it be? What if Silver Fabric were a new Cloud OS, on which you can land anything, seamlessly upgrade, scale up and down across the entire world or just within a single rack?<br /><b>I'm not knee-deep into PaaS, but this seems to me like it is</b>. This is proven technology used for tens of thousand of servers, in financial industries, where time-critical (and extreme customisation) is spelled in capitals.<br />With Silver Fabric you can choose the bandwidth for anything: hardware, software, CPU, core, memory, location, use, processes, processing power - and it all is automatically provisioned after that. Want to take that a step further? Word on the streets has it, that it can also claim processing power from virtualised desktops running in the same cloud; using the same system of surgical precision that allows for any variable to enter the equation. Utility computing for real, but all within your so very strict control<br /><br />With TIBCO Silver Fabric, you virtualise at the application level, not infrastructure. Hostnames, IP's, URL's, even security certificates are made entirely transparent. It will do to your applications what shared memory did to databases: <b>make them fly</b><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Updated October 10th 2012 7:29 CET: I forgot to include what struck me most during the workshop: I see great potential for version management, license management and environment management (want to switch on the entire TEST environment? It takes roughly 10 minutes to deploy a new set of applications on Amazon, as the workshop showed). <b>Switch it off if you don't need it</b>? Why not? Imagine the savings...<br /><br />Silver Fabric also holds the records for every single version of every single piece of software in use. The <b>license negotiations</b> will get a whole lot less tougher on the buy side, and the sell side will see a steep drop in shelfware - maybe that word will even take on a whole new meaning.<br />What I particularly loved is being able to <b>fixate and pin down "applications" to physical locations</b>: legal requirements might force you to keep your apps and / or data within your own country or continent so there's an extremely strong business case here to go Cloud.<br />Last and absolutely not least is the huge potential for data centre migrations. <a href="http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2009/08/plea-for-no-mans-land-clouds.html" target="_blank">I once plead for a "no man's land" Cloud</a> to save us all the burden and cost of moving hardware from one location to the other when e.g. your outsourcing contract changes - these operations take years and tens of millions if not more. <b>With Silver Fabric, you could do that in less than a day</b></blockquote><br /><b><i>The image above is the book I got at the workshop, and missed earlier this year. Written by Vivek Ranadivé, Founder of TIBCO. It's on top of my to-read-pile, but I'd be disappointed if it's less than greatly inspiring. I'm seeing TIBCO extend into Enterprise horizontally and vertically with really mindblowing and well-thought out products - there must be a vision behind that</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-3084588899566208522012-09-26T01:28:00.000+02:002012-10-21T17:48:54.967+02:00SAP may be betting on the right horses, but how about the jockeys?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MjhYDnEKUrA/UGI9hZzYZSI/AAAAAAAABU0/cokaD_28IOc/s1600/Frederick_Barne_Vanity_Fair_1882-08-05_75.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MjhYDnEKUrA/UGI9hZzYZSI/AAAAAAAABU0/cokaD_28IOc/s1600/Frederick_Barne_Vanity_Fair_1882-08-05_75.jpg" /></a></div><br /><a href="http://scn.sap.com/community/sap-mentors/blog/2012/09/24/fresh-new-mentors-fall-edition-2012-">Mark Finnern welcomed the new Sap mentors today</a>, 20 experienced people with some ties to SAP. <a href="https://twitter.com/steinermatt/status/250611369580322816">As Matthias Steiner says</a>, everyone can nominate one, selection process is "top secret".<br />If I'd get to single out one addition that pleases me most, it'd be <a href="http://scn.sap.com/people/fred.verheul">Fred Verheul</a>. Congratulations, Fred!<br /><br />A whole conversation unfolded after <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/MartijnLinssen/status/250593915474939904">I asked Jamie Oswald about the little HANA, Cloud and Integration expertise among the newcomers</a>. Summing up all reactions, there was HANA experience among a dozen, and <a href="https://twitter.com/oswaldxxl/status/250598552168955904">Jamie assured me</a> that<br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="250598240058232833">@<a href="https://twitter.com/vijayasankarv">vijayasankarv</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/martijnlinssen">martijnlinssen</a> Important to remember that Mentors aren't for marketing - big part of job is helping existing implementations<br />— Jamie Oswald (@oswaldxxl) <a data-datetime="2012-09-25T14:12:05+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/oswaldxxl/status/250598552168955904">September 25, 2012</a></blockquote><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />I decided to take a look at the whole group of 110, and see how they could help existing implementations. In plain English: how does their expertise add up to the latter?<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>A word up front. I found more than a few difficulties in completing the task I had in mind. Does that imply any judgment whatsoever on SAP mentors in any sense? Hell no. I just went through great pains trying to find out what their expertise is, and then compared that to SAP's current goals. <b>It's not meant personally, and taking it as such would be such a waste of your time - so don't</b><br /><br />I took the newcomers as well as the already active SAP mentors, ignored everything but their name and company, and area of expertise of course. <b>Was that easy to do? No</b> - the HTML code underneath is so diverse (cough) that it's impossible to parse unless by caring hands. Copied and pasted from various sources, it's a mess really, no standardisation whatsoever.<br />But let's just attribute that to the recent move from old to new shall we, and carry on with the issue at hand:<br /><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 536px;"><colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 5668; mso-width-source: userset; width: 116pt;" width="155"></col><col style="mso-width-alt: 8813; mso-width-source: userset; width: 181pt;" width="241"></col><col style="mso-width-alt: 5120; mso-width-source: userset; width: 105pt;" width="140"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt; width: 116pt;" width="155">Abdulbasit Gulsen</td><td style="width: 181pt;" width="241">Independent Consultant</td><td style="width: 105pt;" width="140">Turkey</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Abesh Bhattacharjee</td><td>IBM India Pvt. Ltd.</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Alexandra Carvalho</td><td>BI Group Australia</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Alex Andrenacci</td><td>Accenture</td><td>Singapore</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Alvaro Tejada Galindo</td><td>SAP Labs Montreal</td><td>Canada</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Andreas Eißmann</td><td>Data One GmbH</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Ann Rosenberg</td><td>SAP</td><td>Denmark</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Anton Wenzelhuemer</td><td>Siemens AG</td><td>Austria</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Arun Bala</td><td>Infosys Ltd.</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Arun Varadarajan</td><td>Intelligroup Inc</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Bhanu Gupta</td><td>Molex, Inc.</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Bruce Armstrong</td><td>Integrated Data Services</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Bryan Enochs</td><td>AT&T</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Bryan Whitmarsh</td><td>Sybase Mobile</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Chris Kernaghan</td><td>Capgemini</td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Christopher Solomon</td><td></td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Clint Vosloo</td><td>BI in the Box</td><td>South Africa</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Corey Adams</td><td>Frucor Beverages</td><td>New Zealand</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dagfinn Parnas</td><td>Bouvet </td><td>Norway</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dan Grew</td><td>AstraZeneca</td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Daniel Graversen</td><td>Figaf ApS</td><td>Denmark</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dave Rathbun</td><td>PepsiCo</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">David Hull</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Derek Loranca</td><td>Aetna</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dilek Adak</td><td>MilSOFT ICT</td><td>Turkey</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dipankar Saha</td><td>IBM</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Dj Adams</td><td></td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Eric Vallo</td><td>EV Technologies</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Ethan Jewett</td><td>Business & Decision</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Fábio Fernandes</td><td>Neoris </td><td>Brazil</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Frank Köhntopp </td><td>SAP</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Fred Verheul</td><td>N.L. for Business B.V.</td><td>Netherlands</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Gary Hooker</td><td>FAHCSIA</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Graham Robinson</td><td>Yelcho Systems Consulting</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Greg Capps</td><td>Coca-Cola</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Greg Chase</td><td>SAP</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Greg Myers </td><td>EVtechnologies</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Gregor Wolf</td><td>Siteco Beleuchtungstechnik GmbH </td><td>DE</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Gretchen Lindquist </td><td>Chevron Phillips Chemical Company </td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Harald Reiter</td><td>Deloitte Consulting LLP </td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Harshit Kumar</td><td>Capgemini </td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Henrique Pinto</td><td>SAP Brasil </td><td>Brazil</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Ingo Hilgefort</td><td>Business Objects</td><td>Canada</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Ivan Femia</td><td>TechedgeGroup</td><td>Italy</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jamie Oswald </td><td>Arch Coal, Inc.</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jan Penninkhof</td><td>Phoqus B.V.</td><td>NL</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jansi Rani Murugesan</td><td>Infineon Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jarret Pazahanick</td><td>EIC Experts</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jim Spath</td><td>Stanley Black & Decker</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Joerg Nalik</td><td>SAP Labs</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">John Appleby</td><td>Bluefin Solutions Ltd</td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">John Astill</td><td>SAP Labs</td><td>US</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">John Harrickey</td><td>CSA Group</td><td>Canada</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">John Moy </td><td>Australia Post</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Jon Reed</td><td>JonERP.com</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Joseph Zeinoun</td><td>Raytheon</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Joshua Fletcher</td><td>ASG Group</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Karin Tillotson</td><td>Valero Energy Corporation</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Lantao Yang</td><td>Dimension</td><td>China</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Leonardo de Araujo</td><td>Beyond Technologies</td><td>Canada</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Luke Marson</td><td>Gavdi Group</td><td>Belgium</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Marcelo Ramos</td><td>Neoris</td><td>Brazil</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Marilyn Pratt</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Mark Chalfen </td><td>Bluefin Solutions</td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Mark Finnern</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Martin English</td><td>Independent</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Martin Gillet</td><td>Freelancer</td><td>Belgium</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Martin Lang</td><td>SAP</td><td>Newtown Square, PA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Matt Harding</td><td>Independent</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Matthias Steiner</td><td>SAP AG</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Mico Yuk</td><td>EverythingXcelsius </td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Michael Koch</td><td>Pixelbase</td><td>United Kingdom</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Michal Krawczyk</td><td>int4</td><td>Poland</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Michelle Crapo </td><td>Perrigo Company</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Mike Pokraka</td><td>Independent Consultant</td><td>United Kingdom</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Moya Watson</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Nathan Genez</td><td>Serio Consulting</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Nigel James</td><td>Square Cloud</td><td>Sydney, Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Otto Gold</td><td>Xiting AG</td><td>Switzerland</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Owen Pettiford</td><td>CompriseIT</td><td>United Kingdom</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Paul Hawking</td><td>Victoria University Australia</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Paula Rosenblum</td><td>RSR Research</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Pete Lagana</td><td>Excellis Interactive</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Peter Langner</td><td>Adventas Consulting</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Peter McNulty </td><td>SAP Labs </td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Philip Kisloff</td><td>Capgemini</td><td>United Kingdom</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Phil Loewen</td><td>it360°</td><td>Thessaloniki,Greece</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Prashant Mendki </td><td>Bristlecone</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Prashant Padmanabhan</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Prateek Raj Srivastava</td><td>Accenture</td><td>Toronto, Canada</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Pratik Talwar</td><td>Colgate Palmolive</td><td>Mumbai, India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Raquel Cunha </td><td>Independent</td><td>Brazil</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Renald Wittwer</td><td>Independent </td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Rich Heilman</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Richard Hirsch</td><td>Siemens SIS</td><td>Austria</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Rukhshaan Omar</td><td>SAP</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Sascha Wenninger</td><td>Australia Post</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Shabarish Vijayakumar </td><td>Wipro Technologies</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Sheng Qiang</td><td>Zhengzhou Sanquan Food. Co. Ltd</td><td>China</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Siegfried Szameitat</td><td>Freelance</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Simha R. Magal</td><td>Grand Valley State University</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Simon To</td><td>Fossil, Inc.</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Sina Moatamed</td><td>IT Strategist and Consultant</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Somnath Manna</td><td>IBM India</td><td>India</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Srini Tanikella</td><td>SMART Modular Technologies</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Susan Keohan</td><td>MIT Lincoln Laboratory</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Sue Dunnell</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tammy Powlas</td><td>Fairfax Water</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Thomas Jung</td><td>SAP</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Thorsten Franz</td><td>AOK Systems GmbH</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tim Guest</td><td>SAP Business One</td><td>UK</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tobias Hofmann</td><td></td><td>Brazil</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tobias Trapp</td><td>AOK Systems </td><td>GER</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tom Cenens</td><td>CTAC Powerhouse </td><td>Belgium</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tomas Krojzl</td><td>IBM</td><td>Czech Republic</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tony de Thomasis</td><td>Acclimation</td><td>Australia</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Twan van den Broek</td><td>CIBER NL</td><td>Netherlands</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Tridip Chakraborthy</td><td>Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Uwe Fetzer</td><td>SE38 IT-Engineering</td><td>Germany</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Vance Pan</td><td>DataCVG</td><td>China</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Vijay Vijayasankar</td><td>IBM</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Vitaliy Rudnytskiy</td><td>SAP / Vital BI (blog)</td><td>Poland</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Wei Zhu (Ethan)</td><td></td><td>China</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Xumin Zhao</td><td>Dimension InfoTech</td><td>China</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Yakov Werde</td><td>eLearnIt LLC</td><td>USA</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Yariv Zur</td><td>SAP</td><td>Israel</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Zimkhita Buwa</td><td>City of Cape Town</td><td>South Africa</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />The rule seems to be that mentors are NOT on SAP's payroll - which I think is excellent. As much as I preach my favourite outside-in theme, this simply is Balls with a capital B. Hug your enemy, or at least keep your friends at a distance. Well done SAP!<br />There are 127 in the list so maybe someone should verify these, but I guess that either some old mentors are still on the list or the 110 is just an old number.<br /><b>Anyway, onto the really exiting stuff: expertise</b>. Again, way too much lack of standardisation there - apparently anyone gets to make up their own definitions. I tried hard to normalise the various definitions, and if I got a few off or even wrong, contact me and I'll give you the full list.<br />I replaced all the various separation characters by a single uniform one, ignored all the detailing such as e.g. Dashboard and Presentation Design (Xcelsius 2008) - which I turned into Dashboard and Presentation Design, and made a full list of unique expertises.<br />Then I used my brain and feel, replaced abbreviations by full descriptions or vice versa where possible, and ended up with a list of unique expertises and total count of these among the SAP mentors.<br />Where I found odd-looking unique entries not resembling anything near them, I left the description intact<br /><br /><b>Was that a [fill in the blanks] load of work? Yes</b>. Most certainly. I might have made some casualties here and there, but the initial list of expertise was over 400 unique entries.<br />What did I not slam together? E.g. ABAP and ABAP Development I did, but ABAP Integration Technologies I left alone. ABAP OO got grouped together with ABAP Object, etc.<br />Where possible, I replaced the word " and " by the separation character, thus splitting one expertise into multiple ones. <b>Again, this was a hard human task and the beholder of beauty was me</b><br /><br />Here's the list, and the count - only the top 30:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Update September 28th 12:10 CET: I redid most of the exercise (see the comment-conv between Ethan and me below) and delivered the cross-reference list as one would like to have it. <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B99D04OqIHunWWI1WkdlQ0FOTnc/edit" target="_blank">Here's the link</a>; I hope you enjoy it</blockquote><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 242px;"><colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 6509; mso-width-source: userset; width: 134pt;" width="178"></col><col style="width: 48pt;" width="64"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt; width: 134pt;" width="178">ABAP</td><td align="right" style="width: 48pt;" width="64">24</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">BI</td><td align="right">16</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Netweaver</td><td align="right">14</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">BO</td><td align="right">13</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Web Dynpro</td><td align="right">8</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">BPM</td><td align="right">7</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">BSP</td><td align="right">7</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">CRM</td><td align="right">7</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">PI</td><td align="right">7</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">ABAP OO</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">BW</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Community</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Data Warehousing</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">ERP</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">HCM</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Mobility</td><td align="right">6</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Scripting Languages</td><td align="right">5</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">SOA</td><td align="right">5</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Solution Manager</td><td align="right">5</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Workflow</td><td align="right">5</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Custom Development</td><td align="right">4</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Enterprise Mobility</td><td align="right">4</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">SD</td><td align="right">4</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Adobe Flex</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Crystal Reports</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Development</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Enterprise Architecture</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">HANA</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="20" style="height: 15pt;"><td height="20" style="height: 15pt;">Interfaces</td><td align="right">3</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><b>Top 5? The usual old-fashioned suspects</b>, I'd say. Where are SAP's HANA expertise? Cloud? And the new Cloud Integration? Mobile? Mobile is at a shared 7th place, but HANA barely makes the list. In all fairness, Matthias pitched in for 6 SAP mentors with HANA knowledge not indicated on the SAP mentor pages (Rukhshaan Omar was present already)<br /><br /><b>Bottom line? SAP equals ABAP</b>, judging from this list, and BI, Netweaver (regardless of how many different meanings that has had over the last 5 years) and Business Objects make up the top 4, followed at a distance by the remainder<br /><br />SAP mentors aren't marketers, even though they fold under marketing in the books. Ambassadors is more what I think they should be considered, and the difference between the two is that ambassadors actually achieve measurable results. Given how up-to-date their expertise is on the SAP mentor pages, I can only guess that that's a fully manual people process<br /><br /><b><i>What if a potential or existing customer would like a SAP mentor to consult him on a specific area of expertise? I guess he'd have to go through the same painstaking hours of analysis as I've just put myself through.</i></b><br /><b><i>Are you an SAP jockey? Well then where's your fricking horse - and where is it heading for?</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-72797407191731576862012-09-24T00:34:00.002+02:002012-10-21T17:49:08.260+02:00What drives IT failure? Ignorance and Greed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KNScilGrREY/UF8xcy3tWXI/AAAAAAAABTw/67r2vQSI8RA/s1600/GreedAndIgnorance.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KNScilGrREY/UF8xcy3tWXI/AAAAAAAABTw/67r2vQSI8RA/s400/GreedAndIgnorance.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />It was an interesting question <a href="https://twitter.com/charles_storm">Charles Storm</a> posed the other day: was I saying that solutions are primarily driven by ignorance and greed? I wasn't, but he made me think:<br /><br /><ul><li>Every solution is driven by need, or want, and some lack of knowledge.</li><li>Every failure is caused by ignorance and greed</li></ul><br />Let's see whether I can find good arguments for that, and where the twain meet<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>If you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs, everything is driven by a need for something, and a lack of knowledge of how to attain it. But if you go up through the pyramid, <b>there's also another lack of knowledge</b>: that of what it is, and looks like<br /><br /><b>Food, water, sex, sleep</b> - we pretty much all know what that kind of looks like, and how we could get some (yes, not always, nor often).<br /><b>Friendship, family, sexual intimacy</b>? How to achieve family is an easy one, but the other two are posing problems for a good part of us, if not most.<br /><b>Morality, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts</b>? Well that seems to be out of the ballpark for most, if you believe conventional belief<br /><br />The same is applicable to IT. Let's <b>create our own imaginary Maslow pyramid</b> and put consumer IT at the bottom, and Enterprise IT at the top<br /><br /><b>You yourself need a phone, a laptop, a network device</b>? Those all come in a range and you can go out and compare some, or stay in your chair and surf-pare them at your leisure. Same goes for "single-person Enterprises", e.g. entrepreneurs - not much difference between them and consumers. All these have a want for something, maybe even a need, or a desperate longing.<br />Hard to compare those to the physiological rock-bottom of Maslow, but I think it's not that far-fetched at all to state that a mobile phone and a laptop (which basically do the same, only mobiles are better for more event-driven tasks, laptops more for batch ones)<br /><br />Anyway, <b>you have that need</b>, and a lack of knowledge: which one(s) to pick? You compare your needs, or business requirements so to say, to that what they supply, or system limitations so to say. they're all ready-made and you can tweak and tune them, but the basics can't be changed. What I experience, when picking a new phone, is running into features that weren't explicit needs, but get created-as-such on the spot. I don't keep track of every-day phone evolution and development, so <strike>sometimes</strike> usually new gadgets and gimmicks take me by surprise.<br />I'd define this whole process as having a basic need, knowing how that could be satisfied by some, but not knowing what "the rest" can offer you. You have a need that you somewhat adjust (like me in my mobile example) and some lack of knowledge which you turn into fairly complete knowledge before "making the buy": achieving the object at last<br /><br /><b>A few steps up, as e.g. an office department with 30-50 users</b>, the same applies: you need that new administrative system. Either to replace the old, or because manual just doesn't cut it anymore. You go out there, but have a hard time comparing. You watch demos, contact sales people, get an occasional expert across the floor - and have yourself advised, in stead of advising yourself. Well, still cool. When very sensible, you'll end up with three products that might fit your need, have them all prepare a Proof Of Concept and you'll end up with the best, or least bad.<br />At that point, you have a far larger lack of knowledge than in the previous example, but done your best to "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that your final choice is a good one. Your lack of knowledge hasn't changed into knowledge, but more of something like basic knowledge. You haven't spelled out the details, and assume that most of what should be there, will be there<br /><br /><b>Let's go directly to Enterprise level from there</b>. More of the same, and more people involved too. In fact, this will be a combination of the previous example where 20-40 departments go through the same stages, probably managed by a CIO / CTO. The need is very diverse here, and the lack of knowledge widespread. But the main tar pit will be formed by the fact that the solution offered will need to cover for all.<br />Hence, the bidding begins. Work streams are formed from the company side, to lay down and collect the business requirements. To make matters worse, often a few dozen consultants from an external firm are hired to not only aid there, but sometimes also take charge of the entire bid itself.<br />Anyway, in the end, <b>a Pandora of needs, wants, and beggings for reassurance gets sent out</b> into the world. After a few weeks, sometimes months, of Q&A going back and forth, strictly moderated, formal responses make it back to the company, at least 100-200 pages a piece, sometimes a tenfold or hundredfold of that<br /><br /><b>Then, the company gets to answer</b>. Or the system integrator they hired. Or both.<br />In that process, what happens is what I describe as "<b>getting compromised to death</b>". Not only do the answers get weighted, but also the questions. With e.g. 15 departments involved, usually 5 of those will not nearly get what they asked for, and suffer from the total solution offered. Filling in the blanks for them will be labeled as "future work", and subject to Time & Material, meaning that the happy winner on the supply side gets to best-effort their way towards it<br /><br /><b>Somewhere in that process, need turns into greed, and lack of knowledge into ignorance</b>. Objectively seen, one should have said at some point that trying to get one overall solution was not feasible. In stead, and by majority vote, it is ruled that the solution presented will satisfy most of demands, and leave big question marks for some - a good minority<br /><br />What should have been done in stead,<b> if you ask me</b>? Accept the offer / solution for those that really got a solid and satisfying answer to their questions, and start to look for alternative for those who didn't. Put the lucky winner in full charge of integrating with the additional lucky winner(s), at fixed price, and there we'd have it<br /><br />Of course, <b>the culprit here is on the demand side</b>. We've all learned that there is no one-size-fits-all solution on the Enterprise level, regardless of all the vendors that claim to have one (and never offer that at fixed price, by the way). Greed and ignorance start right there - and is met by the supplier<br /><br /><b><i>Size matters. It really does. Time also does - things change over time. If you're a smart cookie, you'll know that no Enterprise size project can run longer than a certain period of time before getting severely impacted by changes from the outside. Ignore that fact? That makes you ignorant, as in not wanting to know it. Still persevering your initial want? That would be fairly labeled as greed then</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-68660257635954873182012-09-18T23:11:00.000+02:002012-10-21T19:02:33.423+02:00How and why REST will beat SOAP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oqTTJ5gQVEs/UFjjBDhx1rI/AAAAAAAABRo/YVJU6h2Cpnk/s1600/392px-Pears%27Soap02_75.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oqTTJ5gQVEs/UFjjBDhx1rI/AAAAAAAABRo/YVJU6h2Cpnk/s320/392px-Pears'Soap02_75.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><br />In the past weeks and months, the REST versus SOAP debate has flamed yet once again - however, the balance this time definitely is in favour of REST.<br />So it seems like REST will be the new SOAP - meaning that today's Enterprises that have any form of Service Oriented Architecture will replace their current implementations by those fit for the future<br /><br />That would mean, to a good extent, replacing XML by JSON, and SOAP RPC by HTTP's CRUD: PUT, GET, POST and DELETE<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP">SOAP was originally introduced to and by Microsoft</a>, and was one in a range of futuristic machine-to-machine self-describing protocols. Needless to say, the world wasn't ready then, nor is it now. Current implementations of SOAP are arbitrary, proprietary, bi-lateral human agreements at best. In their worst form, SOAP implementations are dictated by governments and other bodies of power and bring nothing else to the other party but a cumbersome and hard-coupled interface<br /><br />SOAP was adopted by the <a href="http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/">W3C working Group</a> which, as you can see, was closed on July 10th 2009. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-soap12-part1-20070427/">SOAP Part 1</a> describes in length the SOAP envelope, the fanciest feature of it all. Its contents?<br /><br />The SOAP Envelope element information item has:<br /><br /><ul><li>A [local name] of Envelope.</li><li>A [namespace name] of "http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope".</li><li>Zero or more namespace-qualified attribute information items amongst its [attributes] property.</li><li>One or two element information items in its [children] property in order as follows:</li><ul><li>An optional Header element information item (see 5.2 SOAP Header).</li><li>A mandatory Body element information item (see 5.3 SOAP Body).</li></ul></ul><br />Wow! That's <b>an ego-trip for sure</b>. So I MUST call it Envelope, and pledge my allegiance to the W3C gods by referencing one of their URLs, and other than that I'm free to go? That can't be right!<br /><br />Well, it is. And was. For years. I've fiercely objected to SOAP since a decade ago, saying it brought nothing else but confusing rubbish, while adding no value at all to either sender or receiver of it. I said the same of XML, and must admit that I'm pleased that XML is no longer officially supported by Twitter, nor Facebook - nor has it ever been in use by Google. Taking these <b>3 largest content distributors of the consumer world</b>, I think that means something. SOAP? Neither of them supported that at any time - of course<br /><br />Anyway, the future is now, and here: <b>JSON and REST</b>. No more bloated XML that takes up Gigabytes of memory just to parse a 1 MB XML message, no more "500 kilobytes of tags, 4 kilobytes of content" complaints (yes that is implementation, but some if not most of that comes along with adoption), no more.<br />JSON is here, a slim, lean and mean way to construct a message, and even better, it gets automatically parsed by Java<br /><br /><b>The SOAP envelope? Oh my</b>. Have you been there, done that? In endless debates about return values and especially messages, each of them more weary than the other? Discussions about capitals versus lower case letters? That certainly was of great benefit to the business, wasn't it?<br />The SOAP Envelope will simply get replaced by the HTTP header. Standardised, uniform, non-debatable. It's a standard that was present even before SOAP was invented, so I guess it just takes a long time before people see what there is in front of their eyes - or something like that<br /><br /><b><i>In tomorrow's post I'll share more thoughts on SOAP vs REST. Meanwhile, REST assured (hehe) that each and every XML/SOAP implementation in this world is due for a makeover</i></b><br /><br />Martijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.com0