I recently changed my personal "business" card for a mini-card made by the folks at Moo.com. After a few weeks giving it away here and there at conferences or meetings, I can tell: it makes the difference.
People really look at it, asking me questions such as "Where is this ?", "Who made it ?", "Aren't you afraid people going to lose it?". The thing is, no matter the question, this mini-card helps engaging the conversation. It does the in-grouping per itself.
For instance, the photo is a snapshot from the landscape as one can enjoy from the Boulevard des Pyrénées in Pau; however, lots of people start by claiming "hum, looks like [this place]", the place being one they obviously went before - I've heard Tunisia, Florida, California. I then let them enumerate other possible locations, to finally tell them the answer: "it's Pau, France". Most of the guys are surprised, offering me the opportunity to explain the beauty of the Pau Broadband Country.
The lesson of this is well known on the other side of the Ocean since years, however it's quite nice to experiment it on a daily basis: to stand out of the crowd, be different.
By the way: the Moo mini-card don't fulfill Guy Kawasaki's rule: the font is a bit too small for guys like us reaching the 50-yo frontier ;-)
Just for fun: since 2003, I used three different formats and styles for my personal business cards. See the picture - the U.I. card is obsolete - I no longer have a foot in San Fran or Dubai, yet I still like its design (self-made, thanks ;-)
Since I came back in the training business a year ago or so, I decided to drop the traditional slideware stuff * for a more 21st Century stylish method : use the Web 2.0 gear such as YouTube for tutorial videos, Picasa for real world photos, and more recently Facebook for post-training social and collaborative networking (note : all free apps, as I want to keep the learning materials costs as low as possible for the customers).
However, whilst going whole online digital is nice because it's hype, I still need a paper board to explain a lot of things, which a video clip will never replace (except perhaps those made by the folks at CommonCraft).
I love paperboards : it forces you to go crisp & clear, splitting your explanations into simple/one-page explanations - as Twitter forces you to write a message in less than 160 characters. Over the last 15 years that I was delivering training courses and sales seminars, I've collected lots of my paper rolls, for me to keep record of the interesting discussions with the attendees.
Of course, bringing a paperboard roll back home works fine when you travel by car, but it's a bit more tricky when you fly. Thanks to Apple, this issue is over. I now capture all the relevant stuff with my iPhone, and upload it on the MacBook right away. That makes the paperboard digital ;-)
* note : I'm thinking of using cartoons such as this one to explain and share complex stuff in the next future.
So-derle, the Green Fiber Evangelist' video collection got a huge success last week at the training I was delivering to a french telco. For the second time since a quarter of century, I haven't used a single slide as my fiber optics training materials but a web page.
The first time I used a navigator instead of M$ PowerPoint was back in 1996, when my friend Didier Boucher and myself were touring France to evangelize installers and end-users. By then, Netscape Navigator was our best companion, displaying the html pages I created with GoLive and the likes.
Last week, Firefox 3.0 beta and the amazing add-on PicLens were on the party. Thanks to the Internet. Means, thanks to the connection to the Internet. Because, unlike 12 years ago when all the html and jpeg files forming my presentations were on my Mac's hard-disk, today the whole stuff is... on the Cloud. YouTube, Picasaweb, Facebook, etc. : they're all online.
That's the bad thing when you're a connected guy like myself : you do rely a lot on the Internet. It strucked me the hard way this morning, when I was to go on the Green Fiber Evangelist blog to start the training session I'm delivering this week at a large install company : got no LAN connection to start with, hence no Internet connection, hence no online videos, hence no *live* training materials.
Then, the IT guy came to the rescue after lunch, to give me the IP address, DNS servers, proxy settings things to help my Mac go online. It worked, except for one little tiny detail : this company forbids some websites, among which... YouTube. Bye-bye the Green Fiber Evangelist blog (at least for the rest of the week here ;-)
This is kind of weird : a 6,000 employees firm who wants to penetrate the optical networks installation & maintenance business don't authorize ubiquitous access to the Net. By the way, only 600 (six hundred) people out of those 6,000 have an email address. 10%. Who don't even get access to the most popular websites in the world. As my dear former boss Robert is used to say : "there is room for improvement" !
Anyway, Accor hotels do provide free WiFi to their guests. So, thanks to Accor (and Orange), I'm posting this text from my hotel room. After an hour or so spent on downloading all the Green Fiber Evangelist videos on my Mac, with TubeTV.
That's the lesson of the day : never rely too much on the Net. Download vids and pics and copy them on a USB key before going to the customer. And start evangelize people : you need an internet connection to get on the Cloud ;-)
I've revamped the Fiber On Demand blog. Was a matter of a few clicks only, thanks to Yahoo!Pipes (see the features in the previous post). Aggregating content from different sources onto a single web page has never been so easy.
Just missing a 3D/whirling/magnifying carousel, which will be available in a next release I guess.
See Fiber On Demand here. Subscribe to the RSS feed here.
This are my running notes of Bob Metcalfe' s keynote speech at the opening plenary session here at OFCNFOEC'08, San Diego, California. Posted after the speech, for misspelling corrections and irrelevant stuff deletion.
I'll comment some of them later on, in a further post. Just this personal note : Mr Metcalfe himself confirms that good times are ahead for the the Fiber industry. Should she wants to reinvent herself.
Running notes :
- BM has no ppt slides.
- uses instead 3 cards stacks, today will use 5 packs - reads the cards either on the table or hand held.
- the agenda of the day is to get the answer to two questions : "why should we be Terabit Ethernet ?", and then "how ?".
- 20 years between the first optical Ethernet in 1978 and the real commercial one.
- BM has a new project : create the Ether-Net, to solve energy crisis.
- SONET vs Ethernet : Ethernet won because of prices slash on cost per bit.
- BM prefers the terminology "telephon television and data" vs "voice video and data".
- the Internet is now carrying video, mobile, and embedded apps.
- Internet was not designed for none of them.
- Bubblephobia : people still afraid of traffic growth after the 2000 burst.
- expects growing traffic on embedded apps : first were mainframes then mini-computers then PCs then laptops then palmtops, so what's next ? : embedded.
- "alien wavelengths" : fiber people don't allow computer people to send their own wavelengths on the fiber.
- Ethernet technology will continue to ramp-up on a 10x slope, not 4x : 10G, then 100G, then 1T.
- Terabit Ethernet needs break out the existing infrastructure, otherwise it will be chaos.
- chaotic infrastructure because of too many levels, pieces, components - too much complexity.
- BM to the audience : "it's good news for you : it's gonna be fun". invent new stuff. means new business.
- BM lists some directions : new fibers : maybe carbon fibers ? how about no fibers at all ? how about free space mesh ? OOO (no more OEO conversion) ? etc ?
- we will never hear the word "OC3072" because of Ethernet 100G.
- Intel Sales & Marketing VP says TbE will not happen on terminal devices - it will be WiMax instead.
- when Tim Berners Lee invented the WWW, he never thought there will be a Google.
- today we have 4 layers, no more the 7 of the OSI model : at the bottom : Ethernet, then Internet, then WWW, then on top : Google.
- we need to re architect Ethernet because online video : download needs bandwidth, streaming needs QoS, interactive needs low-latency : Ethernet never been good at that.
- re-architect Ethernet : routing, switching, etc.
- meet people needs for lower energy consumption.
- Ethernet will help reducing transportation needs etc.
- BM asks the audience : "you fiber communications people are you ready to help solve the energy crisis ?"
Short biography of Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe: MIT engineer, Harvard mathematician, Internet developer, Xerox scientist, Ethernet inventor, Stanford professor, 3Com founder, Cambridge fellow, InfoWorld pundit, and now Polaris partner.
Read the OFCNFOEC plenary session program here.
See Bob Metcalfe' s recent interview by Light Reading here, and read more here.
Get the clear picture on why online video naturally changes the World here.
Last but not least, the legend of Bob Metcalfe is here, by Wired.
As a presenter who like to travel light - I'm a bit tired of opening up my laptop at each and every security check in the airports (even if it's a MacBook), I'm currently testing a new way to rehearse and do presentations whilst on the road (or in the air).
Here's the 7-steps process :
1. with Apple' Keynote, create the simplest slides set possible, following Guy Kawasaki' s 10/20/30 rule and Garr Reynolds' s Zen approach,
2. export the Keynote file to both Powerpoint and Acrobat file formats,
3. upload the three files onto Zoho Projects,
4. import the PPT file into Zoho Show,
5. send the PDF file to myself on my .Mac account,
6. copy the three files on my favorite USB key,
7. check the availability and integrity of all those files (takes a few minutes only).
Then, I can :
a) access the slides from anywhere in the World, thanks to the Web 2.0.
b) download the PDF onto any PC or Mac once on site.
c) review the slides on my iPhone.
The latest proves to be the most interesting part of the experiment. For instance, I can rehearse my presentation in the airplane, without needing to grab my MacBook. Also, I don't fear intrusive eyes from the guy next seat, see what I mean ?
* " in the air ", not : " on the Air " ;-)
Thanks to Master Guy Kawazaki (and the Magic of the Blogosphere), I discovered the recently published article in Smashing Magazine : Data Visualization: Modern Approaches. For all of you manipulating data to be presented to end-users, customers, or managers, this article (and the related comments, full of links too) is a must-read. It's a given that the web sites and tools mentionned are must-bookmark ;-)
Thanks to the endless sources of distraction offered by the Blogosphere, here is the map structure of this weblog.
What do the colors mean ?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags
I recently discovered Newsmap, a Google News aggregator of a new kind.
Similar in its concept to the " What's Hot " feature on C|Net, Newsmap " provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe ".
As stated as well in the " About " page on Newsmap' website :
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.
I am convinced such of concept can be applied to many other areas than pure online news. For instance, a telecommunications operator could use it in its supervision and/or monitoring systems, e.g. to display users' s traffic.
Chosen by the Jury, made of the Four Top presentation gurus Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman, the winners are :
I am very proud to claim that I could have been part of the jury myself, and I can prove it here !
It's time to have a look at the contest which was launched last month by the folks at Slideshare. To date, 250- entries are listed.
After sorting the view per popularity (to go faster), I've been browsing through the half of it - that is 6 pages : no front slide catched my eyes but the first two. IMHO, those two presentations should be among the Top-5 by the closing of the contest on April 23d. They've got it all : a) you don't need a presenter to understand their meaning; b) they tell a story, from A to Z; c) they keep you captivated. On top of it, their respective first slide is not a trap : the inside is as good as the outside...
Then, here are my two favorites :
Note : ' Shift Happens ' is a slideshow based on a presentation titled " Did You Know? "created by Karl Fisch, teacher at the Arapahoe High School. Thanks to the magic of Internet, I found Karl' s blog yesterday : The Fishbowl is just an amazing piece of knowledge.
The story behind " Did you know " is here. And here too, under the title " Gone Fishin' ", with the video (and music) on YouTube here.
Shift Happens on Slideshare (well, that's right ;-) : click here.
Meet Henry on Slidshare (hum, Henry should be busy right now ;-) : click there.
For those of you who don't want to leave FiberGeneration now, enjoy (and vote)
SlideShare has announced it's first World’s Best Presentation Contest. See the rules here or read the pitch below :
SlideShare's users will vote on the entries while the contest is on. The winning entries will be decided by (the) panel of judges, which is comprised of the who's who of the presentation world. The People's Choice prizes will be decided on the basis of the votes polled. Winners will be announced one week after the contest ends.
The famous judges are presentation gurus Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds, Bert Decker and Jerry Weisman.
The 3 first prizes are : an Alienware laptop and 2 XBox 360
Provided the quality of the grand jury, I guess the winning presentation will have to really be an outstanding one. Both in terms of design - graphic design, overall concept - and content - the topic and the story. In the meantime, it will have to pass through the votes of the rest of the people. Here starts the real issue. Weisman, Decker, Reynolds, Kawasaki : they are seasoned businessmen, experts in their field(s), used to deal with high-level audiences. Hence their certain vision of presentation : a quick/captivating/eye catching story-telling, kind of. How about SlideShare average visitors and users ? Who are they ? My guess : 20-30 yrs old tech geeks. Finding the matching point between them and the jury is the key for success. The winner will be the one who will please * the average * and wow * the experts *. Sounds familiar ? It looks like " American Idol " and the likes to me. A great challenge...
A quick overview of the first applications here, and you'll get the point : for the time being, there is no "wow" stuff. Nothing that turns me on, nothing that make me want to click and watch.
Here is what I would do, should I decide to participate - who knows ?!. By the way, note that this a copy & paste of a comment I left today on Guy Kawasaki' s blog :
Maybe the point is to make the presentation a piece of theatre by itself. A *good* presentation is a story. In this case (Slideshare contest) there is no story-teller, means no speaker/presenter/actor. Hence the basic idea : imagine a presentation where the presenter is inside, 'on' the slides themselves. Then, this presenter will tell a story. A kind of cartoon, if you see what I mean.
Now, the absolute open question to resolve is this one : which topic ? In the introduction, SlideShare claims :
I'm pretty convinced that evangelizing Linux won't make it, nor a recipe for the perfect apple pie : that's too " common stuff ". Maybe evangelizing the perfect apple pie in the greatest city of the world driving a green car will make it though ;-)Your presentation could be about anything you know or care for. From teaching 5th graders history to pitching your ideas to VCs; tell us why your city is great or convince us to buy hybrid cars; evangelize Linux or share a recipe for that perfect apple pie.
Sometimes, there is no better way to kick-off the week than to receive a kick in the... you name it. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, who posted the link on his blog yesterday Sunday, this sermon called “Jesus & Your Job” by Nancy Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church made my day - and perhaps the rest of my week and the days to follow.
Beyond the core message of this sermon, which is about good leaders and the value of people’s work, I see something else : a kind of reminder. It is time for all of us to think different. I wish the combat against Global Warming will force us Humans to unite. For once. For the sake of our children's children.
I just discovered the American Museum of Natural History website. The Science Bulletins section features amazing animations and videos on the Universe, Space, and Earth. It's worth bookmarking, sharing, and, of course, watching here.
In the Earth section, the following three presentations are mandatory : Dead Zones on the Rise, Melting Glaciers: Clues to Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice 1997-2006
Maybe those of you who are still skeptics about global warming will change their mind. Hopefully ;-)
Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio tell Hollywood how the Academy goes green. (photo : Reuters).
"An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary from used-to-be-the-next-president-of-the-United States of America Al Gore and director Davis Guggenheim on global warming has won an Oscar last night in Los Angeles, CA.
In my humble opinion, the Academy' award is another strong sign that the combat against global warming is going mainstream in the US. An excellent news, that is a tremendous step forward to a complete overhaul of our way of life.
As I wrote some weeks ago : for the first time in the History of Humanity, we of the Western World (aka " Occident ") can reshape Mother Earth for the sake of our children' children. And still make money out of it. Going Green (Tech) means make Green (Money - US dollars, get it ?)
post-scriptum : the original article by Associated Press claims"An Inconvenient Truth" to be a power-point presentation. Well, the author doesn't probably subscribe to "PresentationZen", otherwise she would have known that it was designed and created using Apple' Keynote presentation app !
Nevertheless, I understand the confusion : "An Inconvenient Truth" was not filmed at a conference' keynote speech ;-)
Last week, a headhunter * and reader of this blog (he found me through LinkedIn, by the way) asked me the question : "what is ' Testing 2.0 ' about ?"
So, I had to do the Elevator Pitch. How to explain a Paradigm Shifting-next Google-Revolutionary business in 30 seconds. Funny enough, I just finished reading this post on Paul Williams' s IdeaSandBox a few minutes before. I had to keep focus on my usual introduction of Testing 2.0, trying not to do it the '24' style : " The following take place between 1998 and today" ;-)
Let me introduce Testing 2.0 for you :
FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home networks are moving to mainstream. According to the Fiber-to-the-Home Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), in North America alone FTTH networks now pass by six million homes and more than 300,000 homes are being passed with FTTH every month. That means thousands of OSP Outside Plant technicians going in the field to connect and test fibers each month. Meaning thousands of manpower hours, thousands of miles in the streets, thousands of dollars of equipment in the trucks... The problem is : the Telcos can't afford such tremendous investments without cutting costs here and there. Their priority number one : cut the costs of the OSP techs. Avoid the trucks. Get the fiber turned on with no technician on-site. In the US, Verizon calls on the T&M Test & Measurement companies since years, asking them to develop low-cost 'Go/No-Go' test solutions to be used by novices, say the guy who is mounting the optical fiber termination box. No one of them answers : such a solution would kill their business !
Here comes Testing 2.0 : the answer to the Verizon and the likes' s call. Get rid of the trucks, and turn on the fiber without specialized tools and technicians.
Testing FTTH links from the subscriber' s place become a simple/easy/fast task : connect the test probe to the fiber, check the availability/quality of the three services (telephone, internet, TV), send the results to the Service Provider via... SMS, and that's it.
Testing 2.0' breaks the rules, because : a) it splits the test solution into three pieces : low-cost yet universal and reliable hardware, custom-built software apps using Open Source and Web 2.0 bricks, and a complete yet evolutive bundle of services, and b) Testing 2.0 is based on a Pay-Per-Use model.
Low-Cost, Pay-Per-Use, Services : Testing 2.0 revamps the whole Telecoms Test & Measurement industry' landscape :
- Low-Cost : instead of the traditional $ 3k-5k testers which are sold today by all the major T&M vendors, Testing 2.0 concept is based on $500 probes that do the same basic job : go/no go.
- Pay-Per-Use : Testing 2.0 solutions use cellphones and smartphones as the user interface. The probe' s data are then transmitted to the Service Provider (e.g. Verizon and the likes) per SMS messages.
- Services : since everyone in the Telecoms industry do face scarce resources issues, Testing 2.0 solutions include every service both the Service Provider and his Network Equipment vendor need to turn on and maintain the fiber : test reports, data management, etc. All based on Web 2.0 collaborative platforms.
That is Testing 2.0 in brief. From now on, I will publish more details on the dedicated Testing 2.0 ' blog (URL already registered). Also, I have opened a wiki a couple of weeks ago, which will be used together with the Testing 2.0 blog.
Stay tuned ;-)
* I haven't got the job (hey, that is : CEO of a 20M€/50 people firm !), however I've got a new reader. I think the latest will pay on the long run ;-)
post-scriptum : there is nothing to see at the moment at www.testing2dot0.com.
Apple Computer, inc. is dead, welcome and long life to Apple, inc. For all of us Mac fans, as well as for the rest of us entrepreneurs and business developers, the MacWorld 2007 Keynote is worth watching again and again.
Of course, Tuesday the 8th of January, 2007, will stay forever as the day when Steve Jobs unveiled his best-kept-secret new baby : the iPhone. It is not that often (unfortunately ?...) that we can watch a new revolution live. But there was something way more important than the iPhone itself this day. Apple has changed. The ad banner which was released on the apple.com homepage the week before the expo tells this : Steve Jobs has set his company for the Future. Apple has dropped the word 'computer' out of its name, to make it crisp and clear to all of us, especially to its rivals Microsoft and Sony : the Mac & iPod maker is no longer a 'computing-only' firm. Apple is aimed at Consumer Electronics at large. 
Another interesting fact to analyze : Apple is no longer a single-combat-warrior/free electron company. Apple do teamwork. See Intel, Nike, and now AT&T. In each case, a beautiful example of a perfect win-win setup. Thanks to Jobs, and the Apple folks, Intel is learning to think out of the box, Nike reaches the high-tech geeks, and AT&T will be #1 again soon.
Les Poven of Of Things Mac has written a very interesting article on Steve Jobs and Change Management, detailing the Keynote speech in all aspects, from a strategic marketing perspective : "The 2007 Jobs Macworld Keynote: Lessons in Change Management". A must read.
ps : about the iPhone, you shall read the excellent post "iPhone and the Dog Ears User Experience Model" by Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Customers. I guess Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive know Raymond Loëwy' s MAYA principle per the book ;-)
Thanks to Garr Reynolds and his latest post in his highly recommended blog 'Presentation Zen', I found this video on YouTube. It is absolute fun. And a perfect example of efficient viral marketing. More of the marvelous Christine here here. Enjoy the ride ;-)
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