deal architect

Sourcing Far and Wide

I groaned when my wife suggested we walk up a steep hill to go see a Benedictine Abbey in Melk, Austria. I mean monks are austere - what could be of real interest there? I am glad she persisted. We saw the most stunning library I have ever set my eyes on and the baroque church would impress even the most hardened tourist who has had his/her share of ABC (another bloody church!).

Readers of this blog know I constantly caution against vendor consolidation strategies. My other New Florence blog is always telling readers to look for innovation from left field - scour the world for it.

Time after time this week, my wife took us away from the big cities of Munich, Zurich and Vienna we could spend our vacation in (or even just one of those 3), and picked a bunch of places to visit I would never have and I am so glad she did:

• The amazing medieval arcades and statues in the Old City of Berne
• The lovely farmer's market across the Chapel Bridge and hundreds of swans and ducks on the edge of Lake Luzern
• The Landtag - the striking new Parliament building in Vaduz in tiny Liechtenstein
• The town center - the Hauptplatz in Linz - one of the largest in Europe where Adolf Hitler walked as a young boy
• The highest little town in beautiful Bavaria, Fussen

Yes, it took more effort for the car and our feet to get to these places, but just reinforced my view about looking far and wide even in technology to find delightful solutions and not just depend on safe, well-known brands.

Weekend Stuff: Neuschwanstein 20 years later

Margaret and I first visited exactly 20 years ago Ludwig II's homage to Richard Wagner. We were back yesterday with our teenagers.

Amazing the changes. No, not in the castle which is frozen in time. In the world.

• It was almost 85 degrees at the foot of the Alps. in 1989 we would have called it a warm day. Today the first thought is climate change, and we had to go through mental gymnastics to do the conversion to Fahrenheit. It did cool down nicely after evening showers.
• The kids and I gave Margaret a hard time for making us ride a horse carriage up the steep hill. In 1989 not sure we worried about ethical anything when it came to animals. Redemption - we did walk down riding gravity. No ethical commentary on way down.
• In 1989 we had driven down the Romantische Strasse which meanders through a bunch of medieval towns and ends at Fussen . This time we flew into Munich and missed most of that but Margaret wanted to retrace some of those roads. Surprisingly, how few Germans today have even heard of it. Of course, our GPS just laughed when we could not provide it a precise town or address.
• Chinese tourists abound - even castle tour books in Chinese. A whole busload returned to our hotel. In 1989, the year of Tiananmen, few Chinese were allowed to or could afford to vacation abroad
• Germany for most items appears far cheaper than Ireland where the family has been the last couple of weeks. Strikingly different than in 1989. And easier to tell since the euro takes away the currency mental gymnastics.

One thing which has not changed. Our teenagers were as impressed as we were 20 years. Disney was so right in picking this palace as inspiration for his castle - it appeals to kids of all ages. 

Weekend Stuff: The Griswolds come to the Alps

As the kids get older, it's been tough to agree on vacation destinations. So I suggest a drive through the Alps and they look at me funny. Then I say Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland and my daughter says 3 new stamps on passport – cool. I have to correct her and say she already has been to Germany, and Austria is in in the EU. Ok, so how about a night in Czech. And Slovakia to get more new stamps. And I have to remind her  – I am on a US week vacation quota. She responds - and what's wrong with if it's Tuesday, this must be ....

My son’s turn, and I have to tell him Fussen is on the agenda. You know where the Disney castle is. And Salzburg – the city they built for The Sound of Music. And Vienna - where the Lipizzaners of Myakka City near us spend their summers. Cool.

So we are off later this week. Give us a wide berth as we look for Walley World on the autobahn :)

Posting will be light on the blog over the next week or so.

Weekend Stuff: The other “empty calories”

Readers of my blog know I talk quite a bit about IT “empty calories”.  You may also remember seeing my friend and former Gartner colleague Erik Keller on these pages. In his contribution in the hobby series, he talked about his love of gardening.

He has started to blog about it at GroHappy – and one of his first posts is about empty calories from cookies.

Oh and the joy of carrots, beans and slugs!

Weekend Stuff: Of Presidents and Technology

Judith Rothrock of JRocket invited me to her annual “Grape Escape” where she brings some of her clients and industry analysts and media together.

Neat setting – the Old State House in Boston, famous for the “massacre” in 1770. President John Adams was around to tell his perspectives on his peer founding fathers, slavery, his uncomfortable time as the first US ambassador to England.

Then drawing from a more contemporary Presidential event, she served the menu from the Obama inauguration (click to enlarge). For budding chefs out there chow.com has recipes.

Nice to have modern technology discussions in the midst of the technology artifacts from that era. I enjoyed sitting at dinner next to Jeremy Roche of Coda, whose Cloud Pioneer column I coincidentally ran this morning.

Nicely done, Judith.

Photo Credit for menu – Jack Gold

Sesame Street goes to the airport

I am torn between crediting this post to Sesame Street or giving United and RyanAir credit for ever creative fees and charges:

…There's a hole in the bottom of your pocket
There's a hole in the bottom of your pocket
There's a hole, there's a hole
There's a hole in the bottom of your pocket

There's a airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket
There's a airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket
There's a airline ticket, there's a airline ticket
There's a airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket…

There's a baggage fee on the airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket…

There's a check-in counter fee on the baggage fee on the airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket…

There's a home on-line check-in fee on the check-in counter fee on the baggage fee on the airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket…

There's a tax on the home on-line check-in fee on the check-in counter fee on the baggage fee on the airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket…

There's a surcharge on the tax on the home on-line check-in fee on the check-in counter fee on the baggage fee on the airline ticket in the hole in the bottom of your pocket….

Kids, sing this every time you check in with United and RyanAir and every other airline which nickel and dimes you.

Even better, avoid flying them. Do your meetings via telepresence and watch those Big Bird re-runs at home.

Weekend Stuff : Run for the 100s

It’s one of those Florida mornings where the heat and humidity have already started the race about which can get to 100 faster. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums use their own race metric – how many bites they can pack in a day.

Contrary to popular belief, the flying menaces almost never win. They are smart enough to wait for the evening to do their thing :)

Weekend Stuff: Citizen Diplomacy

It has been fascinating to see so many on Twitter change their location to Teheran to try and confuse the mullahs and to tint their avatars green in solidarity with those on the frontlines in Iran. In sharp contrast to the relative quiet from the White House – not helped by our Secretary of State in pain from a fall.

When it is all said and done, it will make a fascinating case study. But as this chat transcript from the Washington Post shows all this traffic may be having an unintended consequence and actually helping the Iranian government. Web sites in Iran are crawling under the traffic – and DoS attacks, and tampering, I am sure by the government.

Also, Iran has had a large and influential Diaspora since 1979. Lots of affluent Iranians out of the country stay in regular touch with friends and relatives in Iran. Many warily even go back to visit every few years. So, the Iranian government is not new to external citizen influence.   What it may not have counted on is non-Iranian Twitter participation. Which we know how most despots turn into propaganda about “external threats”

I don’t think it is a coincidence this week that the Chinese are demanding more controls from Western technology vendors about web access. Every tyrant around the world is being retrained in security briefings about cyber-surveillance, web traffic patterns and disruption technologies.

So as us citizen diplomats celebrate the “Twitter Revolution”, let’s brace for counter-measures around the world, not just Iran.

Rotund man in a silver unitard walks into bar…

…and orders a Golden Cuervo Margarita…

not sure if he does (he looks like a very well fed Osama Bin Laden so probably does not touch alcohol) , but Microsoft is hoping he does better for them than the rotund PC character in the Apple commercials

He is part of a new ad campaign around IE8

“The campaign, launching today, features humorous PSA-style “Special Internet Service Announcements” highlighting various Internet afflictions. The first two are S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. (Sharing Heavily Yet Not Enough Sharing Still) and F.O.M.S. (Fear of Missing Something) with more premiering in the weeks to come.

Each video highlights new IE8 features like InPrivate mode, Accelerators, and WebSlices in very unexpected ways. The videos are now appearing online on high-profile video sites, in social media spaces including YouTube and Facebook, and on a new website”.

I am sure glad they clarified what F.O.M.S stands for. I would have sworn it was Fear of missing Seinfeld

How would your vendors fare on this innovation index?

Emerson Electric evaluates itself using an innovation index - managers divide new-product sales into one of four categories: minor improvements, major improvements, products that are new lines for the business, and ones that are completely new to the world.

I think companies should ask each of their major IT and telecom vendor to provide such an analysis twice a year:

• for the vendor as a whole
• for what the vendor has billed that individual customer

It would give buyers an idea of whether they are not absorbing innovation a vendor may be delivering and other customers are leveraging, or whether the vendor is generally in “milking” mode. And vendors could use the data to benchmark themselves against peers on what they are delivering – whether their R&D is productive, whether their sales and marketing is effective in selling new products etc.

Realistically, though it would be a huge innovation if most vendors line up to share such data...