Crane and Hawk

JOHN KINSELLA

The crane, eyes fixed, moves steadily,

its expression one of quiet desperation;

awkwardly graceful, it lifts

with an arc of its wings.

Turning and cutting the same path over,

the crane relies on what we know as patience,

while the hawk effortlessly shadows—

death’s mimic playing with time.

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A FEW OF THE MAORI WISE SAYINGS FROM LAKE TAUPO.

POETRY FOUNDATION

foto – crane in bilambil 2008 december

Strategy 1: Verbage Liposuction

Liposuction is a medical procedure where a tiny cut is made into a person’s body. Then a tube inserted into the cut. Then a vacuum attached to the other end of the tube and excess fast is removed from the patient’s body.

In a similar way, liposuction can be done on descriptive text in software. Sure, buttons and data entry areas need to be labelled. That
is now what I am talking about. What I speak about here is taking a section of text and rewriting it to remove unneccessary words.
The most common examples of this are text giving instructions or help topics. People tend to scan, not read, while using software.

One of the easiest ways I have found to effectively rewrite text for software (and technical documents) is to

- Create bullet points
- Have entries in bullet points begin with verbs
- Is the order of the list or instructions important? Then use numbered lists
- Consider using diagrams or simple animations to illustrate your point

One of the wonders of bullet points is that each point does not have to be a proper sentence.

Strategy 2: Avoid Acronym and Abbreviation Burnout

I have limited myself to using only one acronym in this blog entry – KISS.
More than 3 to 5 makes the user slow down and think and possibly write what those acronyms mean. It is unfortunately necessary to use acronyms in technical, medical, and scientific documentation due to the nature of the subject matter.  However, writing applications for the general public to use, too many acronyms or abbreviations simply makes them recall what
those acronyms or abbreviations represent.

Via

Via

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There are two new pages if you haven’t noticed…

Image of the Whenever & Wallpapers

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I’ve uploaded new content today so check it out… If you have any ideas for content for either one of the two pages feel free to share with me… If you liked any of the wallpapers they are free to download as your desktop wallpaper… and the images of the whenever, well, I really don’t know why I’m doing them… but anyone is free to contribute…

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"Proverb lore; many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sources"

Spain : " A little bird must have a little nest " — a lesson in contentment, a warning against pretension and undue importance.

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The nest of a blind bird is made by God," is a beautiful lesson of resignation and faith.

foto – brolgas after the flood ulmarra may 2009

I learned the KISS acronym (Keep It Simple Silly) a long time ago. Looking back on my
career, I see the wisdom that the KISS acronym teaches.

When I was enhancing software or using some software (or website) and a recurring thought would cross my mind.  This thought was”what were they thinking about when they designed this screen (or web page, software, …)?”  It is a good bet that some of you might have had a similar thought. 

What prompts that thought though?

Most often, it is simply about cramming too much information into the screen (or web page or software , from now on I will simply refer to both a screen and web page and software as software).

This data overload comes in the form of text, images, and data entry controls. There are resolutions using KISS to redesign the software. I propose 4 strategies to how to re-design (or refactor)  the software screen to alleviate the information overload. In the next 3 blog entries, I present those 4 strategies.

Stay tuned for more

I heard an item on the radio the other day about the Kinshasa Government negotiating with the South African Farmers’ Union to give them large tracts of land in the Congo so that domestic food production could be increased and reliance on imports reduced.

My feelings about this are informed by my own experience in the DRC or Zaire as it was branded in those days.

The company I worked for faced shortages of foreign exchange which threatened its ability to import essential raw materials. An obvious solution was to source more from within the country. One of the key raw materials could be easily grown by small farmers and in certain parts of the country conditions were ideal. The difficulty was to kick start production.

The company hired and trained agricultural extension advisers to talk to the farmers and advise them of the correct mix of crops and how to maximise their yields. The company provided seed, fertiliser and tools to the farmers at cost, although no payment was taken until the company had bought the crop so the farmers benefited from what was in effect an interest free loan. With annual inflation running at several hundred percent this was a significant benefit to the farmers.

When the crop was ready it was collected from the farmers at local weighing stations and they were paid in cash. Because the farmers preferred small denomination notes the company brokered a national deal with the Catholic Church to buy all their Sunday collections in the major conurbations. The Church was relieved of much of its cash handling responsibilities and the diocese was paid centrally saving a lot in transfer charges.

The company had to transfer large quantities of banknotes to the farming areas which was interesting. I remember one occasion when we chartered a Hercules transport to fly thirty tons of cash to Bunia.

Although this was a time consuming and fairly expensive process, the company succeeded in achieving several things:

- Reduced dependence on foreign exchange for imports
- Secured a domestic source of an essential raw material
- Assured continuity of employment for 1,100 people by avoiding shutdowns caused by shortages of materials
- Provided a new revenue source for several thousand farmers and their families, 50,000 people in all, converting them from subsistence farming
- Solved a problem that the Catholic Church had with cash handling

Rather than just give away land to foreign farmers the Congolese government should look at their own farming community and see how they can help raise the level of agricultural production by providing the necessary inputs and advice as well as providing a ready market for the crops. I am sure that there will be resentment against the foreign farmers and this will be another quick and easy solution doomed to failure.

A good idea doesn’t have to complicated, it just has to work. Just like the ideas we generate at Irun Solutions

When he’s not keeping you informed about the latest industry news and offering his own unique perspective on your businesses, Pete Grasso does this blog about his (and my) beloved Cleveland Browns.

I have a bad feeling that the Browns are going to go 0-4 on their way to 0-8, starting with losing to this team later today. I have a feeling Pete, who is a fan of Brady Quinn, will have some choice words for Eric Mangini and the rest of the ownership if they do.

I suppose that the following serves as an end of the month assessment also:

This week I tried a different, more organic approach to learning – I was a bit under the weather, but didn’t want to loose any school time. As a result, I focused on the learning activities and less on the logging (blogging) of the learning activities.

Over the last month, my entries in this blog have varied in length and detail – essentially, I was trying to find my blog groove, so to speak. For the most part, I think that I will continue to let the blog be free form, instead of using the same format for every entry (as I did at the beginning of this blog).

Our star pupil has really shown a heightened affinity to the PC.  I used software by Knowledge Adventure (Jumpstart 1st grade) and Scholastic (Brain Play 1st – 3rd grade) mostly this week. 

Since she seems to learn things best through song and through technology – music and the PC will be foundational learning tools until a change is deemed necessary.

I will post a learning activities overview – for this past week – on Friday.

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No, not that UK. This UK. Check out the cool videos. He’s got to show me how to do that.

Il fallait que ça arrive. Depuis l’annonce du lancement d’une offre de planning low-cost par BDDP, on attendait avec impatience les premiers résultats. Je ne sais pas si la campagne Dior Eau Sauvage est à porter à leur discrédit mais il faut bien constater que le planning ne s’est pas pris la tête pour conceptualiser la cible du produit.

La marque avait déjà défrayé la chronique au mois d’avril lors de la première parution du visuel mettant en scène une photographie d’Alain Delon datée de 1966, la cigarette en moins (souvenez-vous, on avait fait e même coup à la pipe de Jacques Tati).

Habitués des néologismes qualifiant une catégorie de population (esthète du quotidien, apérisien…), les départements de planning des agences font habituellement un petit effort pour inventer ou qualifier les consommateurs. Ici, la cible de ce film devait être : l’homme Mad Men. Résultat : un faux-film qui décline l’imagerie photoshopée agrémentée de la musique du générique de la série. Chapeau les gars, c’est creusé.

Ceci dit, on peut se demander si ce film ne s’inspire pas de la philosophie du KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), idéale pour faire passer un message ou concevoir un produit répondant à une attente simple et identifiée des consommateurs. Pour s’en convaincre, jetez donc un coup d’oeil à notre veille hebdo Né Kid sur le sujet (le hasard fait bien les choses).

My blog this evening – may appear to disappear into the ether for some, however it is my clumsy attempt to explain aspects of an emerging science in the field of marketing and the principles behind the part of our brain responsible for decision making. This is with particular reference to the campaign on the Lisbon Treaty.

Neuro marketing scientists believe that we ultimately make decisions using the most ancient part of our brain; our amygulda The power of our emotional decisions are made on simple decisions of whats in it for me, what is tangible, how can I see the difference, how soon will it make a difference, how will it effect those I care about.

If the answer is well: I dont think I can work out how it will impact upon me, I have more important things going on in my life; Its probably going to happen on the never never, I cant really understand the difference etc. Its going to be damn hard to connect with many people who feel distant from issues like the Lisbon Treaty.  Thus I have tried to include below some of the communications from the yes campaign which try to address some of these issues. Its not exactly the way our higher brain functions might like to believe we make decisions, but unfortunately it would appear that it is closer to our actual behaviour than we might like to admit.

As I said this morning at the Michael Cheika Business breakfast: This vote is not about if we want to be in Europe or not, but it is both about making progress on improving Governance in Europe and about Ireland Inc. setting out our political strategy about how close we wish to be to the heart of Europe.

Keep Ireland strong, build an economy, make Europe democratic, fight crime,

Typically, big companies invest one percent to four percent of revenue in IT. This investment is usually spent on integrated business model implementations, continuous innovations, and day-to-day IT operations. There must be a way to assess and take full advantage on the return of these investments; otherwise, IT organizations cannot move from being cost centers to value centers. Optimizing the value of IT is a top priority in today’s tough economy. Companies rush to reduce IT operating cost and IT capital expenditures mainly because of falling revenue sources. 

Many companies are so focused on evolution in order to always be steps ahead of competitors. They, at times, push themselves hard through IT implementations and afterwards, fail to take advantage of the benefits. They resort to old habits, making change process difficult to achieve. 

Once you implement new systems and processes, you need to aggressively drive value creation from it. Peter Weill, in his book IT Savvy wrote, “The firms that are best at this start driving value early. If you start driving value early as you take the first small steps towards building it, you will reduce the disruptions of major transformation. The goal should be—build a little, benefit a lot; build some more, benefit some more; and so on.” ¹ In other words, keep it simple! Now is probably the best time to resort to this time-tested principle where investment is placed only on IT solutions that are cost effective and that deliver better value and greater performance for the business. Below are just some key initiatives that can help organizations maximize value of IT in a company. 

Define Clear Strategic Vision 

The first step is to have clarity of strategic vision for each of your IT portfolios. Executive managers in Steering Committees have the responsibility to clearly define the main business objectives of projects and portfolio of projects. They are the ultimate architects for the organizational transformation that will happen. The objectives that they define will guide IT project leaders in their decision making and will help them prioritize business requirements. 

Maximize ERP systems 

Most big firms implement a digitized platform anchored on a major piece of purchased enterprise resource planning software such as SAP and Oracle. Implementation should be kept within the standard configuration as much as possible. This is a difficult challenge though. Of course, some business requirements cannot be addressed by standard functionalities. They will have to be developed or coded to change standard functionalities of the application to suit business needs. The challenge is to keep the balance between benefits and costs of these developments. Keeping solution within the platform configuration standards will reduce consulting cost, configuration and development effort. In the long run it will reduce cost of IT operation and application support. Additionally, companies can leverage on continuous evolution of those ERP platforms whenever new releases and versions become available. They can change to the new version without lengthy and costly upgrade process. 

IT Infrastructure Consolidation 

Data center consolidation is a major focus of many organizations today. According to Computer Economics, in 2008, 76% of organizations had some level of activity in the area of data center consolidation.  It is one of the most essential ways to lower the cost of IT operations. Bigger data centers are simply more cost-effective on a per unit basis. Therefore, for many organizations, consolidating multiple data centers into a single facility should be a primary strategy for cutting cost. Additionally, this consolidation effort can also result to mitigating risk and improving service levels. Concentrating computing resources into one or a small number of physical locations can boost the productivity of IT assets and personnel. It will also simplify IT operations management. Most organizations will realize quantifiable returns from such efforts. 

¹ Weill, Peter. IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain. 2009.