Blyk - advertising driven MVNO or media hybrid?

There was an interesting post on MEX (www.mobileuserexperience.com) today. The author argues that Blyk is in fact more than an interesting mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). He sees it as a true media communications hybrid, because they have succeeded in making the (highly targeted) advertising that makes the service free to most customers a selling feature in itself and not simply a unpleasant side-effect of getting the free service.

I am not really convinced of the semantic difference, though I have to confess that I have not yet experienced Blyk myself (I look forward to them entering the German market next year!), but there is certainly much for other MVNOs and operators in general to be worrying about from the Blyk model ;-).

Visual problem solving on the "back of the napkin"

I am just back from a weekend in London. I left the office really early on Friday (around 12:30) because I had hoped to get to the opening of a friend's new office in Notting Hill in the evening.

Unfortunately, the airlines conspired against me once again (see also my earlier posting on reading a Peter Drucker classic whilst struggling to get to Scotland a couple of weekends ago). I ended up flying to London Heathrow, rather than City from Duesseldorf via Stuttgart.. not the most direct route one can imagine! I arrived at the restaurant around 21:00. I suspect this will also not be the last time that I start a posting this way.

But there is a bright side. As with my trip to Scotland, the delay was not a complete loss as it gave me the opportunity to read another book from my backlog; "The Back of the Napkin - Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures" by Dan Roam. Given all the hype surrounding the book, I had high expectations that were only partially fulfilled.

Don't get me wrong. The book is well constructed and provides lost of thought-provoking examples of using visualisation to identify, frame, explain and sell ideas (much as the subtitle promises) and - even better - it provides a conceptual framework for structuring the analysis and visualisation of problems. However, it did not blow me away with its insight as I had been hoping.

Either way, it is well worth reading. For those not inclined to invest the 2-3 hours, Mr Roam has kindly produced a cheat-sheet for the key ideas and provides it for free on his website. And being the master presenter that he is, there are also a couple of presentations of his ideas on youtube (here is the 5 minute primer and here is an hour long presentation for Authors@Google.

At the risk of getting boring already.. TED is fantastic

Before leaving work earlier, a colleague stopped by my office ("my" and "office" are both exagerations given that I currently work at a pulpit on wheels in whatever office space I can find) and we got chatting about the world and, as I have often done over the last 12 months, I got on to the topic of TED.

It doesn't matter who I show the site to, it is always a delight to see their faces light up when I pick out just one or two presentations - this evening it was the classic presentation on the wii by Johnny Lee and Jonathan Harris' presentation of the website "we feel fine".

This second presentation is my personal favourite, Jonathan Harris' ability to create elegant user interfaces to simplify complex and aggregated data gives us a glimpse of what the internet is going to become and the ways we are able to interact with more complex information networks visually.

If you have not visited wefeelfine.org yet, then do so immediately..

And if you haven't visited TED, go there even quicker.

Back "on topic" with analysis and design!

After yesterday's "off-topic" posting on the inspirational impact of "Where the hell is Matt?", I want to return today to something more related to the central topic of this blog - business analysis and software engineering; I listened to a podcast on the way home this evening. It was a cast from the pm411.org project management forum (http://pm411.org/2008/09/21/podcast-episode-036-mindmapping/) and the topic covered was mindmapping.

I will be honest - usually I don't like the pm411.org cast series; I find them slow moving and limited in content. This week's cast was no exception, but it was interesting in that it got me thinking about how I used to use mindmaps to structure different levels of interrelated information:

Used right, the multi-dimensional representation of information in a mindmap allows you to build an entire requirements document. You start with an informal capturing exercise, relating the information as it comes from the stakeholders. With the right tools you can label and map in the stakeholders too (it is just a question of labeling the lines or nodes with the appropriate tags).

I used to use visio, but that got a little too much like hard work so I moved to mindmanager (which is actually discussed in the podcast). The more you add to it the richer the network becomes. With more advanced tools I am guessing that the structure of the data can then be extracted and used in (for example) specification documentation.

A colleague introduced me to www.mindmeister.com recently. It is free to use and has some nice import/export functions as well as integration with various browsers and other applications (though I haven't played around with them yet). I have been using it for holiday planning, but it is more than sufficient to handle more complex maps!

It occurs to me now that I have probably missed an opportunity to use this simple technique - believe me, I know this sounds trivial, but I guess I am getting rusty and have forgotten some of the basics! - to identify dimensions and structures in interrelated information sets and then to build off of them throughout a project - it is easy to want to jump into more structured requirements hierarchies, flowcharts, sequence diagrams and domain modeling activities.

I am going to try it out again in the next project initiation phase I am involved in to see how much it really adds to the more formal deliverables.

Where the hell is Matt?

I just stumbled across the "Where the hell is Matt" website. It is a really simple idea - a guy travels the world and dances like a fool in front of famous landmarks. It appears, however, that this guy has turned into a phenomenon. He has sponsors and has extended his dance to include locals from all the places he visits.

The result is a really positive example of the internet connecting people (the phrase is a little trite, I know, but it really is appropriate here). Amazingly, if you enter "Matt" in google.com this is now the top result. Check it out!


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Some academic resources are really practical

Having graduated almost a decade ago (though, believe me, it doesn't feel that long!), I have developed a healthy scepticism for the applicability of what one learns at university. That said, I am amazed at how seldom academic resources are used in professional training and career development programmes - it seems to me to be a wasted opportunity.

Ever since MIT opened up its course-materials to the general public a few years back, the number of schools offering high quality learning resources for free online has exploded. Predictably enough, this started with the business schools, but it now covers pretty much all disciplines.

And it really isn't just about collections of course notes poorly transcribed into powerpoint (although there is plenty of that too!). There are podcasts, video lectures, reading lists and even some interactive elements.

Now of course this doesn't necessarily compete with the best of the subscription based learning sites (either distance learning universities, or private organisations like SkillSoft), but then again, it is free!

Below I have put together a selection of some of my favourite academic sites:

• MIT - one of the frontrunners, MIT offer mostly written material, but also some multimedia courses across all disciplines.
• LSE - this a specialist podcast feed from the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the Department of Management. As you would expect the LSE faculty always have some interesting things to say.
• Open University's openlearn - pretty much every discipline, mostly written course notes, but really well presented.
  
• Berkeley - all kinds of disciplines and lots of videocasts and podcasts - I am particularly enjoying the first year undergraduate podcasts on "European civilisation from the Renaissance to the present"; you can just imagine the classroom from any number of movie representations of US top colleges!
  
• INSEAD - the knowledgecasts are informal interviews with the professors and industry leaders and at 10-15 minutes a piece are easy to digest!
  

Hope this is interesting for somebody out there. In a later post, I plan on revisiting this topic from a more professional perspective - the keywords being software engineering and YouTube ;-).

Peter Drucker & Agile

I just spent a delightful weekend in Scotland. Having travelled via Heathrow, I was, of course, delayed by several hours. This gave me a chance to revisit one of my favourite books of all time - "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker.

I have to admit, I don't like the title - most people are put off, thinking that it is only a book for wannabe CEOs when in reality it is about how to work effectively at all levels (Drucker himself defines the executive as pretty much every knowledge worker). But that is the only criticism I have of this book.

What is his key advice?

• Focus on one (maximum two) things at a time.
• Prioritise the item you are working on based on the impact it will have on the company (i.e. business value).
• Know what you spend your time on and manage your time agressively.
• Focus on opportunities and on the impact that you can and others make to the organisation.

The book was first published in 1967 and reads in many ways like an agile approach; it is refreshing to reflect on the fact that all of this agile stuff really is just a continuation of management practices that have been recommended for years. It is simply the IT discipline that is finally maturing and catching up with other disciplines.

If you haven't read it already, then go out and buy it - it is a book you can read in a few hours. There probably won't be any real new ideas if you have read anything about effectiveness (or indeed agile and/or lean management), but Drucker puts it together really well (there is a reason why he is the grandfather of modern management!).