2ni’s Blog

He is from braindrop
This might be something for our guys of Axon Active.

What is SNA

- how can I measure, analyze, predict a social network
- focus on relationships
- actors are viewed as interdependent
- high complexity
- nodes and edges

- example maps of science http://tinyurl.com/arqu6f
- flat analysis, eg keyword analysis
- SNA-approach, eg. actors position, reputation measurements

Theory

- one mode: single set of actors
- two mode: two actors (eg books, buyer)
- metrics connectivity how is a graph connected
- metrics centrality: who is the most important node in the network?

I know there are some more, Axon Active is having some more on their analysis…

Business case “content curation”

- you have 2493 new updates, I want only top 5% content
- based on social position of person/posting
- 7tweets

Business case “social search”

- sth between Google and your friends
- leverage friends of friends
- output is people that potentially can answer your yuestion
- aardvark

Looking ahead

- still a lot to discover
- parallel computing
- geolocation
- politics, legal and privacy is a big issue (eg. voice over ip, calendars, email, chats, …)

Technical set of tools

- database, index
- visualization max to 40 points
- no further details
- analyzing twitter: 10Mio people, 20Bio connections on flat files

Discussion about twitter vs. buzz…

He is from 101senses. It’s a private sale like ruelala.com.

Website

- they use magento and drupal as base
- website is a mashup of lot of services (eg. wordpress, picturepage, twitter, …)
- logo with logotournament
- website is a mess, this is on purpose (working progress)
- they use google wave and gdocs for meetings and similar

Opensource Business

- they try it the open source of their business and post everything related on their site
- even their calendar is public!
- private blogs, images, links of every member of the company is integrated

Specializing

- some specializing is needed
- selling stockings for girls
- stockings eshop already exist a lot
- shouldn’t be a 0815 shop
- trying to get a relationship with the customer with their opensourcness
- service-oriented commerce

Shop A vs. Shop B

- Shop A is their trial shop (where they can try some fancy stuff)
- Shop B is their real shop

Trial on Shop B

- shopping cart as a service
- shopping from a picture: click on a item in a random picture to buy the item (similar to video)
- when time goes on, replace magento features with “services”

Difficulties

- Get the products from the manufacturer for a devent price

They are at the very beginning but with some general interesting ideas. Imo they are a little dazzled by the revenues of the private sales from Germany and France. Some ideas will be really difficult to realize.

Preliminary remarks

- everybody can be a future customer of you
- if you can explain yourself, take the chance
- focus on loud voice, benefits of your products or service

Whats important

1. you
2. your business card for opportunities, see moo.com for inidividual cards
3. your website (do it on your own)

Introduce yourself

- introduce yourself is very important, so practice!
- tell what you’re doing from a point of view of the customer in the first sentence!
- try to be specific, eg special project, your specialisation
- what are the benefits for the customer
- talk about something what makes the customer curious
- what does it mean

Elevator pitch

- try to get appointment with your customer
- give additional information by introducing yourself
- make a relation to your counterpart (eg. tell him about your experience after listening to his presentation)
- offer benefits (eg. save money, innovative product)
- make him curious
- get an appointment (eg can I call you …)
- trust, so keep your promise!

Business Success Teams

- This is kind of a product or procedure which has been defined by her consulting company.
- SMART = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely
- Mtg: 1) Info status 5min, 2) mutual support with advice, action 15-20min, 3) Home Work

Geographic issues

- Indian difficult to work with
– boss decides
– not self driven
– always says “yes”

- eastern europe near shoring works better
– culture near ours
– good workers
– managers from eastern europe can be too hard in negotiations (loose-loose situations)
– most are in EU (can freely move, “legal” law, less bribing, but more expensive)
– best choice: 1-2 time zones away, none european state like Russia or Ukraine
– big cities more expensive, more fluctuation, more competition, but less expensive fligths easier to reach
– the further east the lower salary
– 20-40 US$ / hour

Selection criteria

- select large, non patriarchic company (stability, structure)
- small companies have large fluctuations, because most of the developers there don’t want to work for small companies
- check 2-3 references (still active)
- look for pragmatic contracts (non US contracts)
- some companies have mgmt in Europe, workers offshored might be a good option

Is it cheaper on the bottom?

- first criteria still pricing, but in the future it will be more and more not finding the people
- costs by factor ~4 in Eastern Europe (without communication costs, unproductivity, …)
- even with all costs taken factor will be down > 50%
- marketplaces like rentacoder.com or odesk.com only for very small projects

Howto pay

- Bank transfer

Availability / Expertise

- depends on technology ruby seems very rare in Eastern Europe
- if longterm perspective check network of company

What to offshore?

- everything important is kept here
- several options possible
- e.g. mgmt, CTO here and 12 developers offshore
- part of developer here, part of it offshore

Collaboration, Direct communication

- I want to have the developer near me (eg for scrum, pause talks, 1:1 communication, …)
- IM, video conference instead phone only
- Very important: you have to see each other on a regularly base. At least once 3-4 month

For one, sth completely different. Howto for some awesome cookies:

Zutaten:
* 150 gr Butter
* 100 gr Zucker
* 80 gr Rohrzucker
* 180 gr Mehl
* 2 Pack Vanillezucker
* 1 Ei
* 100 gr Haselnüsse gehackt (ich nehm da jeweils gehackte Mandelsplitter)
* 1/2 TL Backpulver
* 1/4 TL Salz (nehm da meist etwas mehr)
* 150 gr Schoggistückli

Zubereitung:
1. Butter und Zucker schaumig rühren
2. Vanillezucker dazu
3. Ei zugeben
4. Mehl, Salz, Backpulver dazu
5. Nüsse und Schoggi dazu

Teig ganz einfach in kleinen Häufchen aufs Blech klecksen und bei 175 Grad 12 - 14 Minuten backen

Distance:   48.19km (singletrail: about 13km)
Elevation:  931Hm
Duration:   3h01
Avg. Speed: 15.9km/h
Details:    gpsies, trainingstagebuch
TCX file:   TCX file (including elevation alerts)

Inspired by TobiTobi I chose the well known Altberg extended by the Elefantentobel.

The trip goes along the Limmat until after Höngg in Zurich. Interesting part of Zurich! Didn’t know this scenery there so far. At the beginning it was quite cold and foggy, but short after going up I got into the sun! After about 250Hm you’ll reach the Altbergtrail. You’ll follow the trail on normal forest tracks until you reach the restaurant Waldschenke

From the Altberg I crossed the ETH Hönggerberg (they have very modern sports facilities, haven’t seen that one until now!), going trough Käferberg until Irchel then going up to the Zoo of Zurich on some interesting trails (tricky one going up as well). Shortly after passing the Zoo and the skating park of Dolder I reached the Elefantentobel trail which follows a small stream. Nothing special there, but okay as track extension.

With this track I reached my year goal of 100′000 elevation meters by cycling (normal work drive excluded).

I recently developed a little tool, which was able to add ascent alerts to your garmin tcx course file. It was ok to use, but had still some issues and I had to choose some settings every time I wanted to patch one of my training files.

So I upgraded my tool by keeping some gauss filtering and mainly adding the Douglas-Peucker algorithm for more reliable results.

I’m now quite happy and it’s even faster and easier to use. You can try the tool with any tcx garmin course file.

Go to the tcx extender

Distance:   72.12km (singletrail: about 19km)
Elevation:  1944Hm
Duration:   5h01
Avg. Speed: 14.3km/h
Details:    gpsies, trainingstagebuch
TCX file:   TCX file (including elevation alerts)

Inspired by TobiTobi I did my longest mountainbike track yesterday. I knew most interesting parts of the whole trip, but it was still interesting. Sometimes it was too muddy and slipery to bike

There are 4 hills to climb: Üetliberg, Heitersberg, Lägern (Hochwacht) and Altberg.

5′186 Hm left to reach the 100′000 by cycle this year.

Bekanntlich steigen die Krankenkassen auf 2010 zum Teil massiv. Bei mir um satte 26%.
Grund dafür ist, dass ich eine hohe Franchise gewählt habe und diese nicht mehr so stark begünstigt werden darf.

Würde ich an einem HMO-Modell teilnehmen, wäre die Erhöhung deutlich niedriger. Doch habe ich 2 Gründe, wieso ich das HMO-Modell nicht möchte:

1. Ich will nicht 3 Tage auf einen freien Termin meines Arztes warten.
2. Wenn ich eine Sportverletzung habe, weiss ich, dass ich zum Spezialisten muss. Der Umweg über den Hausarzt kostet *mich* dabei nur zusätzlich Geld.

Es gibt dennoch eine Möglichkeit, sich nicht zu verpflichten zuerst zum Hausarzt zu gehen und der Preiserhöhung trotzdem zu trotzen:

1. Ich wähle einen Hausarzt nach Wahl. Der kommt nur ins Spiel, wenn ich ernsthaft krank/verletzt bin.
2. Ich trete dem HMO-Modell mit dem oben gewählten Arzt bei.
3. Bin ich nun krank, gehe ich zB zur Permanence am HB. Wo ich hingehe, spielt mir keine Rolle, denn ich zahle in der Regel den Betrag sowieso selbst (Franchise erreiche ich kaum).
4. Sollte ich vermuten, dass ich ernsthaft krank bin, oder bemerkt dies die Permanence, dann breche ich hier ab und gehe zum Hausarzt.

Im besten Fall gehe ich selten zum Arzt, kann frei wählen wohin ich gehe und zahle trotzdem pro Monat weniger Krankenkassenbeiträge. Verloren habe ich dabei nichts, weil ich die Franchise nie erreiche.
Im schlimmsten Fall bezahle ich die Franchise doppelt, in der Annahme, dass ich bereits bis fast zur vollen Franchise beim Arzt meiner Wahl (nicht Hausarzt) war und ab jetzt eine längere Erkrankung oder Verletzung habe.

Ich gehe aber davon aus, dass ich sehr selten zum Arzt gehe und deshalb meine monatlichen Kosten dank HMO-Modell stark reduzieren kann, ohne mich daran zu binden.

Ich habe nicht definitiv herausgefunden, was passiert, wenn ich im HMO-Modell nicht zum Hausarzt gehe, ausser dass die Kosten dann nicht gedeckt sind. Aber da ich bei einer schlimmeren Krankheit sowieso zum Hausarzt gehe (auch wenn der Befund zu Beginn von einem anderem Hausarzt diagnostiziert wurde), sehe ich keine Nachteile.

Distance:   41.39km (singletrail: about 6km)
Elevation:  1736m
Duration:   4h21
Avg. Speed: 9.4km/h
Details:    gpsies, trainingstagebuch
TCX file:   TCX file (including elevation alerts)

On the last day we took again some shorter trip, but boah. Just hard. If you are the person able to cycle 25% and more (!) of grade over a longer period, ie 3-5km on a stony path, this is your paradise! You’ll be rewarded with a nice flowing single trail slightly going down from the top.

If on the other hand you prefer to cycle most of the part, you should do the tour in the opposite direction.

8′000 Hm left to reach the 100′000 this year.