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