Programmers ,Please Come and Accept My Worship

November 2, 2011

Programmers in Singapore, please come.

Whatever your age, nationality, race, rank or religion,
Whatever your language(PHP or Python, Scala or Smalltalk, Ada or Assembly),
Please come, I want to worship you.

I am not being sarcastic. Maybe a bit desperate ;-)
There is no hidden agenda. The agenda is very open: I want you to work for me free for many months. ( As a bonus advantage, I may even allow you to worship me about once a week.)

There are many reasons you can be happy about my open agenda. Before I go into that, let me tell you why I am so happy to worship you.

Let's start with just 2 main reasons:

1. You are a creator.


2. You are a potentially big earner.

You Are a Creator

You can make a pile of plastic, rubber, wires and metal sheets walk, sweep, climb stairs, arrange dishes, play with kids, and so on. Robots.

You can make any fairy tale jump off the pages and sing, dance, move, quarrel, fight and entertain our kids. Games and animations.

You can sponge off and siphon off an experienced but very expensive physician's hard-won knowledge and wisdom, and make it come alive in our laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones. Expert systems for diagnostic purposes.

You can help people choose tailor-made financial products, insurance policies, travel packages, rooms and houses, even the right KG's, schools or colleges to attend.

You sit on the same floor as Picasso, Van Goh, Lennon but you sit a bit higher. Their works do not come alive for many types of people. But your works --- Google search, Facebook, Halo, Warcraft etc --- come to live for many kinds of people.

Books need to be read. Book-readers(doctors, lawyers, stock traders, teachers etc) need to be consulted. But your works, your programs, your softwares, your apps are in our fingers literally --- there to help us, guide us, comfort us 24/7 under any weather in any place.

Can you imagine life without an ATM, Google search engine, Yahoo/Google mail, Facebook friends, Monster job postings, craiglist, Amazon books, youtube clips? No ipod, iPhone? No Excel, no MS Office, no PowerPoint?

Can you run any business without Quicken, Access, MySQL, Oracle or some other database?

There are still many types and fields of knowledge that haven't been put into program, put into software. You decipher them, specify them and code them into something like Excel or Facebook or YouTube and the world will become a better place for you, for your spouse, for your family and friends and for us too.

Oh, come, accept my Worship, you Creators.

There are still many stories that haven't been told in software.
There are still many games that haven't been played in software.
There are still many services that haven't been rendered in software.

Tell them.
Play them.
Render them.

O you Creators, come, accept my Worship.

You can change the world, you can change its course of history. Even if you are not that ambitious, you can still make the world a better, safer, more beautiful, more abundant, more convenient, more hassle-free, more pleasant-to-live, more efficient place.

You Are a Potentially Big Earner.

I won't go into details here either as I haven't research this at all.
So, just help me answer some of these questions:

How much did Alibaba Employer No. 3 earn?
How much did Yahoo Employer No. 4 earn?
How much did Google Employer No. 5 earn?
How much did Microsoft Employer No. 6 earn?
How much did Facebook Employer No. 7 earn?
How much did Creative Technology Employer No. 8 earn? (When I was in NUS, one such guy came to lecture us. He told us that at one time, more than 2000 people reported to him. His MBA came years after his job. I suspect that the NUS MBA school won't even consider his application before he worked for Creative.)

You may not have been one of them. But you still have such chances almost every week in your software industry.

Why not come and accept our worship?

george and family

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Singapore 111ZZXX

Seasons of Life, on February 17, 2011

I travel a lot. On foot and by trains mostly.

Travelling on foot has a purpose, so no problem here.

Traveling by train has no purpose, no meaning, and therefore hard to understand.

Am I taking a train ride to Mandalay? A town I love so much, a town good for fun and music and nothing else for me? Or am I going to Yangon? A new place, a new town that invokes the fear of unknown as well as promises great expectations, challenges, exploits and opportunities?

I read a lot too. For no particular reasons.

Take a lot of notes, dump a lot of notes.

Learn a lot, see a lot, understand a lot. But write very little, even for my diary, let alone this blog or any other place.

For no particular reasons.

Summer vacation. Free, loaf, drift, read for fun, play for fun. Travel for curiosity, read for pure curiosity.

How long can the summer last? How many years have gone in this summer? How many more days will this last?

In my youth, the seasons go like, in Myanmar, Summer(Hot season), Rainy season, Winter(Cold season).

Summer is for loafing.

Rainy season means new/upper/higher class, new lessons, new teachers, new learnings, new understandings, and maybe new friends too.

Winter means long runs, long games, hard studies, exams and tests, prizes and awards, and achievements and recognition.

I didn't have any problem with any season. Neither do I now.

Sweet summer! Then, what?

In Life(or to be more accurate in moods), summer can be followed by winter or rains, or even a new summer!

My Summer is sweet. But it just feels too long. Can't be sustained. When will it be over?

I still want to ...
I still intend to ...
I still believe I can conquer the world somehow.

Good luck.

Product Strategy : What is Strategy? -- 2

I asked a very young reader to give me a very brief summary of a previous post What is strategy? He replied: "Everything is leverage."

I realized at once that I had failed to write clearly. Still, I joked: "Oh, yes, making the competition believe that everything is leverage is a good leverage too ... because, as Sun Tzu says, when you defend everywhere, you're not defending anywhere."

Yesterday, we asked: "Are beans in bamboo containers strategic for your army? " and answered "Yes" to that question.

But not all bags of beans can be strategic. They are when they meet the following conditions:

1. The competition sort of relied on their cavalry. What if they came in boats, on elephants, or merely on foot?
2. Their horses were poorly fed. What if the other side's commander got wind of you plan and prepared properly for that?
3. You can take advantage of the ensuing chaos in their cavalry. What if you were far too outnumbered?
4. The other side's commander would not adapt quickly. What if they dismounted and shot with their arrows, as the Mongols would/did?
5. Even the weather would be on your side: If it rained too heavy,  if the wind blew too hard, their horses would not be able to catch the enticing smell of your steaming beans on the grounds.
6. The other side's horses would not come with mouth guards.
7. The other side did not use some medicine to de-sensitize their horses' sense of smell.
8. Maybe many, many more factors.

These are trash, hoarding, OCD(Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), not strategic assets.

When Do Trash Become Strategic Assets?

You need the big picture, the mosaic, the collage where each trash becomes a component, an element, a cog the wheel, a brick in the cathedral, and so on.

How Do You Get the Big Picture, the Mosaic, the Collage?

Two methods as far as I know:

1. Your parents have coup d'oei in their DNA
2. You hire McKinsey, Bain, Booz, Accenture, HopeHero etc.

Rip-off and Rebuild Software Development

On bitbucket, google code repository, GitHub, I find a lot of django/GoogleAppEngine-Python codes for almost anything: social network, forum, message board, LMS(learning mgmt system), CMS(content mgmt system), wiki, quizz, collaborative writing, shared whiteboard, mobile app etc.

Shouldn't we extract some value from them?

As we all know, Python is not Perl/PHP or even Java. It's a very good-natured langauge.

Login, logout from App1, quiz from App2, friendship invite from App3 etc are there for us to mix and match as our kids play with Lego kits.

My trainees have lots of experience for this kind of not-cut-and-paste but rip-off-and-rebuild development.

If some of us can find a business model to go with that Lego-style app, we may make some money for us.

Product Development: Processes and Steps

According to the literature, Product Development consists of the following processes and step/stages:

1. Identify market opportunities, market segmentations, positioning, and marketing mix(4P's, 6P's etc).
2. Identify customer needs.
3. Generate product ideas, concepts, visuals and design of User Experience.
4. Product Portfolio, product lines, product architecture, business cases and stage-gates
5. Product life cycle management: Reinforcement, Renewal, Resurrection, Retirement
6. MVP(minimal viable product) and prototyping
7. Market testing
8. Project management and WBD, Gantt chart, PERT chart etc
9. Manufacturing
10. Brand equity management, sales training, marketing in general
11. Go-to-market efforst, distribution, logistics etc.

Our approach is more focused, more adaptive and more suitable for software businesses.

  Trends ---> UX ---> MVP prototyping ---> Market testing
  Needs  ---> UX  ---> MVP prototyping ---> Market testing

With the following iterative/feedback loops running throughout:

     Market testing---> Trends
      Market testing---> Needs
      Market testing---> UX
      Market testing---> MVP prototyping

Product Strategy : What is Strategy?

I've been burned so many times. So I learned.

I learn that you must obviously sound and look humble in online communication, discussion etc. So, here I am ---- humble both by nature and by discipline.

What is strategy?
I don't know clearly.

I don't even have a clear answer for: What is strategic?

I only have stories, anecdotes, case studies, fragmented impressionistic data. Maybe too simplistic for Harvard/Standford Profs and for you too.

1. Are beans in bamboo containers strategic for your army?
2. Are trumpets strategic for your army?
3. Are drums strategic for your army?
4. Are silk vests strategic for your army?
5. Is medicine for cracked winter feet strategic for your army?

Yes, according to military histories of the Chinese and the Mongols and  Punic Wars .

1. Are dental chairs strategic for your army?
2. Is winning hearts and minds strategic for your army?

Yes, according to military histories of the British.

What About Software Business?

1. Is "pizzazz" and "sizzle" strategic for your websites?
2. Is "design" strategic for your websites?

Yes to Question 1,according to Don’t Make Me Think, if your site is entertainment(movies, musics, games), pure branding(cereal), or -- I forgot this last one ;-)

Yes to Question 2, according to this Fast Company article

"A reliance on design-driven innovation poses a challenge for the companies that live by it: You can’t easily patent how something looks, or the feel of a user interface. Features, subtleties, and finishes spawn imitators with unprecedented speed. That means that design-led companies must innovate constantly to maintain their edge. And that’s exactly what makes the stories in this issue so interesting."

So What Is Strategic?

They say that leverage can be found in "strange places". What kind of "strange"? What kind or kinds of places? Why strange places?

Leverage, a beautiful word, indeed. Especially in deeds.

Product Development : Designer Speak, Definitely Absolutely Seriously

 

I have been learning to think, work and communicate like a product guy/gal.
 

I read this article in the print version "Dave Morin Explains It All," Fortune September 24, 2012. Online version is at "Dave Morin Explains It All"
 

Now, here are some quotes, only one of which was actually uttered by the great Dave Morin. (First, he worked in Apple's marketing, then he worked at Facebook where he invented Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform, and now he's running Path), and the rest are made up by me.

Can you tell the authentic from the fake, the profound from the pseudo-profound?

1. "With life, mobile has become the platform" 
2. "With platform, mobile has become life"
3. "With mobile, life has become the platform"
4. "With life, the platform has become mobile"
5. "With mobile, platform has become the life"
6. "With the platform, life has become mobile"

The answer can be found in the article: Dave Morin Explains It All

This is how we develop tastes, right? Good luck.

 

Comming Posts

I'm going to compare HungryGoWhere to Yelp/Singapore. This is a sort of preview/teaser.