Tuesday 30 November 2010

Winter winds

I didn't personally hold up the thermostat, but I was told after I walked to university (around 35 mins walk) with a red face, snot pouring out of my nose and tears running down my face from the cold wind, that the temperature was -11 degrees. Add the wind chill factor to this and it would explain why my face and legs were completely numb.

In celebration of this horrible weather, which my house mate Anton thinks is beautiful (easy to say when you stay indoors and drink tea all day: the snow is always whiter on the other side ;)), I will put this video. Enjoy. Also enjoy how YouTube (a Google company) and blogger (a Google site) are incompatible for formatting. I love it how the video goes outside this column.



P.S. The winter here is nothing like in the video. The whole damn place is covered in snow and ice making it impossible to ride my bike (without risking my life).

Sunday 28 November 2010

Sitting with a list

Writing things down seems to work
Being poor makes you spend a lot of time thinking about how you will cover your bills and put food in your belly.

Every day I make myself a list of things I need to get done during the day. The list features my daily work for Alfa.lt English and then there is always something to do for university one way or another.

Other activities that also make the list include the raft of other activities that I do to easy the financial strain in my life at the moment. I'm slowly finding work in Sweden that pays better than the work I'd been doing in Lithuania.

Going by the look of the list these days it seems like I'm living a triple life: full time university, a work life in Sweden and a work life in Lithuania. Sooner, rather than later I'd like to be able to end my work life in Lithuania because the returns I get for my work are rather poor when you take them and spend them in a country like Sweden.

One way that I manage to get through all the important tasks every day (and even complete a lot of the less important ones) is to make the list in the first place and write everything down and then categorize them in order of importance. Often when taking a break from doing an top-priority job there is time to do a less urgent, but also important tasks in between. Thanks to the technology that surrounds me in Sweden (washing machines, bicycles - things that I didn't have in Lithuania), I can do a lot of things simultaneously.

Parkinson's Law also somehow comes into play when I write tasks down. I even find time for doing things (like writing blogs or eating) in between.
Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
In the same way, if I write everything down and prioritize the tasks, they all seem to get done.

Wednesday 24 November 2010

You get what you pay for

I was recently commissioned to write a feature article by a news service in Sweden and I'm waiting on my editor to tell me whether he is happy with the work I've submitted.

In the meanwhile I've got a moment to reflect on why people actually pay others to produce their communications material. For the last three and a half years, I've made my way as a wordsmith (thats fancy talk for journalist) and people pay me because when they ask for something to be made, I make it the way they expect. If its not the way they like it, then it doesn't take long to fix it.

The new mode of the day is for everyone to try to do things themselves in the creative and media fields. It makes sense right? You have learned how to use a camera (press the red button) and you have a USB cable and you have a YouTube account. So why not? As the information age propaganda preaches: everyone is a director, journalist and film star.

The trouble is (and always has been) that you cannot just pick up tools and expect to be good at using them the first time. In most cases (and there are many examples) people get their iMovie or similar low-tech video editing software, chop together some terribly shot raw footage and then they think because it exists, therefore it is good.

Actually you can forgive this misconception, that the makers of these amateur films believe their product is good because over time, by watching television we have come to learn that anything we see on a glass screen is high quality.

It has always been this way because in the past the only people with access to the tools were those who devoted their entire careers to learning how to use it. So back to the present, the amateur director, journalist and film star watches their film and puts it online and suddenly they think its good because its on a screen.

The logic behind this is similar to someone who buys IKEA furniture thinking that they are a carpenter. Or perhaps someone whose finger can bend and therefore they can pull a trigger, that they could be a professional soldier (and not die). Or perhaps you can put your foot down and operate your hands at the same time - now you are a professional race car driver. No.

You get what you pay for. If you think you can do everything yourself, go for it, but do be prepared when you don't get the result you want. Also be prepared to spend more time on the project and waste more resources than if you just outsourced it.

Monday 22 November 2010

Sauna heaven

90 degrees. Dry air. Cedar benches. No clothes. Cold shower. Wonderful.

Monday 15 November 2010

Some instruction for the Swedish ladies out there

If you Swedish girls didn't know that you have the power to solve the immigrant integration problem in this country, well think again.

Have a quick look at this informative video from SVT, Sweden's public broadcaster, about how you can help your country get to know its immigrants better.

Sunday 14 November 2010

The beginning of the end

I just saw this story about how automated news stories are becoming closer to reality than fiction. In previous years people talked about computers writing the news, but there were always people laughing and feeling safe in their writers' jobs because "how could a computer replace a human"?

Now it is becoming a possibility, as you can read in this story. Of course these are just sports statistics from low level games, but it starts here and ends somewhere with the Financial Times generating its content by computer.

The Los Angeles Times is famous for outsourcing their reporting to India, a clear slap in the face of its readers. If their city isn't seen as important enough to have journalists on the streets, then why are they bothering to read it?

There is this video that you can watch, which was made in 2003 (I think) then updated in 2005 when their predictions actually came true.

Thursday 11 November 2010

Communication is everything

One thing with working with technical people, such as engineers or science people and programmers and so on, is that they have amazing ideas, but they can't communicate these ideas to others.

Communicating ideas to others is a crucial thing, because we are people and people communicate. In more relevant terms, great ideas will die unless you can get them across to others who can get on board and make them into reality. You might have a great idea, but if you can't turn it into reality and start producing it to the benefit of others, what was the point of having it at all?

Often techies or (as the Swedish business magnate Rune Andersson called them,) technical freaks, have great ideas on a technical level, but they often don't know how to turn them into commercially viable project. This is nothing against technical people in particular and I'm not suggesting that they are deficient in business specifically, but people can usually only be good at so many things. People that are good at both business and technical things are hated anyway: just look at Mark Zuckerberg. They even made a nasty movie about him.

Today at Innovation In Mind, a conference going on in Lund, we had a speech by William Cockayne from Stanford University. Cockayne walked to the stage to Eric Clapton's song Cocaine. It was cheesy.

What he said later in his speech was much more interesting though. He presented his communications tool, which he takes to companies around the world in order to help them get a bright spark idea and take it so people in the communication, market, finance and management departments so they can understand it and get behind it.

Instead of using paper, Post-its or a whiteboard, Cockayne suggested that you should get regular rubbish and items from around the office and home to create metaphorical models that everyone can see, touch and modify. Sticky tape, rubber bands, cups, cardboard, paper, scissors, straws, plastic and so it. The inventory doesn't need to be designed for the purpose: that would just limit creativity.

By making the creativity and communication process interactive, people can see it, change it, discuss it and really get an idea about how it works.

It gets people together and makes a memorable experience that can really trigger people. Its certainly worth trying.

Watch your back

I watched the film The Social Network last night. Its always good to read what you are signing. Always be aware of dilutable shares.

The film wasn't bad. Mark Zuckerberg looks like a bit of a prick in the film. I wonder how accurate it is.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Why do companies fail and succeed?

In class we discussed the reasons why companies fail and why they succeed. These could be seen as opposites, but in actual fact they are not, especially if your definition of success is not just surviving.

Lack of passion, inability to convey the value of your product to customers, lack of cash flow (in my mind a big one), bad company culture, poor environmental analysis, no finance and so on were pinpointed as reasons why companies fail.

The concrete reasons behind success are harder to pinpoint, but we can say that you do well on all of the above.

The thing is that all these things are connected: if you can't convey your value proposition to customers, you have no cash flow and you get no financing for growth. Also, who wants to work for a company that has no customers and doesn't grow? Its all related. Its the blanket (see video).

Monday 8 November 2010

Marabou price scam update

So I spent the last week monitoring the price of Marabou chocolates (its a very narrow sample I know) at my local Netto, but I noticed no change in price.

There are a few comments I can make here:
Perhaps my original assumption that they jack up the price on the weekend was wrong, but this weekend just gone by was a special one: Saturday was All Saints Day, so that might have had some effect on it, but I doubt it.

I will keep checking the price and let you know when I do notice something. Until then, as far as the reader is concerned, the case is closed.

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Marabou nightmares!

I was shocked the other day when I went to Netto that Marabou chocolates were selling for 22 kr per 200g. Given that at the expensive supermarkets in Sweden (like ICA and Coop) the same product can sell for 15 kr, I was shocked. After all, Netto is supposed to be the cheap one.

I went back to Netto the next day to get some milk and while waiting in line (which conveniently runs past the chocolate and sweets sections) I noticed that the prices of Marabou had gone down to 16 kr. It isn't unusual for supermarkets to change their prices, but usually they put a special sticker on it.

I had a think about it and realised that on Sunday (when people are lazing about at home watching movies) the chocolate cost 6 kr more. On Monday (when people are off to work and get their free fika elsewhere) the prices had gone down.

So the hypothesis: Does Netto jack up the prices every weekend? Do they do it by some other method?

I will be observing the prices every time I go there and as soon as I notice a pattern, I'll let you know. As far as I can tell at this point, it is smarter to buy your sweets on a Monday than a Sunday.

Watch this space.

P.S. Frozen chicken at ICA is also cheaper than Netto.