| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Fri 25 Jun 2004 Apple Store SFCategory : Commentary/appleStoreSF.txt I'm at the San Francisco Apple Store. I can get on to the Airport network. And all my mail's coming in. Cool. Wed 23 Jun 2004 From Chinatown to ChinatownCategory : Singapore/chinatown.txt I've been so busy working on the traveler's hostel project that I hadn't had time to think about going to WWDC. But the time is almost near and the bag's been packed. I've been doing a lot of reading about Singapore's Chinatown. It seems odd that Singapore, with its largely Chinese population, should have a Chinatown, or that it would amount to anything beyond token significance. But due to Stamford Raffles' delineating of the city along racial lines, when he established a free port here in 1819, that's the place where most of our forefathers landed, whether they be rich or poor, and that's where our story began. You can't tell by looking at the tall buildings in the Central Business District, along the fringes of Chinatown, that a lot of places where I walk over today used to be sea. Like where our office stands. Just like Boston's Back Bay, the water had been filled, but in our case with earth from the hills, since flattened, around Chinatown. There's a lot of history, and tragedy, and not a little heroism, to get from then to now. A lot of writing about Singapore is about its plasticity and lifeless-ness, e.g., about the fake Disneyland-ish facade in today's restored Chinatown. But that's what you get when you leave out the story about the people. If you care to hear the perspective of one for whom this is home, you may hear a different, more vibrant tune. After all this is what it means to travel, to learn how other people live and see their own world. That's the theme that I'm trying to build for the hostel website. I'm starting to understand things a lot better now, myself, about Singapore, and if anything, whether we succeed or fail with the hostel, this will be its own reward. So. I'm going to be moving mentally and physically, in the next few days, from one Chinatown to another, in San Francisco. And then back. The experience should be interesting. And also, finally, to watch Steve Jobs live. This I can't wait. Thu 10 Jun 2004 Do, Learn, AdaptCategory : Singapore/DoLearnAdapt.txt I've just finished reading a compilation of the speeches and writings of Mr Tan Kim Lian, CEO of NTUC Income, Singapore's largest provider of general and health insurance, and third largest provider of life insurance. Having started in 1970 with a share capital of only S$1 million, its asset base now total S$11 billion. It was a surprisingly enjoyable read because it's clear within the first few pages that, here, we have a brilliant mind - a rare entreprenurial spirit in a government-linked company. He was constantly exhorting people to "do, learn, adapt" and this reminded me of the diagram that Burke and Morrison drew in the "Business @ the Speed of Stupid" book that I reproduce below : I like this because it pulls the users and systems developers into a cycle that allows each to do, learn, and adapt from working with the other. It's the yin and the yang of systems development.
The TenderloinCategory : Commentary/tenderloin.txt The first time I visited San Francisco many years ago, I stayed in a hotel around the area known as The Tenderloin. Of course, I didn't know a thing about it then. I didn't even know it had a name. My friend who booked the hotel just looked up the cheapest place he could find. Well, we were young then and didn't have much money. (Not that I have very much more now.) But each evening, as I made my way back from the cable cars, I found myself instinctively edging uphill towards Post or Sutter, in a U-shaped loop, before hurtling back down Leavenworth towards Hotel Verona. I realise now I was tracing the outlines of the Tenderloin. But I found the Hotel Verona to be pretty decent, even charming, with its flags from many countries outside. There were many backpackers around. And the denizens of the area leave you pretty much alone, save for some loose change. So it was a great, colourful experience. But the next time I went, it was with my girlfriend (now my wife) and I felt myself more watchful, more alert to the possibilities. Even around Union Square, where we stayed. Where before I enjoyed the colour, now I could feel its edge. Same place, different feeling, different experience. So interesting. So the kid wants to come and I may have to disappoint him. Grosvenor Suites, looks like it could accomodate the family. But I'll never be able to concentrate on the proceedings at WWDC because I'd rather be with them. Maybe next time, when it's a true holiday, though my wife doesn't believe I'll ever take another break. Wonder how it will feel this time. Wed 09 Jun 2004 WWDC and Expedia.comCategory : Commentary/expedia.txt I'm going to WWDC after all. "Dear Expedia.com Customer, I'm still waiting for the air-tickets to be confirmed by my local travel agency. Expedia.com shows just why traditional intermediaries like travel agencies may go the way of the dinosaurs. I couldn't book the air tickets through Expedia, though, otherwise everything would have been all set by now. And at far lower prices. "Please allow at least 48 hours for us to send your reservation to the hotel since they would still have to manually input your information into their system." Well, that solves another riddle. I was wondering how the hotel's reservation system would interface with the portal's system - it's done manually. Isn't there a better way? I'll have a chance to find out, soon. Postfix Enabler Beta 4 ReleasedCategory : Technology/PostfixEnablerBeta4.txt There was a bug with Postfix Enabler Beta whereby the SpamAssassin configuration file (in /etc/mail/spamassassin) was not being read.This has since been fixed and WhiteList settings will now work properly. Also, I've modified the mail filter script so that Anomy will not try to defang a message that came from a site that has already been known to be WhiteList-ed. I think the SpamAssassin set-up will now work the way it's meant to be. All those using Postfix Enabler Beta should download and use this latest release. It took me some time to work these out and I've only just had the time to fix it. Sorry about that and hope people will enjoy the Postfix Enabler experience even more now. Wed 02 Jun 2004 BookHostel.comCategory : Commentary/bookhostel.txt Riddle solved. I was wondering how all the travellers' hostels we have in Singapore (including the very small ones) could have gotten into so many web sites, like Lonely Planet, RoughGuides, BootsnAll, etc. The answer is BookHostel.com. All these sites are using the same search engine. What a lovely business. I wish I had thought about it but we're probably too late. It's truly world-wide in scale. You can do business exclusively using the web. You don't have to send people all over the world to set up offices and drum up business. And you don't have to deal with IT departments. You deal with the owners of the hostels themselves who, of course, can make the decisions. It gives good value to these owners. And seems easy enough to set up. There's also a desktop application a hostel owner can use to tie in all the bookings they get through BookHostels.com, with all those they get through direct calls. It's called Backpack for Windows, and there's no Mac version. It's a pity because the Mac's a great platform to run a hostel on, as we hope to show. Also, it only handles the reservation aspect of running a hostel. I was trying to drive a spine through the hostel operations so that all the reservations and administration activities end up in the accounting system. The idea is that you should collect data as a by-product of all the operational activities, and all these data should show up automatically in the accounting system (i.e., that you shouldn't need to re-enter data again and again to get it from one system to another). You can try to do this manually for a small-scale 12-bed operation. But it would be difficult to work this way if you need to grow to an 80-bed operation or work across two or more sites. Fortunately, we've already had the basis of a hotel reservation system in an earlier work we did for managing course reservations, as well as for room reservations for a business centre. And we have Luca. The key to getting the required efficiency from streamlining all the operations is having the ability to integrate directly with an accounting system. And if the accounting system can guarantee that the data is accurate, you've got a good view into how the business is performing in financial terms. And all these need to be there just so the people actually running the place can concentrate on delivering service, security, cleanliness, and a rollicking good time - all the stuff that a hostel is actually graded on - without constantly attending to the computer system. At least that's the theory. But it's a statement of intent. The Journey is the RewardCategory : Commentary/theJourneyIsTheReward.txt One of the things that attracted me to Apple and the things it was known to stand for was its counter-culture leanings. The sparse, clean, Zen-inspired aesthetics, the marriage of form and function, art and technology - all these were things that appealed to me. As well as ideas like "The Journey is the Reward" - an oft-repeated phrase of Steve Jobs from his early years - which is also the name of a generally sympathetic book by Jeffrey S. Young, which I'm happy to see is still on my bookshelf. We're starting a journey of some sort here. Ever since I started this weblog, I have been looking for a project I can write about that integrates all the things I talk about here. Most of the time, we have to make peace with IT departments, and a lot of these ideas are subversive, diametrically opposed to the traditional IT department stance. So we're going to work on a project where there is no IT department involvement, where we're just going to focus on helping one business succeed through using technology in the way I've described here. This project is for the Travelers' Hostel that I talked about in a previous posting. I was re-reading a couple of articles I wrote about a year ago - "The Mac Business Toolbox" and "How Businesses Could Use Macs". I hope to show how all these ideas come together for a real-world project. We created a mock-up to show how information systems could be used strategically rather than as just a record keeping tool. These are just canned words, used by consultants, but there's a way to really show it. In an IT-department-mediated environment, we would be challenged on credentials, knowledge of buzzwords (like Flash, C++, development methodology, etc), and there's no way we could have gotten going. You can be sure that creating even a mock-up is hard work, and we worry about passing data between a bed reservation system and the accounting system, etc., and all those stuff from the technology angle. But, with the user, you ought to be talking about financial controls, and about getting a view into the workings of the business in terms of cash-flows, etc. through the accounting system - in other words, about the objectives of employing all these technologies, and what the user needs to know to run the business. Part of the reason for writing this weblog was that I felt that it's important to try to argue that there's another way of looking at technology - that the traditional IT/MIS-departments are getting it all wrong. It's a difficult point to argue because the issues are subtle. That's why the weblog format is perfect for it. You can use it to raise a point, make an observation, and demonstrate the alternatives - and then come back again, cycle after cycle, until you've worn down the opposition. Or worn yourself out! But I believe, as always, that the Journey is the Reward. The important thing is to try. So let's move on and give it a go. Sat 29 May 2004 The Axemaker's GiftCategory : Commentary/axemaker.txt I'm starting this book, "The Axemaker's Gift", subtitled "Technology's Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture" : "This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. This Faustian bargain was sealed more than a million years ago, but as you will see, the bargain didn't turn out to be quite what either party might have expected. "We call those with whom we made the bargain "axemakers". But they make more than axes. They make everything. They make our hopes and dreams. They make what we love and what we hate. They make all this, because they make the tools that change our surroundings. And when their innovations are taken up and used, the effect is to shape the world in which we live, the beliefs for which we fight and die, and the values we live by. And our very nature." And I just read this article at MacNewsWorld, yesterday - "Interface Burdens and Mac Usability" : "It's generally clear that the tools you use influence the way you think." "One immediate corollary to the hypothesis that intrusive interfaces affect how we understand the work to be done is that the design assumptions in a tool that dominates a profession should eventually be reflected in nearly all the work done by the people using it. We could speculate, for example, that long-term use of Windows among the architects, engineers and planners working on a building project should eventually produce buildings that feel like physical implementations of the Microsoft Windows interface." It's scary, the implications of all this Microsoft dominance. It's design @ the speed of stupid. Like Lewis Mumford or Marshall McLuhan would have said, "We shape our tools, and in turn, our tools shape us". (Plse see - "The Understanding Business"). Golf GTIs, Neuromancers, and Postfix Enabler BetasCategory : Commentary/neuromancer.txt Lots of downloads of Postfix Enabler Beta. I'd like to thank the people who left their real names and e-mail addresses (at least from what I can tell, they look real) because it feels good to know it's been used by all of you and that you trust us not to spam you, or otherwise abuse the information.
Just a story. I once sold my car (an old racing-green Golf GTI Mark I) to a guy who's a music producer, and I was still working at the Ministry of Defense's IT operations then. He came into our office, which was a Kafka-esque kind of place, and he was telling me how he can't understand how all of us could be staring into the computer terminals all day long. I mean, this is a guy who works with pretty Taiwanese artistes all night long, and so I can imagine how he's got better things to stare at. So it's amazing that you could gaze into this flat screen of the iBook, and feel yourself connected to dozens of people all over the world. Open the lid, wait for the Airport signal to latch on, and you're ready to jack yourself in. Neuromancers all of us. Thu 27 May 2004 Of Systems and PeopleCategory : Commentary/systemsandpeople.txt I'm finding this travellers' hostel thing that I talked about yesterday really intriguing. On the one hand, I've always had the belief that one shouldn't start a business unless one has a passion to really work at it. Like Bill Gates said, you shouldn't wake up in the morning and decide, hey, I'd like to be an entrerpreneur and, let's see, should I be a baker or a fisherman? Or as Steve Jobs say, go get a job as a busboy until you can figure out what you want to - because most people who start really successful companies want to do it so bad that the only way they can live is to start the business. So I have only admiration for the people who're running these travellers' hostels like The InnCrowd. They're top guys. But I also know that you cannot sustain a business like this, where you're doing everything, every single day. If you don't find a way to make it work like a machine, so it'll continue to provide a reasonably efficient service even when you're not there, you're going to find yourself chained to the store. What happens when the first kid comes along? And the guys I'm trying to help compete - they may not have the same passion for the field (they're not even backpackers) but what they have is a fantastic location, a great space, and a possible synergy with the other activities they've already gotten running in the same space - a pub, restaurants, movie screening room and a playhouse. So the interesting question is : how do you use technology to compete? It seems ludicrous to think that technology could have a place in a people business like this. At the scale of operations that The InnCrowd or Hostel One-66 are on, technology loses and the people win, hands down, no questions anout it. But even these have to grow, inevitably, or die. You can't keep still, I don't think. And running a 10-bed operation is wholly different from running a 60-bed facility (worse if you have to spread the operations across several sites). You can see this just by working through the reservation mechanism scenarios for a 60-bed facility. The permutations get to be literally mind-boggling. I guess in a 10-bed operation, you can just stand on a chair, call everybody around and shuffle the sleeping arrangements manually. Try doing that with 60 guys. Or check in and out these guys within 5 minutes. And if you're going to start hiring some help, how do you know if the takings are correct and if the figures tie up? Once the owners stop being able to do things themselves, things start to fall apart. So it's an interesting project. To concede the early ground and move the competition on to a larger scale where technology starts to make a difference. And how, precisely, could we use the technology? In our case, Mac-based technology? That's where it's fun to find out. Wed 26 May 2004 Tools to Think WithCategory : Commentary/toolstothinkwith.txt There's been an explosion of interest in setting up economical no-frills backpackers' hostels here in Singapore, inspired by successful mom-and-pop operations like The Inn Crowd, which recently won a Singapore tourism award, and Hostel One-66, which is set up deep inside our public housing heartland, so travellers can get an authentic taste of living like a Singaporean. The numbers show that the take-up rate, in terms of bed (or bunk) space, is very high, and this has prompted a number of real estate-owning companies (with lots of excess space due to the commercial property melt-down) to come into the fray. I've been working on one such project, and I was commenting last week just how much I enjoyed the "Business @ the Speed of Stupid" book, and here I've found a use for some of the ideas in the book. In projects like these, a lot of numbers are generated to support (or disprove) the viability of the business. And you also need to account for the considerable (and totally admirable) passion and grit that the mom-and-pop operations bring to the job. So how do you analyse how you're going to proceed? I've found Burke and Morrison's "Executive Thought Framework" to be a very useful conceptualisation tool - big words but a very simple picture :
Basically, you look at things at two levels - the "competitive domain" and the "organisational domain". The competitive domain consists of the customer and the competitors, and whether you have a vision whereby your presence will make a difference to the competitive landscape. The organisational domain looks inwards into what you have and what you bring to the mix - your people, the systems you use, and the processes that binds people and systems into one well-oiled, smoothly functioning business machine. I like the idea that you look at strategy as the balance between the competitive domain and the organisational domain. The greater the competitive pressures (e.g., how do you actually compete with people like The InnCrowd, who bring the Club Med experience to low-budget backpack living by sheer enthusiasm), the more you have to find answers in your own organisational domain (among the people, systems, and processes) to compensate for that. This is an interesting problem. When you have a framework to think over things like that, you can see that this is really going to be a difficult exercise in finding a workable balance - especially when you have such focused competitors on the one hand, and, while the numbers show that there is a budget for people and some technology (in terms of PCs and credit card machines) and also for the accommodation items, there is nothing planned for systems and processes. It brings me to the question of why information systems are so little valued. You wouldn't proceed to make changes to a building without engaging a professional architect, e.g., you wouldn't give the job to your friend's son who's studying architecture at the University of Singapore? But people would give the job of building a web site - the reservation system, the accounting and auditing system, etc - to just about anybody who knows a bit about PHP and web site authoring tools, no qualifications needed, just so they're cheap. Why is that? I think there's a simple answer for that. People engage architects and engineers not because they like it and want to spend money on it, but because that's a regulatory requirement. If they don't comply, the penalties are enormous. So, once you have these requirements and you know you have to spend this money, the key is to find the best people for the money you have to spend anyway. With IT, there is no such requirement. So people are not compelled to spend the money. I don't know whether it's good or bad to have a similar regulatory mechanism for designing, building and installing information systems (e.g., I'm sure that the use of Macs would be prohibited in the name of standardisation). But the fact remains that it isn't there. So, IT developers have to find better ways of illustrating the relevance of information systems - where they fit in and why they're important. The better the tools we have to draw the picture, the better it will be for us, the developers. And also for the people who're running the businesses because I'm convinced they will lose their shirts if they go into the fight without a good system, though they don't seem to know it yet. So the problem is, how do we communicate that? Read more ... |
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