Laurent Maumet

My Music experience ...

2009-05-01T06:53:00Z

Sonata Music Originally uploaded by jrossol

A few words about my music experience.

Previsously on this blog, I've spoken about music 2.0 by Gerd Leonhard, and about his idea about the fact that in the future, access to music will be free, but we will pay for filter to access it.

I think he's right. The evolution we've seen in musci business since 25 years is amazing.

Here's my own experience.

1 - The 80's.

I remember in the 80's when only a few computers were able to produce (bad) sounds that we called music. At this point of time, I did not listen any music on PC, but all my music (I was so young...) was on vinyl disks or tapes. Buy a new disk or tape was a big deal : need to decide, go to the shop. We used to buy small disks with 2 songs on it.

2 - The 90's Then came the CDs, a first revolution :

* quality was very good (we called it "perfect") * it became very easy to go from a song to another, no "rewind" needed ! * it was supposed to be "indestructible", especially compare to vinyls or tapes. * it was possible t copy them with no loss, even if at the beginning it was very expensive to buy the blank disks.

Today I still have around 300 CDs, that I've bought in the last 20 years.

3 -And then internet...

When peer-to-peer networks became famous (kazaa, napster), I started to used them in the early 2000, to download a lot of music, especially some songs I'd never buy because music was too expensive, but were very famous. It was amazing to see the speed for a download (even using the poor phone connection).

I started to buy music online in 2005. Why buy when it's possible to just download it ? Main reasons for me were :

* I do not like to stole (maybe old fashion.. but true) * the music I can find on peer to peer networks is not always high qualitiy, and the mp3 tags are not always up to date. This is very important for me to be able to manage the music * the price. At this point of time, in Europe, the price of a CD was about 20 Euros (30 usd), and online, the price was 9.9 Euros( 15USD) * you get the music immediately : you hear something, you like it, you can buy it immediatly (I know you can also stole it, but i prefer to buy !)

The main problem I've with this downloaded music is the protection embebded. I use wma files with DRM. I encounter time to time issues (for which I need to call the vendor). Every time my PC crash ... it's a new story to find again the licenses

Until now, I've bought around 500 songs (ie around 40 albums)

In the mean time, I still continue to buy CDs, when I found cheap ones (in fact I buy them if the price is lower than buying online). When I buy a cd, the first thing I do is to put it in the PC to extract the mucic in mp3 format to have it available on all my devices.

Today , the situation is quite nice :

all my music is on 1 PCs in a nice library, well organized.
from this PC I can update all my mp3 devices
I keep the CD, but seldom access them (only to play them on my old CD machine).

Finally, I started to used the new online music systems : deezer, and now spotify. I really love spotifiy. Now I use it to listen music at home. I like to be able to find a lot of different music, and to have it available for free, immediately, even if it s only streaming.

So, what is next ?

For me, system like spotify is perfect, but I need few enhancements to only use it :

* to be able to "download" the music I like on some mp3 devices to be able to listen to them not connected to the internet. * to have a better management of my library (not just simple playlist). * to imporve the social part of it : having my friend using it and sharing new songs / artists we discover

To be followed....

Personnal Gmail or professional outlook :guess which one is my favorite ?

2009-05-06T23:50:00Z

lettre de Gibraltar 1861
Originally uploaded by histoirepostale

As many people, to work day to day, I use outlook which is a corporate tool, and gmail for my private emails, because it's free and convenient.
Of course, outlook is a good tool, this is why we use it.
What I like much in outlook is :

it's working quite fine : no major issues, * performances are good, management of poor connections is fine * the agenda management is great and very useful in compagny context, * the synchronization with my blackberry is efficient * it's fully integrated with windows, no need to login again * Outlook is fully integrated with other Microsoft tools (office, MOCS, portal), and it's convenient

But... When I compare it to gmail I use for personal purpose... I'm disappointed, and I m sure some functionality are missing to make my life better, and make my job more efficient.

In gmail, mails are organized by conversations, and not just listed like in outlook.
This is really a great feature to make emails easily accessible.
I've tried to reproduce it in outlook, but with no success. The tool is not design for it, so it does not really work.
In gmail, mails can be tagged. this is also great and efficient for me (instead of putting emails in different folders, you can access by tag or by the full list of emails) * Search is of course very good (engine by Google), so you can very easily retrieve emails base on sender name or keywords, which is really more painful in outlook * I can access to my mailbox from every PCs in the world, with no limitation, with the same level of functionality. This is a key point for me. Daily I use 3 different pcs + my blackberry. I can access my mailbox easily on all these pcs. * No backup issue. With outlook, part of my emails are on the exchange server and so are backuped by compagny servers, put a huge amount is store in separate pst files...
That are stored on my laptop...
I ve to do manual backup of it, and I do not like * all my emails are always accessible (no special pst folder, no size limit the 2gb limit for outlook * in gmail, I ve access to all my friends via IM and video chat (which can be done by additional product by Microsoft) * Gmail is integrated with google reader : To follow my rss feeds, I use googlereader. When I want to send an article by email from Google reader... It uses my gmail account * Gmail propose often new features, I can implement if I want to (via googlelabs)
So why do we continue to use outlook, what could trigger a change to gmail ?

Outlook / exchange is a company level decision, all the considerations in this post are only for the client point of view, so to assess to gap before a switch, it would be necessary to consider full picture, but the major issue I see today is : to use gmail, you need to trust Google about data confidentiality and safety.

In business the confidentiality of information that go throw emails is essential( I do not care about it for my personal stuff).
Today we are even using additional tools to encrypt confidential email we exchange.
Going to Google or other SAAS solution would be a huge concern for this.
I do not see today how to solve it and secure people about it.

I'm sure it will come, but I do not see when.

The situation is the same with people that were afraid to put their money to the bank and prefer to keep it at home in a small box...
The arguments were the same... "if I give it to the bank I do not know where it is, what will they do with this ..."
But finally... now everybody use banks, because it's easier, safer, so ... should be the same for emails...soon

Why I think twitter will not kill RSS'

2009-05-15T02:47:00Z

Late for Work / Tarde pa'l trabajo
Originally uploaded by Eneas

Previously, Steve Gillmor, a famous technology journalist signed a blog post in TechCrunchIT with the title "Rest in peace RSS".

In this post, Steve explains why, now the time is for realtime Web and especially twitter and that the old static RSS is dead.
I've been using RSS for a long time to follow websites and blogs, and twitter for 5 months now.

My point is that twitter and rss are 2 complementary tools.

For me, the usages are different, both have good points, so I use and I'll continue to use both.

For twitter I'm user with around 220 followers, 190 followings.

I use it day to day but still don't really go in many discussions.

For RSS, I follow 133 (I've just checked this morning) RSS feeds in google reader.

They are properly organized by categories.
Part of these RSS feeds are ... twitter search (for my company for example) or to follow key people (like @lancearmstrong). This is a very rich and useful source of information.

What I like (love) in twitter is :

it's fast, immediate : when something happen, I can see, feel it. Today, the realtime Web" become more and more important. Tools like twitter, friendfeed really bring something totally new. I love it.
it's easy to find new people that are interesting for me : following the @ discussions, or using tools that suggest me people to follow, I can easily find new very interesting people
it's simple : no complicated features (except all these @replies parameters...), the usage is immediate as soon as you go on www.twitter.com
search is very powerfull : because people post their blog entries on google, because people discuss on google, the realtime search is very powerful and always bring me very good results and inputs. This is today my main reason to use twitter.

What I like (love) in RSS is :

it's reliable : no issue, it works
it's quiet. When you're in Google, there's a lot of noise (a lot of discussions that are not interesting for me). In my rss reader, I follow my favorite websites and just them. In a quick check (few minutes),I check information about my company, about me, about some hot topic. I cannot do that in twitter
I can organize information by categories. In twitter i cannot do that.
I can know what I've read / not read. For some blogs, I want to have a look (at least on the title) on every post, in Google reader, it's very easy
the information is immediately accessible. In twitter, I see a link, with a shorten url on which I've to click to see more. With RSS in Google reader, I see the title of the article in big, and immediately after, the post itself. It's very powerful to go throw a huge number of posts.
a lot of tools exist to manage RSS feeds. I use Google reader online, especially because i use several PCs, so it's important for me to be able to access MY feeds every time, everywhere, but other nice clients exist.
RSS can bring to me information from many sources : blogs, twitter, social networks like linkedin, ... in a single, coherent place.

Based on all these good points (I did not list the bad ones...), I'll continue to use both tools.

Twitter is just as it beginning, under construction, new services, features will come that will make it even better. I'm convinced real-time WEB is the future.

RSS is a base simple efficient format,(Really Simple Syndication) that answer to a need (the syndication) that we will still continue to have in future ... so it will stay, and even become more and more popular.

a very good presentation'

2009-05-15T03:17:00Z

If you ask yourself what 2.0 can bring to your company, and especially to knowledge management, I recommend you this very good presentation. It's available on slideshare, done by people from T-System. I found it very interesting and very helpful. Enjoy !

** The Wikipedia Myth - Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management ** from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions

** Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - People at the Center ** from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions

** Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - Getting started ** from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions

myth or reality ?'

2009-05-22T01:45:00Z

hey son, get out of the clouds Originally uploaded by notsogoodphotography

Yesterday (May 29th 2009) I did attend SOLARCON in Singapore.

One afternoon of overlook of Solar energy business.

Solar is about producing electricity using PhotoVoltaic (PV) technology. After this afternoon, here are my ideas, my questions about this market:

* the market is very promising, a lot of nice charts that show a wonderful market in ... 2100 * The ecosystem is not ready. For example, for PV panels are done using silicon, historically, silicon market is shared by 8 big players. Today, 120 companies are ramping up in china. The forecast is to keep 20-30 players. The prices went from 140$ / kg to 60 $/kg. No real idea of forecast. * The grid parity (solar electricity at competitive price) should be reached in 2012 in area with high electricity coast / lot of sun like Italy and California. * Current crisis has an impact on development : big investments are needed, and banks to not loan money these days. * The technology is improving a lot, often, so investment done today may be obsolete soon * Biggest countries (US, India, China) recently announced big plans to increase solar part in electricity production. Because they think green...and also because it's a good way to develop economy during the crisis. To meet these targets of solar electricity production for 2030, the production of solar panel have to be 9 times bigger than what it is this year... for the next 20 years.. (sounds crazy, no ?) * To sustain ecosystem, all players ask the governments to give grants and to fix the electricity rates.

* Smartgrid is mandatory for efficient solar electricity production.

My feeling after these presentations is good, but a lot of very big investments have to be done, it will take time. Politics help will be needed to sustain these very long term investments.

[Update 2012 : it seems twitter do not keep old tweets, the link below does not work anymore today]

During the presentations, I've updated my twitter using the #solarcon tag (surprisingly, nobody else did this), so you can find my notes there.

Web 3.0 ?

2009-05-27T00:55:00Z

Something is hapenning on the web. social networks, and now realtime web (twitter, ...)

This (short) presentation from ReadWriteWeb give a good overview about these trends...

Web 3.0: How’s That Panning Out Then…

View more OpenOffice presentations from Richard Macmanus.

Look, the earth is still alive !

2009-06-12T03:56:00Z

The Breathing Earth Simulation is a very nice real-time simulation that display on a map the CO2 emissions, birth and death rates, by country.

You can see the earth breathing.

The counter in the bottom right corner is impressive : it shows the cumulative number of death and born people sicnce you open the page.

When you go to every country, you can have the detail statisitcs for this country.

The source data seems to be reliable : CIA World Factbook and United Nations Statistics Division.

A very nice way to present and help people to "feel" key numbers.

How to implement what your customers need ?

2009-07-30T15:22:00Z

I'm currently working on improving my organisation in order to define and implement solutions that are the good ones for my users .
I love this SlideShare Presentation:

User-centered design: A road map to usability

View more documents from Will Sansbury.

How to implement what your customers need ? (2)

2009-07-30T16:08:00Z

I continue to search way to imrpove customer relationship to define good systems.

Inspiring video : maybe my customers even do not know what I want to sell them !

In this video, done by a google guy, we see that while google is fighting hard to launch his Chrome browser... "normal" street people do not know what is a browser !

Insteristing.. isn't it ?

I've found this video throw Seth Godin blog.

Summer in France ... the shutdown !

2009-08-25T15:29:00Z

After 2 or 3 weeks of shutdown, France is back to work.
For french people, this summer shutdown is "normal".
Everybody take between 2 and 4 weeks of Holiday in summer, and everybody is back to work beginning of September.

When I say everybody, it's everybody, even our president.

After my 2 years spent in Asia, I see pro and cons to this summer break (this break is absolutely not done in Asia).

Of course, the big issue is that everything is delayed.
For example, to plan an IT project, if July/August is in the timeline, it's mandatory to add 1 month (it's sure that you'll go 2 time slower compare to other months).

But in term of global efficiency, maybe it's not so bad :

in september, everybody come fresh and in good shape with a lot of energy * for the balance between family and work, it allows everybody to be sure to be able to spend at least 1 week in familySo finally, I'm not sure if France would be more efficient without this shutdown, but I'm convinced that for people it's more healthy to have it !

I do not know how it's in US.

BNF (French National Library) is ready to surrender to Google !

2009-08-31T15:31:00Z

The BNF is the French National Library.

For years, and especially when Jean-Noël Jeanneney was in charge of the BNF (2002-2007), BNF has refused to discussed with google to scan it's books.

Jeanneney wrote a book about it : "Google and the myth of Universal knowledge : a view from Europe".
The argument is that google is a US private company so :

they will make money with it, wich is against french idea of universal access to books * they will not scan everything, but they will make choices, and the criteria will be an US angle
At one point of time French people wanted to launch an initiative "against" Google initiative to scan books Gallica.

Today we learn that some discussions are ongoing between Google and the BNF.

The reasons are easy : governments do not give money to do Gallica, and google proposes to do it for free.

This is a very important news, it should make a lot of noise ...

Some very cool iphone Applications

2009-09-24T19:53:00Z

I'm very impressed by the very cool applications that exist for iphone.

To find new applications, I use appsfire , a very cool service, where you can browse throw most installed apps, or throw VIP prefered applications.

If you have an iphone, you must try it !

Using appsfire, I've found for example :

remote :

This application is simply magic. The installation and setup is very simple :

1. you install it on the iphone 2. you launch itunes on your pc (or mac), and enter the code provided on the iphone in itunes

And then ... the iphone become a remote that control itunes on the PC. It's simply magic !

shazam :

You hear a music that you like, you just click on shazam, and click "tag". The iphone "listen" to the music, and the give you the title and artist. Very useful to note and archive music that you like.

Don't talk, just relax, and watch ...

2009-09-26T15:52:00Z

I love this video of kuroshio sea aquarium (2nd largest aquarium of the world). Nothing to say, just watch it in HD and fullscreen, the music is OK, so switch-on the sound... and relax...

Google proposes OCR feature. I love it

2009-10-02T06:10:00Z

The letter S for TWTME Scavanger hunt
Originally uploaded by cursedthing

Google now proposes an experimental service to convert text scanned in image format (JPG, PNG or GIF format).

OCR is a very useful functionality on a day to day basis (especially at work) because even if everything is digitalized, we still have printed version, example to contract), and when we need to do a new document, based on a printed one, OCR is needed.

I like this feature which is a good example of google added value.

They have google docs, they develop OCR for google books ( and also for search engine that convert pdf in html), and they just propose it as a simple service for us.

To try it, it's here http://googlecodesamples.com/docs/php/ocr.php

What is the link between the NASA and the Commandant Cousteau

2009-10-10T08:38:00Z

Purple Explosion
Originally uploaded by ecstaticist

Yesterday, I've heard about this new experiencing from the NASA on the moon.

' A NASA spacecraft crashed into the Moon on Friday morning, on purpose, in a bid to discover ice hidden below the lunar surface. '

I found this news quite strange : in order to find water, which is necessary for life... NASA crash a rocket. The symbol is not good !

I reminds me that same technical was used 50 years earlier on earth to discover world we do not know : the sea.

The french Commandant Cousteau used to put dynamite in the Mediterranean sea in order to count the dead fishes.
It was when it was difficult to go under the sea (after he invented the open-circuit scuba that is still used today).
At this point of time, using dynamite in the sea seems to be a good idea even for Cousteau that was a great defender of Nature (he fights a lot against dynamite fishing after).

I'm sure it's the same for the moon, and in 50 years our children will think "But why did they send a rocket to find water ?"

it rocks !'

2009-10-11T11:00:00Z

Happy face.
Originally uploaded by fmgbain

Finally, they did it.

I was waiting for it since months, when it had been annouced with previous version of Picasa : google implemented name tag for faces in Picasa.

Why is it so important for me ? Because now as google says,

" I can organize your photos based on what matters most: the people in them "

Basically, picasa (desktop) scan your photo and find faces.
then you can tag them (like on facebook for example).

The algorithm seems to be efficient (of course, between kids... they're some mistakes) and the functions to tag well implemented (photo / photo, bulk update, suggestions, ...).

I'm using it since yesterday to tag my thousands of photos. I'm very happy with it.

You should try it !

With realtime web, geography become more important

2009-10-18T14:00:00Z

Resistant
Originally uploaded by 96dpi

After 2 years sent in Singapore, I'm now based in France.
I go to Singapore time to time for business.

Using twitter everyday, I realised that real time web is very linked to where you're, because of time zones.

When we use realtime web tools (twitter, search in twitter), the interaction is done with people online.

If you're online when other people are sleeping... the efficiency is not so high.

Being in Singapore, it was more difficult for me to interact with people in France, especally in evening time (evening in France is night in Singapore).

Internet is a very good tool to simplify interaction even if people are far away, for this, websites, emails are very efficient tools to share information, and exchange information, on asynchroneous mode.

With realtimeweb, it will change, it's more like having a log of interactions, but in realtime, so people need to use it at the same time to interact.

Everybody says, and we see it, that new web is about real-time, so it will be interisting to see how it will be auto organised, based on the location of people.

Will I get a Kindle for Christmas ?

2009-10-27T09:37:00Z

This morning, I connected to my favorite amazon.fr (yes, I'm in France) to order a book.

And... fantastic news... on the home page, I can read "The new kindle is now available for ordering".

This is a news I'm waiting for months.

The things I'm waiting from a kindle are :

* be able to buy a new book and have it immediatly (yes, I'm quite impatient sometimes...)

* have just 1 thing to bring in which I've all my books. I often read few books at the same time...

* have my favorite newspaper directly at home. I love reading newspaper, but it's sometimes boring to go and buy them (especially in winter, cold weather...)

So this news made me very happy ! I plan to buy a kindle since the first day. Why didn't I do it yet ?

First because it was not available where I live (before in Singapore, now in France). I know I can still order it from US or buy on eBay, but no. I do not like to buy items that are not available where I'm because I know it will be painfull to use (what happen if it fails ? ....)

Second, because of the price. I think my limit is 220 USD which is quite the price for US people now.

So, will I get a kindle for Christmas ? This is not sure...

* The price is still a little bit to high (when I place the order... the price goes to 334 USD to be compared to my 220 USD limit ...+50% ) * I need to check which books are really available (this a quite important point !). Should be ok, books are read are mainly in english and about tech topics. * I also need to know which french newspapers are availabble (I know "le monde" is) * Finally, I'm not sure about the wireless connection. Is it 3G ? Wifi ? Will it work in France ? If I go in other countries (Italy, Singapore, ...) will it work ?

One strange thing is that amazon do not really communicate or tease about it.

So, let's think about it... and maybe wait for an android eBook ?

[Update] : I've found avery good blog about kindle : simply "Blog Kindle" In this article International Release for Kindle 2 ! I've learnt that :

* the kindle available is the "kindle 2" while last version is Kindle DX... * the kindle is available for France Italy * the kindle is not available for Singapore (strange)

Will I buy it for Christmas... I still do not know !

Google Wave... My first (GOOD) impressions

2009-10-28T18:26:00Z

Originally uploaded by Ric e Ette

Here it's, finally I've got an invitation to use Google Wave, the new Google communication tool.
Since the announcement last may, I'm like everybody, waiting for it.

Finally, it has been released on 1st of October, for few lucky people that then had invitations to send to their friends, etc...

First reactions were not enthusiastic, especially by famous blogger Robert Scoble.
Scoble explains here and here that Google wave is over hype and very unproductive because of all the noise it generates.

Scoble explains that wave is as nonproductive as email, and even worse

Google Wave adds many of these unproductive problems and then lays another few unproductive things on top...

It is noisy, but the noise often happens way down in a wave deep in your inbox...

This is far far worse than email. (New email always shows up at the top of my inbox, where Google Wave can bring me new stuff deep down at the bottom of my inbox)...

And, worse, when I look at my Google Wave page I see dozens of people all typing to me in real time. I don’t know where to look and keeping up with this real time noise is less like email, which is like tennis (hit one ball at a time) and more like dodging a machine gun of tennis balls. Much more mentally challenging.

So finaly, I could try iy !
Is it as bad as Scoble says lt ?

Honestly NO, and even I'd say, Google wave is GREAT, and very promising.

Here're the main reasons :

It's nice, and easy to use
The design is nice, I like to use it.
Without any explanation, I was able to start a wave and discuss with friends
It's real-time You see what the other person is writing without waiting for this "enter" key. This is very nice and improve the interaction. I often work with other people located on the other side of the planet. Chat is a very good tool to discuss, and build solutions, we use it everyday.
The real-time aspect of wave will be a real added value.
You can structure the discussion In "normal" chat tool, what you write come in a list, one after the other.
In wave, you can add your comment at the good place. Then, the discussion is structured, with main stream and sub discussion. Quite powerful
Traceability of discussionsAll the discussions are kept as waves that you can archive.
Wave is an open platformThe "extension" notion seems to be very powerful, and open for developpers, this will bring new nice features very soon.
As I see it, people will build collaborative solutions based on wave platform. Such a solution, used in the context of a small team will be very powerful.

very interesting numbers and facts about our (digital)

2009-11-06T16:19:00Z

This morning... a rainbow made my day !

2009-11-06T16:32:00Z

via flickr.com

Htis morning, bad weather here, cloudy and rainy.
Because it's automn, sun comes quite late (after 8am).
So I was driving in bad mood, because of the weather, the cold, the rain, and suddenly, in front of me a wonderfull rainbow, done by some sun that came throw a hole in the clouds.
Just magic (the photo is not done by me, driving, I couldn't take it, but the atmosphere was similar).

Life is so simple sometimes, a simple rainbow in the morning while driving to work and you feel good !

Posted via web from lmau's posterous

Why quality is always important'

2009-11-07T10:56:00Z

Image by tonyhall via Flickr

Tweetdeck and Seesmic are struggling to be number 1 twitter application.

Yesterday was important in this match.

While seemic made a big buzz implementing twitter lists, in Web version, tweetdeck failed to released a new new version for Iphone : because of a bug that made the application crash for some users, they had to rollback, and now are waiting for apple to approve the new version.

Few thought about this :

1 - Quality is FIRST. You can go fast but if quality is not there, you'll not win

2 - When you're fast with good quality, no need to tease a lot. Just do it, and people will come to you

3 - The apple process with a quality check and an approval has big impact on startups release strategy : while on web or private applications you can release as soon as possible, on Iphone, you do not manage the schedule...

Of course the match is not over, but today, seesmic scored some points...

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Here it is, I've re-tweet in twitter.com. Looks cool

2009-11-07T11:10:00Z

via twitter.com

This morning, connecting to twitter, I saw a new infor;ation on top of the window : twitter added to my account as beta group member the new "Retweet" functions.

It looks good, and give added value : instead of the classical "RT xxx", my followers will see the initial tweet with a small mention that show I've re-tweeted it.

It will be more "readable" for followers, especially in case of multiple re-tweets
We will not face anymore the "more than 140 characters" issues when re-tweeting !

The small inconvenient I see is that using this, I cannot add a comment (to explain why I re-tweeted). But maybe it's not so important !
.

Posted via web from lmau's posterous

Why I'm an happy premium Spotify user

2009-11-08T15:34:00Z

I wrote a post "My music experience" in april this year, 6 motnhs ago.
The purpose of this post was to give my personnal experience about music, from the 80s to these days.

My conclusion was that spotify would be a perfect system for me, with few enancements :

to be able to "download" the music I like on some mp3 devices to be able to listen to them not connected to the internet. > >

to have a better management of my library (not just simple playlist). > >

to imporve the social part of it : having my friend using it and sharing new songs / artists we discover > >

So what is the situation today ?
Very simple, I'm now a premium spotify user, I pay 10€/month for that.
I use spotify everyday to listen music : on my laptop when I work and I need to concentrate, in my car or at home on my stereo system, using the iphone.
Why did I subscribe to the premuim ? 3 reasons :

To get rid of the advertisment of the free version : In the free version, the advertisment message comes every 10/15 minutes, with the same message ! It's quite boring ! 2. To use the Iphone application : The Iphone application is great. The level of functionnalities is the same as the desktop version. 3. The most important feature is the "offline mode". In this mode, the applications download the music when you're connected to wifi, and after you can listen to it even if the Iphone is not connected to a network

I've around 800 cds that I've paid at an average price of 15 Euros so a total of 1 200 Euros.
This is equivalent to 10 years of spotify's premium subscription !

So today I'm a happy spotify premium user, I don't use anymore itunes or windows mediaplayer, and I do not plan to buy any new CD or buy music online.

Of course, now, I hope that spotify will improve the experience with new functionnalities in the application (better playlist management) and social features.

If you want to improve your self-organisation (good todo lists, ...) check

2009-11-10T06:12:00Z

I found this video very inspiring.

David Allen (who wrote the book Getting Things Done) gives a talk to Google staff.

The length of the video is 45 minutes, I watch it entirely !

If you've read the book, the video will give you another vision of it, by the author, if you did not read it, it will give you an introduction.

Check it, and let me know what you think !

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My favorite Google Wave gadget is MindMap gadget

2009-11-10T06:39:00Z

I use Mind map on a day to day basis when I need to structure a topic, especially in brainstorming phase.

For this, I use freemind which an open source dekstop application.

I've discovered last week a gadget for Google wave that allow you to build a mind map within a wave.

Very powerful to work remotely.

Of course this first version has limited functionalities, but it's ok to start to use it.

All the informations are on "Bruce's blog"

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My new aquarium is now ready ! The fishes can come.

2009-11-11T16:39:00Z

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Project management best practices mind map

2009-11-11T20:20:00Z

I plan to share my 10 years experience in project management on my blog.
Before starting, i quickly drafted a mindmap of the topics i plan to address. Here it is. Any ideas?

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because

2009-11-12T19:59:00Z

Last week, I discovered on my www.twitter.com a new button "RT".

I've explained it in this post why I think it's nice even if .. there's a limitation :you cannot comment anymore your retweet (add a personnal touch).

Today I've read this post from Evan Williams (Twitter CEO).

In this post, @ev explains the reasons of this implementation, and the reasons are very good, and especially it improve the overall system consistency.

With an embedded RT function, the whole system will be consistent, and it will be possible and easy to see who is retweeted, who are the sources.

Today, it's not really possible, because every RT alters the initial message.

@ev also explains that it's a first version, and that improvements will come later.

I let you check read the post for more details.

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a new air application to access google analytics statistics'

2009-11-13T19:14:00Z

I've just installed Trackkboard, a new air application that gives access to google analytics statistics in a nice way, to follow your websites.

Well done, and nice.

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a new air application to access google analytics statistics'

2009-11-13T19:14:00Z

I've just installed Trackkboard, a new air application that gives access to google analytics statistics in a nice way, to follow your websites.

Well done, and nice.

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it rocks ! Check this video if you''re

2009-11-17T11:21:00Z

This video present the new features implemented today in google translate. Very very good improvement :

realtime translation : no need to press "translate button"
text-to-speech to listen the english version
phonetic features
pronunciation feature for chinese.

Very nice !

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it rocks ! Check this video if you''re

2009-11-17T11:21:00Z

This video present the new features implemented today in google translate. Very very good improvement :

realtime translation : no need to press "translate button"
text-to-speech to listen the english version
phonetic features
pronunciation feature for chinese.

Very nice !

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According to Google, Google docs is not (yet) a good alternative to Microsoft

2009-11-21T23:04:00Z

Image by Google via CrunchBase

The battle between google and microsoft is in progress, with a big battle Microsoft office / Google documents.

Every day news come about new companies switching from Microsoft office to google doc.

Last week, Dave Girouard gave an interview to ZDnet Asia.

Dave Girouard is an important guy in google (he's one of the company's four presidents including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin), so his words are important.

And what he said in this interview was a big surprise for me.

To make it short, he explained** that google documents is not the good solution for enterprise yet, it will be in 1 year !**

His exact words are :

We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet

he expects Google's online document application, Google Docs, to reach a "point of capability" next year that will serve the "vast majority's needs".

Of course, using both Google documents (for personal use) and Microsoft office tools (for business), I know the differences that exist between them, and that google is still behind, but I did not expect a google guy to admit it.

Now the question is : is 1 year the good timing to expect Google documents to catch Microsoft office in term of capabilities ... or will it take more than that ?

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According to Google, Google docs is not (yet) a good alternative to Microsoft

2009-11-21T23:04:00Z

Image by Google via CrunchBase

The battle between google and microsoft is in progress, with a big battle Microsoft office / Google documents.

Every day news come about new companies switching from Microsoft office to google doc.

Last week, Dave Girouard gave an interview to ZDnet Asia.

Dave Girouard is an important guy in google (he's one of the company's four presidents including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin), so his words are important.

And what he said in this interview was a big surprise for me.

To make it short, he explained** that google documents is not the good solution for enterprise yet, it will be in 1 year !**

His exact words are :

We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet

he expects Google's online document application, Google Docs, to reach a "point of capability" next year that will serve the "vast majority's needs".

Now the question is : is 1 year the good timing to expect Google documents to catch Microsoft office in term of capabilities ... or will it take more than that ?

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Roger Federer gets the giggles because a journalist needs to ask him questions

2009-11-28T19:02:00Z

In this video, Roger Federer cannot stop laughing because a journalist needs to ask him questions in Spanish...

A real funny moment !

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Roger Federer gets the giggles because a journalist needs to ask him questions

2009-11-28T19:02:00Z

In this video, Roger Federer cannot stop laughing because a journalist needs to ask him questions in Spanish...

A real funny moment !

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a good start is mandatory'

2009-12-06T09:10:00Z

This is true for everything in life: if the start is not good... you'll have to fight to come back in good shape, and maybe it will not be possible.

For a project, this is especially true. The cause of many project failures can be traced back to the early days of the project. Before the start of the project, it's easy to think. After, when the project is launched, it's a lot more difficult, because you will have to run the project. To be efficient when you run the project, and be able to think, see the issues, the project has to be clear. When the project starts, everything is possible :

* what will be the deadline? * what will be the deliverables? * what will be the methodology used? * who will be on the team?

Of course, some of them have constraints, but, before the project starts, you can change them, or at least try to change them. If you cannot change them... you still can organize the project to meet them.

For example, if the deadline is very aggressive, what I always do is :

* Understand why. What will be the impact to release later? * Propose pre deliverables or other solutions to answer the need as soon as possible, and take time to build the full solution. Sometimes, it's even possible to prose a pre-version that will meet 80% of the requirements, before the need date... * Put in place the good organization to achieve it (need more people ? more money ? ...)

If you don't take the time to review it and start the project with an impossible deadline, you'll fail, waste money, and energy...

Ariane 5 flight 501

2009-12-06T21:33:00Z

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

On June 4th, 1996, the first Ariane 5,the European Rocket was destroyed by its automated self-destruct system 37 seconds after launch

The root cause of this destruction was a software bug on the navigation system that had been re used from Ariane 4 and not tested enough...

The bug report is available online, his reading is very instructive.

You can find it here.

You can also read the good article in wikipedia.

A human Clock !

2009-12-13T17:57:00Z

May be expensive to pay a guy 24x7, but so nice !

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a fantastic video from American Museum of Natural History'

2009-12-22T09:42:00Z

This video shows the known universe. It start from Tibet and then goes to the farest known area of universe. All the elements (stars, planets, ...) are represented to scale.

Just take 6 minutes to do this incredible journey.

It's absolutely fantastic.

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Google, GTD, web2.0, Innovation, … 6 very good books I’ve read in 2009

2010-01-02T16:24:00Z

Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr
The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman

My method to keep my inbox empty

2010-01-09T23:17:00Z

Every day, I receive around 50-100 emails in my inbox.

Since years, I'm looking for a good method to stay organized, and not be overloaded by all these incoming pieces of information.

I think that I've found THE method that works (at least for me).

This method is a concrete implementation of Getting things done, the method from David Allen.

Here are the few 3 steps to implement it.

1 - Configure your email system

Currently, I'm using Microsoft Outlook, but the setup can be done with every email system.

I use 5 folders :

0 - Inbox: where all email comes when I receive them

**1 - Action **: email for which an action from me is needed

1 - Read / Review : emails that with stuff I need to read / review

2 - Waiting for : emails for which I'm waiting for an action from someone else

3 - Done : emails processed, kept for archive.

An extra folder "Gmail view" is there to get in outlook the nice looking "conversation view" of Gmail. You don't need it if you 're already in Gmail.

The numbers shown after the folder name are the number of items in the folder (not the unread items, I do not care anymore about read/ unread, you'll see why after).

2 - Process your Inbox

Everything starts with the inbox. When emails are received, they go there.

I process my inbox at least 2 times per day: on time in the morning, before lunch and another before leaving.

I avoid reading email as they come. I've noticed that if I read emails as they come, I lose what I'm currently doing, and jump from a topic to another, losing efficiency.

The inbox folder is sorted by "from" field.

The processing steps are the following :

a) open email and read it

b) if I can answer the email immediately (less than 2 minutes according to GTD standards), I do it, and I move the email to "done" folder

c) if I need to answer to the email, but cannot do it immediately, because the task needs more time to be achieved, I ask myself if someone in my team can do it for me

- if yes, I forward the email to him/her, I move the original email in "done" folder, I move the email sent in the "waiting-for" folder

if no, I'll have to do it myself, I move the email to the "Action" folder.

d) if I do not need to answer the email, but I need to read it more carefully (presentations, communications, ...), I move it to "read/review folder"

e) finally, if the email does not trigger any action, I move it to "done" folder.

3 - Process "action", "read/review" and "waiting-for" folders.

Once a week I do a full, complete review of these folders during my GTD weekly review (every Friday 12:30 to 2 pm)

I review the "waiting-for" folder during the one-to-one meetings I've with my team members.

I process action and read/review when I've time (using GTD principles).

If I see that action and read/review folder are getting too full, I plan in my agenda for a specific session to review them.

4 - Conclusion: Why I feel so good about this system?

** **

a) the emails are sorted according to what I need to do with them.

Previously, I tried to do it using "read/unread" and "flags", but it wasn't efficient.

** **

**b) all the emails I've processed are not anymore in my view. **

They are in "done" folder that I seldom open. I'm not disturbed by them.

** **

c) The KPIs to know if I'm under control or not are built-in.

I just look at the number of items in each folder.

** **

d) coming to work in the morning with an email with few emails (just the one from the night, as I work with a 24x7 organization) is very healthy.

** **

I let you try it, and let me know what you think about it.

Offline mode and security, the 2 missing features of Google docs

2010-01-12T16:28:00Z

I'll not explain here why I think that google docs is a very good solution for business, I'll do it another day.
I'll also not discussed the comparison of functionalities between Google docs and Microsoft office applications : today there's a gap, as even Google highlighted it.

What I want to focus on is the 2 key improvements that need to be implemented before more companies can use it.
2 functionalities that make the whole thing not usable in a business context.

If you propose users to switch to cloud applications, their 2 mains concerns are :

Where are my datas ? How to be sure that nobody can access them ? 2. What happen if the network is down ? We cannot work anymore ?
1- Security, confidentiality of datas.
For my personnal use, I do not really care about confidentiality of my datas. I do not share confidential stuff. If someone access it, I do not really care.
For company datas it's totally different. Company datas are confidential : products, sales numbers, people names, ...

Today, there's no real commitment of Google on this point.

This statement that can be found here is really very vague.

"Rest assured that your documents, spreadsheet, and presentations will remain private unlless..."

I'm sure this commitment is not enough for a company to make the decision to switch to Google docs.

2- Offline mode
Google docs uses "gears" to provide offline mode.

The functionalities provided are OK for email : you can still access the mailbox, read, write emails that will be sent as soon as network comes back.
Even on a poor network that is cut quite often, this is not an issue.

For the other applications, the story is different.
With spreadsheet, you can only read the documents, but no changes are possible. This is a big issue.

In my opinion, especially for travelers, it's not acceptable to have such poor functionalities in offline mode.

According to some people, html5 that will be used in next releases of Google apps will solve it and offer a higher level of functionalities. We need it.

Service Web 3.0'

2010-01-14T06:34:00Z

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After earthquake in Haiti OpenstreetMap contributors create Port-Au-Prince

2010-01-15T19:46:00Z

A fantastic example of "2.0" success.

After terrible earthquake in Haiti, OpenstreetMap community manage to create a very accurate and up-to-date map of Port-au-prince.

This is the result of more than 800 contributions done by people on the field mixed on yahoo! images qnd some old CIA's maps.

The objective is to assist humanitarian aid organisations that are on the field now.

You can check the result ( still under construction ) here

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'Waterskiing behind a car in the snowy streets of Bucharest'

2010-01-25T18:42:00Z

Please, take 4 minutes to watch this amazing video.

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Apollo

2010-01-25T19:19:00Z

Image via Wikipedia

"Houston, we have a problem".

In my first post about project management key success factors, I've written about why a good start is mandatory.

This post is about the next success key factor:** the team.**

A good project manager without a good team cannot be successful. The team will be constructed during the start phase, and the job of the PM is to manage this team, to make it as efficient as possible.

My best example about this is Apollo 13 lunar mission by NASA that was intended to land on the moon.

During the mission, a fault in the electrical system produced an explosion which caused a loss of electrical power and failure of both oxygen tanks. This was a major failure that made the life of astronauts at risks.

Thanks to a very good teamwork reaction, engineers finally found a solution to make the module back on earth with no damage to the men inside it. Why was it possible to achieve it :

1. Commitment and involvement. All the people in the team are committed to succeeding, and each member is fully involved to make as much as possible to succeed. In the example of Apollo 13, this is, of course, the case, because lives are in danger. 2. Competency Members of the team have the good technical skills to find a solution and achieve the objective. 3. Authority and flexibility of the manager The team follows the manager. The manager gives the direction, he also gives people clear objectives and after let the team members opportunity to find the best way to achieve this. 4. Self-control Even in a very difficult situation people do not lose self-control. If self-control is lost... nothing is possible, nothing will be solved. 5. Creativity Some "impossible" solutions were found to achieve the goal. Example: how to use circle oxygen bottles on a square connector? This was possible because the manager assigned a team to solve this specific topic, and because the team accepted the challenge without saying ... "No, it's not possible" 6. Luck Like in all good story, a piece of luck is necessary to succeed. In the case of Appollo 13, a sick astronaut could not make it the D-Day when the rocket took-off. Thanks to his experience, he was a key guy on the ground to find the solution to make the manual landing possible.

If you want to check all this and be inspired, just check this film, you'll not be disappointed.

all about users, nothing about companies'

2010-01-28T05:28:00Z

Google has posted the 5 Google privacy principles.

This text, and video associated, gives the 5 rules that Google proposes to follow regarding users data privacy management.

* 1 - Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. * 2 - Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. * 3 - Make the collection of personal information transparent. * 4 - Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy. * 5 - Be a responsible steward of the information we hold

My comments:

1 -** The first principle justify why … Google needs to gather as much personal information as possible.** This is nice: "tell me all about you, it will allow me to be more relevant". Sure. Very people may argue that the best way to protect privacy is to avoid storing confidential datas. With this 1 principle, Google explain that they will do the opposite (store a lot of personal information), but that's a good thing for the users. Very clever!

2 - There's nothing about companies. Today, Google really focus on personal users, not on company. Not a single word to explain how the privacy of the datas of company that may use Google cloud application will be managed.

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iPad vs Kindle vs Rock (I still want an iPad !)

2010-01-29T10:34:00Z

I still want an iPad even if it’s poor compared to rock !

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Great, now I can upload what I want to googledocs

2010-01-31T12:46:00Z

It has been announced a few weeks ago, and finally it has been activated for my account.

For sure I'll use it intensively.

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now seesmic functions go to twiter.com !'

2010-02-04T19:10:00Z

Twitter announced a new functionnality : the « Hovercards ».

Basically, on twitter.com, when you hover over a username or avatar; the cards will display information about that person and allow you to interact.

Very good idea !

Seesmic has implemented it several months ago in seesmic web, and it's very useful!

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A robot-Mouse

2010-02-11T21:32:00Z

Be patient, and watch this video.

The "mouse" first discover the labyrinth, and at the end, it needs only 4.7seconds to cross it.

VERY IMPRESSIVE !

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Teach every child

2010-02-14T17:28:00Z

Jamie Oliver is a famous chef. His speech about how fighting obesity is just fantastic.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html?awesm=on.ted.com_886s

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Dilbert and the Feng Shui

2010-03-12T21:04:00Z

One thing I've learnt during my 2 years in Singapore is how Feng Shui is important in Asia.
This week, 2 comics with Dilbert talk about Feng Shui.
Very funny, very true !

Shift Happens, be ready !

2010-03-12T21:39:00Z

I've found this nice Presentation on slideshare.

It gives very interesting facts, numbers about the revolution in progress.

A very good introduction to understand what is hapenning.

Shift Happens

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman.

Why I'll never buy an amazon kindle ...and why it's not a bad news for amazon

2010-03-18T12:02:00Z

Image by zimpenfish via Flickr

In a post last October I asked my self if I should buy a kindle for Christmas.

Finally, I did not and now I'm sure it was a good decision.
I'll never buy a kindle because I'll buy an iPad, and I'll use the kindle application to access amazon books.

I've already tried the kindle application for iPhone.
I've read a first real book on it and I was very impressed of the quality of the reading experience even on a very small screen : good contrast, very easy to read (even in bad luminosity conditions).

Having it on an Ipad (which is basically a big Iphone) will be just perfect for me.

I've just found an article in mashable, where you'll see that other people think like me.

So finally, Amazon will not sell a lot of kindle, but will sell a lot of electronic books, thanks to the kindle application.

DILBERT and cooperation... I cannot stop laughing !

2010-03-26T14:49:00Z

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Discussion about meetings efficiency... so true !

2010-03-26T21:33:00Z

a concrete implementation at US Defense IS Agency'

2010-03-31T19:47:00Z

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: interesting informations about a concrete implementation of cloud architecture.

Disa CSD Cloud Brief Sept 2009 Hjs

View more presentations from Kevin Jackson.

2 very good articles about Cloud computing

2010-03-31T21:47:00Z

Image by kevindooley via Flickr

Here're 2 very good blog posts I've read tonight about cloud computing.

'IaaS, Hype and Marginal Cost' by Dimitriy Samovskiy * 'The cloud is great. Stop the hype' by Theo Schlossnagle.
These posts are interesting because they go behind the hype and propose a concrete analysis of cloud computing.
A must read !

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Googlemaps get direction funny result !

2010-04-05T19:36:00Z

According to googlemaps, the best way to walk from Grenoble (France) to Genova (Italy) is to take a boat and go via corsica !

(if I select "by car", the result is more accurate !)

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this is not a spiral !'

2010-04-11T07:57:00Z

This optical illusion is just amazing.

This is NOT a spiral !

Source : a tweet from @timoreilly

For more illusions, here is a good source

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Vino wins Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the power of wikipedia ...

2010-04-25T15:32:00Z

Today, Alexander Vinokourov won the cycling race "Liege-Bastogne-Liege".
Is it really important ? Maybe not, except for cycling fans like me...

What interests me here is that the race ended at 14:52, and wikipedia started to be updated only 3 minutes later !

I'm currently reading the book "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel H. Pink.

This book discuss about motivation, and the first example taken is to compare the 2 encyclopedias Encarta from Microsoft and Wikipedia.
One done by the big Microsoft with a lot of money, and the other by a lot of anonymous volunteers.
Of course, you know the result, the team of highly motivated people built the very complete Wipidedia, and Encarta... does not exist anymore.

Today one more time, a cycling fan took some time to update Wikipedia with the result of the race, and Wikipedia is immediately up-to-date.

we''re near the ultimate music application !'

2010-04-27T20:58:00Z

Image via Wikipedia

As I've explained in a previous I'm a premium spotify user since last november.

I use spotify daily at home on my desktop, on my laptop and traveling, on iPhone.

What I prefer in spotify is :

the access to a huge catalog of music * a good iphone application with a very important offline mode
On my post in november, I wrote :
"

Of course, now, I hope that spotify will improve the experience with new functionnalities in the application (better playlist management) and social features

Today spotify released a new version of its application, and ... the new version brings social features and better library management !

With this new version, it's now possible to share playlists using facebook (when spotify is launched, it asks you login/password to connect to your facebook account).

The other new important feature is that the music files on your computer are accessible throw spotify UI.

I already love it !

(normally, the update comes automatically, if it does not, you can just go to the spotify website and download it).

See you on spotify.

Time Machine

2010-04-30T06:09:00Z

hahaha !

Source mathfail.com

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What Itil V3 Doesn’T Say About Organisational Structure

2010-05-01T18:53:00Z

An interisting presentation about the organisation to put in place in IT department to implement ITIL.

What Itil V3 Doesn’T Say About Organisational Structure

View more presentations from Patrick Keogh.

Robots on twitter are a big pain. An example with Jamie alias @HoldemTalkRadio

2010-05-08T08:48:00Z

Spam is an issue on twitter, and I'm tired about it. Since a long time third party application like twhirl or seesmic have implemented functions to report spam and help twitter to ban senders (basically, by sending a tweet to a special user @spam created by twitter team for this). Other services like topify enhances twitter new follower email notification in order to help users to know who follow (based on bio, last tweets, number of followers, ...) them and decide if they should follow back.

In a recent post, twitter have reported that % of spam tweets has drop from a 9% in aug'2009 to 2% in march 2010.

This is a big achievement and I hope it will go even lower in the future.

The issue I'm facing now on twitter is what I'd call "intelligent" spam.

Because people always want to have "more" than others, because people think that having more followers is a measurement of power, I see many of them doing all they can to get more followers.

I'll not discussed here why it's a non-sense to rate reputation based on number of followers (ratio between following and followers is a lot more important).

Yesterday, I received an "@lmau" notification.

First thinking is "Nice, someone is including me in his "follow Friday" recommendations !"

But who is @HoldemTalkRadio ?

A look as his bio :

@HoldemTalkRadio is a guy named "Jamie L. Simon".

Jamie lives in Los Angeles, California.

Welcome Jamie, Nice to meet you.

More interesting, Jamie is listed in 1,174 lists !

According to the title of the lists, Jamie seems to be really power user : "top-im-rockstars", "klout-influencers-coachforyou", "awesome-engaging-people", ...

A quick look on Mrtweet also give me good feedback on Jamie : 39 people have recommended him (while 0 have for me ...)

But something is strange... Jamie recommended me in his #ff, but we're not connected. He doesn't follow me, I don't follow him...

Another strange thing is that Jamie follow 19k+ persons, which is more than the 17k+ that are following him...

Next strange thing is that Jamie has already send more than 100 000 tweets.

A quick look on twittercounter.com show me that he sends few hundreds tweets every day (when big users like @loic "just" send around 50 / day....).

When I look closer to yesterday tweets from Jamie, I see that he sends hundreds of ramdom #followFriday tweets.

Conclusions : * Jamie is just a robot * Jamie is just generating noise * I'll not follow Jamie. * People who have honored Jamie by adding him in their list... are certainly also generating noise. I'll not follow them * people who have recommended Jamie in MrTweet are also generating noise. I'll not follow them.

What should twitter do to improve that ? Here're a few ideas : * automatically detect accounts that are sending more tweets than a human can, and automatically tag them as "robots" * propose special functions to filter, manage these "robots" users (in my case, I'll just filter them, because I do not what to see their noise) * measure the "noise" in the total number of tweets generated by these robots.

Have a nice day Jamie !

TV is a drug

2010-05-08T20:53:00Z

An interesting video about TV...

Maybe someone could do the same about social media !

[Television is a drug.](http://vimeo.com/10857606) from [Beth Fulton](http://vimeo.com/user791798) on [Vimeo](http://vimeo.com).

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Ipad is coming to France, but price too high !

2010-05-10T20:22:00Z

I've already explained it few times on this blog, I want to buy an Ipad as soon as possible.

It's now official, the Ipad will be available in France on the 28rh of may.
The only big issue is the price.

In fact, the price is a same in France and in US (for example, 499 for a 16Gb, WIFI version) but... it's 499 USD in US and 499 Euro in France !
Which means 30 % more !

The other issue is the price of the 3G plans with phone companies.
Orange proposes 39Euros /month for a 2GB limited connexion. This is huge !
For my Iphone, I pay the same price for unlimited datas and 1 hour of voice.

I know IPad is selling very well in U.S. now, but honestly, I'm not sure I'll buy one, because of the price...

What are they talking about ?'

2010-05-13T10:01:00Z

These days we see a lot of discussion around the way Facebook (does not) take care of it's user's data privacy.

Here're the 2 best sources I've found that describe the "problem".
In fact I don't think there's a problem, I'll explain why in a coming post, but it's interesting to look at these 2 articles to understand what people are talking about.

In this diagram The New York times give a view on the 50 settings with more than 170 options that are available to manage privacy on facebook.

In this series of images Matt McKeon shows the evolution of privacy default settings over the years (from 2005 to now).

It's amazing to see how user's data are more and more public by default everyday...

NO TRUST !'

2010-05-14T14:43:00Z

Image via Wikipedia

They are a lot of discussions these days around how Facebook handle it's user's data privacy.
I've talked about it in a previous post.

As far as I'm concerned, I've absolutely no issue with this.
Do you know why ?
Because I do not trust Facebook. I do not trust it at all !
**
**
As a consequence, all the datas I put there can be public, I've no issue.
No secrets.
All my privacy settings are set to share everything, like this, I cannot be disappointed by Facebook if they change their mind.

I think everybody should do like me and this is why :

Facebook is a very very young company that has grown very very fast.
In these conditions, **errors are always possible

** 2. Facebook is inventing something totally new.
Who could imagine this very big social network just 10 years ago ?
Who can predict what it will be in 5 years ?
The system is totally new, the rules need to be written, so for sure they will change.

**Mark Zuckerberg has never been very keen to commit on user privacy. **
In fact it's the opposite.
Facebook commit to provide its users a system to share more and more datas with more and more people, by default, datas are shared.
**To build a system that is really sure in term of security and privacy it has to be designed for this since the beginning, it has to be part of it's DNA. **This is not the case for Facebook.

Of course not trusting Facebook limit a lot the added value...
Of course I hope that something new will come in future with less functionalities, but with privacy commitment written in it's DNA.
Maybe it's Diaspora ?

fantastic video of this volcano that stops the planes....'

2010-05-15T20:03:00Z

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

The robot that solves any rubik's cube combination in about 30s

2010-05-17T06:13:00Z

source : loic

Source : loic

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Amazon.com is optimized for IE8 ! Seriously ?

2010-05-18T19:47:00Z

This evening, amazon.com advised me to use Internet Explorer !

Sorry but I prefer Chrome !

What is Google TV ? Here's a good video to understand.

2010-05-27T15:02:00Z

Here's a good video to understand what google TV is about.

Good video about social media key numbers

2010-06-01T11:08:00Z

This is a very good video about social media development.

Web 2.0 At Work'

2010-06-01T12:43:00Z

2 years old but still interesting slides about deploying web 2.0 features in a company.

Web 2.0 At Work - Simple And Social Collaboration Between Coworkers

View more presentations from Acando Consulting.

When the Google ads ruin the credibility of BP

2010-06-01T15:39:00Z

Reading a presentation by BP about how to implement "Knowledge Management in pursuit of excellence" on slideshare website, some google ads were there to remind me that BP is not always excellent !

THE 22 MINUTE MEETING by Nicole Steinbok, Ep 53

2010-06-02T21:10:00Z

Quite basic message, but we spend (and loose) so much time in meeting that it's always good to come back to basics !

Watch it, it's a 5 minutes video, for sure you'll get a lot of good energy from Nicole!

Social Media Statistics & Facts 2010

2010-06-08T05:07:00Z

funny video !'

2010-06-14T23:02:00Z

This is what happens when BP spills coffee.

Hahahaha !

The surprising truth about what motivates us'

2010-06-20T09:08:00Z

What is really motivating us ?

You MUST watch this video (just 10 minutes)

For some Googlers... the world is limited to U.S. !

2010-06-23T04:38:00Z

This morning, an important news has been posted on google official blog : "Google voice for everyone".
Everyone ? Means I can try it from here (France), as I remember it was just available from U.S. before.
Good news ! I will try it as soon as possible.

But no... "everyone" finally means "everyone in the U.S.".

Google, wake-up!

Even if U.S. is a big country with around 300k persons, we're around 6 800k staying outside U.S. !

I need these pills !

2010-09-08T03:53:00Z

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Why London+ Qantas Airways > Paris + Air France

2010-09-10T19:47:00Z

I'm just back from Singapore wnere I've spent 4 very efficient business days.

Usually I travel via Paris airport, using Air France plane.
This time, I decided to change and to try Qantas Airways via London.

The initial reason of this change were :

avoid Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and the very bad experience I've everytime with the security controls and the organisation of the airport
flight on an Airbus A380

Doing this, I had to change my habbits and buy a Qantas Airways ticket i stead of Air France.

My conclusion is that I'm fully happy about this choice !

in London heathrow, everything went smoothly, no big queue, a good organisation at security checks.
Qantas airways is a real customer oriented company. You can feel it immediatly on board when the announce is not done by a "chef de cabine" but by the "customer care manager". And this is not bullshit. People on board seems to be really committed to make you happy during the flight.
The A380 experience is great : more space (few cm... but very important for my long legs), very good and modern Entertainment system.

So, even if I'm french, I can tell you that London + Qantas Airways > Paris + Air France.

Location:Chemin de Maupertuis,Meylan,France

A nice presentation about GTD

2010-09-12T20:04:00Z

This presentation give a very good overview of GTD.

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Kindle vs Ipad ad

2010-09-14T05:34:00Z

Very good ad for kindle with 2 very good arguments :

1 - Kindle is better than iPad under sunny conditions (by the pool...)

2 - Kindle is cheaper than iPad

By the way, I'm still happy with my choice to buy an iPad instead of a kindle.

When I go to the pool I just need to put myself in the shadow of a tree...

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

What is the real difference between an iPad and a newspaper ?

2010-09-14T18:11:00Z

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The problem for Google Docs is still about data privacy and offline mode

2010-09-16T16:44:00Z

9 months ago I wrote a post to explain that the 2 big challenges for Google to deploy widely google apps in companies was about data privacy and offline mode.

Where are we today ?

For offline mode, the situation is worse than before as google has desactivated it....

For data privacy, the problem is still there and a news today shows that it's real and that google absolutly need to find a solution : a google engineer has been fired for accessing user data.

The reaction of Google was of course to fire the guy, which seems normal, but this obviously raise questions to all users, CIOs that will think twice before giving all their datas to Google.

Image via Wikipedia

Most Strange Penalty Kick Ever!

2010-09-19T08:10:00Z

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

A very simple way to customize outlook to make it GTD friendly !

2010-09-27T14:29:00Z

Since 1 year now I use GTD principles to manage my emails and achieve the ultimate goal :** inbox 0**.

I've described this in a previous post . The idea is quite simple, based on 5 folders :

0 - Inbox: where all emails come when I receive them 1 - Action: email for which an action from me is needed 1 - Read / Review: emails that with stuff I need to read / review< **2 - Waiting for **: emails for which I'm waiting an action from someone else 3 - Done: emails processed, keeped for archive.

For more detail on how I use these folders, you can refer to the initial post.

The most important thing is to be able to empty the inbox and file emails in the proper folder in a very efficient way, as fast as possible. To make it really very easy for me I've done some customisations of my outlook client to implement 4 customs buttons.

When I open an email, the 4 buttons are accessible.

Their function is very simple :

* "Done" files the mail in the "3- Done" folder * "Action" files the email in the "1-Action folder" * "Read" files the email in the "1- Read / Review folder" * "Waiting for" files the email in the "2- Waiting for email"

Here's a quick guide to implement these buttons in your outlook.

First, you need to create 4 macros : MoveDone(), MoveAction(), MoveRead(), MoveWaitingFor(). Here's the source code template. Just use it 4 times, replacing the name and the macro and the name of the folder.

To finish, you need to add the button, this is very easy :

* Just open an existing email * Right click in the toolbar then "Customize" * In the popup, chosse "Macro". You should see the 4 macros you have created. * Then drag and drop macro 1 by 1 from the pop up to the email tool bar. * Here're the 4 buttons !

Now, just go to your full inbox, open the first email, and start to clean !

next generation phone ?'

2010-09-27T14:36:00Z

I'm not sure if we sould call it a smartphone or a tablet or a PC or ... but it is very promissing !

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

What problem are you trying to solve ? (a good video about innovation)

2010-11-02T06:48:00Z

Here's a good video about innovation. It's a speech by Scott Berkun at Web 2.0 Expo in 2008. Berkun gives a 10 minutes speech about innovation (post-it, Edison, ...) and finish by this very good idea : the most important question to answer by innovators to be successfull is

**" What problem are you trying to solve". **

This is especially true for social media !

Make your presentation alive with Chinese Shadow Play

2010-11-02T15:19:00Z

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Make your presentation alive with Chinese Shadow Play

View more presentations from Gary Yang.

5 iconic images... in 3D

2010-11-18T21:00:00Z

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

Very good slides about Social Media for Business

2010-11-21T22:19:00Z

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Social Media for Business

View more presentations from Presentation Advisors.

MUST-READ presentation'

2010-11-30T00:29:00Z

Here's a very well-done prezi presentation about social media.

Introduction to Social Media on Prezi

The history of 200 countries over 200 years in 4 minutes

2010-11-30T23:40:00Z

I like gapminder a website by google that shows statistics about demographic and economics for 200 countries, other last 200 years and provides the tools for each user to build his own graphs.

In this video, which is a program from the BBC a scientist uses gapminder to do a real show and comment the evolution of 200 couintries over the las 200 years.

If you like numbers, just dive into it !

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

The history of 200 countries over 200 years in 4 minutes

2010-11-30T23:40:00Z

I like gapminder a website by google that shows statistics about demographic and economics for 200 countries, other last 200 years and provides the tools for each user to build his own graphs.

In this video, which is a program from the BBC a scientist uses gapminder to do a real show and comment the evolution of 200 couintries over the las 200 years.

If you like numbers, just dive into it !

Posted via email from lmau's posterous

A Day in the Life of Social Media

2010-12-11T16:13:00Z

just relax and enjoy !'

2010-12-18T11:04:00Z

Superior, Speed Fly from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

Please, no electronic greeting card for me.

2010-12-26T16:23:00Z

The end of the year is coming. It's time to think about how to whish all your friends, colleagues, partners,... a "happy new year".

If you want to send me your wishes, I have to tell you that I don't like to receive electronics card embedded in an email, because :

it often does not work. On a laptop, the email open with a bad design and the question "do you want to load pictures?", on the smartphone, the result is even worth.
The design is often very bad. Every company tries to do nice stuff but the result is seldom nice...
people using this kind of electronic cards often send them quickly, just add your email address to a list, with no customization. For me, it is just spam. The worst case is when the same email is sent to many people as "cci"...

So, when you wish me "all the best", please try to make it personal, authentic.

A 2 lines email will be perfect!

I wish you all the best !

Looking for a tool to manage your action list? Facilethings.com is coming and

2011-01-06T11:55:00Z

Thanks to Francisco Saez (@franciscojsaez) , I've an access to a new GTD-like action management website : facilethings.com. I can here your questions coming : "What ? 1 more tool to manage actions ? Why should I try it ?". Here're 3 reasons : * facilethings.com is really GTD compliant, it's even a very good GTD tutorial.
In the different screens you know at which step you're (collect, process,...) and a quick text explain you very clearly what you have to do.
This is for me what makes this tool special and good to use.

facilethings.com is simple and efficient.
The design is very nice : simple, elegant, with an easy access to the different functions.
**facilethings.com implement the most important functions ** that are needed for a start.
For example, the recurring tasks are already there. In many other tools recurring tasks are not implemented, and it's a big miss as we all have recurring tasks !

I'm not sure of the roadmap of the application, for me, it should concentrate on :

implementing projects
creating mobile applications for android and iphone/ipad.
of course, it's very important to keep the fresh and nice design !

If you manage to get an invite and give it a try, and please tell me what you think !

This is just amazing

2011-06-10T19:48:00Z

This is simple data available in Wikipedia, be this graph is just amazing !

I found it in a very good post from Andrew McAfee : The One Big Story, and the Next One".

Can we calculate ROI for Social Media ?

2011-06-20T11:44:00Z

La révolution technologique (sous-titrage en français)'

2011-11-20T21:23:00Z

Un peu d'humour pour prendre du recul sur la révolution technologique en marche.

the efficiency of your team can increase dramatically !'

2011-11-23T13:00:00Z

I'd like to share with you a tool that I've discovered few months ago and that helped me to improve dramatically my team efficiency.

The name of this tool is "The behaviour" scale. The guy that presented it to me is Nicolas Schifarth

It's a simple A4 document that represent the 9 levels of reaction when someone faces a problem to solve.

4 are unproductive, 1 is neutral and 4 are ... productive.

The nine steps are :

Ignore This is clear, the first thing you can do when you face an issue is to ignore it. Maybe because you really don't know anything about it (nobody told you, you did not see the effects yet) or because you don't want to see it. 2. Deny
The problem is now there, you see it, someone tell you about it but reality is sometimes difficult to admit, so the reaction can be "what are you talking about ? There's no problem" 3. Blame
Now you know there's an issue, you can see it, you can feel the effects, but then, first reaction can be to try to find an immediate explanation, and more important to explain it's not your fault ! 4. Justify
Ok, there's a problem, you're part of it (because you did something wrong or because you did not prevent it), the next try is to explain why you failed and to justify the failure. 5. Undertake
This is the first "not unproductive" state : there's an issue, you just admit it exists !
This is the famous "Houston, we've an issue" send by appollo 13 crew. The question is not is there a problem ? who can we blame ? It's just to report the issue. 6. Paliate
There's an issue. You admit it exists. First positive thing to do is to limit the effects. 7. Analyse
The problem is under control, you can start to analyse why we are there, what can be done to solve it 8. Correct
OF course this is the most important : you correct the problem ! It took us 7 steps to come here.... 9. Imagine
This is the nirvana ! you try to think out of the box to correct this issue, to think about the next ones and anticipates !

What do you think about it ?

Next time you face an issue, or interact with soemone, just try to think about where you are from 1 to 9...

In my case it helps me A LOT.

(If you work with French people, here're the version in French-English and in French)

today I failed, but I did not give up !'

2011-12-04T13:35:00Z

Today I ran the Singapore half marathon. with 20 000 other people. This was the second time in my life I ran such a distance, the first time it was in Annecy (France) last april. This half-marathon was supposed to be a check of my progression that will bring me to become a marathoner.

During this race, everything went wrong. I did not feel good at the start (too hot), I never found a good pace, and started to be feel really bad at km 9...

This has been a terrible experience. I was supposed to be here to beat my personal record (2h06 min) in order to secure the possibility to run a full marathon next april.

When I understood that it will not be possible, and that I'll have to fight to finish in less thant 2h30, the feeling was really terrible.

Finally, I did not give up, I fight for 2 hours and 26 minutes, which is a very long time, and I arrived safe to the finish line. That was one of the worse sports experience in my life.

My conclusion after that race is that :

running is a very difficult sport when things go wrong.
I'm quite sure that 50 % of my failure is due to mental aspects
running in Singapore with hot weather and a lot of humidity has a big impact on my performance
I'll not run the marathon next april, I'll try again the half marathon to progress

Tonight I'm very disappointed, but I'll take 3 to 4 weeks of rest and start again to train !

Je vous conseille de lire Réussir avec les réseaux sociaux de Jean-François

2011-12-04T14:27:00Z

Je viens de finir de lire le livre de Jean-François Ruiz : "Réussir avec les réseaux sociaux".

Le livre est associé à un site web : "Réussir avec les réseaux sociaux"

Ce livre est interessant et complet, il offre un bon niveau de vulgaraisation des réseaux sociaux, en couvrant un spectre large, et en allant dans les détails. J'ai appris beaucoup de choses en le lisant, j'y ai pris beaucoup de notes et inséré de nombreux marques pages, c'est bon signe !

A la fois théorique (pas mal d'études citées) mais aussi très concret (guide pas à pas pour commencer sur linkedin et viadeo par exmeple), ce livre se lit facilement et rapidement.

Une faiblesse du livre est qu'il ne couvre que les aspects "outils" , un chapitre plus complet sur comment déployer de tels outils en entreprise (changement culturel, impacts sur l'organisation) aurait été interessant.

Je vous conseille vivement la lecture de ce livre si vous vous interessez au sujet.

An incredible video'

2011-12-06T05:00:00Z

This video by Sebastien Montaz-Rosset is just incredible, I love it !

Organizational Charts

2011-12-10T17:45:00Z

This comic from Bonkers World about orgcharts is nicely done.
I found it while browsing the web to find ideas to improve the organisation of my team.
Not sure it can help me !

14 raisons d'utiliser Linxo pour gérer vos comptes bancaires

2011-12-28T09:47:00Z

Linxo est un outil pour gérer ses comptes en banque. Je l'utilise depuis quelques semaines et j'en suis très satisfait.
Voila 14 bonnes raisons qui je l'espére vous convaincrons de l'essayer

C'est gratuit. 2. L'initialisation est très facile et très rapide 3. Linxo est compatible avec la plupart des banques françaises 4. Linxo est disponible depuis un simple navigateur 5. Linxo est disponible sur iOS (iPad, iPhone) et sur android 6. Linxo se met a jour automatiquement en se connectant directement a votre banque 7. Linxo categorise automatiquement plus de 80% des opérations téléchargées 8. L'interface est très facile a utiliser, très rapide et très efficace 9. Les statistiques proposées sont complètes et permettent d'avoir très facilement une vue d'ensemble des comptes, des revenus et dépenses 10. La recherche d'écritures est intuitive, facile et très rapide 11. L'analyse des dépenses passées regroupées par catégories permet une analyse très pertinente 12. Les graphiques présentés sont cliquables pour zoomer ou obtenir la liste des opérations correspondantes 13. Linxo est français! (je crois) 14. Linxo peut vous avertir par email quand un évėnement se produit sur un compte ( opération de crédit ou débit importante, solde faible)Bonne utilisation!

9 reasons to use TuneIn radio

2011-12-28T22:31:00Z

I like to listen to radio programs.
If you are like me and you are looking for a good application for that, I highly recommend you to try TuneIn radio, and here is why 1. TuneIn radio is available on iOS (iPad and iPhone), android and blackberry
2. Tunein radio is even accessible from a simple browser on your laptop
3. TuneIn radio manage very well low connections via a very good buffering system
4. From TuneIn radio you have access to live feeds
5. TuneIn radio also gives you access to podcasts
6. TuneIn radio offer a very good search feature to find feeds or podcasts
7. All your applications on your different devices can be synchronised (especially good for bookmarked feeds)
8. TuneIn radio is free or very cheap (for the "pro" version)
9. TuneIn radio ia nicely done on all platforms

I hope you're now convinced to give it a try!

Proxy Switchy!'

2012-01-04T06:57:57Z

We often have to change the "proxy" settings on our latops, depending where we are (at office or at home for example).

This change is not very easy on windows (in Internet Explorer : tools / internet options / connections / lan settings and then type the proxy configuration).

Switchy! is a chrome extension that do it for you in 2 clicks !

The principle is very easy : you just need few minutes to install and configure it with different configuration you're using (for me : direct connection with no proxy, work with proxy).

Then, when your laptop starts, you open a Chrome browser, and select the good configuration in 2 clicks.

Try it, it's fast and easy !

walkers in Java 2008'

2012-01-05T19:16:58Z

It was in central Java in Indonesia in the afternoon. I like the green color. People are walking in the middle of the road because few cars go there. The moutain behind the clouds is a volcano.

leadership!'

2012-01-06T21:04:34Z

As CIO one of my key success factor is to choose the good companies to work with.

Based on my experience, the most important criteria is LEADERSHIP.

Leadership to guide me (a customer does not necessary knows what he needs...) Leadership to propose solutions Leadership to take the good decisions to be efficient Leadership to show the direction.

Leadership is the result of companies culture (do they encourage their staff to take risks? ) but depends even more on individuals.

So when I choose a partner I spend quite a lot of time to discuss technical aspects, organisation, schedule, price, but what I'm looking for is to feel if the guys that will lead the project are real leaders!

Inspired Bicycles - Danny MacAskill'

2012-01-07T22:20:44Z

This video is 3 years old and the quality is not so good (no HD available). I still watch it time to time as it is really very cool. It's about a (crasy) guy that does crasy things on his bicycle. Do not forget to switch on the sound, the music is very good.

Breathe, relax and enjoy !

7 reasons to have a Samsung Galaxy note

2012-01-08T17:48:48Z

I've a Samsung galaxy note since 3 weeks now.

I'll not do a full test here, as I'm not good for that, and as you can find many tests done by many very good people.

Instead, I'll give you the key reasons to have one.
As a background, I've to say that I use or have used :

Ipad 1 (personnal, at home)
Ipad 2 (daily for work)
Samsung galaxy tab (7 inches) (before I have the galaxy note)
few blackberrys (last one is a torch)
2 iphones (3 and 4) (used by my family members)

So here are the reasons why I've replaced my blackberry and why I've given my Galaxy tab to my son :

**I love the size. **
The galaxy note is bigger than a "normal" smartphone and provides a really good reading experience.
In the same time, it's not so big and fit in the pocket of my trousers (which is not the case with the galaxy tab 7 inches).
**I love the speed. **
The speed is just amazing (going throw screens, launching applications, browsing internet).
**I love Android Honeycomb. **
The note comes with Android Honeycomb (Samsung commited to bring Android 4 -Ice Cream Sandwich - in Q1).
With this version of android, the user experience is really very good. It's now comparable with iOS.
**I love the weight. **
The device is not heavier than my smaller blackberry!
To acheive this, Samsung uses very thin materials (when you change the sim card, you're always affraid to breake it), but it's really good to have a light device.
I love the integration with google services.
This is true for all Android devices, but the integration with Google services is really great. I love to watch my picasa photos. I love to find my preferred addresses in Google maps...
I love the battery lifeOne of the problem on many devices is the battery life. With the galaxy note, I can use it "normally" during the day without being affraid about having no more power.
I love the screen resolutionScreen is just amazing. Watching videos is a real pleasure.

Congrats LG ! Your video has been seen by 1.5 million people in just 12 days!

2012-01-09T15:27:39Z

It's simple. It's a very good idea. It's very effective ! All I like ...

1,427,187 views, 9,709 likes, 324 dislikes... Good results for a so simple video.

3 reasons NOT to have a Samsung Galaxy note

2012-01-10T14:29:32Z

Yesterday I published a post to explain why you should have a Samsung Galaxy note.
In this post I'll give you the reasons not to have one (even if I think you should !)

**It's too expensive. ** The price of the device on amazon.com is $689.99. It's really crasy to buy a so expensive device !
**The pen provides no added value. ** There's a very good ad where you can see a guy doing creative things using the pen.
I've the galaxy note since 3 weeks, I've still not use the pen...
**It's made of basic plastic. ** The back cover is really very poor. Samsung did it to make the device light, but it's really strange to buy a $700 device and to feel afraid to brake it when you need to open it !

Lastpass (the ideal password manager)'

2012-01-11T14:33:44Z

LastPass is a password manager that promise you "The Last paswword you have to remember". The principle is to record all your passwords in a simple place and remember only one which is your lastpass password, like the key of your safe.

I use the service since few years now to secure all my passwords for all the services I use (I've more than 200 sites secured). Lastpass proposes a chrome extension I use everyday when I'm connected : at home, at work.

The main reason I use it is because of the chrome extension : it makes the access to the service simple and easy.

This simple extension is the access point to the lastpass service and gives access to your "lastpass vault" where all your passwords are secured.

The extension is also screening the pages you're browsing and if necessary proposes you to automatically fill login / password. It's really very well done.

I hope you'll enjoy it !

my beginner''s guide'

2012-01-12T13:46:46Z

On this blog one of the main topic I adress is social media. When I find good presentations, videos, posts on the topic, I share them here. I use this material quite often to do presentations or to share with friends.

To make it easy for everybody I've created a specific page that give access to everything from a single page, giving some structure.

The page is here.

I hope it will be useful for many of you, if you have ideas, resources to share, feel free to ping me, I'll add them !

Umbrellas in Bali'

2012-01-13T17:33:49Z

[![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3k22kA7RGqQ/TxB3PiQUdEI/AAAAAAAB0VQ/YoqkwuQ8reQ/s640/DSC03582.JPG) ](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/f0lwDMHxBGu3nKvl37hy9NMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite)

From [My best photos](https://picasaweb.google.com/laurent.maumet/MyBestPhotos?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite)

I took this photo in Bali during a walk in the forest. I like the light, the colors. I like the quiet atmosphere.

“Where the hell is Matt”'

2012-01-14T15:24:02Z

If you don't know Matt, you're lucky, because you'll have a very cool moment in few seconds.

It took Matt 14 months in the making, in 42 countries, and a cast of thousands.

The principle is very very simple, so it's very good !

Breath, relax, and enjoy !

(do not forget to put in HD and volume ON)

you should do it for your own security !'

2012-01-15T17:14:13Z

I've already posted about lastpass, the service I use to secure all my passwords in one single place.

A new tool is now available : the "security challenge". This tool will screen all your your login/passwords recorded in your lastpass vault and give you statistics

* number of duplicate passwords * weakness of the passwords * average password length.

I did it. The first result was obviously terrible : many duplicate passwords.. I basically use 4... and quite weak passwords.

Then you can imagine that changing all these passwords (I've 260 websites secured in lastpass) will be a big pain. This is where lastpass can help again. Based on the list of all the web sites, it propose you to directly open a new window on this site, then you go to the "change password" option and change it. Of course you still need some time to do it, but it helps a lot !

I love when services like that really gives added value that you did not expect...

Thank you lastpass !

Why travels can help you to be more efficient.

2012-01-16T17:54:12Z

Travelling all over the world for business has obvious inconvenients.

It's time consuming, you loose time in the travel, it's also tiring, because of the travel itself, because of jetlag.

By the way I've found that travelling is s also very usefull for me to be efficient Here's why in 4 points.

Breath !

When travelling, you're away from operational activities.

It breaks your daily routine, and you're less involved in operations.

It has 2 good points : the level of stress decrease, and you can breath !

Another perspective.

Being away physically give you another view on what you're doing. It helps to take a step back and have another analysis on the situation.

This can be very useful to find new solutions.

Meet new people.

When travelling you meet new people.

New people means new ways of thinking, new ideas.

Discover your colleagues.

Travels is very good way to take time to discuss with your colleagues and really discover them.

Being together away from the company helps people to be less shy and really show who they are.

We need a tool to share RSS subscriptions

2012-01-17T16:26:05Z

I'm a big user of RSS.

I use google reader on a daily basis to browse throw more than 160 sources.

This is efficient, powerfull and really help me to be sure not to miss informations.

Something I'm missing is the possibility to share my rss feeds subscriptions.

Of course I can "export" them in an opml file, and then email this file to my friends, but isn't it old fashion ?

I would love to be able to share my subscriptions like I can make my lists public in twitter.

This functionality should be embedded in Google reader standard features.

Anybody can help ?

let''s start'

2012-01-18T20:08:37Z

Last week-end I've read the book "Zen To done" by Leo Babauta.

Zen To Done (ZTD) is "The Ultimate Simple Productivity System".

I'll not describe ZTD here, for more details please go to Leo's website to read a summary, or better, buy and read the book (I highly recommend it).

One main idea of ZTD is to be pragmatic and to change your habbits one by one.

I'm already a GTD user since few years, so I've already implemented some concepts described in ZTD (collect, process using the 2 minutes rule, ...) but I also face the "classical" GTD issues : too many actions, a complicated system to follow them (using the very good application nirvanahq) and a lot of difficulties to do the weekly review.

I've decided to do an experiement and to try to implement ZTD concepts and see how it can help me.

The first stage I'll try is to implement the habit of defining every morning the 3 MITs (Most Important Topics) that I want to adress during the day (and I commit to myself to ...).

As a start, I've also drastically simplified my nirvanahq usage : I've removed all my projects, and put all the actions in 1 single list.

I started this last Monday (January 16th).

Every week I'll give here a status of the experiment.

Discus in Singapore'

2012-01-19T19:07:00Z

[![](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-uDAJqVoOOdM/TxMN-v2L5aI/AAAAAAAB0WU/qcUat0-oT4U/s640/DSC_0057-2.JPG) ](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/J8S9st73vvIZKGHP_ptIAtMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite)

From [My best photos](https://picasaweb.google.com/laurent.maumet/MyBestPhotos?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite)

I took this photo in singapore.

I've spent 2 years there with my family.

I maintain aquariums since 25 years.

My best one was in Singapore because I was able to maintain the king of the fresh water fish : discus.

I had 6 of them : 2 couples plus 2 individuals.

Last year I ran 1 045 kilometers.

2012-01-20T20:53:12Z

I started to run seriously in june 2010.

2011 was my first complete year of running :

* I ran 1 045 kilometers, 2 times more than 2010. * I ran 112 times, which is 2.15 times per week. * I ran during 113 hours and 58 min. * I burned 96 672 calories * I ran in France, Germany, USA, Singapore, Indonesia, Spain. * I raced 3 times, 2 half-marathon (Annecy and Singapore) and a 16 km race (Paris-Versailles). * I beat my longer run record running my first half marathon in 2h6min. * I beat my 10km record in 59 minutes, (during the half marathon). * I learned to practice interval running * I was injured 1 time

I've really enjoyed to be serious at running, and I plan to continue this year.

My plan for this year is to run again a half-marathon in april, and if it goes well, I'll run my first marathon in automn.

And you, do you run ?

(Photo By timtak on flickr)

“Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation”'

2012-01-21T15:30:49Z

Kseniya Simonova is from Ukraine, her performance is "Sand Animation" : she creates a story just using sand on a simple glass.

The story is about war, so it's quite depressing but it's full of emotion.

Breathe, relax, and enjoy !

My experience with ZTD week 1

2012-01-22T15:59:24Z

As I've explained in a previous post, I've decided to use Zen To Done productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

This is the feedback after 1 week.

For this first week, I've decided to implement 1 new habit : 3 MITs. The habit is simple : at the beginning of the week, and then every morning, I'll list the 3 MITs (Most Important Topics) that I want to achieve during the day (or the week).

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	2/3
January 16th	Yes	3/3
January 17th	Yes	1/3
January 18th	Yes (4)	2/4
January 19th	Yes	1/3
January 20th	Yes	2/4
Total	Yes every day	11/21

What are my conclusions?

11/21 is a poor result. I've clearly over committed to myself during that week. There's 1 specific MIT that I've pushed from day 1 to day 5 (finally I did it in day5) that made me loose 4 points.
Defining the 3 MITs at the beginning of the week and every morning really helped me to focus on the good topics and to realize when I missed them.
During this first week, I've also drastically simplified the way I use my todo system (nirvanahq). I've removed all project, and used 1 simple list. I've also simplified the actions (remove duplicate actions, remove actions I'll never do...). As a result, I feel really more comfortable with this system.

For the new coming week, my objective is to continue the implementation of this new habit, with a better result !

ps : why did I put a bonsai here ? Because I like bonsai's !

I''m back to paper !'

2012-01-23T11:03:42Z

After trying few electronics tools to take notes during the day (evernote, workflowy, notepad, ...) I'm back to paper !

I've tried to stick to evernote for more than 1 year.

I've installed the application on my blackberry, on my laptop, on my iPad, but it still not the good system.

I've found that using an electronic application to take notes on the spot has few drawbacks that are killers :

* It's not fast enough : When you want to take a new note you have to switch the device on, launch the application, sometimes login, create a new note, and then you can start to take notes using the keyboard, which is often slower than writing with a pen. * You are limited to letters : When I take notes, sometimes I want to draw , or to organise the words. On an lelectronic system it's not possible * Sometime it bugs : Sometimes it's due to network issues ("connection lost"), sometimes it's because I forget to push the "save" button. The "Lost" not experience is very frustrating * It "kills" the human contact with people : When you use a device to take notes, people thinks that you're sending emails, or sms, which give a bad impression and kills the contact.

Because of all this, I'm back to paper.

What is social media ?

2012-01-24T11:52:19Z

I did not post about this presentation yet. It has been written by Marta Kagan. I like it, it's a very good introduction to social media to start with !

What is Social Media?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan

Welcome, comments on this blog are now opened !

2012-01-25T15:28:25Z

To make the blog more interactive I've finally activated the comments.

I had to spend some time as the theme I use (done by Leo Babauta) does not support them. I had to change manually the source code.

I use Disqus system because I like blogs that use it. It offers a good level of functionality : authentication, notifications, threads.

Feel free to leave your comments and your ideas !

Orangutan in Sumatra'

2012-01-26T10:08:31Z

I took this photo in 2011 in Sumatra. I of my dream since I'm 10 years old was to meet Orangutan in the jungle. It finally happened in August 2011 in Sumatra. The quality of the photo is not so good because the light was quite low.

Mario Kart (Rémi GAILLARD)'

2012-01-27T16:39:00Z

Rémi Gaillard is a French guy from Montpellier (south of France, by the mediteranean sea).

He makes very fun videos doing very funny things in the street, with normal people. The result is often fantastic.

I've choosen this video where he is Mario Kart in the streets of Montpellier !

Breathe, relax and enjoy !

'The art of presentation #1'

2012-01-28T10:22:36Z

95% of presentations are boring. Everybody use PowerPoint few people know how to use it.

I'm always trying to do better presentations to make them less boring, more efficient. This very good series of presentations written by Eduardo S. de la Fuente is full of tips, ideas to make it happen.

If you do presentations, you should read this carefully.

In this first one, you'll learn :

* some statistics ("95% of powerpoint presentations suck" Guy Kawasaky). * some common mistakes (too many bullet points...) * that YOU can change this and improve !

Relax, breath and enjoy ! Do not miss the video on slide 21 !

The Art of Presentation. Following the ZEN path. WHY

View more presentations from Eduardo S. de la Fuente

My experience with ZTD week 2 : 47% success

2012-01-29T10:40:14Z

As I've explained in a previous post, I've decided to use Zen To Done productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

This is the feedback after 2 weeks.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

During week #1, the success rate has been 52 % (11/21)

Here're the results of week #2 :

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	1/3
January 23th	Yes	3/3
January 24th	Yes	2/3
January 25th	Yes (4)	2/4
January 26th	Yes	1/3
January 27th	No	0/3
Total	Defined 4 days	9/19

What are my conclusions?

9/19 is a poor result. It's even worse than last week (11/21). I’ve clearly over committed to myself during that week. Like last week there’s 1 specific MIT that I've pushed from day 1 to day 5 that made me loose 5 points.
I did not defined the MITs on friday as my work day started at 6am.
Even if the numbers are quite bad, I'm happy with this week. It was a VERY busy week, and defining 3 MITs everyday really helped me to keep control. I'm still happy with my new way to use todo system nirvanahq (I've removed all project, and used 1 simple list)

For the new coming week, my objective is to continue the implementation of this new habit, with a better result !

My new A5 notebook with top spiral. If you're lefty, you should try it !

2012-01-30T13:05:58Z

As I've explained in another post, I'm back to paper to take notes.

I think I've found the good notebook for me, it's a simple A5 Note pad with top spiral .

Top spiral is important because :

* it makes it easy to turn pages * it makes it easy to tear a page * it makes it easy for me to write, as I'm a lefty (yes, for lefty people, writing in a "normal" notebook is difficult, with a a top spiral I can write without pressing my wrists into the spiral )

I use it in a very simple way : 1 page = 1 topic.

Every meeting, every discussion, every topic I use a new black page, starting by writing in the right top corner the date and the topic.

I do not hesitated to tear pages if what I wrote is not valuable or if I've copied it in my electronic system because it was valuable.

And you, what do you use ?

create your public timeline from twitter, facebook and others'

2012-01-31T07:13:37Z

Do you know timekiwi ? I've just discovered it because it has been acquired by french company overblog.

timekiwi creates a public timeline from your posts on different services : twitter, instagram, Tumblr, facebook, flickr, foursquare.

It's clean and nicely done.

I've activated mine here.

You can activate yours, it's free and very quick.

Let me know what you think !

Evernote web clipper'

2012-02-01T07:59:45Z

I'm a big user of evernote.

I've it installed on my laptop, on my phone, on my iPad.

I like to use it to record interesting datas like infographies, graphs I find on Internet

The chrome extension "evernote web clipper" is just perfect : by a smple click I can add the page or image to my evernote collection.

I use it a lot.

If you want to try it, just follow the link.

Fly fishing in the Alps'

2012-02-02T06:19:16Z

I took this photo in Pelleautier Lake in French Alps.

It was a sunny day (like very often in the area).

The moutain in background is the "Pic de Bure".

This post is part of a serie of posts in which I present my best photos. All of them have been taken by me. The quality is not professionnal of course, but I love them.

Some incredibles numbers about apple

2012-02-03T06:36:11Z

Lately Apple published their quaterly financial results.

Based on increasing sales (for iPad, iPhone), the results are very good.

Apple has now USD 97 Billions in cash.

This very good infographic shows all the good numbers at once.

'The Art of presentation #2 (we need to improve our presentations !)'

2012-02-04T07:04:04Z

95% of presentations are boring. Everybody use PowerPoint few people know how to use it.

This post is number 2 to introduce you a very good serie of slides written Eduardo S. de la Fuente .

If you do presentations, you should read this carefully.

If you missed the first one it's here.

In this second edition, you'll learn :

* you need to prepare. Prepare what you want to say. Prepare what you want the audience to remember * a presentation is : the slides, the notes and handouts. * a presentation is a scalable story * you need a pen and paper ! * you need to think think think !

Relax, breath and enjoy !

The Art of Presentation II. Following the ZEN path. PREPARATION

View more presentations from Eduardo S. de la Fuente

My experience with ZTD week 3 : 6% success (94% failure !)

2012-02-05T20:20:52Z

This is the report #3 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

During week #1, the success rate has been 52 % (11/21) , during week #2, it has been 47% (9/19).

Here're the results of week #3 :

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	0/3
January 30th	Yes	0/3
January 31st	Yes	1/3
February 1st	No	-
February 2nd	No	-
February 3rd	No	-
Total	Defined 2 days	1/18

What are my conclusions?

1/18 is a very poor result.
In fact during this week I did not use ZTD. I did not take time to define 3 MITs everyday.
By the way, I did achieve a lot of things during this week but without planning them.
As a consequence, my achievements are not the most important ones, so it's not a so good result.
I need to improve my routine when I'm travelling to make sure I define the 3 MITs before starting my day

For the new coming week, my objective is to continue the implementation of this new habit, with a better result (which will not be so difficult) !

aviary'

2012-02-06T06:33:59Z

Aviary is an online image editor that proposes a full range of tools.

I use it when I have simple images to edit.

I like it because it's easy, simple, free, and in the cloud, so I've access to all my creation whatever device I use.

The aviary chrome extension is very basic, with a simple click it capture the current page and opens aviary for further editing.

If you have to do such action, I highly recommend you to install it.

I use it a lot.

If you want to try it, just follow the link.

January 2012'

2012-02-07T06:54:18Z

With this post I start a new series in which I'll report my running activity.

I started to run seriously in June 2010, 18 months ago.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Annecy"] [/caption]

My objective is to be able to run a marathon. This should happen this year in october in Amsterdam (to be confirmed).

My short term objective is to run the Annecy half-Marathon on apritl 15th.

I ran this race in 2011 in 2:07.

The objective for this year is to go below 2 hours.

This will be a big challenge as my agenda is really full in the next months.

In January I ran 39 km. This is quite low, last year I ran 83.

My motivation was not very high, and I did not manage to find the motivation to wake-up at 5:30 am to run in the cold night.

The race is now in 10 weeks, so it's time to start to run seriously 3 times per week.

Runners'

2012-02-08T05:33:08Z

No comment...

Snow in the Alps'

2012-02-09T08:26:41Z

This is a very simple photo take from the window of my house.

I like the snow on the trees, it's nice, quiet, and remind me a lot of good memories !

This post is part of a serie of posts in which I present my best photos. All of them have been taken by me. The quality is not professionnal of course, but I love them. You can find all the posts here.

Today I'm 41 !

2012-02-10T09:04:12Z

This is not so important for many people, but today like every year on February 10th, it's my birthday.

This last year has been full of good things, and the starting one is very promising ! To celebrate this, here's some good energy bring to you by SoniaT I use this photo as wallpaper on my laptop.

'The Art of presentation #3 (we need to improve our presentations !)'

2012-02-11T06:11:19Z

95% of presentations are boring. Everybody use PowerPoint few people know how to use it.

This post is number 3 to introduce you a very good serie of slides written Eduardo S. de la Fuente .

If you do presentations, you should read this carefully.

If you missed previous posts, they are here, and here.

In this third edition, you'll learn :

* how to design your presentations * how to choose the images * how to present datas.

Relax, breath and enjoy !

The Art of Presentation III. Following the ZEN path. DESIGN

View more presentations from Eduardo S. de la Fuente

My experience with ZTD week 4 : 59 % success !

2012-02-12T21:15:54Z

This is the report #4 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

During week #1, the success rate has been 52 % (11/21) , during week #2, it has been 47% (9/19), and during week #3, a total failure (6%)...

Here're the results of week #4 :

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	1/3
February 6th	Yes	3/3
February 7th	Yes	1/2
February 8th	Yes	2/3
February 9th	No	-
February 10th	Yes	3/3
Total	Defined 4 days	10/17 (59%)

What are my conclusions?

10/17 is a better result compare to last week and is my best result ever!
As decided last week, I've improved my routine, and I've defined the 3 MITs before starting my day except on day 4.

For the new coming week, my objective is to continue the implementation of this new habit, with a better result. If the result is there, it will be time to implement a new habbit !

Hey Google, where is the offline mode?

2012-02-13T13:56:33Z

2 years ago I wrote a post about the need of offline mode for google services (google documents and gmail). Offline mode is really a missing feature especially for people who travel.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Image via CrunchBase"] [/caption]

2 years ago, google used to use a plugin "google gear" to implement a minimal offline mode : mails were accessible and documents were in read-only mode.

Where are we 2 years later ?

Nowhere.

Google gears has disappeared.

For gmail an application is available in the chrome webstore, but it's not really good as it's not consistent with the normal way to access gmail.

Google promised to implement offline using html5, but it's still not available.

If anyone knows about the roadmap, let me know !

The rise and fall of personal computing

2012-02-14T06:02:18Z

Changes are occuring faster and faster in tech world.

I love this chart from asymco.com, because it shows in 1 page this acceleration.

The Y scale is a logarithmic scale and even like this we can see that Android and iPad growth is just crasy compare to the whole history.

It shows also very well ho ;obile devices are boo;ing and are now more important than traditionnal personnal computing devices (PC, Mac).

Where will it stop ?

Welcome to all Norwegian! (yesterday, 72% of visitors of this blog have connected

2012-02-15T06:45:06Z

Yesterday something strange happened.

72% of visitors of this blog have connected from Norway.

On a normal day, main connected countries are France and US.

I'm not sure what happened.

All this visitors came to see an old post "5 iconic images… in 3D" about which I sent a tweet yesterday morning

Is it because of the topic ?

Is it because by luck this tweet has been put on a homepage?

Was it just a robot ?

If you have an idea, or if you connect from Norway, feel free to leave me a comment here !

Bonsai in Singapore'

2012-02-16T06:50:11Z

I love bonsai trees.

I took this photo in Singapore's Chinese Garden.

In this place there're the best bonsais I've ever seen.

This post is part of a serie of posts in which I present my best photos. All of them have been taken by me. The quality is not professional of course, but I love them. You can find all the posts here.

The Known Universe by AMNH'

2012-02-17T06:31:18Z

An impresssive video of the journey from earth to the limit of the universe...

This post if part of a series in which I present my prefered videos. You can find all these videos on my youtube channel.

'The Art of presentation #4 (we need to improve our presentations !)'

2012-02-18T06:17:50Z

95% of presentations are boring. Everybody use PowerPoint few people know how to use it.

This post is number 4 to introduce you a very good serie of slides written Eduardo S. de la Fuente .

If you do presentations, you should read this carefully.

If you missed previous posts, they are here, here and here.

In this fourth edition, you'll learn :

* "there are 2 types of speakers : those that are nervous and those that are liars" * you must rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, .. * deliver your message during the first minute.

Relax, breath and enjoy !

The Art of Presentation IV. Following the ZEN path. DELIVERY

View more presentations from Eduardo S. de la Fuente

compact calendar is for you.'

2012-02-19T08:25:35Z

I was looking for a template to construct in excel a calendar to plan my travels during the full year.

The good template is not easy to do as they are many ways to represent a calendar !

Finally I found the very good "compact calendar" proposed by David Seah.

David proposes nicely done excel and pdf templates that are configurable and present 1 year (or 16 months) on 1 single A4 page.

I like it because it's simple, well designed, and very easy to use.

I let you have a look at it, I hope it helps.

My experience with ZTD week 5 : 78 % success !

2012-02-20T11:18:47Z

This is the report #5 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

During week #1, the success rate has been 52 % (11/21) , during week #2, it has been 47% (9/19), and during week #3, a total failure (6%), week #4 had been better : 59% success !

Here're the results of week #5 :

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	3/3
February 13th	Yes	3/3
February 14th	Yes	3/3
February 15th	Yes	1/3
February 16th	Yes	2/3
February 17th	Yes	2/3
Total	Every day	14/18 (78%)

What are my conclusions?

14/18 is a better result compare to last week and is my best result ever!
As decided last week, I've improved my routine, and I've defined the 3 MITs before starting my day, everyday.
defining MITs everyday really helped me to be (at least feel) efficient !

Next week will be avacation week, so I'll not try to apply this routine everyday. It will be an off week.

I'll start again the week after, the objective will be to keep a good level of success, I'll not try to implement a new routine.

** **

key numbers'

2012-02-21T05:27:17Z

This infographic is very nice.

It presents a lot of significant numbers about social media.

To succeed, you need to fail !

2012-02-22T05:32:40Z

As you know, I'm reading a lot of things aroound innovation.

1 key thing I've understood is that to be good in innovation, you must take risk, and fail.

A good example is google.

Google laucnhes many product, some have huge success, but some are also big failure.

This nice infographics shows this.

A key number : in 12 years, google launched 251 products, 90 have been cancelled !

Jump in the swimming pool'

2012-02-23T07:45:00Z

I took this photo in Singapore.

I like the movement, the energy.

'The Art of presentation #5 (we need to improve our presentations !)'

2012-02-24T09:50:05Z

95% of presentations are boring. Everybody use PowerPoint few people know how to use it.

This post is number 5 to introduce you a very good serie of slides written Eduardo S. de la Fuente .

If you do presentations, you should read this carefully.

If you missed previous posts, they are here, here, here and here.

This last edition is full of resources that you can use to do better presentations :

* books * images * deliver your message during the first minute.

Relax, breath and enjoy !

The Art of Presentation V. Following the ZEN path. RESOURCES

View more presentations from Eduardo S. de la Fuente

rock climbing in the Alps'

2012-02-25T05:45:18Z

Do you know Cëuze ? It's a very nice moutain near Gap in the French Alps. This video about a guy doing rock-climbing there is just fantastic !

Relax, smile, and enjoy !

My new social Workflow (thanks @tacanderson !)

2012-02-26T18:35:32Z

I read all posts written by Tac Anderson on his blog newcommbiz.

Last wednesday Tac published a very interesting post about his new social workflow.

This post is very good because it's very clear, concrete and explains everything about Tac's organisation on social medias ( to publish posts on his blogs, Twitter, facebook, to share good links, ...).

I let you read it for further details.

Based on this, I've improved and updated my own system.

The main changes are :

1. I've created a new blog on tumblr : lmaulight. I'll post on this blog all the links I share : my own blog posts and other good posts I find. I'll also post photos I take (not sure what I'll do with path). If you want to follow everything about me , just follow it ! 2. I've also decided to use diigo. Diigo seems to be more than a bookmarking tool, but for a start I'll use it just for this purpose : it will collect all the good links I find and help me to retrieve them. Later I'll see if I can do more with it.

To implement this, I use ifttt.com and buffer as recommended by Tac.

I've not yet implemented a facebook page. I'm thinking about it, but not decided yet...

I hope to see you on my blogs soon !

What do you thonk about it ? Any idea ? Any comment ?

If you're using powerpoint, you must see this video.

2012-02-27T06:25:24Z

I love this video by Don McMillian about bad powerpoint presentations or about how to write better powerpoint presentations.

I especially like the example about graphs to present datas...

If you are using powerpoint, you must watch this !

On this topic, you can also read the series of posts about "The Art of presentation" part 1, part2, part3 and part4.

60 seconds in social media

2012-02-28T05:37:57Z

This infographic show the activity that occurs in 60 seconds on main social media websites.

The most impressive number is 2 000 000 videos views on youtube very minute !

(via @jeanlucr and business Insider )

Looking for good photos for your presentations ? Compfight is for you

2012-02-29T05:22:58Z

Do you know compfight.com ?

This site is a search engine to find good quality photos.

It brings photos from flickr under creative common licence.

Do not forget that photos are free, but some rights are still reserved (like attribution).

Do you know other good web sites to find high-quality photos ?

Electric cables in Vietnam'

2012-03-01T06:47:30Z

I took this photo in [Hanoi, Vietnam](http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=21.0333333333,105.85&spn=0.1,0.1&q=21.0333333333,105.85 (Hanoi)&t=h).

This is a "normal" view of electrical cables in the city !

Why email starts fights (video)

2012-03-02T07:40:33Z

I'm quite sure that in your organisation (like many...) people send tons of emails. Email is a wonderfull tool, but ... not all the time. I love this video, because it explains it very well. I show it to all my teams !

What do you think ? How do you manage it ?

Please share your experience!

If you have an issues to access the video, please follow this link.

key

2012-03-03T05:44:35Z

Some key numbers about Google.

My prefered ones :

* 1 000 000 000 search per day * 500 changes implemented per year to the search algorithms * instant preview loads in 1/10 seconds on average

(via Search Engine Journal)

a good infographic'

2012-03-04T20:09:13Z

We have a problem with emails !

Do you feel sometimes like an email machine, spending your day reading and answering emails ?

Do you sometimes face the fights started by emails ?

Too many emails is highly unproductive.

This very good infographic shows some nice numbers, and propose solutions.

(source : ansonalex.com)

6 reasons to switch from Google reader to feedly

2012-03-05T05:45:34Z

I spend around 1 hour per day browsing hundreds of feeds.

Since many years, I'm a big user of Google reader.

Recently I've started to use feedly, based on an advice from Tac Anderson.

The switch is now definitive, I'll not come back to Google reader (at least for few weeks...).

Here're 6 good reasons for you to do the same :

1. Feedly is very nice. The design is just fantastic, ad the reading experience very nice (on all platorms) 2. Feedly is available on pc, android, iOs. Today I use it in Chrome on my lpatop, on my iPad and on my Galaxy Note. 3. Feedly implements very good sharing features, easy to use. 4. Feedly proposes a chrome plugin "feedly mini" that gives me access to the sharing features when I'm reading a site 5. Going from Google reader to feedly is very easy to set-up as feedly synchronize with google reader feeds in 1 click 6. Feedly keeps synchronised with google reader (subscriptions, posts read, ...) so it's very easy to go back

I hope I've convinced you to give it a try!

Let me know.

Posté avec Blogsy

My experience with ZTD week 6 : 39 % success !

2012-03-06T06:37:31Z

This is the report #6 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

During week #1, the success rate has been 52 % (11/21) , during week #2, it has been 47% (9/19), and during week #3, a total failure (6%), week #4 had been better : 59% success , week #5 has been so far the best week, with 78% succes.

Here're the results of week #6 :

Here are the results:

Day	Did I define 3 MITs?	How many achieved?
Week	Yes	1/3
February 27th	Yes	2/3
February 28th	Yes	2/3
February 29th	Yes	1/3
March 1st	Yes	0/3
March 2nd	Yes	1/3
Total	Every day	7/18 (39%)

What are my conclusions?

Starting this week, I'll start to implement a new routine. **The objective will be to come back under control with emails. I'll manage emails to stay inbox 0. ** To achieve this, the new habbit will be to check emails daily for 30 minutes.

Results next week ...

all about good powerpoint presentations'

2012-03-07T06:27:09Z

One of my favorite topics is about how to improve bad (powerpoint) presentations. At work we spend a lot of time in meetings where the speaker uses powerpoint presentation to support his speach. Powerpoint is also used for sales meeting, to introduce products.

These presentations are too often boring : too long, not enough structured, messy, too complicated.

Powerpoint ios not a bad tool. It's even a good one : a lot of functionalities, easy to use. In fact t becomes a problem because it makes it too easy to produce slides.

On this blog I post time to time about good ressources on the topic to help us to improve.

To make it more efficient I've created a specific page where all these resources are listed :

[h4] "Let's do better presentation" [/h4]

I hope you'll like it, and it will help you to make your next presentation as interesting as fireworks !

Train in HongKong'

2012-03-08T06:39:31Z

I took this photo in the funicular railway that brings passengers up to Hong Kong's Victoria peak.

The problem with the wires...

2012-03-09T15:49:44Z

[image_right_link href="url_here" src="http://www.francetv.fr/info/image/74r53c9ow-9ed4/570/320/377841.jpg"]

IT wires are a pain : network wires, power wires.

I fight everyday to have my team installing workstations, network plugs, ... with nice cabling.

It's always difficult, and often we have a big mess under the tables.

This picture has been taken last week during a TV show with french president Nicolas Sarkozy.

What interest me in this picture is what I see in background... Even in the context of a tv show, with the french president, the cables are messy !

Google 2011 revenues breakdown

2012-03-10T16:59:05Z

In 2011 , 96% of google revenues came from advertising.

This infographic gives the breakdown of these advertising revenues.

My prefered number : the cost per click for "Cheap car insurance" is $33.97 !

(source : wordstream)

February 2012'

2012-03-11T13:00:30Z

After my big failure last december at Singapore half marathon, I'm now training again to run another half-marathon in Annecy on April 15th.

January has been a recovery month, with not so high motivation, and I ran 5 times and 39km. February was better. I ran 9 times for a total of 74 km. It's better compared to last month, but still not enough.

My objective is to run 3 times per week which is at least12 times per month...

I really appreciated running this month.

I did one of my best run ever on the snow. It has been a fantastic experience, alone in the woods, listening to good music.

March will be very important to come in good shape and by ready on april 15 th,.

It should be ok, because high motivation is back, and the weather is really better now with better temperatures.

My experience with ZTD week 7

2012-03-12T08:37:15Z

This is the report #7 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement 7 weeks ago is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

The 2nd one I started to implement last week is to manage emails to stay inbox 0 and for this to spend 30 minutes per day in an "email cleaning" session.

Here're the results of week #7 :

Here are the results:

Day	MITs defined	MITs achieved	Emails cleaned
Week	Yes	2/3	—
March 5th	Yes	0/2	Yes
March 6th	Yes	1/2	Yes
March 7th	Yes	1/2	No
March 8th	Yes	1/2	No
March 9th	Yes	2/2	No
Total	Every day	9/18

What are my conclusions?

Next week I'll not try to implement any new routine, but just have better result on the emails !**

Results next week ...

New theme for this blog

2012-03-13T06:10:04Z

As you can see, I did several improvements on the blog.

First one is the theme. Beginning of January I switched to very minimalist theme proposed by Leo Babbauta. I really loved it because it's clean and nice. I've decided to switch to a new one because Leo theme is too minimalist for me. It's not possible to insert widgets in the sidebar or footer for example.

It's also not possible to add comments. Of course I could spend time to improve it and develop using php and css, but I'm not good enough, and don't have time for that and it's not a good idea, as Leo didn't implement these features on purpose.

Finally I've bought a theme : Purity 1.0 by Tauris. It costed me 35 USD. I choose it because it's minimalist, clean, but proposes all functionnalities from a standard wordpress theme. I took me some time to switch to it as I had to "redevelop" pages. I took me around 8 hours, which is a lot ! But finally I'm very happy by the result.

I hope you like it, do not hesitate to feedback to me and tell me if you'd like to see some improvements !

incredible music in the woods'

2012-03-14T06:07:42Z

This video is an advertsisement.

I like it because it's nicely done, quiet, and the system to produce the mucis is just magic !

Relax, smile, and enjoy !

Bicycle in Vietnam'

2012-03-15T07:45:12Z

I took this photo in Hanoi, Vietnam,

The guy tranports hats and baskets on the bicycle.

Bicycles are still very used in Vietnam for day to day transportations.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES MIND MAP (updated)

2012-03-16T06:11:40Z

Here's an update of the mindmap I've published before : Project management best practises. Based on recent comment from Bonnie, I've added a section about "clear team expectation".

For more detail on this, you can read 2 details posts :

How to succeed in a project : a good team is mandatory. Best example : Apollo 13

How to succeed in a project : A good start is mandatory.

Do you have any ideas to complete this map ? Do not hesitate to feedback to me !

(I created this map using iTough on iPad)

Google's algorithm changes

2012-03-17T20:36:12Z

Google succes started with 1 good idea : pagerank.

Every webpage is given a rank calculated with a sophisticated algorithm (how many links from other pages go to this page).

Thanks to this "pagerank", google search feedback to users to best results.

I've found this infographic that lists all the changes applied to the algorithm years after years.

A lot of work ! Impressive, isn't it ?

(source)

My experience with ZTD week 8

2012-03-18T18:00:00Z

This is the report #8 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement 8 weeks ago is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

The 2nd one I started to implement 2 weeks is to manage emails to stay inbox 0 and for this to spend 30 minutes per day in an "email cleaning" session.

Here're the results of week #8 :

Here are the results:

Day	MITs defined	MITs achieved	Emails cleaned
Week	Yes	3/3	—
March 12th	Yes	2/2	Yes
March 13th	Yes	1/2	Yes
March 14th	Yes	0/2	Yes
March 15th	Yes	1/2	Yes
March 16th	No	0/2	No
Total	4/5 days	11/18

What are my conclusions?

Next week I'll not try to implement any new routine, but I'll start again to define 3 MITs, and consider email as a fourth one.**

Results next week ...

One Year in 90 seconds'

2012-03-19T06:00:00Z

If you want to know how this video was made visit this page. This post if part of a series in which I present my prefered videos. You can find all these videos on my youtube channel.

how to become an email Ninja'

2012-03-20T06:00:00Z

In a previous post I've described my method to keep my inbox with zero emails inside.

This presentation explains it again nicely !

I hope you'll enjoy it. Do not hesitate to comment and share.

Inbox Zero: Action-Based Email

View more presentations from merlinmann

The Power of less - Why Less is Powerful

2012-03-21T06:00:00Z

The power of less is a book by Leo Babauta. This book is full of good stuff.

Chapter 1 is about "Why Less is powerfull".

Chapter main idea :

[h4]Less is Powerful because if you do less, you have to focus on the essential[/h4] At work, or at home, you have many things to deal with. If you focus on the essential, you'll put the best chances to achieve it, instead of loosing yourself.

You can apply this to : [list_square] [li]your action list : start with the one that are really essential[/li][li]your projects : focus on the 3 more important[/li][li]the internet websites you read [/li][li]your goals : identify the things you really want to achieve[/li][li]your emails : just check email twice a day, do not try to read all of them[/li][li]and so on ...[/li]

[/list_square]

Here's a quote from the book : [blockquote_with_author author="Leo Babauta"] Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations.

Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy

[/blockquote_with_author]

If you want to read the full story, you can buy the paper or kindle version of the book here : Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential

Stones in Tomok'

2012-03-22T06:00:00Z

I took this photo in Tomok, Lake Toba, on Sumatra island in Indonesia.

Lake Toba is a very special place in Indonesia.

It's the place of Batak people. Batak used to practise cannibalism rituals until late 19th century. These stones were part of the ritual place.

a simple tool to organize your brain'

2012-03-23T07:00:00Z

Workflowy is (another) tool to manage your lists.

"lists" are not just your action lists, it's all kind of lists: a list of ideas when you brainstorm, a list of posts you plan to write, ...

Workflowy does not have any fancy features (like projects, due dates, ...), it's very simple and easy to use.

Workflowy is a web-based application, registration is very easy.

To start, workflowy is just a simple white page where you can enter all your lists. No need to enter "edit" mode or to "save", all your changes are immediately recorded.

What makes workflowy special and very good to use is the very simple and intuitive way to browse your lists. You can build lists with thousands of items without being lost. Everything is easily structured and organized.

I love it and use it daily.

The video will show you in detail the concept.

If you try it, let me know if you like it!

The Big Switch'

2012-03-24T07:10:00Z

I read The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from "Edison" to "Google" 4 years ago.

4 years is an eternity in the tech world, but this book is still worth reading.

The author, Nicholas Carr make a very interesting parallel between electrification and change occurring in the IT world.

I use what I've read there every time I need to explain to someone what cloud computing is about.

Carr also discusses all the impact that this change in IT have on our day to day life.

If you're interested in IT move to the cloud, you should read this book.

Smart thief caught on cam.'

2012-03-25T19:02:00Z

Watch this video from the start to the end to appreciate the surprise...

Enjoy !

This post if part of a series in which I present my prefered videos. You can find all these videos on my youtube channel.

My experience with ZTD week 9

2012-03-26T16:18:00Z

This is the report #9 of my experimental implementation of Zen To Done the productivity methodology by Leo Babauta.

As a reminder, the first habit I've decided to implement 9 weeks ago is to define every morning the 3 Most Important Topics (MITs) I want / need / commit to achieve during the day.

The 2nd one I started to implement 3 weeks ago is to manage emails to stay inbox 0 and for this to spend 30 minutes per day in an "email cleaning" session.

I'm really happy with the result of these 2 new habbits.

Defining 3 MITs everyday really helps to stay focused.

Of course many times it does not goes as planned, and achieving the MITs is not always possible, but at list I achieve some, and I know what to focus on next day.

**Next week I'll not try to implement any new routine, but I'll still focus on : **

** define 3 MITs (**and do them !)
do a 30 min email cleaning session everyday to come back to inbox 0.

Results next week ...

6 reasons why project managers fail to plan.

2012-03-27T15:52:50Z

If you want your project to be successfull, you need to plan.

At the early stages, you need to plan the journey that will bring the team from the start line to the arrival (i.e. the end of the project).

Many projects fail because the team start to run without proper plan.

[h4]Everybody knows this, but why few people actually really plan before starting ?[/h4]

[h5]Because at the beginning, everything is possible.[/h5]Everybody is full of energy, the resources (manpower, time, money) seems to be infinite... So why plan ?

[h5]Because we are (often) too optimistics[/h5] "Let's go, it should be ok". Because at the beginning everything is possible, the mindset can be "Everything is possible, se are good, so we Will succeed, so.... no need to plan !"

[h5]Because planning is difficult. [/h5]

To plan you need to take a step back. You need to understand what is the essential. Planning requires specific skills.

[h5] Because planning means choices.[/h5]

When you plan, you need to choose the path, and to choose is to renounce. You need to decide wich path you'll not go. This is sometimes difficult.

[h5]Because planning seems boring. [/h5]

We all prefer action. We feel like "loosing" time planning when we could do so many concrete actions for the project !

[h5]Because we are too focused on concrete execution.[/h5]

They are so many things to do on the project : organise logisctics, welcome people, start first actions, ... From early morning to the night, the project manager is busy on very concrete actions with no time to plan...

[h4]So a good project manager will be able to forget these bad reasons that try to push him in the bad direction, and will focus on plan ![/h4]

Buffalo in Indonesia'

2012-03-29T07:00:00Z

I took this photo in Tomok, Lake Toba, on Sumatra island in Indonesia.

This bufallo was near a house, eating quietly.

Global Internet users will double in the next years and most will be mobile.

2012-03-30T05:39:03Z

Global Internet users will double in the next years and most will be mobile. This is one of the facts you'll find in this very good presentation by Business Insider : THE FUTURE OF MOBILE.

This very good presentation give an outlook of what is hapenning and what will happen in mobile market : market growth, OS war, ...

Sunset in Sumatra'

2012-04-05T07:00:00Z

[![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-TZv1Fb6wwU0/T2Xr5ujUb-I/AAAAAAAB2Fc/th8zqyiKuz8/s400/DSC_0213.JPG) ](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/NcisFOzoAxgC6VjPLz2y8tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite)

From [My best photos](https://picasaweb.google.com/115659010738886748256/MyBestPhotos?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite)

I took this photo in Tuk-tuk, [Lake Toba](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Toba), on [Sumatra island](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra) in [Indonesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia).

It's was a rainy evening, by the lake. Sunset helps to do nice photo with beautifull colors.

I've improved my personal record on half-marathon by 10 minutes !

2012-04-25T14:56:37Z

Photo Credit: David via Compfight

I'm still folowing my objective to become a marathoner.

On april 15 I ran half-marathon for the 3rd time.

My first run was 1 year ago in Annecy (France), it went well, and it took me 2h 06 min to finish.

In december I did another try in Singapore, it went really very bad, and I finished the race totally exhausted in a terrible 2h26 minutes.

This new attempt was very important as I had 2 objectives : forget the Singapore failure, and improve my last year time to confirm that I'm on the good path to achieve a marathon soon!

Everything went well and I crossed the finish line in a very good (for me !) 1h56 min.

It's 10 min, better than last year. It's an average speed of 11.0 km/h (last year was 10km/h).

Why did I improve ?

because every race I build experience. Last year was my first ever 21.1km run. This year it was the 3rd one

because the weather was very good : 7 degres, small rain. I've learnt that this is an ideal weather to run

because I was confident about my objective : some good training sessions showed me I was able to run at 11km/h

because I was not alone. 2 colleagues ran with me and helped me to keep the good pace

because I'm improving at running ! I just started to run 2 years ago, so I'm still improving

because I did some "qualitative" training not just running to build my endurance skill.

So what is next ?

My new next objective is to run Paris marathon in 1 year from now.

Before that, I'll run Paris-Versailles (17km) in september to keep an intermediate objective.

I've now one full year to improve and be ready !

What Singapore can learn from Europe.

2012-05-31T15:59:15Z

I've spent 2 years in Singapore, and go there for business once per quarter.

This city / country is amazing. In 45 years Singaporeans have been able to achieve tremendous development of their economy.

This has een possible thanks to good decisions, strong leadership, and a lot of work.

At the end, even if standard of living can be comparable between Europe and Singapore (living, housing, leisure, schools, ...) huge differences exists espcially around politics, arts, inequalities.

These differences are very difficult to describe without behing caricatural.

A colleague pointed to me a very good article : What Singapore can learn from Europe by By Tommy Koh.

In this article , Mr Koh describe 4 areas of differences betweeen Europe and Singapore in which Singapore should learn from Europe :

[list_ordered][li]Salary equity and minimum wage[/li] [li]Higher fertility[/li] [li]Embracing nature and sustainable development[/li] [li]Heritage, culture and the arts[/li] [/list_ordered]

If you want to know more, just read it, this is a very good article to understand differences between Singapore and Europe society.

Photo Credit: Eustaquio Santimano via Compfight

10 laws of productivity

2012-06-27T17:47:36Z

I'm a big fan of Behance team. I've read the book "Making ideas happen" in which I've found a lot of very good ideas. Recently I went throw an article: "10 laws of productivity".

I highly recommend you to read it as it is concrete, simple and clear.

The 10 laws are :

Break the seal of hesitation
Start small.
Prototype, prototype, prototype.
Create simple objectives for projects, and revisit them regularly.
Work on your project a little bit each day.
Develop a routine.
Break big, long-term projects into smaller chunks or “phases.”
Prune away superfluous meetings (and their attendees).
Practice saying “No.”
Remember that rules – even productivity rules – are made to be broken.

I've also created a very simple presentation about it that you can use if you need to present the document to several people, feel free to use it!

** 10 laws of productivity ** from Laurent Maumet

Photo Credit: westpark via Compfight

The state of social media in the H2 2012

2012-07-12T12:38:10Z

A new and very good presentation about social media.

A lot of very good and up-to-date numbers.

The one prefer is : With 158 Million users US does not have the largest social networking population, China does with 308 Millions !

2H12: The State of Social Media & Social Media Marketing in the Second Half of 2012

View more PowerPoint from Esteban Contreras

un exemple de communication de crise, maintenant la vidéo !'

2012-07-12T13:18:24Z

Le vendredi 6 juillet Orange a connu une panne majeure sur son réseau en France qui a impacté 26 millions d'utilisateurs pendant 10 heures.

Le problème est maintenant réparé et le réseau est revenu à la normale depuis le samedi matin.

Au delà de la communication institutionnelle via les média (télé / radio), la conférence de presse du PDG le samedi après-midi, Orange déploie aussi une campagne de communication sur le WEB tout azimut.

les comptes facebook et twitter sont régulièrement mis à jour
une page spéciale a été mis en place sur le site de Orange
Orange a acheté des liens publicitaires chez Google pour être sur que le premier résultat en cas de recherche "Orange panne" soit le lien vers la page officielle

Enfin, une vidéo expliquant en détail ce qui s'est passé et comment Orange a (très bien ;-) ) réagi a également été mise en ligne.

Résolution de l'incident réseau - le déroulé en... par Orangefr

Is your team affected by the Centipede's Dilemma ?

2012-07-23T15:25:04Z

For an organisation, a team to be efficient, proper strategy and thinking is very important. For sure, running a team without a plan, an objective can be very counterproductive : people don't know what they have to do.

Saying this, it's also very important to keep in mind that the biggest risk is to do nothing, because you're scared of not having THE good plan.

Thinking too much sometimes can kill organisations : people spend time discussing about defining basics things, basic rules, and don't move !

The best way to explain this is the "Centipede's dilemma" :

A spider met a centipede. "How do you keep all those legs coordinated?" the spider asked. The centipede replied, "I don't know. I'd never thought about it before." At this point, the spider ran off, and the centipede tried to give chase, but was unable to because he couldn't make his legs walk properly, and he could never move again.

So, be sure not be affected by the Centipede's Dilemna !

Photo Credit: theilr via Compfight

10 hands on 1 guitar.

2012-07-26T07:34:00Z

"Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover)" has a good success these days in France. If you watch this video you'll have the song in your mind all day long !

7 ways to avoid the Centipede's Dilemma

2012-07-30T04:26:02Z

In a previous post I've described the "Centipede's dilemma" that may affect your team.

Here're some rules to avoid this Centiped's dilemma and make your team as efficient as possible :

1. be clear on the objective : if team members know what they have to achieve, they will not loose time in discussions. 2. be as clear as possible on the plan : what are the milestones, the deliverables. 3. be clear that the team has to success, not to explain the failure. 4. on a project reuse standard templates from previous projects (for minutes of meetings, ...) : we need to reuse, reuse, resue... No creativity is needed for templates, templates will help people to focus on the essential. 5. set a standard who / what / when template for action lists : people should not spend days to put in place action lists 6. define proper governance model with at least 2 level (operational / steering) and be sure to make it work as soon as possible. 7. be sure to involve experienced team members. They will detect "centipede dilemma" effect and react immediately to propose ways to proceed.

Photo Credit: theilr via Compfight

Will you buy it ?'

2012-08-01T07:18:14Z

Google glasses is said to be a new breakthrow as big as iphone was. For sure it's something totally new, incredible. To get an idea, here're 2 videos. The first one shows the concept, the second is a real demo done at Google I/O conference on June 17th.

is it really a good idea ?'

2012-08-04T06:26:18Z

Previously I've posted 2 videos about Google Glasses concept. These videos are from Google and present the concept.

Here're 2 other videos that give another point of view.

The first one is just a parody, the 2nd one go more in depth in what our life could be if google glasses-like devices come in our world.

Sight from Sight Systems on Vimeo.

August 2012'

2012-09-10T16:35:15Z

Photo Credit: David via Compfight Last time I've posted about my running experience was in april after my very good run in Annecy Half-Marathon when I improved my personnal record by 10 minutes.

5 months ago.

These 5 months have been difficult in term of running due to a bad muscle pain in the thigh .

Just after the race, the pain was so strong that it was even difficult to walk.

I had to rest a lot for it to heal.

From may to July I ran less than 50 km in total ! (I ran 105 km just in 1 month in march).

Starting mid-august, I have been able to run again around 2/3 times per week, and I'm very happy !

In order to prevent the pain to come back, doctors have asked me to strech more and build some abdominal muscle. I'm focusing on it...

My next objective is still the Paris Marathon, on April 7th 2013 !

I'll be ready !

The art of setting limits'

2012-09-17T05:00:00Z

The power of less is a book by Leo Babauta. This book is full of good stuff.

Chapter 2 is about "The art of setting limits".

Chapter main idea :

[h4]Setting limits is mandatory and is a iterative process[/h4] Our time and space is limited, so we need to focus on limited items.

If you just take all comes to you, you'll not be able to achieve it. you'll have to many actions to do, to many phone call to give, and so on...

If you live without limits, it weaknens you in many ways, it dilutes your power and effectivness.

You can set limits on emails, daily tasks, the amount of time spent on the phone, the number of projects you have on your plate, ...

To set the limits, you have to find the good number of items that fit to you.

For this you'll have to analyse your habit and define a limit, test it for a week, adjust, and adjust again.

Here's a quote from the book :

[blockquote_with_author author="Leo Babauta"]

1. Analyze your current usage levels (how many times do you do something a day ?) and pick a lower limit based on what you think would be ideal 2. Test it out for about a week, and then analyze whether that's working for you. 3. If it doesn't work, adjust to a new level you think might work better, and test that out for about a week. 4. Continue to adjust until you find the right level and until you make it a habit.

[/blockquote_with_author]

If you want to read the full story, you can buy the paper or kindle version of the book here : Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential

What is the link between Neil Armstrong and a Google search ?

2012-09-21T11:31:17Z

** Apollo and Google ** from Laurent Maumet

Only 2 companies are making profit selling phones !

2012-10-04T13:56:21Z

You should read the presentation "The State of the Internet" from "Business Insider" .

You'll find in a lot of numbers about internet evolution in last years (audience, advertisement, mobile, ...)

For example, today, 95% of mobile profit are going to 2 companies : Apple and Samsung !

Except HTC, all others are losing money.

(source : kelblog)

Why I switched from Nirvana to Wunderlist ?'

2012-10-24T14:14:15Z

I've been using Nirvana for a long time as my only tool to support my GTD system.

I like it because it's nicely done, coherent with GTD, efficient.

By the way 2 weeks ago I've switched to Wunderlist.

Why ?

For ONE reason : MOBILITY.

Wunderlist has an ipad and an android appplications.

These applications are nicely done and allow me to be 100% sure to access my actions even if I'm not connected to a good network (which is quite often finally).

If I want to have an efficient system it must be accessible on my ipad and or my galaxy tab, everyday, in all locations, online and offline.

For this, a dedicated application is a must.

photo : Hartwig HKD via Compfight

4 reasons to use mind42 for mind mapping

2012-12-05T11:06:21Z

Today I've found a very nice mind mapping application that I'd like to share it with you.

I'm a big fan of mindmapping, I use it quite systematically when I'm brainstorming, thinking, ...

Today I've given a new try to mind42, and I have to say that I'm very happy of what I saw.

The team did a great work and the application is now very good.

What I prefer is :

it's simple

In a simple browser, the application is very intuitive, no need to read long tutorial, ...

it's bug free

I did not try it extensively, but for basic usage, in a chrome browser, I did not meet any bug !

it allows me to collaborate with others !

This is for me a must have for mindmap application. Mindmapping is for brainstorming, puting your ideas on paper to sutrcure them but also to share them.

The best is to be able to collaborate on the same piece.

Today, I still miss the wonderful mindmap plugin in google wave !

It seems that mind42 is very good for collaboration : 2 or more people can collaborate real-time on the same document. That's great !

it's free !

photo : blmiers2 via Compfight

'All is about passion - Scott Dunlap (ultra runner)'

2012-12-13T10:49:48Z

Scott Dunlap is an ultra runner. His passion, his life is about running races longer than a marathon (up to 100 miles, 160 kilometers). Scott gave a speech at Le Web last week. The topic was about "internet of things". Scott uses devices to monitor his performances : speed, elevation, calories burnt,...

Running very long discuss is crasy. It's a lot of pain.

So why do this ?

Scott answer is very simple : "all is about passion". I like this statement. Your content here.One nice device he also uses is a kind of "mood traker". Every 30 minutes, Scott press a button to rank his mindset, his mood on a scale from - 4 to +4, i.ie from "please kill me now" to "Euphoric". The result is very interesting and is repeatable from race to race : Scott mood go up and down 3 times, with higher and higher intensity.

The 3 "bad mood" states are called "The wall", "the pit" and "the Abyss".

Scott explains that he like running because these difficults phases are followed by good ones ! And especially the last one the Euphoria state.

A very inspiring video.

Un livre blanc sur le cloud à lire de toute urgence !

2012-12-27T12:51:07Z

Tendance-Cloud propose un livre blanc dans lequel 10 experts partagent leur vision du Cloud.

Parmi les "experts" on retrouve des professionnels "historiques" de l'informatique "traditionnelle" (IBM, CAP GEMINI, ORANGE), mais aussi de la nouvelle (Revevol, Beamap, Clever Cloud, Group Camp, CloudMagazine.fr) et du monde de l'netreprise (Lyonnaise des Eaux).

Les 10 articles offrent des éclairages divers sur le sujet, une mine d'information.

A lire de toute urgence !

Le livre blanc est la.

Infrastructure capacity planning in the cloud...

2013-01-18T11:02:06Z

This slide is from a presentation by Adrian Cockcroft "Replacing Datacenter Oracle with Global Apache Cassandra on AWS.".

I love it, I even printed it and put it on the wall in my office!

Cassandra implementation at NetFlix

2013-01-25T06:00:39Z

Cassandra is one on the top NoSQL database.

Cassandra is used for example by twitter, eBay, Netflix.

This presentation from a Adrian Cockcroft is available on slideshare.

It's very clear, concrete and pragmatic about Netflix move from inhouse Oracle DB to cloud hosted (at amazon) Cassandra DB.

** Migrating Netflix from Datacenter Oracle to Global Cassandra ** from Adrian Cockcroft

culture change for an IT team'

2013-02-04T11:36:24Z

Moving from legacy, on-premise IT systems to cloud-based solutions (SaaS or IaaS) involves a cultural change for IT team members. IT guys need to switch their mind, accept to "loose control" on their hardware. In order to illustrate it to my own team, I've written a few slides with 3 examples. These examples are of course caricatures, but the idea is there ...

** Go to cloud culture change for an IT team ** from Laurent Maumet

a fantastic IT portfolio template.'

2013-02-13T16:40:31Z

If you are looking for good portfolio management solutions for your IT projects, I highly recommend you the IT Dashboard website.

Building an IT projects portfolio is very important for CIOs in order to :

[list_checkgrey][li] list potential projects, decide which projects to launch[/li][li]follow on going projects assing progress and risks[/li][li]have a good communication tool.[/li][/list_checkgrey]

As stated on the welcome page :

The IT Dashboard is a website enabling federal agencies, industry, the general public and other stakeholders to view details of federal information technology investments. The purpose of the Dashboard is to provide information on the effectiveness of government IT programs and to support decisions regarding the investment and management of resources. The Dashboard is now being used by the Administration and Congress to make budget and policy decisions.

This site presents all US federal IT projects.

The main points I like are :

[h4]Transparency[/h4]

All projects are presented.

The montlhy report by the project manager with the current status and risk analysis is available.

[h4]3 simple kpis[/h4]

Each project is managed using only 3 kpis :

[list_checkgrey][li]project cost[/li][li]project schedule[/li][li]risk assessement by project manager[/li][/list_checkgrey]

This set of kpi is simple and easy to understand. A FAQ gives all the definitions.

[h4]Nice visual representation[/h4]

The green/orange/red color code helps to have a very good immediate view

Simple graphs are porposed.

[h4] The source code is available [/h4]

Finally, the source-code of the site is available for free.

I use it as a template since 2 years, based on a sharepoint framework. If you're interested in sharing, let me know.

The Shadoks effect.'

2013-06-05T16:41:24Z

As a CIO one of the biggest challenges I face in my journey to cloud computing (using SaaS or real public IaaS) is the IT ecosystem resistance.

Traditional IT partners come from the 'non-cloud' industry (and often are still into it).

Going to the cloud is for them a big challenge because it will change completely their job (no more licenses to sell, no more big integration projects).

It will impact their business model deeply: fully flexible costs based on usage, no more upgrades, no more 'maintenance' fees.

The Shadoks used to say 'Why do it easy when you can do it the hard way?'

Many consultants become Shadoks when they talk about cloud computing.

We start from a very simple concept: a multi-tenant application accessible by a single browser and shared by all users and we come to discuss very complicated stuff like 'private cloud', 'PaaS', 'IaaS', 'hybrid', 'public', ...

All this is explained in complicated charts, with different words.

The problem of that is we often lose the initial objective and finally just discuss implementing some private cloud (which is not the cloud !)

I'm more than ever convinced that the IT world is in strong mutation and that cloud will change everything.

Players need to adapt or disappear.

Cloud is simple and easy to go, don't make it complicated.

My ZTD experience, 1.5 year after...

2013-06-12T06:05:12Z

I discovered Leo Batauta Zen to done blog in January 2012.

I started to implement ZTD as my productivity method just few weeks after.

In order to help me during the first weeks and to share with the community, I started a series of blog posts during the first weeks (in fact 9 weeks).

The main changes in my personnal organisation since then are :

Create a daily routine ! Take the habbit to create habbits and stick to them. This is a very powerfull skill that we all should learn ! Leo's approach is very pragmatic, concrete, and it works ! (at least for me...) For example , I've setup the habbit to run 3 times per week, the habbits to keep my email inbox at 0

Every day, 3 MITs Every single day I define the 3 (3, not 4 or 5!) MITs (Most Important Things) that I commit to do for this day. This is really a very simple but VERY powerfull habit. It helps me to feel under control and achieve most important things, so it's helps me to be more productive.

** Simplify, simplify, simplify** I'm an engineer, I like complicated and elaborated things. But based on Leo's advices, I'm now in a 'simplify' as much as possible approach. For example, my action management tool has been simplified drastically. I went from an elaborated GTD oriented system with maybe 150 actions into it in 20 different lists, to a simple system with 3 lists and around 30 actions into it.

So yes, I'm very happy about it.

If you're looking for a good productivity ;ethod, I highly recommend you to have a look at it.

4 organisational tips'

2013-06-25T10:20:43Z

As a CIO I've sometimes to face crisis : a critical system is down, it has to be repaired as fast as possible.

In this case, a good organisation and good processes are mandatory to be efficient.

When 2 remote teams have to work together to solve the issue, it's even more critical.

The 4 key points I check to be sure of the efficiency of the teams are :

1 leader per team. These leaders need to be in close communication and to trust each other. During the crisis they should be very close. These leaders need to be real leaders, not just guys that follow actions.

-** 1 common action list**. A clear action list (who / what / when / status) has to be shared in real time if possible by both teams.

For each action, apply the process : Assign / Acknowledge / Report status. The task is explicitly assign to an owner(a person). The owner explicitly acknowledge that the action is assigned to him (her). The owner reports on regular basis about the progress.
Regular overall status published by the leaders. This in mandatory to give clear visibility to all the team members, it's also important because it obliges the leaders to take a step back and make a status.

Photo : Tambako The Jaguar via Compfight

My definition of IT system cloud index

2013-07-09T17:57:54Z

The objective of the "cloud index" is to monitor the cloud level of an IT system in order to monitor and to communicate in a simple way to the level of cloud reached.

Here's the definition I use.

The IT system is defined as a sum of Business Services (i.e. applications, see ITIL definition).

Each business service is characterized by a "feature_size".

The "feature_size" express the complexity of the application (kind of "function point" approach).

For each business service, we express it's "cloud_level" on a scale from 0 to 100 :

* 0** ** : the business service is hosted on dedicated servers on premise * 10 : the business service is hosted on shared servers (via virtualization for example) on servers on premise. * 20 : the business service is hosted on an external datacenter * 50 : the business service is hosted on a IaaS platform * 60 : the business service is on a PaaS platform * 100 : the business service is supported by a full Saas Solution.

Based on this, the cloud index is defined as the weighted average of the business services "cloud_level" weighted by the "feature_size".

13+1 raisons de lire On entend l'arbre tomber mais pas la forêt pousser

2013-07-23T05:46:59Z

Apres l'avoir dévoré, voila les 13 raisons pour lesquelles je vous conseille le livre de l’économiste Nicolas Bouzou "On entend l'arbre tomber mais pas la forêt pousser".

1. C'est un livre qui propose un éclairage original sur les mutations du monde en cours 2. C'est un livre optimiste 3. C'est un livre qui se lit facilement 4. C'est un livre qui fait un voyage dans le temps, 5. C'est un livre concret 6. C'est un livre dans son temps 7. C'est un livre très documenté 8. C'est un livre didactique 9. C'est un livre qui replace les changements actuels dans l'histoire 10. C'est un livre qui remet en perspective nos connaissances historiques 11. C'est un livre pragmatique 12. C'est un livre dans lequel on apprend beaucoup de choses 13. C'est un livre disponible sur liseuse

Et en bonus, c'est un livre dans lequel j'ai appris la signification du mot 'thuriféraire" !

The 4 real reasons why cloud computing is not good for your business

2013-07-23T06:18:17Z

The IT world is in mutation. This is now sure. Legacy IT is going to the cloud.

Around me, I see people that don't really believe it or are reluctant, so here're the 4 reasons that can explain why cloud computing is not good for your business :

1. because your IT team does not understand it 2. because you think it's safer to keep your money under your bed instead of putting it in a Bank 3. because you are afraid of change and love status quo, and you're convinced that it was better in the old days 4. because you produce your own electricity and don't want to rely on centralized power plants

If none of these are true for you... believe me, you should proceed!

Photo by William Stitt on Unsplash

Today I've removed Dropbox app from my ipad.

2013-09-22T20:29:36Z

Today I've removed Dropbox app from my ipad.

The reason is very simple : I don't use it anymore since few months.

I store a lot of files in the cloud, and I was an happy early adopter of Dropbox but as Google drive has improved a lot, it's now my single place to store files.

I did not plan for this change, but it happened because Google Drive makes it easy to share documents and because it can be easily used by several users on the same PC.

I've 1000 contacts on linkedin

2013-09-23T17:00:57Z

Today I just saw I've 1000 contacts on linkedin.

I use linkedin more and more everyday.

First it's my "evolutive" contact list : every time I meet someone I immediately send a connection invitation, and I don't keep anymore the paper business card.

If someone I meet is not on linkedin, I'll not keep his contact information.

I appreciate to keep "light" contact with people and follow their carreer and contact them again later even if they have a new job.

It's also a place where I share interesting articles (from feedly) and I read trending topics and also parse what my contacts are sharing, which is often good stuff as these people have something in common with me (they are in my network).

Until today my policy has been to accept all invitations (except very strange ones, but they are very few) and I'm quite happy with it as I don't feel totally overwhelmed by requests and I still see a coherence in my contacts.

Maybe I'll change that in the future.

'[Good Video] The Social Media revolution.'

2013-09-24T17:07:02Z

This is an update of the video from Erik Qualman the author of Socialnomics.

Still my reference for Social media understanding.

26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20

2013-09-25T17:02:53Z

I love this presentation.

My top 5 are :

#1 Stop multi-tasking

#2 Set-up a routine and stick to it

#3 Doing is better than perfect

#4 Delegate and learn to make us of people

#5 Always take notes

** 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20 ** from Etienne Garbugli @egarbugli

The scribe

2013-09-26T21:13:36Z

As a CIO I’ve sometimes to face crisis : a critical system is down, it has to be repaired as fast as possible. In such a case, a good organisation and good processes are mandatory to be efficient. When the crisis in ongoing, people are under pressure. All the members of the crisis squad are working hard to execute actions to solve the problem. New events are coming about the environment. 1 key role is the scribe. The scribe duty is (simply) to write down what is ongoing : actions performed, news findings, new events... This role is very important because :

this material will be used real time by the crisis leader when he makes a status
the person in charge of crisis communication will find there all informations he needs
new person coming on board during the crisis will be brieffed using it
finally, these notes will be key material for the analysis after the crisis. The notes will be evidences that will be used during the debrieff to inderstand what happened.

Death by Powerpoint !

2013-09-27T22:30:52Z

In the good series of presentations about presentations, here's a nice one by Alexei Kapterev.

** Death by PowerPoint ** from Alexei Kapterev

Just spend less to boost your innovation (source = Amazon.com)

2013-10-23T14:46:48Z

This slide describe the 3 pillars of Amazon culture. Of course, Amazon is Customer centric. Of course Amazon is a company that innovate a lot. What is very interesting is that Jeff Bezos (Amazon's CEO) explains that frugality (spending less) is a boost for innovation. I like this concept and strongly believe he is right.

(This slide comes from the presentation "Amazon.com: the Hidden Empire ".)

a comprehensive metholology to go to cloud.'

2014-02-19T09:37:00Z

People often ask me about which methodology I use to drive the migration to the cloud of IT systems.

In fact, the methodology I use is a public one. It has been published in 2011 by Vivek Kundra (former Federal CIO) and is simply called "FEDERAL CLOUD COMPUTING STRATEGY".

This document cannot be found online but I kept it for you, it's here :

Download

It's 32 pages, and it's very easy to read.

It first explains the expected benefits of the cloud and then proposes a concrete approach to structure the migration.

A must read!

Today I've put this on a wall in my office...

2014-02-20T17:05:04Z

The 3 promises of cloud computing

2014-05-06T06:19:13Z

People often ask me what is cloud computing added-value. My answer is :

1- Lower cost of ownership

Going to the cloud means the big modification, infrastructure sharing, same software for all. This will necessarily bring lower cost of ownership.

2- Better functionalities.

Cloud based applications (Software as a service) are new software. They use last available technologies and implement new functional concepts. The major improvement is about collaboration. Because ‘file’ as we knew it for ever does not exist anymore, people can collaborate easily in a totally new way.

3- Better agility and flexibility

With cloud infrastructure can be started up or stopped on demand, applications do not need to be installed. They just need to be used. This brings a totally new dimension in term of agility and flexibility.

My new todo manager is todoist , I love it.

2014-05-14T20:27:17Z

So I’m using a new application to manage my actions list.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="320"] Todos Santos - Greg Long (Photo credit: nathangibbs)[/caption]

I’ve been a happy user of wunderlist

for some months, but some synchronization bugs that impacted my lists (the lists were not the same between devices) make me lose confidence and that’s not a good situation for a todo manager!

Looking around I came to todoist

I’m using it for 6 months and I’ve even subscribed a premium account last week (first time for me !).

If you are looking for a todo application (and even if you are not) I highly recommend you to have a look at todoist, I promise you’ll not regret it.

The main reasons that make me happy about it are :

1- simplicity

todoist is very simple with no extra features. The UI is 'human-oriented', for example, if you want to plan a task for tomorrow, you just write ‘tomorrow’ in the date field… The interface is clean, no extra buttons.

2- all devices and Gmail integration

It’s a must-have for a todo manager to be accessible from all devices. Todoist web is very efficient, the Android and iPad applications gave me great experience. I use it mainly for my android phone on mobility but also in chrome when I’m on my laptop. The chrome extension is great. As I’m a Gmail user, I appreciate the Gmail integration that allows me to transform an email into action in just 1 click.

3- projects, sub-projects, tasks, subtasks, labels

Managing my todo, I need to structure tasks to group them by topic or project, … todoist is very flexible for that. It offers to create projects, and subprojects, and even subtasks. It’s very nice. It’s even possible to use tags (just by adding @tag) in the task description. So I can organise my tasks very easily,

4- sharing with others

Even with the free version, you can share tasks with others. You can share a project (everybody will see all the tasks within the project), and assign a task to a specific person. It’s the first time I see a todo tool really good for sharing actions.

5- APIs

todoist offers a REST API to access your actions, it opens a lot of possibilities for future integration. I’m starting to play with it, and plan to integrate some statistics about my actions in my ‘personnal analytics’ dashboard (more about that soon).

6- and even fun!

todoist implement a metric ‘the karma’ that monitor your level of productivity. If you add action, complete them on time, the karma goes up. If you have late actions, the karma goes down. It’s not very important, but it’s fun and gives some motivation when I tend to be out of control and don’t update my actions…

So know, just click here and enjoy!

'[MUST SEE] Aaron Swartz – The Internet’s Own Boy'

2014-07-28T22:57:01Z

Tonight I watched the movie about Aaron Swartz. This guy was a genius, I highly recommend you to watch it.

Let's fight the conference call tragedy !

2015-01-06T09:55:05Z

Every day we are struggling to deploy new tools to collaborate better with remote teams (in my case using Google Hangouts but it could be skype or Lync or ...).

What we try to avoid is the "conference call tragedy".

This video explains perfectly what I mean by "conference call tragedy".

Using a system like Google Hangouts mixing sound, video, document sharing is a strong help to improve this kind of meeting because :

it's easier to connect (no need for a pin number, ...)
every participant knows who is connected
with some video, we bring some "humanity"
we can share the document easily so be sure everybody is on the same page.

That said, switching from conference call to Hangouts can be difficult because of some technical problems: you need a correct data connection which sometimes not the case, you need a correct earphone/microphone, people you are interacting with need to have an account or a piece of software, you also need to learn how to use it (even if it's very easy, still some tricks to know...) But the biggest barrier to switch is people resistance to change: we have been using phones for so many years...

The transformation is in progress, it will take some time, but companies who will be able to make the switch can improve dramatically the way they work!

5 cool startups in Wearables

2015-02-13T12:35:36Z

Last week I had the chance to attend the Wearable Technologies Conference in Munich (#WTEU2015) It has been a great opportunity to have a view on wearables market and meet some very cool startups.

Bitbite : the first wearable device that helps you lose weight and improve your eating habits.

It’s a device that you put in your ear and listens to the way you eat (chewing sounds). The promise is that the device will be able to analyze your eating habit and will coach you to improve them. For example, you have the bad habit to eat a snack every day at 11 am because you're hungry. To correct that, at 9 am, the device will just tell you “you should eat an apple now”. Funny. What I like about this idea is the way they use an easily available data (chewing sounds) and get value from it.

Bragi : This device wants to know what you are doing.

http://www.bragi.com/Content/Movies/BRAGI_IMAGE-FIN-V7A-h264-01.mp4

It’s another device you put in your ear. It will have some sensor to monitor your activity (speed, heart rate, …) and will embed an mp3 player. What interests me more here is the positioning of Bragi team about data privacy. Their view is that wearable should not store your data in the cloud, because of data privacy issue. No other speakers took this position. 2 quotes : “If you give your data to big companies they will use it. If they say they will not, it’s bullshit” “I urge you not to talk about data, it’s your life. You do not share your life with everyone”.

I like the idea and agree with the concern, but I’m also convinced that sharing data brings value so people will accept to share...

Heddoko : a complete solution compression suit with sensors that gives feedback.

Heddoko from heddoko on Vimeo.

A very promising solution (by cool Canadian guys) based on sensors that record your movement and promise to help you to improve. For a start, they focus on Yoga, golf, and swimming. The challenging part will be to develop efficient algorithm to analyze data and provide a valuable feedback to users. I really love the idea of “personal coach”.

UPRight Perfect posture in just a few weeks.

UPRight is a small device that you put in your back and will vibrate if you don’t keep a good posture. The idea is to coach you for few hours for few weeks in order to teach you how to have the good posture.

Another good example of a device that promises to help us to stick to our resolutions.

Upright - Perfect posture in just a few weeks. from Oded Cohen on Vimeo.

Sensoria : smart socks for running

Sensoria Coaching Evolved from Sensoria Inc on Vimeo.

As I’m a runner, Sensoria is a dream for me. In order to avoid injuries and improve my running efficiency, I’ve read many books that describe the good running form. Then I try to use them and adapt the way I run. But I’ve to say it’s almost impossible to get results because of lack of feedback. My Garmin 620 smartwatch gives me some data (cadence, vertical oscillation, ground contact time) but these are just numbers and it’s difficult to improve based on this. The promise of Sensoria is to really coach the runner and give him feedback to improve. I’ll buy it as soon as it will be available!

All these 5 startups are at an early stage (not a product yet on the market, let’s keep an eye to see what they deliver.

Summary of the book Reinventing Organizations in a 9' video

2015-06-01T12:05:45Z

I've not yet read the book "Reinventing Organizations", this video proposes a summary in 9 minutes.

The main points I'd like to highlight are :

the explanation on why implementing "Lean" can be a problem if the organization is not at a good level.
the idea that the world is not black & white and that all types of organizations can be useful based on company history, challenges, and objectives.

Lean and Agile Adoption with the Laloux Culture Model from Agile For All on Vimeo.

Netflix culture in 124 slides

2015-09-08T11:59:39Z

Netflix is an impressive company.

I've already posted slides from them about their cloud journey (how and why they migrated their IT from internal to fully cloud at Amazon).

The purpose of this presentation is to describe Netflix culture.

I like the fact that it's fully public (older versions are even available), this transparency shows that people at Netflix are very confident their values are the good ones and want to spread the word. One of my preferred slides is slide number 83 :

** Culture ** from Reed Hastings

The most important word today is API

2015-09-23T12:54:38Z

These days I'm working a lot of Digital Transformation.

What does it mean? What are the opportunities? What are the challenges?

As an IT guy, my conviction is that all is about the cloud (of course, and that's not new) and APIs.

APIs are the real game changer that allows all IT systems to be open for interfaces and collaboration by design.

Part of Amazon's success is a consequence of Bezos initial choice to go for 100% Apis back in 2002. He even wrote a memo about it :

All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.

Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.

It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter.

All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired.

Thank you; have a nice day!

For example, having IT systems exposed throw APIs allowed Amazon to launch their cloud offer AWS for everybody even if it the software were developed for internal purpose (running their private datacenters supporting Amazon's retail business).

In order to convince people and explain what all this is about, I'm constantly using this presentation :

** Why should C-Level care about APIs? It's the new economy, stupid. ** from FΛBERNOVEL

Why should C-Level care about APIs? It's the new economy, stupid. from Fabernovel

Focus'

2016-01-04T21:32:08Z

I like new year time. It's a time when business really slows down for few days and when I've time to think about long-term stuff. It's a good time to take a fresh start and take some good new-year resolutions. For example, one of the best resolutions I took was back in '12 when I decided to implement "Zen To Done" productivity method from Leo Babauta, it really changed my life.

Of course like all of us I'm struggling to find sustainable new year resolutions that I'll not forget after few weeks or even few days.

For this year, I've been inspired by Benoit Curdy who proposed to make it simple and only take 1 word (he took "Quality" for this year).

For me, the word will be "Focus". For 2016, in all my actions I'll focus as much as possible:

in meetings, I'll be 100% focused on what happen in the room (i.e. not checking my phone, browsing the internet or answering emails)
when I'll be with someone I'll focus on what he or she is telling me
I'll keep only 1 browser tab open to focus on the action I'm currently doing (writing a document, answering an email, reading news, ...). I took this one from a recent post from Leo Babauta, I already tried it, it's not easy, but cool.
to create new habits, I'll focus only on 1 per month (taking 30 days challenges)
every week I'll choose which big project I want to focus on to make a move
when I run (I do it 4 times per week) I'll listen to nothing and just focus on the run (not all runs, but maybe 1 / week)
I'll read only 1 book at a time (I've currently 4 books in progress)
...

What I expect from this focus is:

be more efficient avoiding multitasking, and being really concentrated
be able to move on a big complicated project by focusing on 1 specific action
be a better manager for my team
be a better dad and husband

This word "Focus" will be always in my mind. In order to change my behaviour, I'll proceed step by step and implement changes 1 by 1, with focus! (not trying to do all objectives that are in the post starting tomorrow) .

I wish you a very good year!

About machine learning

2016-01-13T07:40:57Z

Machine learning is changing the world.

In near future electronics systems (our phones, our cars, our watches, our smart home, ...) will be able to achieve results that will bring us in another dimension.

Machine learning is a technology really rising for 2 years and creating huge business value. It's pushed by the big ones as it's at the heart of their business: Google, Facebook, Baidu, Tesla, ... When Netflix recommends you a film, they use machine learning, when Gmail filter your spam, they use machine learning, and so on. These are "simple" examples, more important ones are coming.

First example: autonomous cars.

Soon ( Elon Musk recently announced it will be in 2 years from now) cars will be able to run autonomously in 'normal' streets.

They will be able to 'drive' better than normal humans.

Recently, George Hotz claimed he is building an autonomous car, by himself, and using a software he wrote made of only 2000 lines of code.

You should read the article and watch the video, very impressive: the software does not explain the car how to drive, but how to learn to drive. George has to drive kilometers (he even plan to be an Uber driver to gather more data) and the car learns to drive looking at George's rides data.

Another example is image or speech recognition.

Google Photos is now able to search your pictures based on people, things or places.

Andrew Ng from Baidu Research presented a device (a simple camera plugged into a smartphone) that is able to analyze and describe what it sees. Baidu Eye.

There's also a cool video with Kyle McDonald walking in an Amsterdam Street with his opened laptop and the software is describing what it can see throw the webcam, for example, 'a man eating a hotdog in a crowd' or 'a person riding a skateboard on a city street'. It's amazing to see in real timing the algorithm reacting to new real-life situations.

The business applications for these image recognition capabilities are huge.

For example, a user takes a picture of a something he'd like to buy and the application is able to recognize the object and propose offers.

So what is machine learning?

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can teach themselves to grow and change when exposed to new data.

(source)

For an extensive explanation, there is Wikipedia.

The best and simplest explanation I've seen is recently is in the book " Robbie the Robot Learns to Read" (by the way it's a book for kids).

The story is about Robbie the robot that wants to learn to read.

First, Robbie is taught about syntax and grammar rules. This is not a Succes, Robbie is in fact not able to read books because he often encounters text that does not follow the rules he learned. This is "standard" programming. The second method is to simply let Robbie "read" as many books as possible (as he doesn't know how to read, it means he will just parse texts). Based on all these "reading", Robbie will be able to self-learn how a text is structured, how it works, and then learn how to read.

In this video, Andrew Ng from Baidu Research gives an example of how they fed a software with youtube videos for 1 week. After 1 week, the software has been able to autogenerate a neural network to recognize the most common image on youtube: a cat! (even if he even doesn't know what a cat is). The beauty of machine learning is that the most it gathers data, the most it's accurate.

Why is Machine learning coming now?

The theory behind machine learning is quite old. It's about neural network type algorithms that have been established yea rs ago.

The theory is nice but like a rocket in order to fly it needs 2 things: a big motor and a big fuel tank. A rocket with a big motor and small tank will not go very far, a rocket with a small motor and a lot of fuel will even not take off.

For machine learning, the motor is the computing power, the fuel is data.

Thanks to Moore's law processors (CPU or GPU) are always more powerful, thanks to cloud computing a huge amount of processing are accessible for everybody, this is key to power the machine learning algorithm.

The fuel is data. 90% of world's data have been generated over last two years. Because storage is cheaper and cheaper (people thinks it may be 0$ soon), and accessible easily thanks to the cloud, a machine algorithm can find fuel easily.

What's next?

Today machine learning is just at the beginning. It's often used as a buzz word, a lot is still to be done, but machine learning is changing the world and that's a great news!

Spotify Engineering Culture

2016-01-18T07:44:58Z

Spotify the well know music app is a European company that is very successful. It seems that the culture in the company is quite unique and the good think is that they are public about it and even spend the time to explain it.

There are 2 charts I keep using for years to inspire me.

It's simple, easy to read and full of great ideas.

https://vimeo.com/85490944

https://vimeo.com/94950270

To know more, it's on this page.

Learn'

2017-01-27T07:01:04Z

1 year ago I decided that my word for 2016 would be "Focus" and I'm very happy about it.

This idea of replacing the traditional New Year’s resolutions by just 1 word is an idea I took from Benoit Curdy and for 2016 it works for me. I really made progress, it helped me to be more efficient and enjoy life (1 tab in browser is quite challenging but I love it :-) )

It's now time to decide what will be my new word for 2017 and it will be "Learn".

I've always been in a "learning" attitude. During my career, I've jumped between different topics, businesses, jobs.

Learning new things is key to be able to invent, innovate.

In the tech area, many things are happening: block-chain, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, autonomous cars, chatbots, platforms, and also Arduino, raspberry, IoT, ... The world is changing very fast thanks to new technologies and it's going faster and faster.

Looking back at what has happened in the last 10 years, is really mind-blowing.

Didn't exist in 2006: iPhone iPad Kindle 4G Uber Airbnb Android Oculus Spotify Nest Kickstarter Stripe Square Instagram Snapchat WhatsApp

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) 23 janvier 2017

What will happen in the next 10 years?

In order to really understand what is happening, be able to anticipate trends, and innovate I think it's even more important to learn.

My objective for this year will be to spend the time to learn new things, especially in the tech area. That will include

* learn more about A.I. I know the theory of neural networks as I studied it in the '90 but I need to learn how to use it now (could be with google Tensorflow or others) * learn new development languages (should be node.js and Angular.js) * learn how to assemble hardware to build simple automation in my house (could be this or that) * learn more about block-chain (not sure what I can do with that).

In order to learn I'll have to :

* Dedicate time to this activity (this means less time other things, I'll have to make choices) * Read more and more: As Confucius said: “You cannot open a book without learning something.”. Last year I read 10 books, I plan to read at least 15 this year. * Try things, experiment. I'll try as much as possible to implement concrete things. Experiment means failure, and failure means learning. * Share as much as possible. Share with my friends, my colleagues, my family but also online. I'm a heavy user of Twitter and LinkedIn, I will be more present on Facebook to share and interact with others (especially to learn how it works )

I wish you a wonderful year!

Read'

2018-02-07T21:31:20Z

#My word for 2018 will be "Read"

I started with this "word of the year" idea 2 years ago. This idea of replacing the traditional New Year’s resolutions by just 1 word is an idea I took from Benoit Curdy.

In 2016 the word I choose was "Focus", in 2017 "Learn".

In fact, I realized that Focus + Learn = Read!

I love reading books as it's a quiet moment during which I'll have to focus on one single and simple task and at the same time it highly stimulates me, opens new horizons, brings me new ideas.

In 2016 I read 10 books, in 2017 16. For 2017, my objective is to finish 24 books which is 2 per month.

Around 1/3 of it should be fictional books that I listen to while running using Audible.

The other 2/3 will be non-fictional books I'll read using my Kindle. For these, my objective will be to find a way to remind what I read.

When I read I often highlight interesting paragraphs or quotes. My track record in remembering what I read is very low, this is quite frustrating as one of my objectives when I read books is to learn things and to be able to share with others about these readings.

I'll implement the method proposed here A System for Remembering What You Read.

It seems to be a little bit too complicated and may put many constraints on me but I'll give it a try and simplify it if needed.

I'll publish my notes about books on this blog even if it may be a difficult exercise as some of the books I read are written in French and here I write in English. But let's try!

I'll also continue to use Goodreads.

Photo Credit: [wuestenigel](https://www.flickr.com/photos/30478819@N08/34479911450/) Flickr via [Compfight](http://compfight.com) [cc](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

0 to 1

2018-06-14T12:02:06Z

This post is part of a series of posts about book I've read. My objective in these posts is not to do a complete summary of the book, but more to give you an idea of the content and why you should read it. They are also memos I use to remind myself what I've read.

Book title : "0 to 1 - Notes on startups, or how to build the future"

Author : Peter Thiels

Summary

Peter Thiel is is a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund . In this book he gives his view on how to create a new successful business :

to be a real game changer, a new business is nit a copy of an existing one. The Idea has to be totally new. From 0 to 1. Not from n to n+1.
monopoly is key. The new business has to be so new that it will be a monopoly.

The book is very practical and full of anecdotes and real examples.

My notes

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. > >

Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th. > >

Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. > >

This pessimistic undercurrent drove then-president Bush 41 out of office and won Ross Perot nearly 20% of the popular vote in ’92—the best showing for a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. > >

Under perfect competition, in the long run no company makes an economic profit. > >

Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money > >

Monopolies drive progress because the promise of years or even decades of monopoly profits provides a powerful incentive to innovate. > >

All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition. > >

children, it cost Microsoft and Google their dominance: Apple came along and overtook them all. In January 2013, Apple’s market capitalization was $500 billion, while Google and Microsoft combined were worth $467 billion. Just three years before, Microsoft and Google were each more valuable than Apple. War is costly business. > >

Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding. > >

As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage. > >

As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible. > >

Eroom’s law—that’s Moore’s law backward—observes that the number of new drugs approved per billion dollars spent on R&D has halved every nine years since 1950. > >

Biotech is difficult because we didn’t design our bodies, and the more we learn about them, the more complex they turn out to be. > >

progress without planning is what we call “evolution.” > >

Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. > >

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best. > >

When Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion in July 2006, I thought we should at least consider it. But Mark Zuckerberg walked into the board meeting and announced: “Okay, guys, this is just a formality, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here.” > >

In 1906, economist Vilfredo Pareto discovered what became the “Pareto principle,” or the 80-20 rule, when he noticed that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land in Italy > >

Remember our contrarian question: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? > >

All fundamentalists think this way, not just terrorists and hipsters. Religious fundamentalism, for example, allows no middle ground for hard questions: there are easy truths that children are expected to rattle off, and then there are the mysteries of God, which can’t be explained. > >

When a cheap laptop beats the smartest mathematicians at some tasks but even a supercomputer with 16,000 CPUs can’t beat a child at others, you can tell that humans and computers are not just more or less powerful than each other—they’re categorically different. > >

And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals. > >

Why do so many people miss the power of complementarity? > >

But when indefinitely optimistic investors betting on the general idea of green energy funded cleantech companies that lacked specific business plans, the result was a bubble. > >

How to Work Less to Achieve More'

2018-12-13T04:02:49Z

Hyper Focus - How to Work Less and Achieve More.

Author : Chris Bailey.

Summary

One more book about personal organization and productivity.

What makes it particular is that it addresses a key topic which is "focus" : how to deal with interruptions and distractions we are subject to in order to be more porductive.

Did you ever found yourself ineffective because you spent a bunch of hours without completing any task but switching between few of them ? or reading websites ? or playing a game on your phone?

This book is for you It gives a clear view about possible root causes and proposes an action plan to correct it.

I'm a big fan of Zen Habits by Leo Babauta as it helped me to reshape my personal organization years ago and I found this book is a very good complement, with similar ideas but a different perspective.

It is at the same time quite high level with concepts, theory but also very practical with donw to the earth ideas to implement.

First concept is "hyper focus" : how do you put yourself in condition to really focus on what you are doing. In order to do so, you have to "manage" the distractions.

Distractions are divided in 4 categories :

no control / annoying : office visitiors, loud colleagues, meetings 2. no control / fun : team lunches, call from loved ones, watercooler conversations 3. control / annoying : email, phone alerts, meetings 4. control / fun : new websites, social media, instant messaging accounts

2 types of focus

"hyper focus "where you cut all distractions (by puting your phone on plane mode, ...) 2. "regular" where you cut some but not all distractions

Main idea about hyperfocus is :

choose a productive or meaningful object of attention; 2. eliminate as many external and internal distractions as you can; 3. focus on that chosen object of attention 4. continually draw your focus back to that one object of attention.

The second concept (and it was a surprise to me) is "scatter focus".

Scatter focus is about conscientiously letting your mind wandering. The point the author makes is that focusing is very important, but you also need times where you let your mind go.

A big part of the book is about this "scatter focus" concept.

I especially like the "Scatter focus capture" which is about spending 5 to 10 minutes, 1 or 2 times per week to let your mind go and take note about all the open loops you have in mind.

My notes

As many as 40 percent of our actions are habits, which shouldn’t require conscious deliberation. > >

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing—and then sustaining that attention—is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to. > >

There are two main criteria to consider when categorizing what to focus on: whether a task is productive (you accomplish a lot by doing it) and whether a task is attractive (fun to do) or unattractive (boring, frustrating, difficult, etc.). > >

But how many of these eleven million bits can our minds consciously process and focus on at once? Just forty of them. Not forty million or forty thousand, but forty. > >

Our lives are generally structured around the fact that we’re able to hold, at most, seven pieces of unique information in our short-term memory. > >

At any one time, your attentional space should hold at most two key things that you are processing: what you intend to accomplish and what you’re currently doing. > >

But it’s important to make a distinction between shifting our attention and multitasking. > >

1. How much of your time you spend intentionally 2. How long you can hold your focus in one sitting 3. How long your mind wanders before you catch it > >

You enter this mode by managing your attention deliberately and purposefully: by choosing one important object of attention, eliminating distractions that will inevitably arise as you work, and then focusing on just that one task. > >

Hyperfocus is many things at once: it’s deliberate, undistracted, and quick to refocus, and it leads us to become completely immersed in our work. It also makes us immensely happy. > >

When it comes to your most important tasks, the fewer things you pay attention to, the more productive you become. > >

You enter into hyperfocus when you engage both your thoughts and your external environment and direct them at one thing intentionally. > >

To hyperfocus, you must 1. choose a productive or meaningful object of attention; 2. eliminate as many external and internal distractions as you can; 3. focus on that chosen object of attention; and 4. continually draw your focus back to that one object of attention. > >

The concept of hyperfocus can be summed up in a single tranquil sentence: keep one important, complex object of attention in your awareness as you work. > >

Rule of 3: at the start of each day, choose the three things you want to have accomplished by day’s end. > > This is similar to MIT concepts of Zen Habits.

Once you become aware of how frequently you interrupt yourself, it’s hard to go back to working the same way again. This is why it is critical to manage your attentional space wisely. You can focus for so much longer by taming distractions ahead of time. > >

Environmental cues don’t actively interrupt us, like notifications, but they can do just as much harm to our productivity and personal life. > >

There is a wealth of research that examines why our mind wanders at the exact time we’re trying to focus. It does so significantly more when • we’re feeling stressed or bored; • we’re working in a chaotic environment; • we’re dealing with and thinking about a number of personal concerns; • we’re questioning whether we’re working on the most productive or meaningful task; or • we have unused attentional space—the more we have, the more prone we are to mind-wandering episodes. > >

If you find it difficult to become immersed in your work throughout the day, it’s worth questioning whether your tasks are difficult and complex enough. > >

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you find you’re anxious at work even after taming distractions and working with more intention, consider whether your current skills are a good match for the tasks at hand. > >

There is, however, one practice that has been proven in study after study to increase working memory capacity: meditation. > >

Practicing mindfulness is another proven way to increase the size of your attentional space. > >

Begin to practice mindfulness by choosing one daily task that doesn’t consume your complete attention—sipping your morning coffee, walking through your office, or taking a shower > >

The research is clear: mindfulness and meditation improve virtually every aspect of how you manage your attention. > >

One area I’ve noticed that particularly benefits from hyperfocus is conversations. The secret to deep, meaningful conversations is simple: bring your complete attention to the person you’re speaking with. > >

Continually scanning for threats is what compels us to dwell on that one negative email or overthink a careless offhand comment from our boss. What once aided our chances at survival now sabotages our productivity and creativity in the modern world. > >

When your mind wanders, it visits three main places: the past, the present, and the future. This is precisely why scattering your attention allows your creativity to flourish as you travel through time and connect what you’ve learned to what you’re doing or what you want to achieve. > >

I draw the line between mind wandering and scatterfocus. Scatterfocus is always intentional. > >

I’ve found it helpful to distinguish among a few different styles of scatterfocus: 1. Capture mode: Letting your mind roam freely and capturing whatever comes up. 2. Problem-crunching mode: Holding a problem loosely in mind and letting your thoughts wander around it. 3. Habitual mode: Engaging in a simple task and capturing the valuable ideas and plans that rise to the surface while doing it. Research has found this mode is the most powerful. > >

This chapter is one of the shortest in the book, because the main idea is simple: scatterfocus mode helps us to recharge our ability to hyperfocus, in addition to letting us plan for the future and become more creative. > >

Useful information is typically the densest of the three categories. Books are a good illustration: while a book can sometimes take less than ten hours to read, it can take decades to write and may contain a lifetime of lessons that the author has learned and summarized. Books provide access to the highest-quality thinking and most useful dots on pretty much any topic. > >

The Zeigarnik effect makes us want to finish what we start, but every minute we spend on something useless is a minute we lose working on something useful. > >

Invest in serendipity. Consume challenging things outside the boundaries of your expertise, > >

Set your browser’s homepage to open with Wikipedia’s “random article” bookmark. Look through the AMA (Ask Me Anything) section on Reddit, where world-renowned experts answer popular questions from everyday people. > >

Open offices do have their benefits. One is that they support working for longer on a single project before switching to another. The reason for this is interesting: while our colleagues interrupt us more in an open environment, they’re also more considerate about when they do. > >

If you’re a manager, consider the type of work your team does before you plan for an open office. If you do decide this design is worth the potential productivity costs, be sure to educate your employees on how to manage interruptions. > >

One of the best strategies to train your brain to become more aware is the hourly awareness chime. > >

Enjoy'

2019-01-08T17:47:21Z

My word for 2019 will be "Enjoy"

I started with this "word of the year" idea 3 years ago.

This idea of replacing the traditional New Year’s resolutions by just 1 word is an idea I took from Benoit Curdy.

In 2016, my word of the year was "Focus", which, for me, functioned as a reminder to spend more time on fewer things, avoid multitasking, be more present.

The next year I chose "Learn" and spent more time on learning new things related to digital like coding, big data, machine learning but also lern things related to the personal organization, to geopolitics, to history.

Finally, for 2018, I chose "Read" with a target of 24 books to be read during the year (I finished at 17), doing some posts about the books (I did it for 2).

For this year, my word will simply be "Enjoy".

I'll try as much as I can to enjoy the moment, take time to appreciate a simple meal with my family, time to enjoy visiting a new city, time to enjoy running, looking at nature. To put it simple, enjoy more all small things that make my life.

For this, I'll have to calm down, chill out, and also sometime take a step back from my busy schedule. I'll also have to improve the way I deal with notifications coming from all devices (more on that on a post coming).

I also plan to enjoy more at work.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job. I'm really passionate about it, tt's full of excitement, stimulations, great responsibilities, nice colleagues, ... but for this year I want to take time to realize how lucky I'm to hold such a position, to take time to celebrate our great results take time to really enjoy it.

"Enjoy" means also being optimistic. People keep telling me I'm not so bad at it, often I'm the guy that sees the "half-full" glass of water and this why the headline of my blog is "Welcome, Smile, Life is good !".

Being optimistic is a strong engine for me and I'm convinced it helps to be to be stronger. Recently I've realized I'm sometimes less optimistic as I used to be especially in some stressful or boring situations.

I'll try to keep the positive view during this year!

I wish you a very good year. Enjoy !

Image by [@SoniaT](https://twitter.com/SoniaT) > >

The end of Chapter 2

2019-10-11T08:31:51Z

I'm closing Chapter 2 of my professional life as I'm leaving Soitec. This is a big moment for me as this Chapter 2 lasted 13 years.

Before talking about Chapter 3, I want to pause and reflect briefly on what happened during these years with Soitec.

To start I had the chance to be as head of IT part of the pioneer team to start a new factory in Singapore, been relocated there for 2 years with my family.

This has been just the beginning of a global scope. Now I've ex-colleagues or partners that are sometimes friends in France, Singapore, the US, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa.

When I became CIO I've been the initiator and the leader of the company's digital transformation. Back in '10 I was convinced that Cloud, Mobility, and Social were reshaping the world and bringing them to business was strategic to create value.

In '11, we launched our "Cloud-first" strategy to totally reshape the way we did IT to improve agility, security, and costs thanks to cloud.

This has been a very exciting journey, with key decisions like moving to Google Gmail/Gsuite, like relying on public AWS cloud to run some of our fab critical applications and also tons of experiments, trials, and errors to find the best solutions and to manage change.

Conviction, resilience has been key during these years to consistently keep pace. The results have been really very rewarding with tangible cost reductions, innovative systems to support business and an incredible 9.7/10 rate given constantly by the rest of the company to our performance.

I'll keep in mind tons of memories with my incredible colleagues. Hard times with systems failure crisis, but most importantly a lot of fun, a lot of passion.

During these 13 years, the business story of Soitec has been very dynamic, with high points and very difficult times. I'm very proud to have been part of the team that took the leadership beginning of '15 at a very difficult period to turn around the business. This has been a huge opportunity for me to extend my scope outside IT, to Quality, Supply Chain, Procurement. I've learned a lot! This has been an incredible human story with all the company members. This is when I understood that this Digital Transformation is before all a question of culture, of women and men.

While handing in my decision to leave was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, the positivity that has poured out from my boss Paul and all the team has been amazing, and I'd like to thank them for that.

I know the team is strong, I'm convinced my departure will be an opportunity for my colleagues to grow and I wish them all the best.

Soon I will open Chapter 3. This will be a totally new Chapter as I want to launch my own business: Welibo. I cannot tell more about it now, but for sure it will be around Digital.

Stay tuned, have a nice day.

End of the day, Sumba Indonesia (not too far from Welibo)

Fin du chapitre 2

2019-10-11T08:31:51Z

Le chapitre 2 de ma vie professionelle se termine car je quitte Soitec. C'est un moment important car ce chapitre 2 aura duré 13 ans. Avant de parler du chaiptre 3, je souhaite prendre un temps de pause pour réfléchir à ce qui s'est passé pendant ces années à Soitec.

Pour commencer j'ai eu la chance d'être le leader de l'équipe informatique dans l'équipe qui a démarré la nouvelle usine de Soitec à Singapour et pour cela de vivre 2 ans inoubliables en Asie avec ma famille.

Par la suite, avec l'expension de Soitec mes responsabilités se sont étendues de manière globale. Maintenant j'ai des ex-collègues ou partenaires qui sont parfois des amis en France, à Singapour, aux Etats-Unis, en Allemagne, à Taiwan, au Japon, en Afrique du Sud, en Chine.

En devenant DSI j'ai été l'instigateur et le leader de la transformation numérique de l'entreprise étant convaincu depuis 2010 que le Cloud, la mobilité, les réseaux sociaux étaient en train de transformer le monde et donc la façon de faire du business.

En 2011 notre projet stratégique "Cloud-first" nous a amené à totalement repenser la façon de faire du numérique en améliorant notre agilité, la sécurité et les couts grace au Cloud.

Ce fut un voyage passionnant, avec des décisions clés telles que le passage à Google Gmail / Gsuite, ou encore de s'appuyer sur le cloud public pour exécuter certaines de nos applications critiques, ainsi que de nombreux essais, erreurs pour trouver les meilleures solutions et conduire le changement.

Conviction et résilience ont été essentielles au cours de ces années pour maintenir le rythme. Les résultats ont été vraiment très gratifiants avec des réductions de coûts tangibles, des systèmes innovants pour soutenir l'activité et une note incroyable de 9,7 / 10 donné constamment par le reste de l'entreprise à notre performance.

Je garderai à l'esprit des souvenirs avec mes incroyables collègues. Des moments difficiles (les systèmes informatiques parfois ça tombe en panne...) mais surtout beaucoup de plaisir, beaucoup de passion.

Au cours de ces 13 années, l'histoire de Soitec a été très dynamique, avec des moments forts et des moments difficiles. Je suis très fier d'avoir fait partie de l'équipe qui a pris la direction au début de l'année 2015 à une période très difficile pour redresser l'entreprise. Cela a été une énorme opportunité pour moi d'étendre mon champ d'action en dehors de l'informatique, à la qualité, la supply-chain, les achats. J'ai beaucoup appris! Cela a été une histoire humaine incroyable avec tous les membres de l'entreprise. C'est là que j'ai compris que cette Transformation Digitale est avant tout une question de culture, de femmes et d'hommes.

Officialiser ma décision de partir ait été l'une des choses les plus difficiles que j'ai jamais faites. La façon positive dont mon manager Paul y a répondu a été un moment très fort, je tiens à le remercier pour cela.

Je sais que l'équipe est forte, je suis convaincu que mon départ sera une opportunité pour mes collègues de grandir et je leur souhaite bonne chance.

Bientôt, j'ouvrirai le chapitre 3. Ce sera un tout nouveau chapitre car je veux lancer ma propre entreprise: Welibo. Je ne peux pas en dire plus pour le moment, mais ce sera certainement autour du numérique.

A bientôt et bonne journée !

End of the day, Sumba Indonesia (not too far from Welibo)

Quelles technologies pour sortir de la crise COVID-19

2019-10-11T08:31:51Z

La sortie de crise de la pandémie de COVID-19 nécessitera l'utilisation d’outil numériques de suivi de la population.

En l'absence de vaccin et de traitement disponibles, combattre l’épidémie de COVID-19 passe une identification et une mise en quarantaine des personnes atteintes.

Le confinement total actuellement en vigueur en France permet d'atteindre cet objectif (puisque l’ensemble de la population est en quarantaine) mais a un impact très important sur la vie des personnes et l’économie.

Sortir du confinement global suppose une capacité d'identifier les nouveaux cas et de prendre des mesures d'isolement pour eux et les personnes rencontrées.

Cette figure présente la stratégie à adopter lorsqu'un nouveau cas de COVID-19 est identifié.

[1]

Note : détecter les porteurs de la maladie suppose être en mesure de réaliser des tests à grande échelle. Ce document ne traite pas de ce document.

En modélisant l'épidémie et en particulier le R0 important et le fait que la maladie peut se transmettre avant l’apparition des symptômes voire même par des personnes qui n’auraient pas de symptôme on arrive à la conclusion que pour que ce confinement ciblé soit efficace et endiguer l’épidémie il faut être capable de réagir très rapidement en moins de 2 jours lorsqu’un nouveau cas est détecté pour procéder aux mesures de confinement et de désinfection.

[1]

Pour que cela soit possible, il est indispensable de mettre en oeuvre des outils numériques qui eux seuls vont permettre d'identifier les personnes et les lieux à risque et de prendre les mesures dans le délais imparti.

Le smartphone et la technologie de "bluetooth ouvert" seront mis en oeuvre.

Pour appliquer la stratégie décrite plus haut, il faut être en mesure de lister les personnes qui ont été en contact avec le cas porteur, à moins de 1 mètre, pendant plus de 15 minutes.

Le GPS qui équipe l'ensemble des smartphones présente des limites importantes : il ne fonctionne pas en intérieur et sa précision en milieu urbain et en cas de déplacement est assez faible (plusieurs mètres). Du fait de ces limitations, les données recueillie par le GPS ne pourrons pas être utilisées seules.

La technologie de "bluetooth ouvert" équipe également l'ensemble des smartphones, elle ne permet pas de localiser l’utilisateur sur une carte, mais permet de connaître l’ensemble des smartphones à proximité et donc enregistrer avec précision la distance et la durée de l'interaction. Cette donnée est celle nécessaire. Ce système est celui utilisé en Corée du sud.

Les risques sont grands car des données de localisation précises ne peuvent être anonymisées.

Mettre en oeuvre un système à l'échelle de la population qui enregistre la position de l’ensemble des positions des personnes et la stocke peut inquiéter sur des atteintes potentielles aux libertés fondamentales.

Cette inquiétude est légitime car rendre anonyme des données détaillées de localisation croisées avec d'autre information peuvent être désanonymiser facilement.

[2]

Des études ont même montré que avec seulement 4 points de localisation, on peut identifier la personne dans 95 % des cas . [3]

Le retard de la france dans la maîtrise de la donnée est un gros handicap.

En Chine, la mise en place depuis de nombreuse années de systèmes de surveillances de masse interconnectés entre eux a permis de rapidement déployer les systèmes. L'application qui permet d’attribuer à chaque individu une couleur en fonction de son niveau de risque (Vert / Orange / Rouge) a été mise en oeuvre par Alibaba Finance qui est est l’entreprise qui développe l’application qui attribue un score social à chaque personne.

Aux états-unis, l'administration américaine a demandé à Google et Facebook qui disposent de nombreuses données et d’équipes de développeurs importantes de se pencher sur la question.

En France, nous n'avons pas d’acteurs de ce type.

Des pistes pour la suite

Préserver les libertés individuelles "by design".

Pas de centralisation des données.

Des équipes travaillent dessus Oxford, MIT, Allemagne. Il faut lancer une coopération Europeene sur le sujet.

Une stratégie globale (pas seulement cet outil)

Basé sur le volontariat

Une application qui soit utile aux personnes.

[1] L. Ferretti et al*., « Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing », Scienc*e, mars 2020, doi: 10.1126/science.abb6936.

[2] « When Is Anonymous Not Really Anonymous? – The Markup ». https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/03/24/when-is-anonymous-not-really-anonymous (consulté le avr. 01, 2020).

[3] Y.-A. de Montjoye, C. A. Hidalgo, M. Verleysen, et V. D. Blondel, « Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility », *Sci. Rep*., vol. 3, p. 1376, 2013, doi: 10.1038/srep01376.

Chapitre 3 : AuRorA-5R

2020-10-07T00:00:00Z

Il y a 1 an, le chapitre 2 de ma vie professionnelle se terminait avec mon départ de Soitec après 12 années riches et intenses.

Le chapitre 3 est maintenant commencé et il s'appelle AuRorA-5R que je co-fonde avec Cédric Stien et Pierre-Emmanuel Frot.

L'idée de créer AuRorA a germé pendant la crise Covid lors de laquelle nous avons oeuvré au sein du collectif Voc-coV initié par Cédric pour collecter des masques et les distribuer aux soignants, élaborer le masque OCOV, apporter du support à la filière des respirateurs ou encore porter en France le jeu de simulation People Of The Pandemic.

Notre ambition est de s'appuyer sur notre énergie, nos compétences, notre expérience pour accompagner, susciter, amplifier les projets d'innovation des PMEs pour des transitions responsables et résilientes.

Pierre-Emmanuel, Cédric et moi amenons des expériences et de compétences très complémentaires. Mon rôle dans l'équipe est bien sûr de porter le pilier numérique en utilisant mon expérience acquise en menant la transformation numérique de Soitec pendant 8 ans dont L'Usine Nouvelle vient d'en saluer les résultats en remettant à Soitec le prix de l'usine 2020 !.

L'aventure ne fait que commencer et reste à écrire, à bientôt pour la suite.

C'est un test

2025-05-22T05:24:25Z

Un test de post

qui est poussé automatiquement !!!

Chapitre 4

2026-06-25T00:00:00Z

Il y a presque sept ans, j'écrivais le chapitre 3 de ma vie professionnelle. Je co-fondais AuRorA-5R avec Cédric Stien et Pierre-Emmanuel Frot pour accompagner les transitions des PME. C'était sorti de la crise Covid, du collectif Voc-coV, d'un certain enthousiasme. Six ans plus tard, le paysage a changé, et moi avec.

Aujourd'hui, le chapitre 3 est derrière. Voici où j'en suis.

Atipik-solutions et Watsy

Je suis CTO et associé d'Atipik-solutions, où je consacre l'essentiel de mon temps à Watsy®, notre plateforme pour l'industrie. Watsy mesure les pertes, les rend visibles, et aide les équipes de terrain à améliorer leur production au quotidien. Plusieurs années de recul en production, et la conviction que la valeur réelle d'un outil numérique se voit sur le plancher d'une usine, pas dans une slide de comité.

J'ai rejoint Atipik-solutions parce que c'est exactement le genre de boîte que j'aurais voulu construire moi-même : équipe technique sérieuse, produit ancré dans le réel, clients qui repartent avec des résultats mesurables. Le rôle de CTO me permet de continuer à coder, à structurer, et à faire le pont entre la technologie et les enjeux métier que j'ai pratiqués toute ma carrière, comme consultant puis chez Soitec.

Welibo, vraiment

À côté d'Atipik-solutions, je porte Welibo, la société que j'avais annoncée à la fin du chapitre 2 sans bien savoir ce qu'elle deviendrait. Welibo est aujourd'hui le véhicule de ce que je construis et accompagne en dehors d'Atipik :

Uxium, une plateforme web minimaliste pour permettre aux indépendants et aux PME de disposer d'une vitrine numérique professionnelle, sans dépendre d'un prestataire technique. Une alternative simple, prévisible et autonome, avec un accompagnement IA intégré.
BikeSlot, une startup de stationnement sécurisé pour vélos que j'accompagne sur le numérique, à destination des entreprises, copropriétés et établissements qui veulent offrir un service utile à leurs utilisateurs.
Quelques autres pistes plus tôt dans leur cycle de vie.

Welibo n'a pas vocation à devenir un gros véhicule. C'est un cadre pour bâtir et accompagner, à mon rythme, des projets que j'ai envie de voir exister.

Ce qui s'ouvre maintenant

Trois choses, en parallèle d'Atipik-solutions et de Welibo.

Le conseil aux dirigeants. J'accompagne les dirigeants d'ETI et de PME, avec une expertise marquée de l'industrie, à clarifier ce que l'IA et le numérique changent pour leur entreprise et à décider quoi faire. Deux à trois missions par an, en complément de mes projets. Pas une reconversion, un prolongement naturel : trente ans de numérique, treize ans à Soitec dont plusieurs en COMEX, des projets en cours qui me tiennent les pieds dans le réel. Les détails sont sur la page d'accueil.

L'IA, une longue histoire. J'ai commencé à travailler avec l'intelligence artificielle en 1996, sur des systèmes experts. Trente ans plus tard, les outils ont changé du tout au tout, mais les questions de fond beaucoup moins : à quoi sert vraiment cette technologie, qui en tire de la valeur, et comment éviter les pièges. Ces questions, je les explore au quotidien dans ma pratique, et je les partagerai ici.

Ce blog. Je l'utilise pour assumer publiquement quatre territoires : l'industrie et les données ; l'IA pour les dirigeants, vue depuis l'intérieur d'un comité de direction ; l'IA et la société, dans la lignée de mes interventions à l'UTL de Laragne ; et ma pratique du numérique au quotidien.

À bientôt pour la suite.