Well, because I’ve been preparing the minutes of the IE-Club symposium I went to last Tuesday on “Tomorrow Stars of the Internet”. I’m doing my best so that you can benefit from what was said at Microsoft France as if you actually were there and the event occuring in English. You should get it on Monday max.

Many thanks to Steve for sending the story to me. The situation raises such international concerns that I felt I had to share it with you all:

AP release:

A public school teacher was arrested today at  John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, President Bush said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. The unidentified man has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

“Al-gebra is a problem for us, ” Bush said. “They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. They use secret code names like ‘X’ and ‘Y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, “There are 3 sides to every triangle”.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes.”

Amazon recently launched a Beta version of looking very promising Business Solutions services. Amongst them the Amazon Fulfillment group…And guess what…All faithful blog readers remember my “Entrepreneurial Brainstorming session N.5“: I don’t feel like selling plenty of dusty books, just because I become lazy at the very idea of queuing twice a week at the post office. I needed Amazon or a new venture to same me the first mile just like Ikea saves itself the last mile, concretely the delivery and assembling, to offer cheaper rates.

Well, it seems, as Kari put it in this comment and I thank him for that, that I was a week early. Amazon just released a portfolio of business services aiming at easing warehouse and shipping operations of corporate accounts.

Frankly, I was proud of myself on this one. What I’ll probably do very soon is use that Amazon’s Business Solutions Fulfillment service through a venture I would’ve created for this specific purpose. More on this topic in a near future.

Homework – in the comments section, think for a sec and quickly share with us:

1) what you think of Amazon’s Fulfillment Services Group;

2) whether you’d like to brainstorm more and more on entrepreneurial ideas I would provide on “Tech IT Easy”.

1) Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s machiavelian offspring who has raised a mere 40$m in total, used to be a .edu e-mail addresses only networking platform. It is now opened to anyone.

And since good news never come alone, Yahoo! has just announced having bid for taking Facebook.com over. The amounts released are in the 1bn$ range. For your information, Facebook.com generated sales for 50m$ minus in 2005.

I should however remind my readers that Zuckerberg had not only turned down about 6 months ago a 750m$ offer by Viacom (asking for 2bn$), but he didn’t show up at an 8:00am meeting with Microsoft recently. Needless to say, MS is not interested anymore in the deal.

2) Such a perfect transition… Microsoft has taken a giant step in the social networking industry, although it’s been preparing it for 4 years. Microsoft had indeed backed a start-up named Wallop 4 years ago, alongside with VCs Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners & Consor Capital. Wallop empowers Internet citizens and bloggers with very cool personalized tools ensuring your web corner is tailored to your personality.

Microsoft et alii ’s underlying strategy seems to be pushing for Internet citizen being able to chose her/his service and focus on providing design features to make it more appealing to one’s community of interests. At least, technology barriers look much higher than in the ‘traditional’ social networking (business, dating, fun, etc.) industry.

I was almost forgetting: YouTube founders looks like willing to exit for 1.5bn$…

My call: it’s only the beginning of the social networking wars.

I was abroad between June 2005 and September 2006. I had left an old and rusty France. Nothing was really happening, and I followed this French Web 2.0 thing from far away – not really believing in its actual depth, and actually assuming the Israelis and Americans were doing it better. I was ALL wrong. 14 months seems to be nothing, but in the digital world, 14 months is pretty much a century.

France is back on track! It’s the first time in my lifetime I heard serial entrepreneurs speaking with their heart, soul and brains rather than with their ego and virtual bank account bottom line. Some people really want to build true, self-standing, long-lasting European success stories. And maybe they already have.

Frankly, listening to these driven entrepreneurs rose in my deep inside some pride, pride of being French. Those who know me will start thinking that I’m going nuts, but this is true: I was proud that such change agents were from France and not from … Well, I don’t know. You fill the … yourself.

Right now I’m exhausted, but I’ll post IN ENGLISH (I received exactly 14 e-mails today asking me to do so, thank you NYC friends for giving me homework, as if I needed more than I already have) the full minutes of this great great lecture in the upcoming days.

Picture – from left to right: Philippe Berna of Kayentis, Pierre Chappaz (standing) of Index Ventures / Wikio / Netvibes, Pierre Krings of Price Minister, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, Stéphane Bohbot of Modelabs, Pascal Lorne of Miyowa, Dominique Agrech of Xange Private Equity, Eglantine from IE-Club.

“I knew I had seen this guy somewhere…” was I wondering right from the start of the class. Indeed, take a look at this video interview by Jean-Michel Billaut, a French Internet-World videopodcaster & blogger, I had watched some time ago.

Jean-Louis Bénard is a prominent entrepreneur on the French Internet stage. Back in 1993, right after graduation from Ecole Centrale Paris, where I’m currently studying Information & Communication Technologies, Jean-Louis founded F.R.A., a B-to-B web service company, selling intranet / extranet / e-Commerce solutions to big corporate accounts. After growing from 1 to about 100 employees, the company was bought out in 2001 by Business Interactive, today one of the main players of Internet platforms (CRM, intranets, mobiles solutions, ad campaigns performance-tracking tools) and marketing (design, marketing, banners, affiliation programs). Jean-Louis remained at Business Interactive as a CTO for 2 years.

As every entrepreneur, he probably couldn’t stand not starting all over again. I guess Jean-Louis could feel 3 years in advance the video hype coming, so he started in 2003 an IPTV service aimed at empowering corporate accounts (like IBM: see SoftwareTV, unfortunately in French) with the appropriate tools enabling them to open personalized Web TVs, a great marketing and buzzing tool. The name of the company’s Brainsonic. Brainsonic pioneered the industry and still is the European leader today on the Web TV landscape although competition is getting tough all over Europe. Apparently, a strong emphasis is put on R&D at Brainsonic’s, innovation being a key-driver for customer satisfaction and the top line; namely, growth.

For roughly 3 hours, Jean-Louis Bénard explained to us his vision of where the world computer sciences might be heading to.

The main topics discussed were: history of computer architecture, middleware, design patterns, birth of the Web 2.0, and the promising swordfight between Microsoft’s .Net environment and IBM & Sun et alii’s J2EE platform.

And at last I could hear a sound argument against the sustainable spreading of AJAX technologies: overwhelming callback requests will eventually kill the technology.

Definitely one of the best IT lectures we have had so far. Jean-Louis, we know you are extremely busy, but keep on coming teaching at Centrale!

For the next few weeks, I’ll make sure I read more on some of the topics lectured (design patterns, Web 2.0 architecture, the future of e-Commerce interfaces) to write posts on this very blog. So keep your eyes opened.

Have you ever spent a two-hour Information Systems Department meeting without understanding a word of what was being said, just nodding when asked a question? So learn the jargon before getting fired. Speaking the same language as bullshitters is one of the keys to your future success. Plus you’ll be able to interact better and perhaps convey some good ideas for improvement (reminder: that’s half of what you get paid for, second half being perfect implementation).

- RF*

Request for *: corporate process aimed at one’s suppliers. Usually a tender.

- RFI

Request for Information: most of the time about a product (functionalities, pricing, etc.).

- RFQ

Request for Quotation: the client broadcast on its e-procurement system some specifications, and suppliers are asked to make a bid (price) to sell their product or service.

- RFP

Request for Proposal: the client asks its potential contractors to submit an integrated financial and technical offer, mentioning deliverables precisely and a schedule.

- QIP

Quality Insurance Plan: a document summarizing all quality processes and action linked with project deliverables (versions and updates management, engagement management, accountability, document management, etc.)

- PMP

Project Management Plan: a document stating the way (budget, processes, investments, stakeholders) a project will be led to success.

I’m sure you already know the ones below:

- UT

Unit Tests: when the developer tests her/his program her/himself.

- FT

Functional tests: testing the deliverable’s functional scope.

- iTests

Integration Tests: first tests made when different deliverables get integrated together.

- ST

System Tests realized on an integrated system using a test collection document. External modules might be simulated.

- TAM

Third-party Applicative Maintenance: maintenance and customer support realized by a third-party, i.e. a company that doesn’t host or hasn’t devised the system. Maintenance can be either corrective or aimed at upgrading quality standards, functionalities or performance.

- TAD

Technical Architecture Document: folder in which both physical architecture and operational model are described. Document aimed at facilitating maintenance and operational support. Functions are of course described, but what counts most is the detailing of the physical architecture of the system (servers, storage, parameters, flows, addressing plan, etc.).

Can you think of other useful jargon acronyms?

Many thanks to Julien Codorniou, a blogger and Microsoftee who very kindly invited a dozen student-bloggers to the event, my humble self included. Indeed, I’ll be on Tuesday night at Microsoft’s Paris office on ‘rue de l’Université’ to attend a, IE-Club lecture with the most prominent French Internet entrepreneurs. Check this out:

Pierre CHAPPAZ, Founder of KELKOO, Chairman WIKIO & Co-CEO NETVIBES

Tariq KRIM, CEO NETVIBES

Pascal LORNE, CEO MIYOWA

Pierre KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET, CEO PRICEMINISTER

Philippe BERNA, Chairman KAYENTIS

Dominique AGRECH, Executive Committee member at XAnge Private Equity

Stephane BOBOHT, Founder of DIGIPLUG and MODELABS

Marc SIMONCINI, CEO Meetic

Impressive, uh? It raises a concern: my expectations are so high that I can only hope the content will match it.

In case you don’t understand everything (it’s all in French), do not worry. I’ll obviously keep you posted by publishing a review of the symposium very soon. And it will as usual be all in English.

For more information on the event, see this post on Julien Codorniou’s blog. And if you read this one day, thank you again Julien, for your kindness and time.

Note Bene to my Parisian fellow readers who’re actually going to the symposium: I’d be glad to meet up with you there. Don’t hesitate to give me a buzz: +33-6-87-67-00-99, ideally during lunchtime so that we can set up something. I’m already very happy to have, at last, planned a meeting with ‘blogworld friends’ Hadrien Simon and François-Albert Gandon. The more the merrier!

There are two things Craig McCaw cannot live with: risk and not having a private life. On the latter point, that’s why he never went public with any of his ventures. In 1994, he sold McCaw Cellular (once a dusty family business) to At&T for 11.5$bn; he raised a little later about 900$m from amongst other Intel and Motorola for to make Clearwire, a wireless communications company – twice the money he would’ve got on the stockmarket according to The Economist (July 15th 2006). Craig McCaw refuses most journalist calls, and doesn’t like to appear in the media.

About risk, here are two very Craig McCaw quotes we should keep in mind:

- “You have to be driven by competitiveness, which is usually driven by adversity“.

- “I’ve never worried whether somebody else thought it was the right thing. If I believed it was the right thing, then I was prepared to build it and hoped that ‘they would come’ “.

“I am a visionary entrepreneur above all, in the field of mobile telecommunications and wireless. I was born next to Seattle, Washington. I have three brothers, and the four of us were working in my father’s business selling cables when I decided to sell the cable business on the day I dropped out of Stanford (back in 1981) to focus on remote technologies. Using the cash from the divestment that happened a little later, I borrowed a lot of money and purchased American Telecom Regulation authorities radio communication licences.

Soon after, I had made my company the largest mobile phone operator in the US. I sold to AT&T in 1994, which mobile division became the well-known Cingular.

I could join AT&T’s boardroom, but I hate people taking themselves too seriously and long meetings above all.

Instead of taking my big money for granted, I started all over again. My company is a third-generation wireless broadband Internet provider player operating in the 50 biggest cities in the US, Belgium, and Ireland. Again, I took a big risk, since I chose to carry lots of debt. But this is the price of fast market recognition. I hit the “Face Value” column of the British newspaper The Economist about two months ago.

Who am I?”

Update 5:43pm – Congratulations to Vincent van Wylick who recognized Craig McCaw behind this short bio. I’ll post some more details about Craig McCaw tomorrow.

Remember this word: COST (and unfortunately, you will). An acronym helping you remember the 4 aspects of project management that matter most:

C for Cost;

O for Organization;

S for Schedule;

T for Technique.

It’s very simple, probably simplistic. But who knows, sometimes complex problems have an easy way out.

PS: I’m very likely to post a “Who am I?” number 4 tomorrow, on Sunday. So keep your eyes opened.

My RSS feedburning stats have soared in the recent hours. I had seen my regular weblog reading stats booming from 100+ on average in August to 200+ in September while my RSS feeding statistics stayed stuck below 100.

Today 60 more people subscribed to my RSS feed. To the 150 people who got “Tech IT Easy” in their RSS feeder, to the 200+ people reading me on a daily basis, and – the most important bit, to the “Tech IT Easy” community, those who actively comment, I want to thank you. So, thank you.

By the way, I don’t know well what you like: entrepreneurial ideas? the IT leader “Who am I”? new IT product or service reviews? telecommunications? computer networking? software? e-Business and BPM? e-Commerce? Stuff about me? Be bold, be creative, tell me! I find it hard to understand your expectations well since the post I consider to be best hardly get many comments. So tell me what you’ll like to talk about and discuss right here.

And thanks again. Keep coming, start commenting (that’s what matters most to integrate a community: give!), and tell me what you like.

Donald E. Knuth, a Professor at Stanford University and Godfather of algorithmics, wrote in his bible entitled “The Art of Computer Programming” that computer science would arrive at maturity stage when 1500 algorithms would be known and mastered. In the beginning of the 80s, Donald E. Knuth had counted about 500 existing algorithms.

In your opinion, where do we stand today?

What does “the maturity era of computer science” mean to you?

Addendum September 25th 2006 – in a more recent academic publication (2001), Knuth stroke a contradictory stance: there would be an infinite need for computer science algorithms. If you feel like learning more about that, see this comment by Vincent van Wylick.

I’ve been a member of Project Management Institute, Paris region chapter for one month, and went to my first Project Management Institute event last Tuesday. It took place in the Maison des Mines, in the old Paris (see picture).

For a couple hours, I carefully listened to 2 lectures by Jérôme David from Technology Partners Inc., and Vincent Massol from KPIT Cummins, on outsourcing and offshoring in respectively industrial & software environments.

Here’s a quick review of an event that I found both extremely interesting and useful.

After a brief introduction by Jean-Claude Bernard, the very laid back and professional VP Finance of PMI France (also a senior executive in the Schlumberger Groupe if my memory’s correct), Jérôme David begins with introducing himself (12 years at EDS in France, the US, Asia – 6 years at TPI) and his company, Technology Partners Inc. (TPI), to the audience. TPI is an international outsourcing consultancy working on behalf of big corporate accounts, like GM, from sourcing suppliers to establishing contracts and supervising day-to-day operations. TPI has sourced about 780 contracts so far for a total transaction value of 320$bn, employing 450 consultants worldwide (70 in Europe, 5 in France), being involved in 100+ outsourcing contracts re-negotiations or restructurings.

The actual theme of Jérôme David’s speech was the following: “Distance effects of Outsourcing & the role of a Project Manager”.

10 points I remember from Jérôme David’s lecture:

• The lecturer started by providing 3 distance effect examples: client-supplier distance, geographical distance, cultural distance.
• The one who negotiates the deal isn’t the one who implements: big mistake!
• The 4 aspects of outsourcing: performance management, financial management, contract administration, relationship management.
• Solid processes are essential to address the distance factor.
• In case the relationship goes wrong, don’t go to court until there’s no more skin in the game.
• Start negotiating a “right to audit” from day One.
• Contractually ensure the presence and role of Key Employees during the whole outsourcing engagement.
• Start with simple, small, package-able projects. And let time scale things up.
• A black-box project is a project in which the client only worries about writing specifications and waiting for deliverables, without getting involved in the contractor’s process.
• If the business plan doesn’t show potential for at least 50% in cost-savings, don’t go for outsourcing. Draw a better business plan or wait for better times and ideas.

After a short break, Vincent Massol’s lecture got started.

Vincent Massol is a technical director at KPIT Cummins, an Indian company heavily promoting Agile Offshore Software Development (AOSD) techniques. What a coincidence, the lecture was precisely about Agile Offshore Software Development…

Here are the 10 key points I brought back home from this second lecture:

• AOSD is all about short iterative lifecycles (2 weeks sounds good) in a distributed development environment: organize your team, iterate fast, integrate continuously, share infrastructure, and communicate frequently.
• A best practice: the daily scrum meeting. In maximum 15 minutes, everybody in the team, independently from the location, gets to say what (s)he did the previous day and is planning to do the same day. That’s it: no problem solving or brainstorming.
• Think about re-factoring issues from scratch. The structure of the system (defined at iteration 0 when use cases architecture is drawn up) should allow for additive functions to come at a later stage.
• Time boxing: the delivery date never changes. What may differ is content.
• Share, share, share: meet physically before starting to work together, use word docs, blogs, video conferencing, remote controls, wikis, mailing-lists, forums, emails, phones, instant messaging systems, etc. Use whatever tool you like but share knowledge permanently!
• Make sure you have validated metrics and indicators in all these project areas: quality, speed, integration, communication and maintenance.
• Break the “us” and “them” syndrome.
• Make sure the French team is aware of the fact that their attitudes might appear arrogant.
• Make sure the Indian team knows that the French make efforts for their attitudes to be less arrogant.
• Evangelise permanently on agile methods: AOSD is more a state of mind than a process and it should be fully understood by all the project stakeholders.

There you go dear readership. I hope you’re getting a grasp of how much I enjoyed attending my first Project Management Institute event..and its debriefing cocktail where I got to meet with very sharp-minded people, with very diverse backgrounds.

I believe CIOs haven’t yet heard of a – good – software that, without spending half-a-day setting it up, maps one’s physical network graphically. For a system administration purpose, getting to know easily a MAC address, an IP address, the nature of the contactee (server, client, router, etc.) and to which physical area of the network (e.g. router n° 2, port n° 47 when it comes to the campus room from which I’m writing this very post) she/he is linked can only prove to be helpful.

In many small and medium businesses, the CFO also deals with Information Systems. Therefore, the network mapping software will have to avoid geeky jargon and by-far-too-technical features.

Furthermore, I’m extremely interested in software engineering project management, networks and security in general, and I truly don’t see any serious player on this market, unless companies want to spend zillions on information systems urbanization consultants.

I’m thinking of making this simple thought become a reality by making it a University project. One of my classmates, Pierre Pattard, seems ready to jump in the network mapping software bandwagon. Pierre’s really an expert in networks and security, and has a good software development background. We might get one or two more people on board before making a final go-or-not-go decision. We should first fine tune our goal and the raison d’être of such a network mapping software.

On this matter, your opinion is most welcome. Thank you in advance for your help.

Addendum 22nd September: we were joined by another excellent IT specialist, Jean-Sébastien Hächler. I guess the team’s set up, unless we find one last good profile. I’ll keep you posted.