Before you label me a religious nut, let me explain that religion to me has little to do with god, rather it is about finding meaning in what we do. In that sense, it may be more appropriate to call me a type of Buddhist than the Catholic that I was raised as. I think that business and technology (to the latter of which, I include science in general) are particular areas missing a type of meaning, and there is actually a continuous battle being fought against it.

This is perhaps more apparent in science, where prominent celebrity-scientists like Richard Dawkins are waging a war against creationism, and with that all that it stands for. I have little defence for the bible-based pseudo science being propagated by people with very little in credentials to their name. I don’t particular think that science should’ve ever entered this area of people lives; it comes from an outdated belief that the church should control everything that we stand for. ‘Control’ is the wrong word; there should be ‘meaning’ to all things we do, but the validity of science is established and the validity of religion is being undermined more everyday by pretending to be a pseudo-science.

In business too, a battle is being waged between maximising measurable shareholder returns vs. the more intangible qualities that make ideas great. Religion, meaning, has lost it’s place to the Dollar bill a long time ago…

I thought this subject appropriate as one of my favourite science fiction shows has ended last weekend, Battlestar Galactica, in which the presence of a god or gods plays a strong role in determining the fate of man and machine. It is one of a trilogy of shows that have played a strong part in my thinking since I was a teenager; the other two being “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Terminator,” the movies and the show [I also love "Babylon 5," though that more for the solid quality of screenwriting, on par with shows like "The Wire," a story for another day and blog].

There is little doubt in my mind that some version of the future predicted in those three shows will come true. The robots will come anyway, but what does that mean for us? Will they be equals like Data in Star Trek; dangerous allies like the friendly terminator on John Conner’s side; or simply “the enemy?”

I guess that this is for us to decide and I think that some kind of religious element, similar to Asimov’s three laws of robotics perhaps, will have to come into place for there to be a meaning that transcends the relationship between man and machine. Our very nature is determined by the state of nature as we perceive it: a planet with resources too few to maintain all of us, feeding our competitive spirit; humans that are a kind of machine, with a limited life-span, and the ability to procreate, feeding our compassionate spirit and need for understanding. By creating beings that defy that logic, it is hard to fathom what effect that will have on us. Will we see them as competition, as slaves, as children, as equals? How will they see us?

I think that religion, as it is now, needs to accept that science is an established area that explains, in part, our place in the universe—science will not, as yet, make us immortal. I also think that religion is a strong candidate for the building of communities, something that science and technology plays a role in also. I think that the imperfection that is religion, should perhaps also be built into technology in some way, remembering that by religion, I mean “the bringing of meaning,” which is different to “the bringing of purpose.”

That meaning, whatever it is, “god,” is by nature imperfect, fuzzy, and unclear, because worshipping perfection, a perfect god, a “techno-god,” will more than likely mean the end of us. I have a hard time imagining that such a god will tolerate flawed creatures like us.

This is my brain-dump after spending a few days in limbo, and currently on just a few hours of sleep. It is, admittedly a little light on criticising the business side of things, which, in my opinion, has more than proven it’s ability to take meaning away from action. Take it as the start of a conversation perhaps.

Vincent
P.S. speaking of sci-fi and the future, did you know that “Demolition Man” is considered the Nostradamus of sci-fi movies?

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I’m pretty disappointed in the readers of tech it easy—you can comment on the light stuff, what doesn’t really matter, but you won’t on the things that do. It makes me re-evaluate the value of blogging. I’m about to engage on a journey, which I know will take me away from blogging for some time. As you already know, I blog when I can and don’t when I can’t. Perhaps it’s the same way with the way you comment, I doubt it, but I’m no mind-reader either; I just know what works for me and what doesn’t.

Internally, at tech it easy, we’ve been having a discussion about the future of the site, part of which I’d like to share with all of you. As is evident, I have been the main blogger here for some time, which doesn’t make me the boss [there is none], but it gives me a strong say in the matter. What we considered, briefly, was to make tech it easy a more commercial endeavour, with all the good and bad that brings, mainly:

• moving to a dedicated server and away from wordpress.com, which would give more flexibility in terms of design and content.
• implicitly, dedicating time, energy, and money to building up the tech it easy brand

Doing this would require initiative, leadership, and hard work, from the team, which is, at the moment, only a handful.

Here is the profound part of this post [I expect that 80% of you have stopped reading by now]. It is the way I feel about the direction we should take, and I prefer having it scrutinised in public, rather than in private.

The way I feel is really the way I behave, which is that I find maintaining tech it easy solo a pretty hard job and would like help with that; I find some of the “features” that wordpress.com brings to the table pretty great [e.g. no worries about things going wrong technologically] and some things pretty frustrating [e.g. little script-support, though things have been getting better]; I don’t feel hampered by the lack of income from the site, though I do feel unhappy about the lack of discussion [worth more than any cash amount]; And I don’t feel like I should be managed better [i.e. professionally], but I do feel that some things can be structured better, such as who posts, when, and that’s it.

Are these “feelings” enough to make changes on the site? … … …

No.

I don’t think they are. What tech it easy allows for right now is for a team of writers to post when they can, which is part of the attraction to blog here. Everyone who has joined tech it easy so far has a passion for technology and will certainly, at some point, feel the need to write something about it. When they do, I am happy and I hope you are too. If they don’t, que sera, que sera, as they say. It’s a free world and a free site.

[incidentally, if you feel the need to write and would like to do so on tech it easy, give me a buzz]

That is all I have to say on the matter. In summary, moving the site will create more freedom, but it will also make matters more complex, and it won’t automatically lead to a better blog. Readers, bloggers, I’ve had my say. It’s your turn now, if you chose to take it.

Vincent

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When I was a young, innocent kid, growing up in the small German town of Bonn, I remember one thing very well. That is, looking at my father’s Bild Zeitung (he is and was a big football fanatic) and seeing the cartoon “love is …” Each week (or day, I don’t remember), a new cartoon would appear, with a new definition of love. Whether it made a difference, I don’t know, but it does still have some nostalgic value.

Today, …

Similar to love, I think that writing or “blogging,” as the kids call it, has a certain subjective value. I think that, from my observation of my own behaviour and that of others, blogging is … the desire to figure out stuff. I started blogging as a student, as did Jeremy, Fidji, and many others on Tech IT Easy. Now, as my study-time is over, I find myself having less time for studying, which is sad really. What has taken over is that “learning on the job” thing, which makes you good at building up routines, but not necessarily at the brain-qualities that blogging benefits from.

I think that blogging also fits other paradigms, such as to publish news, to market something or someone, and to make money, many of which aren’t my own, but which certainly have more relevance to “in business” thinking and action.

Just one of the thoughts floating through my mind this week, as I’m spending a lot more time figuring out stuff, than learning on the job.

Vincent

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After reading this Techcrunch intro, I just joined Blellow today. While I’m not much of a bandwagon guy, as far as social networks are concerned, there are a couple of reasons, which I vocalised on this blog, why I dig the idea of this social network.

A short history of my adoption of social networks

When I started coming on Twitter, I was excited about creating a Hive Mind. What attracts me about the internet, blogging on Tech IT Easy, and social networking, is that it can be similar to forming neural connections between smart nodes, much like in your head. Twitter didn’t deliver much on that promise so far, however, because, even though there are a heck of a lot of smart people on the service, it’s very difficult to manage that data, let alone make it useful.

Friendfeed is another service I use and have written about. Two things that attract me about it: Friendlists, which allow me to segment my interests and social circles. For instance, I have a Tech IT Easy friendlist where I just see all the Tech IT Easy bloggers and their twitter-updates—many of you probably didn’t know that—allowing me to keep up to date, at a glance, on what these smart guys are up to in their lives.

What I also like about FriendFeed is their rooms, which allow me to focus on specific content like apps, and ask questions to an audience interested in that same content. The downside: there is no real working index for rooms, you just have to do a dedicated site-search on Google , I guess.

Let’s get to Blellow!

The service isn’t on the same maturity level as Twitter of Friendfeed yet, which is also partially why I’m asking you to join me. For instance, I cannot yet search for friends whose email-address I have (and I also hope they add searching for Twitter-contacts, like FriendFeed has). Following is a short commercial, which you will have also have seen on Techcrunch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTV6fCo92xI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

What Bellow does is the following:

• Instead of joining a stream of content, which grows exponentially with more users, you can just focus on groups that specialise on content like SXSW 2009, Apple, B2B marketing, Photoshop, etc., etc., you get the idea.
• You can create private streams between a select group of people, sort of a private IRC channel, if you will.
• When you create your profile, you have to add a lot of info about yourself, hypothetically allowing people to search for keywords and finding a kindred soul. The video shows a freelance flash developer searching for other developers on Bellow and getting the advice she needs.
• Other things it also allows, but which are underdeveloped, is search for jobs and projects. Sort of like e-lance, with the added benefit that you get to see what people say before you hire them.
• Meetups are another feature, but are, as usual, focussed on the US only, leaving us “old-country” Europeans in the dark.

That’s it! A short review of the first 30 min., I spent there. But hopefully I get to see some familiar faces soon!

Vincent

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Just finished a project, which gives me a few days to reflect, work on my personal business-plan, aka career philosophy, and write blog posts about pricing and stuff. A few months ago, I purchased the second edition of the book “The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing.” It’s a really good read, though also a complex one—I’m on page 80 of 450, and I started reading in December! That said, having been exposed to setting my own prices for the services I provide, also taught me a thing or two already.

Understanding pricing really means two things: understanding the numbers and understanding the psychology behind why people are willing to charge or pay x amount for something. The difficulty is mainly that information is incomplete. I can’t judge 100% what contextual factor made a customer decide to go the other way, or why the competition charges 3 x less than my product. At the same time, this fuzziness also means that pricing is not just a matter for the “finance guys,” it’s a matter of doing your homework, experimenting, and some instinct.

Pricing itself is a subject that is actually relevant to everyone [I'm excluding millionaires here, though they may consider the price of their yachts and Rolls Royce's sometime]. It’s something that matters when pricing yourself (what is a fair wage or fee for people to pay you?); when pricing products and services; and when considering paying for products and services (why does a certain price seem to high or like a good buy?).

Pricing yourself

According to my nice bible on consulting, there are three main ways that I can set my own prices. I can work on an hourly / weekly / monthly / etc. fee, I can charge a single fee for the whole project, and I can be paid for reserved time [aka, I set aside x amount of days per month for client y]. Consultants typically charge a lot and that is not for arrogance reasons. Rather, one factor is the amount of risk that you incur. By committing to one client, who may only need you for an undetermined amount of time, you risk forgoing other income. Hence you charge more per project. Something like reserved time over a longer period of time would be less risky, hence you can charge less for that.

Of course, it’s also a matter of what value you bring to the table, which is really a two-edged sword: is the value that you bring, the skill-sets that you have acquired (and which cost you money to acquire)? Or is it the value that your client attributes to it? It is always the latter, though if that value is lower than what it costs to produce it, you’re making a loss and should rethink your business.

Similarly, it should optimally be so that when you apply for a job, you have an estimate of the financial value that you bring to the company. This isn’t always made clear, often you have a salary-indication showing what you are worth to them, but your value-contribution may very likely be higher (or lower) than what is expected. Negotiating in such a situation requires sufficient knowledge about that value—yours and theirs.

Pricing products and services

The mechanics of pricing here is much the same, though perhaps simpler to understand. At least, from a cost-perspective, which should be just a matter of adding up the ingredients and the (wo)man-hours. But cost in itself does not tell you enough. For one, there are economies of scope and scale. Second, there are avoidable costs. And third, we live in a era where the cost of (re)production can often be minimal [I should note at this point, that the edition of the book that I bought is from 199X; a 4th edition came out in 2005, which, I imagine, approaches the digital economy more].

And of course there is also the matter of the competition (cost-based pricing only works well in monopolistic situations—”it costs what it costs, what are you going to do about it, punk?”) and, again, the value that the customer places on your product. But this kind of interplay can be really complex and is exactly why I decided to read this book.

A note on the avoidable costs part. Recently, I was looking for a laptop-bag and came across what I thought was a great deal. Everywhere I looked the bag cost €40. But one place had it for €25. Without thinking I added it into my basket [this is e-commerce] and wanted to order it. Until I saw that sending it would cost €20 [other's charged €5], bringing it to the same sum. This was actually a coincidence, as they charged €20 for sending other products as well. Why does one company charge much more than others for sending materials, but less for the materials itself? My acquired wisdom taught me that this is because it encourages people to buy lots of products at once. Because people buy a lot, the store has to store less inventory over time, which represents a saving that it can translate into the cost of its products.

The inventory cost is an avoidable cost that you, as a store, can tweak up, down, or away. Just like you can outsource certain parts of your operation, etc. etc., you can make decisions on an organisational level which will have an effect on your costs. And because your costs don’t matter to your customer, the value that he attributes to your product does, you have to change your costs and margins to match that picture. Did that make sense? I had to re-read that part of the book a few times to get it myself, sort of.

The price that you and I are willing to pay

While marketeers would like you to think that this is all a psychology game, it is in fact still a psychology + numbers game at this stage. When my income is low, making a purchase that consumes a large percentage of it, will make me very price-sensitive and vice versa. If I use an app that saves me x amount of time [allowing me to earn more money], then that app has a certain value to me relative to that.

But there are psychological aspects as well. My Mac, for example: I know it saves me time to do what I do (=financial value). But I also feel good about being on a Mac (=psychological value). Or the digital SLR I am planning to buy. I briefly browsed the second-hand market, but abandoned the idea because I value the security of buying a new product. My expertise in cameras is too low to place my faith in a second-hand camera, even if it is half price. Had the new Mac not come out recently, I would’ve probably bought a second-hand one, because I know about 10 different tests to make sure that it’s ok. The product’s reputation is a factor, but so is the customer’s expertise.

Setting a price is a matter of what value it has for a customer—real and imagined—and good marketeers can position their products wisely to convince customers of that.

Final thoughts

Don’t worry! Tech it Easy won’t become a pricing-orientated blog anytime soon. As interesting as it can be, it doesn’t quite hit that mainstream nerve, I don’t think. For me, it is just another puzzle to solve on the big canvas that is life. And perhaps, I made you curious about it also? If so, give me a buzz in the comments or send me a mail. As I’m here to learn, I’d love to discuss any questions you may have about this!

Vincent

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There’s been a lot of discussions over the year about how to protect your pictures’ copyright (e.g.). The number one method appears to be watermarking, which makes sense, though it really won’t prevent anyone from still sticking that picture on a random site. I, personally, haven’t thought much about copyright, but of course, I am not making money from photography.

As I am buying my first SLR camera (a Canon Rebel XSI) pretty soon, I thought a little what I want and don’t want out of photography. I like to make good pictures of course. I like to become a master of the medium. I like to express myself. And, I’d like to be able to take pictures whenever I want to. But one thing I noticed, from taking over 5000 pictures with a Canon Ixus, with less than 5% with me in it, is that I also like to be a part of the picture-experience.

What inspired my idea was my recent upgrade to an Intel Mac with my very first webcam—that’s right, I never saw the attraction until now. It rules! To anyone used to video-Skyping, you’re familiar with the huge video of your friend, and the tiny video of yourself at the bottom.

So, I’m thinking, why not have the same thing for pictures? Taking a picture would then look like this:

Instead of having a pesky and rather ugly watermark, you can see who actually made that picture. You could of course have a little mini-cam in your camera, pointed at you and taking an up-to-date shot of what you look like — that one was taken while I had the flu, some months ago — but a static picture will do the trick most of the time.

What do you think? Should photo-pubishers like Picasa, iPhoto, Flickr, etc. integrate such a feature? Would it have any useful function to you, as a photographer or as a viewer? Share your thoughts!

Vincent

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Check this out! Kutiman, 26, out of Israel, took all kinds of different, unrelated movies on YouTube, put them together and made songs out of them. It reminds me of my teenage years, watching MTV and seeing some real creative stuff. The kind which, I guess, you now find on YouTube. (Thanks, Jens)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBfj6khrG4&hl=en&fs=1]

Vincent

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I decided to take an hour or so out of my schedule and just write. This topic is something that has been on my mind in the last three months, perhaps longer, and writing about it hopefully helps. Comments are (always) open, so your input is valued.

First off, let me start with saying that a choice is best made when (all) the options have been explored. That isn’t always possible of course, but I definitely prefer making well-informed decisions over the opposite. In a casino, you can either lose big, win big, or stay even. The odds are pretty much stacked against you and the gamble is that you have to act on no or little information, which makes my first principle on informed choices moot.

To those that don’t know, I finished an extended degree in business administration last year. It was a weird time, in that I totally ignored the requirements of that degree and wrote an opus on high tech entrepreneurship and the ingredients it needed to succeed. That took well over a year, after beginning to write it. When I graduated, I did so with a good grade (marked down a little for the sheer length of my thesis), and came forth with more knowledge about companies and the conditions to succeed, than perhaps I should’ve accumulated. The first few months were spent looking for a job, which was a strange time. I enjoyed every one of my job-interviews, but we always ended up talking about running the business and the mechanics of the industry, rather than the job. Any conversation I had, I would come away with a few pages worth of information about that company and it’s industry, but I’d get rejected for the job [my general impressions about jobs these days: companies look for specialists, not generalists].

I then took on a consulting gig, which was to help start a business in the wine-space. The way I got it, was that I responded to an unconventional job-advert and wrote a proposal for how I could add value and what I wanted in exchange. It was accepted, and I hired an intern to help me develop the business case. I had a great time, much passion in the wine-industry, much good and bad wine was drunk. It lead me to submit another business plan to the New Venture competition, inspired by (but different from) what I had done [abandoned for feasibility reasons, though I learned a lot]. While I did apply for more jobs, the same situations kept arising, great conversations, where I would act more like an equal than an applicant and no job.

Consulting gig 2 arrived on New Year’s Eve, I was called out of the blue, because of an internship I did in a similar business some years back. I was hired as a consultant to get a business into an incubation programme and look for funding. I semi-wrote about some of it, for my last post. It’s a great product, I think, and I’m very excited about developing it. Every meeting, we come up with new ideas for the business and there’s great energy and chemistry there. In the middle of this, I did a mini-consulting gig — a due diligence project on an investment — and gigs 4 and possibly 5 are in the pipeline.

Those are my gambles and semi-gambles. I could choose to become a self-sufficient consultant helping startups get to the level where they get funding—this was the topic of my thesis and I know this through and through. I could decide to ally myself with my current client for a longer period of time, perhaps become employee no. 5. What doesn’t make this a gamble is that I do what I’m good at and I do what I love. What does, is that I don’t yet have a sales-machine in place for getting future clients; I operate strictly by word of mouth.

On the other side is security. I’ve been offered a job in a financial trust. The wages are reasonable, I would have to move (to a French-speaking country), and I couldn’t combine it with my consulting gigs. I would have to give up what I love doing for a steady income that will likely grow, a good network of people that I could do future projects with, and … a recession is looming. If I were a career-minded / money-orientated / rational individual, it would probably be a good choice to make.

Yet I am hesitant, for obvious reasons, because I may have found my niche, and taking the secure choice would mean giving that up. I have to make a decision in about a week’s time.

What would you do?

Vincent

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I’m sitting here writing this on my new Intel Macbook, 4GB of RAM and 256MB of video-memory, coming from a 4-year old PPC iBook with 1GB of RAM and 32MB of video-memory. The latter is the very definition of the principle I’m talking about. From the beginning, I’ve had to find creative solutions to doing my work and it’s been incredibly rewarding. I’ve yet to experience a boundary to the Macbook’s abilities. Having total freedom is exhausting. It encourages exploration, rather than getting things done, and it leads to exhaustion. No matter how far you try to go, you’re still inside that box.

I’ve been engaged in three funding proposals in the last two months. The first, ok, more of a business-plan competition than a funding application. The second, applying for a government grant. The third, applying for a large venture capital investment. Of these three, the grant application was my least favourite and I loved the VC application process. Why?

We have an undefined amount of time to apply for the government grant. We had to follow a template with ultra-confusing headings (e.g. I have three sections that want me to describe the market… am I supposed to do it thrice?). And the total had to be no more than 25 pages.

We found out about the VC option very late in the game, 24 hours before the deadline in fact. We had to fill out a webform, which was in total ca. 8 chapters. Each section had a character-limit (not word), ranging from 100 to 4000. One section for the market and business model = 4000 characters. What the company does = 100 characters. A simple form to fill in the finances, focussing on the key-figures only (revenues, EBIT, equity) which forced us to do all of the complicated calculations for ourselves, and a section for what we wanted to give away of the company and why. Instead of doing an unlimited amount of writing, we used whatever extra time we had to discuss the problems and solutions.

I wrote the 8-page piece for the competition in two hours. Because that’s all the time I had left, after handing in the VC proposal that same day. It forced me to focus on the essentials and nothing more.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a productivity-tool like a laptop, making a startup survive, raising kids, educating people, boundaries are the key to ultra-focussed, ultra-creative solutions to the problem at hand. Giving people total freedom rarely leads to the right results; it makes life easier to both in the very short-term. In the long-term it definitely creates more overhead, as you’re constantly chasing after those that you gave the freedom to. “Kid, it’s been a month, where are you now?” “I’m on the introduction, but I have all the time in the world, right?” Kid, for your sake, I hope not.

The end.
Vincent

P.S. looking for the right picture lead to this article on the same topic.

Audience: How do you set yourself boundaries? I’d love to know!

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