Language and its importance to our development

April 14th, 2013
From Globalvoicesonline.org

From Globalvoicesonline.org

As recent migrants to Spain, the question of language raises its head almost daily. We don’t speak much Spanish but are acutely aware that we need to. If we want to enjoy this country to its fullest we have to. Otherwise we will always be isolated and dependent on a handful of like minded expats who also haven’t put in the work to learn the local language.

Yesterday we were surprised to come across a school in the hills behind us in Marbella that is a German School with a Spanish bilingual stream. Who would have thought that this would be available. We had been grappling with the question of language for family offsprings. As we are English speakers in Spain on German passports, German should be part of the mix we have been thinking. And here was a possible solution. English at home, German and Spanish at school.

So while checking the school’s website, the TED newsletter dropped into my inbox and I decided to view some on a Sunday for fun. Don’t normally get the time. And I discovered a talk from a previous TED session, in fact from 2011, that was totally fascinating. It was about language and what that meant to human evolution.

In fact the point this speaker, Mark Pagel, made amongst other amazing points was that having a universal language allows people to share ideas, innovate and create together and this was what was causing such enormous growth in our technological advances across the board.

In my lifetime alone, the mobile phone, internet, organ transplants, space trips, natural regrowth of human organs and so much more has appeared. Far more I think than previous generations have experienced. And the reason for that is that we can steal ideas so much quicker if we can understand the language that somebody else used when developing and describing his invention.

As a total different story though, but very much along the same principle of language, that popped into my inbox was a report (5 of them and worth reading) by Steve Blank on China and his recent visit. Talking about such things as China’s innovation hubs, investments & VCs. China invests (both private and state funds) in billions of dollars every year in innovation mostly in telecommunications, media and technology.

Yet at the same time, China bans contact to the rest of the world. No YouTube, no Google, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Flickr. All of the people and info sharing tools are restricted to Chinese products that China’s authorities are able to control and censor where required.

So the contrast between what Mark Pagel states and what China does highlights the principle that the more people can talk to each other in a common language across all borders the better and easier new technologies can be developed.

What does that mean for China, and as a matter of fact for Vietnam a country also dictated and censored by its communist government, and the billions that that country invests in innovation hubs? It’s not going to be as effective. In fact it is mostly more focused on copying and making something from overseas work in China rather than inventing something totally new and adding to the development of the world. The 10th Groupon site anybody? Sure. It’s available in China.

Imagine if China opened it’s doors to international thought – or at least allowed its citizens to. What this amazing giant could achieve. With it’s hard learning and hard working citizens who are alway striving to get better at what they are doing, this huge world power player could contribute so much to the well being of the global community. If only it opened its doors to the language of the global community.



How to change the world and other small goals

March 16th, 2013
Occupy Wall Street protestor being removed

Occupy Wall Street protestor being removed

Occupy Wall Street didn’t make it. They didn’t really make a difference and the movement didn’t survive. In fact all that the Occupy movement got known for was untidy evictions from their various vantage points. Oh wait. They did manage to engineer the resignation of the Dean at St Paul’s in London. Success? Hardly.

Yet their message was incredibly important. Stop fat cat practices in the corporate world. Those practices that lead to indecent profits, huge CEO salaries and pittance pay to the people who make the organisation function. Those toilet cleaners, PA’s, support staff and more.

And sure. Warren Buffett‘s secretary earns over $100k per year. Seems a lot, but then look at the profits that his Berkshire Hathaway makes and you have to wonder about the unfairness of it. I am going to presume for the sake of the argument that the rest of the non investment broker staff also earn small salaries. Can’t see the cleaner getting more than $100k per year. Can you?

So what happened? Surely the stats of the top 20% of the population in the USA hold 89% of the wealth should be something that would ‘occupy’ the minds of the eighty percent of the USA that fight for the scraps of the wealth.

Perhaps a random idea is that the Americans are so used to thinking that everybody can make it in the USA and therefore if they are poor they can only blame themselves, surely. They just didn’t make it and they better be happy with their fate.

What the disenfranchised people in the developed world are forgetting is that they do have the power. They don’t actually need to think it’s their fault that they are not getting an equitable slice of the wealth cake. And perhaps one should not forget the developing world where the same inequalities are coming to the fore.

It was therefore great to see in Switzerland a move by the ordinary people taking back some of that power. The people voted overwhelmingly against high executive pay. Lead by one individual, Thomas Minder owner of a family-owned business, a tiny outrage ended up becoming a popular vote.

And that’s how it has to be done if you want to change the world. Messy occupy movements where people settle in tents on the fringe of financial district? No. A well thought through campaign that appeals to the ordinary people via legal and regular channels? Yes to that.

It surely applies to all of the changes that people want to make. Violence, riots, uprisings, demonstrations are not the way to do it. Even in the Arab world the uprisings have not really made a difference instead allowing lunatic fringe religious groups to run the show. Talk about a step back into the dark ages.

You want to make a change? Do it within the system. Just like the Swiss did. They changed the law. We can do that too. And with social media allowing us to talk so freely to each other and making it easy for tribes to get together it really isn’t necessary anymore to camp on the doorstep of the stock exchanges.



Jobs for everyone – don’t count on it

March 7th, 2013

laborforceparticipationThere have been some interesting developments in the human resources space. The Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in particular has started a strong debate. Her call to bring back telecommuters into Yahoo’s offices has caused a lot of random hot air to circulate.

Whereas some companies have allowed their workers freedom to work from home Yahoo has now decided they want their staff back in the office. It seems positively old fashioned. Going backwards? Do we need to be physically together to produce the best work possible? And what about the cost to the environment and the back pocket for all the commuting to work.

But then another interesting article caught my attention. Reading about an innovative design studio based in Copenhagen and admiring their design work it was interesting to note that this award winning studio consists of two partners and one assistant. Sure they are a division of a larger agency, but their business unit is small.

How does this work? It can only work when the small unit can tap into an available freelance talent pool. And this is where work is ultimately going to. Just as this agency, Mega Design, is doing. They bring in talent when required. This means that you are never at risk with high overheads. You can expand or shrink according to the work load. It’s like having telecommuters on tap. Without the risk.

Of course there will still be the Yahoo, Facebook and Google’s out there who amass people in the hundreds and thousands. But where the big changes will happen will be in the small to mid size businesses. The ones that are most often knocked over by recessions. And the ones that used to employ those millions newly unemployed.

An interesting question was posed in a blog post recently. In response to the unemployment figures in the developed world that are not budging even though the recession is receding into history and the stock exchanges are posting highs not seen since before the crash a question was asked. (Taking the highs as an indication that the economies are doing well.)

And the question was: why are companies not hiring. Even though the economy is moving again and into positive figures. Why is there no hiring?

And probably the answer to this is that companies are going to do the very same thing that this design studio in Copenhagen is doing. Once they require staff they will outsource to freelancer on a per project basis because it’s safer. It’s a matter of keeping your overheads in sync with your project sizes.

The big headache of course is that young people coming out of formal education have been educated for the purpose of slotting into factory style work environments. Note that many hugely successful businesses out there have been started by people who never finished their post high school qualification. Steve Jobs springs to mind.

We are educating our youth for the wrong job market. There are only so many jobs at Yahoo or Google. The rest are going to have to become freelancers. Do they know how to run their own business, how to sell their services, how to keep their skills relevant so that they are marketable, network to find new business and the list goes on.

What else are we not providing our young people with? Relevant work place skills. A degree in English is not going to be enough for a regular copy writing job. And companies don’t have the budgets anymore to train up young people. This means our unemployed out there are the youth. Because on their first day at work all they can possibly do is make coffee for the boss. And there are no longer budgets for these skills.

 

 



Effective strategy against terrorism – stop the manufacture of arms

January 21st, 2013

Image courtesy of Sofrep.

People are making money out of selling arms to terrorists. Sure it’s companies. But, here’s a reality check. If you have shares in Dassault Aviation, Sukhoi, Mikoyan, EADS, Finmeccanica, Thales Group, Lockheed Martin, Boeing or BAE Systems then you are making money out of terrorism.

Or what about an investment in companies that appear harmless? General Electric, Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi, Saab, Hewlett-Packard and the list goes on. Shocker isn’t it. And if you have investments in such ‘harmless’ investments such as Unit Trusts you will find that the bundle of companies they invest in will surely have some of the above in their portfolios.

While government leaders shake their heads at Algeria and the terrorism attack at a BP natural gas plant the main point that is seemingly always missed is who supplied the terrorists with arms. It isn’t really about a gas plant that needs better protection or an Algerian army overzealously riding in guns blazing.

No the real question surely should be how did the Masked Brigade, who claim responsibility, get the funding and arms to launch such an attack and kill 80 or so people. Or so the media have us believe. Could of course be more or even less one hopes.

It’s the same weird logic that keeps the Americans in guns. There would not be the same killings in schools or movie theatres by gun madmen, however unhinged they might be, if they could not get hold of guns. Throwing knives isn’t really an alternative option.

Don’t allow the selling of guns to anybody in America and you would have a considerable fall off of random shootings in public spaces.

Same principle applies to terrorist groups. Do not sell guns to anybody. And you would have a fall off of terrorism.

For instance Germany, upstanding citizens and all of that, have one of the largest armament industries in the world and in fact are the third largest arms exporters in the world. In 2011 exports topped €10Billion, of which 42% went to third-party states outside NATO. In particular Saudi Arabia is a faithful customer. And one asks how many of these arms could end up in Islamist terrorist groups?

So before anybody else blames Algeria for this disaster, ask yourself the question:- who is giving terrorists the arms and ammunition to wage these wars.  Who is making the money.



Unemployment is not always about no jobs being available

January 18th, 2013

The United Nations brought out a report on domestic workers at the beginning of 2013. An interesting statistic was that Spain is one of the top employers of domestic workers and most of them are foreigners. Hey what? The country with one of the highest unemployment numbers in Europe imports labour. About 2 million of them. That could make quite a dent in the millions that are currently unemployed.

So why do Spaniards not want to work as domestic workers? Well who does, one might even want to ask. After all there are umpteen jobs out there that nobody wants to do. Like for instance clean the floors in a supermarket, or stack shelves, or serve behind a counter. How mindless is that? How many times a day do you want to grab sausages, weigh them, put them in a packet and slap a price tag on it? And toilet cleaning?

It’s obviously not anything any self respecting person wants to do, surely.

And so it comes as somewhat of a surprise to see that ranked in number 5 place of the all time best companies to work for in the USA in 2012 is in fact a grocery chain. Yip. Their staff turnover is a low 3.6%. People love to work there. Regardless of whatever they have to do, and cleaning of toilets must be one of the tasks surely, nobody leaves their job. Because they love working there.

So it’s not actually about the type of work that one has to do that makes one want to work at something. It is all about a whole bunch of other stuff. In fact some serious research into wages and salaries has brought up that high rewards are really only necessary if the rest of the situation is unbearable.

It is probably safe to say that the counter staff at Wegmans, number 5 in the best companies to work for, are not earning Investment Banker bonuses. And at a loss of 3.6% the excuse these execs sprout of having to keep good staff and hence the high salaries doesn’t actually cut it either.

Of course high skills and knowledge are something one has to pay for. Cheating others out of money obviously requires skills. Oh wait, Investment Bankers don’t steal money, they just shuffle it around. To deserving individuals. My bad. (I’m sure there are a ton of highly skilled ethical bankers out there too. Regrettably their good deeds generally go unnoticed.)



Building relationships – for the win

December 25th, 2012

As a business person you can make a decision early on in your business life cycle whether you are going to offer a product or service to whoever wants it or whether you and your customers/clients have a mutually beneficial relationship.

They are not the same. Perhaps in the olden days when we had Mom and Pop stores they were. But with the advent of major marketing players the mutually beneficial went out of the window. Never to be seen again. Or at least not for a while.

But it’s not only your super stores, super manufacturers, super suppliers of stuff that are starting to realise that their customers want to be heard, taken note of. Smaller organisations including non-profits also need to play by the same rules.

Take for instance concert halls and philharmonic orchestras. In the past many of these organisations have delivered whatever the concert master/director decided was good for the public. And in fact many still do. It’s a kind of dictatorial rule of-and-by ‘good taste’. If you don’t like classical music then get lost. And that attitude kind of translates into all contact with the public. Whether it’s the ticket office or ushers in the concert hall, the public gets treated as if they were the servants.

Organisations who are looking after their customers/clients/audiences and building true relationships are making it happen whatever the economic climate is.

 

Toronto Symphony Orchestra

This article by a blogger shows how an organisation, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, reacted to a customer’s complaint about wheelchair accessibility. They worked incredibly hard to revise their attitude towards their customers. It’s worth remembering that the customer is part of the equation of every successful business venture, whether for profit or not.

So considering this success story, an irritating experience of another kind showed how not to do business. After trying unsuccessfully to buy a book from a website in Spain, Santana Books, with a UK credit card, another attempt with a Spanish card which was successful but did not deliver the eBook, I sent an irritated comment on the contact page complaining about the sites non-usability.

I didn’t hear back from them for over a week. And finally received email notification that my eBook was now available for download. Why it should take so long is another question of course. Surely it could have been automated? At the same time I received another email advising that I would receive a refund as I had sent in such a rude comment.  Not what I had expected or wanted. “How can we improve our website’ would have been more appropriate.

Needless to say, there is no way I will buy any of their other books. Not because the books are not worth buying but because the shopping experience is just too painful.  Perhaps one disgruntled customer is not a big deal. Perhaps it is. But one disabled customer managed to get a revised attitude for a concert hall’s accessibility policies. And wrote a glowing report about it.

And isn’t that how it should be?

A mutually beneficial relationship.



Transport in Vietnam – some fun images

December 1st, 2012

An Australian friend we met in Hue, Vietnam has a particularly fabulous sense of humour. He’s definitely somebody who can see the fun in situations. These are some of his pics that show life in Hue. And in particular shows Vietnamese inventiveness when the situation requires some lateral thinking skills!

Vietnamese idea of a car seat for a child.

As seen in Hue, Vietnam. A child seat for a motor bike.

So what to do when your motorbike is your only form of transport and you have a small child to accommodate? And of course your first thoughts are for Junior’s safety.

Well what else but rigging your very own special safety seat for your little one. It’s high enough to allow junior a view of the countryside. And it even has a very functional safety belt. Wedged in between your legs, sharing space with the umpteen plastic shopping packets and other essential things that need transporting all seem safe.

What else would you want in a child seat?

Can’t see anything else that could do the job any better….

 

Fish monger in Hue, Vietnam

Selling your fish where they fell. In the middle of a busy street.

Now faced with the situation of having one motor bike and a huge load of fish that you need to get to the market. What do you do? You load everything onto your motor bike and hope for the best. Of course if you run out of rope or forget to fasten one side, or you totally overload the bike with far too many baskets and items then you could have a situation as shown in this image.

However, as ever, Vietnamese people are inventive. And what some people might consider to be a train smash when all of your fresh produce gets scattered all over a four lane busy road.  If you are in Vietnam you make a plan.

And if the plan involves selling your produce to passers by who show an interest in buying your fresh and still wriggly fish right off the tarmac, who are you to complain or ignore a ‘making a living no matter what’ situation. So while you are grabbing your wayward fish, you are also serving customers who have no worries about the traffic rushing by on both sides of the accident.

Shopping opportunities in everything….

Fixing wiring on a petrol tanker in Hue Vietnam

Enterprising electrician fixing cabling while standing on a petrol tanker. And don’t forget the cigarette in the mouth.

The wiring in Vietnam is quite decorative most of the time. In fact, you could probably find some images and posts on the topic on this site. For the first time visitor to Asia it’s mind blowing. We are just not used to low hanging wires that in some instances you have to brush aside just to carry on walking along the pavement. Not that many people use pavements in Vietnam. After all the road is good enough. Never mind the traffic.

So looking at this image you will see that repairing these low flying wires requires some work too. And if you don’t have a stepladder or pole to quickly climb up with then you might just need to pull up the nearest petrol tanker. So no worries about inflammable petrol, and live electrical wires.  Or the fact that the super inventive technician is also smoking a cigarette.

Why would you worry after all as a card carrying Buddhist your demise is pre-ordained…

Transport in Vietnam

A bicycle is as good as anything else when goods need to be transported.

And finally a sight you might think is a rarity. Well, no. Everything is carried using bicycles or motor bikes. Whether it’s a huge sheet of glass, a stack of dead birds hanging on either side of your saddle, or a bevy of live birds hanging by their feet who come to life when the cyclist stops, everything is possible.

Probably most of the cycles are used more to push goods around than as means of personal transport. Flower and fruit sellers have fully laden bicycles carrying a bottle of water to spray on their goods, a scale to weigh product and plastic bags to wrap their product in.

But goods are not the only things carted. Many kids will give their pals a lift, and whole families make space on both bicycles and motor bikes with baby in front, wife and at least two more kids behind them.

Click on image to view an enlarged version.



Technology joins us together

November 9th, 2012

Remembrance Day: November 11.

You can roll your eyes and groan at how technology has disturbed our lives. When my kids visit they spend more time on their iPhones than talking to us. Easy access to technology can be really disruptive. But then you come across an example of the good side and you know that like everything in this world there is a flip side.

A really touching blog post by a writer whom I follow made me reflect on how great technology can be. Dave is disabled and a wheelchair user. And he is Canadian, at the moment working in the UK. He wrote about a chance meeting and discussion he had about war graves in the UK. And yes, weird topic. But he had discussed with some locals about a nearby graveyard honouring fallen soldiers during World Wars. And Dave’s father had served in the second world war for the Canadian Air Force.

On Remembrance day, observed on November 11,  he and his partner wanted to visit the graveyard but couldn’t find the details online. So he wrote a blog post about his experience and called on his readers for help. And there it was. Details of websites and info readily provided by some of his blog readers.

I’m totally against war myself. I tend to think it’s a bunch of politicians following their power kicks. At the end of the day I have seen Brits get on with Germans, I’m German and I married a Brit.., (so World War II?), Vietnamese and Americans get on (Vietnamese War?) and Japanese and Americans? (Word War II?) and I’m sure I could recite a huge long list.

But as much as I am against war, I am fully in support of those people who get sent out to make those wars happen. They are not to blame. And I am for fully supporting veterans in all and any way that may be necessary.

So I sympathised with Dave and his wishing to visit graves of war heroes. And so it was really touching to see the response to his request for help to find the memorial graveyard. He got exactly what he was looking for. It’s wonderful see the best of people like that. More often we see the nasties, the trolls. And I suppose it is because they make the loudest and nastiest noise. But then you see how our internet community can do the good stuff too and you know it’s good after all.



Wow, such a hugely unpublicised and amazing victory for women

July 26th, 2012

Brigitte Lacombe: Photographic Exhibition at Sotheby’s on Arab Women in Sport

The London Olympic Games will have one huge victory that will go almost unnoticed but is nevertheless enormous in its significance. Every competing nation, all of the 205, are sending women athletes.

Now you might think, so what? But it’s actually a big thing. Arab countries have quietly opened their in-take of athletic representation to include women. Sure some of the women competing are in fact Arab women now living in the USA and able to train without police supervision and protection. Still. The nations are admitting that women are allowed to show themselves on such a public stage. In front of thousands of spectators and millions on the box.

A true victory. Thank you to all of those women who have stood firm, often under personal threat and disregarding their safety, and who have so steadfastly pushed the authorities. They have done this quietly, brashly, with quiet voices and sometimes with strident demands. Each one of you a huge thank you. We as women can quietly celebrate another huge victory.

Well done all of you. Too numerous to count or give credit to. Efforts that have produced a small wave sometimes and sometimes a full on tsunami of change. Let’s carry on. It’s worth it in the end. Your daughters will thank you. Mind you, they might even just consider it their right. And that’s also good.

To commemorate this achievement a photographic exhibition is being held during the London Olympics. It’s at Sotheby‘s and by photographer Brigitte Lacombe. It showcases Arabic women athletes during the Arabic Games in 2011 held in Qatar. And for more on Muslim women in sport visit this blog.



We’re getting it all wrong

June 22nd, 2012

Yip. That’s right. All the experts out there determining what our society is all about. They are mostly getting it wrong. Our society is all about doing stuff together. Groups of us. Families, friends, communities, congregations, work place colleagues, school friends, Facebook friends, Twitter followers.

We want to be together and we want to join in doing things with each other.

Watch this video by famous YouTuber Matt. It’s one in a series of Where the Hell is Matt. It’s apparently his last video.

Every single snippet of Matt dancing with a tiny group to a big bunch of dancers has one thing in common. The people dancing with Matt are loving it.

Sure it’s about dancing, music and having fun. All in one bundle. But it’s more than that. It’s about doing something together.

In our modern society where people are desperately lonely for whatever reason it”s viewing this video that makes one realise that we are still herd folk. We love being in a group. We love doing something together, achieving a something together. Making something work. Together.

So if you are looking for the next big thing like Facebook. Whatever it is you might be thinking about creating remember this point. Make it about people sharing and achieving something together.  Allow them to get together in some form or other and you could be onto a winner.



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