Posted by Rene Jansen
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:06:00 GMT
This week we encountered the end of the virtual era. No longer just a digital existence for Winkwaves. Why? We bought a printer. Strange, we have been working for quite some time now and could pretty much live without a printer. But now we are entering the era of contracts. And contracts are physical things you know. People like contracts on paper. With signatures. And stamps. And spoiled coffee. God knows why people are so fond off paper...
And secondly, we recieved our new winkwaves business cards and winkwaves letters (until now we used the former bPerform ones of course). Thanks to good old Andre, who designed them for us. Thanks Dre :) Wanna learn more about Andre? His
web site contains an extensive presentation of his work... (kidding)
So, now you understand what I mean with: the end of the virtual era :)
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:59:00 GMT
It has been a while since I posted. You could ask yourself: is that good news or bad news... I would say, optimistic as I am, that's good news :)
We have been quite busy over the last few months, and made several very important steps forward:
- We found an investor who understands the importance and fun of doing business in the knowledge economy and web2.0 world. We are really happy to have him aboard!
- Our team is now strong and fully focussed on delivering excellent web2.0 services. We have capabilities available according to Alan Coopers golden triange: understanding users and usability, understanding business and commerce, and understanding the enabling technics.
- We have created our first web2.0 service. It is running alpha these days, expected to go in beta next week. This service will create a major breakthrought for web2.0 in the Netherlands, and we can hardly wait to show it to you!
- We were able to acquire some very interesting projects. Will tell you more about this in later posts, but expect some fireworks ;)
- We set up a nice "board of inspiration". A board of very interesting people who are willing to act as sparring partners every now and than, to keep us awake, sharp and focussed on our promise to our users: "perform with a smile"!
So, the fact that I didn't post very often, is just a result of priorities. Priorities in setting up and running the business. But to avoid that this blog is falling asleep, I invited the other team members as well, so you might expect postings from them from now on as well. And if you just wonder how we are doing: drop us an email or come over for a coffee or a beer!
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 12:57:00 GMT
Today I received a nice mail from Vincent, author of the
Zesser blog. He pointed my "attention" to his posting on
Attention XML.
Attention XML follows the kind of the same methodology as bPerform does, in a sense that it monitors users behavior, to enable the easier "re-finding" of information you once read. Secondly, it enables to suggest (pro-actively) content that might be interesting for you.
His post reminded me on a topic that I wanted to discuss with you for quite some time, what I will call the Big Brother fear: Today in the Amsterdam subway, I bumped into Maureen, a nice girl who used to sing in one of my former bands. I hadn't spoken to her for quite some time, so we had a nice chat and a good laugh. After a while I told her about bPerform and what we try to achieve.
When she learned from me that bPerform will kind of monitor what you do to be able to pro-actively guide your attention and focus to information that might be interesting for you, she reacted like "oh, mmm, so, my manager will have a powerful means to monitor what I am doing? I would hate that!".
I explained to her that the objective is definitely not to "monitor and punish". I heard about this fear earlier, and this fear is actually an important reasons why we offer our product in combination with training and coaching of both the knowledge workers and their managers. If managers should use web2.0 to monitor what their people are doing, they will reduce the willingness of users to share information in a web2.0 way, and by that, remove all the advantages that web2.0 offers to all of us.
During this discussion I realised two things:
1) The Big Brother fear should be addressed in both the software and the marketing communication of our product
2) that our product is most suitable for organisations with "new types of managers". The former "command and control" managers will not realise any benefits with web2.0, but I am sure the new generation managers that understand the essence of the knowledge economy will not use bPerform to control their people, and by that, will benefit greatly from improved information sharing, community building and happier employees...
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:00:00 GMT
Just bumped into a nice article on
Frankwatching, a nice blog on web2.0. This describes exactly what we are doing, we need to work on our PR asap, that's for sure :)
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:48:00 GMT
Last week I was on a friends birthday party. I chatted for a while with his sister, who was considering to do a PhD research. She asked me whether I felt
my PhD research had been beneficial or not. I thought about her question. I did spent quite some nights, weekends and oh yeah, days of course, on my research. I obliged myself to work every evening at least half an hour, even if I was tired and wanted to relax, and I permitted myself 2 evenings of fun per week (like playing in my band). As we all know now, I managed to finalize my PhD research in about 2 years, doing it in part time next to my commercial job (again, thanks to the help from all collegues and students from the University of Amsterdam who supported me, and thanx as well to Capgemini, Bortiboll Communications and Bit-IC who funded part of the research).
So you could say, I could have done a lot of other things during those late night hours. Was it worth it? Yes, definitely, I said to my friend's sister. I think I owe quite some interesting projects I worked on over the last years (i.e. the
DHL web site) to my PhD thesis and the authority my research gives me.
However, I think if I could do it again, I'm not sure if I would go again for a PhD thesis, or rather write a business book (like I wrote earlier with
Martijn Hoogeveen and later one with
Monique van Berkel). It is easier to write a business book, since you can focus on your message and the practical relevance of your message, instead of the focus on scientific relevance. And suddenly a thought came to mind: it is about time to write my next book! I should start writing about my bPerform thoughts. About the business impact of Web2.0. What are the problems that managers of knowledge intensive firms run into. And what are the problems that individual knowledge workers run into? I realised that the current books on knowledge intensive organisations don't cover the whole story I want to tell (I realized myself how difficult it is to find good literature for teaching my courses at the University of Amsterdam, remember, the course where we started a
nice blog about all aspects of managing information and knowledge).
So, OK, let me think: I plan to interview, let's say, 20 managers and 20 individual knowledge workers. And I am going to ask them questions like:
- how important is knowledge for you to survive, and to create competitve advantage?
- what are the main challenges facing you as a knowledge intensive firm?
- how do you currently manage knowledge? What goes well, what needs improvement?
- how do you benefit on a strategic level from ideas and inspiration of your knowledge workers?
- what support do internal and external systems offer you, and is their support satisfying?
- how do you deal with the fact that knowledge workers are professionals that want to manager their own live and their own work, and that they often share knowledge in peer groups outside the company
And I realise myself that these questions are just a beginning, I need to think more about the real important questions. I need to define some objectives, hypotheses, a research framework... Damn, it's gona be another PhD thesis!! But... With a more practical focus, although I consider to write some scientific articles based on this research as well. Cool! This gives me energy! And it is important for all of us to better understand what is happening in the knowledge economy, so let's go for it! Any suggestions for questions? For people to interview? Just let me know....
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 12:47:00 GMT
The nice thing about posting to this blog, is that interesting people read it and send me emails, specially since google introduced its
blog search software. Today I recieved an email from Isaac Garcia. You might know Isaac from the
centraldesktop blog. I quote his profile information here: "Isaac co-founded Upgradebase in 1997, a leading product data provider to the Computer and Consumer Electronics industry; and Vendorbase in 1999, a B2B Marketplace for Computer Resellers. Both companies were acquired by CNET Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNET) in 2002. During my 3 year tenure at CNET, I served as a Director of North America Enterprise Sales for CNET Channel."
Isaac told me about his new initative,
Central Desktop. I visited their site today. It is an interesting collaboration environment based on Wiki. What I like about it is the thougth of a semi-structured, semi-unstructured shared environment, a bit like
basecamp, but then completely different :) They use the nice pay off: "reduce team spam". And I think most people in corporate environments, working on major international projects, recognises the spam in their email boxes. And Web2.0 is indeed a perfect way to improve team communication and collaboration, without increasing the number of mails in your inbox.
What I feel, looking at centraldesktop or Basecamp, is the huge need for better collaboration suites than the main providers like Microsoft offer us. So, join the group of people who make the online collaboration world a better place to be, join centraldesktop or bPerform or any other of your favorites, just quit using old fashioned cooperation tools and environments, just wake up and have fun, join web2.0!
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:46:00 GMT
Do you see any difference between this post and previous posts? You should. This post is made with a veeeery big smile on my face. Let me tell you: about 1,5 year ago I had to exchange my lovely titanium powerbook for a dull IBM (nothing wrong with it, a good laptop, but no real identity and a pretty dull image) since Capgemini forbid me to work on my preferred platform. Policy rules and standardisation. So you think a standardised platform helps? I was working on a Capgemini project in brussels for DHL, when my IBM laptop broke down. So, I went down to Capgemini Belgium, about 250 meters from the DHL building where I was based. I showed them my laptop and asked if they could help me. I felt lucky, since I could see a stack of exactly the same laptops behind the service desk. The joy of standardisation. But, it wasn't it good as it seemed.They felt sorry to say, but since I was working for Capgemini Netherlands they couldn't help me, there was no international SLA to help me...
But now the good news: today I configured my good old powerbook again. What a joy, MacOS 10.4 is excellent. I like spotlight, I like the dashboard, I like the rss feature in Safari, I like it all... Mmm... Sorry, I just got carried away enjoying to work with apple again. If you are an apple user, you know what I mean. If you are not, you will not know, and might never understand what I mean. Then, you just better ignore this post, I promise the next posts will be less promo again :)
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Thu, 08 Sep 2005 12:44:00 GMT
You might think, wow, normally Rene posts several times a week to this blog, and now it has been weeks... Is he alright? Is that startup alright? Yep... Alright... The only thing that happened is that I started again with a consultancy job for a few days a week, a startup needs some cash flow of course. And what I already foresaw: it is hard to keep focus on bPerform if you are in consultancy again... However, the good news is that I had again some very good interviews with banks and informal investors, and I feel like being pretty close to a good deal, a deal that should enable the full flash focus of my two brothers in arms. And that's very good news!
Secondly, I am again teaching a nice course at the university of amsterdam. Needs to keep my thinking and inspiration alive, hey! For those of you speaking (or at least understanding) the beautiful Dutch language (smurf language as my UK friends call it), in a few days you might check the blog we started around the theme of the course:
management of immaterial values. The students will post their thoughts on the knowledge economy, the information economy, tagging, and all those nice subjects that we are making money and fun with these days :)
So, will update you shortly on some news coming up around bPerform, will keep ya in the loop!
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:40:00 GMT
We all know some people try to break all rules, and get rich without working. I read a lovely
scam the scammer story this morning. Hilarious! Have fun :-)
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Posted by Rene Jansen
Fri, 05 Aug 2005 12:38:00 GMT
When I checked my stats this morning, you know, that's one of those nice first things in my morning ritual, drinking coffee and checking my stats (soon I hope to be able to check my actual turnover of course, even more interesting), anyway, when I checked I found out that ING had found my posting and visited this blog.
And yep, this afternoon I was called by the manager of ING Entrepreneurial service for North Holland (the area of the Netherlands where bPerform is based). Although he couldn't explain why this happened (I still think they need to do some process checking with mystery customers, and update their processes and systems based on these findings), he appologised for the inconvenience and stressed that ING definitely would like to help starters...
He explained that they offer loans to starters comparable to "personal loans" based on criteria like:
- Height of income from previous job
- Level of Education
- Business Plan
- The entrepreneur himself
He offered to have a face to face chat and discuss how this would work out for bPerform. So, let's have a chat with these guys. Perhaps I can even sell them some consultancy on how to improve their customer experience :-)
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