Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

New Year's Gratitude List

Charles Green, author of my favorite sales book "Trust Based Selling", suggests making a New Year's Gratitude list this year, rather than a New Year's Resolutions list. 

What a great idea.  It's amazing how you can change your own mood by focusing on the things you should be happy about.  The last time I ran a project, I'd often start our daily check-in meeting with a quick "what's going well for me outside of work" around the table and I swear it was one of the most useful practices on the project. 

So what have I got to be thankful for this year?

• I'm thankful I've just left my last job and that my exit was mutually amicable.  The company and I both took a gamble on a new business stream - Agile consulting - but it didn't work out.  So, even though I am disappointed, I'm thankful for what I've learnt and thankful that I've got a little redundancy money to help me transition to my next job.  It was a worth while gamble.
• I'm grateful to my (now former) colleagues Callum, David, Charles and Ali for opening my eyes to a new way of seeing the word.  T
• I'm thankful that my daughters are healthy and well ... if not peaceful and quiet.
• I'm delighted and relieved that my friend Graeme has completed his Comp Sci degree in the last few months (at the grand old age of 36), that he has had his "junior developer" contract renewed for another 6 months, and that he's committed himself to get C# and .Net certification.  That takes testicles.
• I'm grateful to my friends in the Agile and Theory of Constraints worlds.  Sometimes I hide myself in those virtual worlds ... just for a rest. 
• I'm pleased with myself that I've kept up my work on my book.  Although I think the outcome is important (i.e. finishing the book), I find the journey a pleasure.  When I was growing up my Dad used to typically work a 10 hour day then come home and work on his farm.  One night when I was helping him move an electric fence on a frozen night why he bothered with the farm.  He said he found it relaxing.  Same here.
• I'm grateful to my lovely wife.  Just because she is lovely.  And tolerant.  And for being utterly charming.  And because she looked after the kids an awful lot this year while I was traveling to work.

There!

I feel better already :)

Britian repays WW2 debt to US

From the BBC:

The UK will repay debts owed to the US dating from the World War II by the end of this year, the government says.

The final payment of £45m will be made by the 31 December, meeting a 1945 obligation to repay the debt in full.

[via Owen and someone else who I can't recall]

Free online file conversion site - many formats, upto 100M files

zamzar.com looks useful.  It converts many different file types (graphic, text, audio, video) into different file types ... for free.

For instance, I've just converted a harvard business review pdf into word and it did an okay job.  Not quite perfect ... each page was blurry because it contained both the original graphic from the pdf and the converted text.  Once I deleted the graphics it looked better.

It also converts video into ipod format and I'm going to give that a go shortly.

I'm not sold just yet ... but it's worth sharing.

Time magazine article: Are you Sticky?

Here's a nice easy article about Chip and Dan Heath's new book "Made to Stick": http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1552029,00.html

I'd love a free laptop please.

According to Joel Spolsky Microsoft has been giving free laptops to well known bloggers as a promotional gimmick.  There's a bit of a debate about whether the bloggers should accept, mention and / or keep the laptops. 

I receive a few "review" books from authors, the majority of which I read and many of which I recommend.  The review books are generally books which I would like to read anyway and I assume most of my readers would too.

I recently recommended the absolutely fabulous "Made to Stick" after reading the authors' HBR article and free excerpt on their website and then the authors kindly sent me a review copy.  There are a number of books that I haven't recommended despite the freebies - some because I'm too lazy and others because I wasn't wowed by them.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this is because I'm upset that no one sent me a new laptop.  I'd really love a new laptop. 

It doesn't have to come from Microsoft ... but I wouldn't mind if it did.  I wouldn't mind an Apple either.  I'd even happily accept a new Toshiba - their products are good, although, in my experience, their service sucks.  I'd happily review any sun drenched holidays on offer too.  I'd also love to review a new job too because I got made redundant last week. 

Oh, and I'd be delighted if someone wanted me to review any high quality noise canceling headphones too.  As the father of 2 noisy under-5s, I asked Santa for "peace and quiet" this year rather than the more traditional "peace and goodwill" but the closest I got was "Peas and Broccoli" with my Christmas dinner.  Perhaps I was bad during the year.  Perhaps Santa doesn't exist. 

Oh.  From a more serious, but related, angle.  My wife is a doctor and our house used to full of free pens from pharmaceutical companies.  But no more.  Nowadays she is a proud member of No Free Lunch, a group of doctors who believe "that pharmaceutical  promotion should not guide clinical practice".  In other words, they are very concerned that the free gifts - pens, conferences, lunches - can indirectly effect treatment decisions in favour of the drug companies.  Go take a look at their website - it might surprise you.

From their FAQ:

Q.  I’m not influenced by all these gifts anyway, so what’s the problem?

A.  Doctors, like everyone else, are influenced by promotion. Though there have been no randomized trials, there have been plenty of observational studies, and all of them have reached a similar conclusion (see Wazana): Doctors' prescribing behavior as well as other behaviors (for example, requests to the hospital formulary) are influenced by promotions and interactions with reps. Doctors who practice on the basis of promotion, meet with reps, and use information provided by them are more likely to prescribe more expensive, inappropriate medication. Though the possibility of publication bias exists, no study has shown that practicing on the basis of promotion leads to more cost-effective prescribing. And while no study has looked at the influence of gifts, or small gifts, per se, it is reasonable to extrapolate the vast social science literature on gifts (see below) to physicians. Though many physicians may believe otherwise, there is no reason to think that they are immune.
BACK TO THE TOP

Q. Surely you're not suggesting that something as inconsequential as a pen could possibly influence what I prescribe?

A. That's exactly what we're suggesting. And the social science literature suggests the same. Gifts create relationships; they create obligation, the need to reciprocate (See Katz, et al). For this reason even small gifts can be disproportionately influential. Though many individuals, as well as most professional society guidelines make distinctions among gifts of small and large value (permitting the former while proscribing the latter), presuming that larger gifts influence more than smaller gifts, this distinction is probably baseless (see Dana & Lowenstein).

That said.  I am completely above bias and so I am happy to accept any donations.  Laptops and Jobs, especially.

simple mistake's

1.  From the BBC:

Retailer Marks & Spencer has admitted making a "silly mistake" after getting a slogan on its children's Christmas pyjamas range grammatically wrong.

The slogan "Mum's dreaming of a quiet Christmas just like the one's she used to know" has a rogue second apostrophe.

Oh dear. 

At the ripe old age of 37, I have recently learned when to use "it's" and when to use "its".  While I am very proud of myself, I'm also slightly bothered because I now notice when other people get it wrong - and I'm simply not the sort of person who notices these things. 

2.  But, I understand why these sorts of things are important.

I went to university in a smallish New Zealand town called Hamilton.  Nothing much happened in Hamilton, but one of the joys I recall most fondly - as I was an immature, but brilliant computer science student back then - was riding my motorbike past one of the small video shops on the outskirts of town.  It was called FLICKERS and if I rode past the shop at night fast enough then the neon letters "L" and "I" blurred together, charmingly renaming the shop.

 

Isn't it fascinating how one tiny, tiny, tiny blur can cause such an unexpected and significant change in meaning?

3.  But the worse case I've ever seen was when the tutors at my University put together a training book for a first year programming course which used a modular two version of Logo.  The newbies would write programs to send a little insect around the screen leaving a trail behind it.  The tutorial had a library of functions such as up, down, left, right, penUp, penDown, but my favourite was the function which returned the X and Y co-ordinates of the insect.  It was innocently called penIs.  They only noticed after the books had been printed.  Ooops.

The 2nd most readable and useful book I've ever read

 Last month I mentioned what looked to be a most promising new book Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath .  Chip very kindly sent me a gallery copy, which I've just finished.  I'm happy to report that the book is fantastic.

Hi Chip,

I received your book on Saturday morning and abandoned my wife and kids for the weekend, when safe, to read it.  Fantastic!  I genuinely think that this is the 2nd most readable and useful book I've read in my life.  The first was Goldratt's business novel "The Goal" which uses many of the ideas in your book - especially concrete and emotional stories, but your book is the one I need right now.

I'm currently 30+ chapters into my own Goldrattesque novel and your book has given me several ideas where I need to tweak the story. 

Thanks for the advance copy.  I've got a rather large email list of people who'll just love your ideas and I'm about to send out a note recommending they pre-order a copy. 

Thanks again,

Clarke

If you need to sell ideas to other people and make them stick then this is the book for you.  I suspect it will be 2007's Tipping Point.

p.s. the authors have just started a blog.

My clever friend

I have an old friend who, before he got married and had kids, forget to go to sleep at night. 

He was tired all the time until he started setting his wristwatch alarm to got off at 11pm, in order to remind him to go to sleep.

I never did figure out if he was really rather clever or really rather daft.

Have your children been naughty?

Delightful!

If your children (work colleagues, or other loved ones) have been naughty then send them an official letter from santa.

http://www.warningfromsanta.com/

[p.s. Santa swears he doesn't spam people and the crowd at 5pm.co.uk, who threw this together, are reputable ... so I'm not expecting spam.]

Bail outs ...

Earlier this year Accenture bailed out of the massive NHT IT project.  It looks like they didn't leave the NHS in a bad situation because they handed the ongoing work to another big supplier. 

Do you have any - brief - stories about IT suppliers who have bailed out mid way through a software development project?

I'm interested in (a) why they bailed out (b) what the consequences to the customer and the supplier were (c) if there is anything that could have been done to avoid it?

I don't want to know names, but the stories would be very helpful for adding authenticity to the plotline of my book.

Can you help?