Today I visited Bootstrap meeting for the first time, so now I feel obliged to write a post about it. Even better to write it before Albert does.

In fact, I thought I would be horse riding at the time of the meeting. But you have to live by your principles, and one of my principles is, don’t ride horses in a shitty weather. The weather was awful all day.

The place

Chlodna 25. Nice place! Never been there either. It’s a cafe and there is also a room downstairs, where the presentations took place. And there are lots of board games available that you can play.

I arrived exactly at 12, took a chair from above because there was already no free places in the basement and ordered an apple pie (12 was early enough for me to miss breakfast), and the presentation started. (read more…)

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Nothing to write home about, but I made some technical improvements which make me really happy.

I added 1gb of ram to my laptop, getting at the total of 1.5gb. It’s hard to believe how much difference it makes. Everything is snappy, there is no delay when switching to window which was unused for some time, and files open momentarily.

I have also moved this site to a better host, on which it is possible to install stuff without debugging it for a whole night. It will allow some long overdue updates.

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I wanted to mention John Hagel’s post a few days ago, but couldn’t find time till now. He presents agenda for the new year, mentioning couple of things which might be inspiring.

Increasing value of deeper relationships, against the background of social “transactions” dominating the Internet.

Diminishing value of advertising. “Longer-term, I anticipate that most businesses online will have to make money the old fashioned way ? by offering products, services and experiences so valuable that people will actually pay money for them.”

Increasing value of leadership. “In times of great uncertainty and rapid change, unprecedented opportunities arise to shape our environments to create even more value. Shaping requires deep insight into the fundamental forces at work and powerful personalities to communicate conviction and persuade many who are on the sidelines that the rewards outweigh the risks.”

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It is might seem this post is late. Where in fact it is a day ahead of the one of the previous year. What I want for 2008?

Money: whatever (more the better).

Traveling: whatever (more the better, but the direction might be important this time).

I wish for some progress with new ideas, so far I was screwing either the idea or its execution, maybe in 2008 I will manage to get both right.

There are also some personal things, which are, however, not suitable for planning.

PS. This year I will definitely get the driving license.

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14-year-old modified TV remote to manipulate tracks and play with trains in Lodz (not surprising, there is hardly anything to do in this city). The Brits are impressed, the news gets privileged position on theregister:

At last, news of impressive tech innovations are starting to come out of this country.

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Wow, my company still surprises me sometimes.

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Hey, it’s high time to do some sort of 2007 summary. Everybody else did it already. And still I need to do a new year mission statement.

Speaking of which, let’s see what I wrote one year ago:

In practical terms, pursuing some big thing is the only way of getting satisfied on that. It?s the most challenging too, but I will keep on looking.

There should be no problems in travelling and money departments. Unless there is some real disaster. I want to go sailing for the first time, but it?s purely logistical challenge.

The only thing I feel pessimistic about, as usual, is the driving licence.

Apparently I didn’t invest too much time in it. But probably it captured the most important things anyway. Here is how it really went:

• Surely there was no problem with traveling. I spent most the year in Moscow or Kiev, with trips also to Mexico, St. Petersburg, Paris, Lviv. Nothing to complain about and in fact I was already tired of being abroad so long
• No problems with money either and working abroad actually helps
• I worked on one “big thing” candidate for like half a year, but after finally getting the first prototype ready, I realized the idea might not be really big. So no breakthrough. I need either more confidence in the idea or a better idea. Still I’m glad for all the things learned along the way
• I didn’t have time for sailing and actually other than occasional horse riding didn’t do much of an activity. In the end of the year I felt for the first time in my life that I’m not as slim as I used to be. But I kicked off a killer diet and went back to an acceptable state in 13 days
• As expected, there was no progress whatsoever about the driving license
• There was a personal thread in my life which started casually, but then its prominence increased every month, and now it’s a mystery where it will lead

I feel 2007 can be considered either as a failure to actually reach what I wished for, or an important prelude for what is coming next (future will tell).

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My colleagues shared with me two resources for latest trends. Thanks.

http://trendwatching.com/briefing/ – 8 important consumer trends for 2008:

1. Status spheres – there are different “status spheres”, or “a variety of lifestyles, activities and persuasions, which can be mixed and matched by consumers looking for recognition from various crowds and scenes”. Examples: traditional sphere (status by luxury), transient sphere (collect as many experiences as possible), etc.
2. Premiumization – trend to create premium versions of products and services
3. Snack culture – “embodies the phenomenon of products, services and experiences becoming more temporary and transient; products that are being deconstructed in easier to digest, easier to afford bits, making it possible to collect even more experiences, as often as possible, in an even shorter timeframe”
4. Online oxygen – “consumers needing online access as much as they need oxygen”
5. Eco-iconic- “Eco-friendly goods and services sporting bold, iconic design and markers, that help their eco-conscious owners to visibly tout their eco-credentials to peers”
6. Brand butlers – companies going out to provide useful services to potential customers (e.g. toilets at the concert) instead of advertising. Hmmmm.
7. Make it yourself – “the next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well”
8. Crowd mining – rewarding crowds for valuable deliverables (fellowforce would fall into this category)

The second is an article on BBC – The shape of things to come. They list following trends, some are overlapping with the above:

• Make it yourself
• Local networking
• See-hear-buy (ability to buy product instantly, like a song playing in the restaurant)
• Think blue (from the sky – carbon labeling)
• Secret bling (less obvious exclusivity, “being in the known” required to recognize the value of the objects)
• Radical transparency (services to remove unwanted personal information from the open web)
• Body language (devices understanding gestures)

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Article by David Hornik (VC) on his impressions from trip to China.

One line summary (I’m in a hurry:): Chinese market is great, but there are few real entrepreneurs. And there is no effective legal protection for investors, so you have to count on the culture not to get screwed by Chinese entrepreneurs. But unfortunately the culture makes it ok to screw foreign investors.

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Thx Przemek video is cool:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7vUdKTlhk

(David Allen presentation at Google; add to my recent interest in GTD)

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I decided to examine the “Getting things done” (GTD) more closely, mostly inspired by nozbe. I use this application, but didn’t care about underlying “ideology” till now. I will probably write more about nozbe later.

Anyway, the bible for GTD seems to be David Allen’s book titled, you guessed it, “Getting things done”.

I searched our online library, but they didn’t have it. But Russians, and you can always count of them, stepped forward and published a pdf with the book, which can be found on google. For preview purposes, riight.

Anyway. I started the book it seems super cool so far (or maybe I just have unlimited needs in the organization area).

Even the introduction was interesting, which is usually not the case for books. It gives background why nowadays should be more stressed than before and what has changed and why are previous tools inadequate.

Work has no edges

In the old days, work was self-evident. Fields were to be plowed, machines tooled, boxes packed, cows milked, widgets cranked. You knew what work had to be done?you could see it. It was clear when the work was finished, or not finished.

Now, for many of us, there are no edges to most of our projects. Most people I know have at least half a dozen things they’re trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn’t be able to finish these to perfection.

?In knowledge world… the task is not given, it has to be determined? (Peter Drucker)

Our job is constantly changing

We are rarely doing what we were hired to do.

Previous tools inadequate

• Calendars
• Todo lists
• “Big picture” approach (starting with mission etc.)

Sources of stress

• We have more commitments than we are aware of ? from big ones to trivial ones
• Our sub-conscious mind is constantly tracking all of them
• These “open loops” take our energy and add the stress

Goal

For me, the most appealing vision presented in the introduction was – to stay relaxed and productive under circumstances of constant work and information overload. Metaphor to karate’s “mind like water”. Either overreacting or underreacting to the inputs makes us less effective. Water on the other hand – responds to the object with exactly the same force that it was hit with.

I might add more notes as I move along.

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I’m rather proud of myself, because, in something like two hours, I created a first perl script since, well, maybe 6 years.

The point of the script is to copy data (gallery and image description) from my current gallery called SPGM, to the new one called Zenphoto. SPGM stores data in plain text files, while ZP keeps in the database.

Got it working, and then found out that Zenphoto doesn’t integrate with wordpress so well. And that it is much less pretty inside, that I had thought. Eh.

Anyway, below is the script and some details in case someone might find it useful. (read more…)

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Dear readers. With some hesitation I would like to inform you that you might also want to check a second blog, which I update from time to time. In fact, usually more frequently than this one. It’s at http://blog.ogito.eu/.

Ogito is a draft blog for whatever next-big-idea I am currently chasing.

Why keep blogs separate? Sometimes it is indeed awkward, but more often I don’t want notes (often quite technical) from constantly changing ideas to hit this personal blog. Also, switching idea every month might not look serious, so I want to keep it somehow aside:)

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With this, I am finally done with photos from 2007:

Mexico gallery

Paris gallery

I cannot help but feel (also from the photos) that traveling this year was different than before. While previously it was a joy in itself, now I couldn’t fully separate it from the things I was dealing with through the year.

A mistake most likely, since I need careless wandering to reset myself, and I missed this last year. Of course some people have greater problems so no reason to complain.

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