Asia: more than 119’000 people killed, thousands still missing, up to 5 million displaced.

Maldives: 75 confirmed death, 42 missing, 9’000 evacuees, 12’000 homeless people, numbers are still moving quickly and daily.

I published in October a post about our next holidays in Maldives. We decided with my wife to cancel them. It was a difficult decision for us, not financially speaking at all, but more a question of ethic vs. risks vs. helping people. Let me summarize our thoughts. As a reminder, we have a little boy who is 3 years old and we planned to visit Maldives at the beginning of February, in about 4 weeks.

Risks

This part is quite factual, although some people don’t want to face them.

– The real state of the resorts is not easy to find out. There is a kind of positive and reassuring propaganda (understandale in a way…) from the Maldives’ Ministry of Tourism, which is difficult to trust if you have also seen some images on TV.

– It will be difficult to resupply the islands for the coming weeks, which is already the case (tourism, inhabitants).

– The specialists are concerned about the long-term supply of fresh water (see this article).

– The substructure of the islands could be strongly damaged. This is not already apparent, but could be very dangerous for the stability of the buildings on the islands. A lot of water reserves are integrated in this island substructures and could be lost (contamination) (see this article too).

– “There is a chance that we could have at least as many dying from communicable diseases as we had dying from the tsunami” (see this article). I heard at the radio yesterday (a doctor specialized in disease epidemics) that the first effets should be first visible in about 4 to 6 weeks, specially because of the mosquitos which are transmitting a lot of diseases.

– It is very difficult to know how far this region will be confronted with afterschocks/earthquake replica. There were already a lot, and there will be a bunch in the coming weeks.

So, as a conclusion, a lot of uncertainties and under-estimation of the seriousness of the situation, to our point of view. And too risky for us and specially our little boy…

Ethic

“People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming ‘help, help’. And after a few minutes you didn’t hear the kids any more.”

– I heard a lot, also in our travel agency, “Visit Maldives in effort to save tourism!”. This argument is driving me bad, really. Just have a look at the quote above.

– Priority is still set to tourists and not to the local inhabitants. Which is completely crazy and unacceptable. We do not want to participate to that… (see this article).

The reconstruction of Male’ appears to be more important than saving the lives of the thousands of destitute people scattered in more than 200 islands.

– How is it possible to lie down on the beach while people in the surrounding are fighting to re-build and re-construct?

Our little problem as tourists is definitely NOT important. And for some time, also not for this country! A lot of people lost one or more relatives. We are talking about people. Hey, please, a little respect. Let give them a little time to reconstruct and to be in mourning!!

Helping people

– A lot of possibilities to make some useful donations. Have a look at this Google page, which is handling the donation and relief websites.

– A good idea could be also to visit them, but first in some months!

Consequently, we are going to visit Saint Barthelemy. More to come in some days…

I had my last 2004 business lunch today with Cédric and Nick in Zürich. And what for a lunch :-) We were at ZicZac, which is a quite funny place: very good and loud music, excellent and huge self-made hamburgers, self-made French-fries (quite uncommon at this time) and a cool atmosphere. All in all, really the right place to finish our “2004 business lunch tour”.

PS: guess with what I took the pictures ;-) More to come tomorrow.

Knowledge@Wharton published an article about the way Richard Branson, owner and founder of The Virgin Group, is managing.

Interesting!

It is difficult to separate the success of the Virgin brand from the flamboyant man behind that brand. […] “Advertising costs enormous amounts of money these days. I just announced in India that I was setting up a domestic airline, and we ended up getting on the front pages of the newspaper. The costs of that in advertising terms would have been considerable.” Visibility is good, says Branson, “as long as you’re not in the headlines for the wrong reasons.”

What is the most important quality of a good leader? “Having a personality of caring about people is important,” he says. “You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.” He reinforces that message with all his CEOs and top managers.

Branson places enormous value on time management skills. As chairman of a large group of firms, Branson says he spends about a third of his time on trouble shooting, another third on new projects, both charitable and business, and the last third on promoting and talking about the businesses he has set up. He also makes time for family and vacation.

In order for this process to work, employees must be happy. Branson says his philosophy of “look for the best and you’ll get the best” helped him build an empire recognized for its young, fun culture. “For the people who work for you or with you, you must lavish praise on them at all times,” Branson says. “If a flower is watered, it flourishes. If not, it shrivels up and dies. It’s much more fun looking for the best in people. People don’t need to be told where they’ve slipped up or made a mess of something. They’ll sort it out themselves.”

Motivational strategies extend to innovative ideas. The key to encouraging innovation within the Virgin ranks, suggests Branson, is to listen to any and all ideas and to offer feedback. Employees often leave companies, he reasons, because they are frustrated by the fact that their ideas fall on deaf ears. Interaction between employees and managers is fundamental. For the companies in which he serves as both chief executive and chairman, Branson writes his staff “chitty-chatty” letters to tell them everything that is going on and to encourage them to write him with any ideas or suggestions. He gives them his home address and phone number. He responds with a letter personally, even if he doesn’t follow up and deal with the details.

“Some 80% of your life is spent working,” says Branson. “You want to have fun at home; why shouldn’t you have fun at work? I think leaders have got to make a bigger effort to make sure the people who work for them are enjoying what they’re doing. If a chairman of a company visits Seattle, that chairman should take all the staff out in the evening and have a few drinks together, talk together and party together and not be embarrassed about the staff seeing the weaker side of you. They don’t lose respect for you because they see your human side. They actually gain more respect for you.”

When asked what motivates him to grow now that he has money and fame, Branson says he sees his own life as the long university education he never had. “Every day I meet new people, challenging them and being challenged.” Virgin is poised, he believes, to make a real difference. “Because I don’t see Virgin as a company but as a way of life and I fully enjoy it, I don’t think I’ll ever retire,” says Branson.

We received a quite original Christmas gift from our hosting partner in Germany, Triaton – an HP company. We found that quite a good idea: a calendar from the magazine Geo (in French, in German). Its title is “Top view of the earth”, really amazing!

Gartner To Acquire META Group For $162 Million

STAMFORD, Conn., December 27, 2004 — Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB), the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, and META Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: METG), a premier information technology research and consulting firm, today announced that the companies have reached an agreement under which Gartner will acquire META Group in an all-cash transaction valued at $10.00 per share, or approximately $162 million. The boards of directors of both companies have unanimously approved the agreement.

Pixoria released a new version (1.8.3) of Konfabulator for Windows. I have already tested Konfabulator for a while.

What is Konfabulator?

Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today’s advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X.

The format for these Widgets is completely open and easy to learn so creating your own Widgets is an extremely easy task.

We are now confronted with a huge human tragedy in Asia. On day after my last post, the last information talked about more than 23’000 dead people with thousands more missings, specially in some Indian islands near Sumatra. Millions of people lost their homes……

The quake, the fourth largest recorded since 1900 and measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, occurred after a rupture on the Indian Ocean seabed caused by the violent grinding of two tectonic plates.

Sri Lanka and India were severely hit with respective death tolls of 10,897 and 6,597, while the number of dead in Indonesia rose to 4,725. A further 866 deaths were reported in Thailand, 51 in Malaysia, 43 in the Maldives, 30 in Myanmar and two in Bangladesh.

Huge waves swept some 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) as far as Africa, crashing on to the shores of Kenya and Somalia, affecting the islands of Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles on the way. More than 100 Somali fishermen were reported missing feared dead.

All the people dead, all these children dead….

Four weeks later and we would have been under the wave, too. God.

6,300 Dead as Quake, Tsunami Devastate Asia

The world’s biggest earthquake in 40 years hit south Asia Sunday, unleashing a tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India and swamped tourist isles in Thailand and the Maldives, killing more than 6,300 people.

A wall of water up to 30 feet high triggered by the 8.9 magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra caused death, chaos and devastation.

I wish you and your family a very happy and restful Christmas. Have a good time.

We also tried hard ;-)

A Christmas tree

A Christmas table

A Christmas fire

A Christmas capon (3.4kg)

Mumm Brut Rosé

Château Coutet (Sauternes)

1er cru classé 1999

Château Saint-Pierre (Saint-Julien)

Grand cru classé 2000

Château des Rocs

Bordeaux supérieur 1985

And…the whole family :-)

I published some pictures of a one-day family trip me made in the mountains last week-end. Have a look!