I discovered this very nice photographer, Luc Giard, this week-end. Great approach for discovering new countries, a real work with lights. Have a look.

Approach

When I concentrate on a country, I look for what makes it most different from neighbouring countries and can be found nowhere else. Reading, meetings and several visits permit this approach.

A different Angle

Faraway countries may be very exotic but this fact does not belittle reports on neighbouring countries. When I had the occasion to start work on England it seemed the ideal opportunity for an all-round deepening of my research. Close up, everything seemed familiar, but I found it interesting to see this very familiarity from a different angle.
The familiar allows reflection on our daily life. The commentary is not descriptive but rather a mirror reflecting each individual personality.

It takes time

My task consists of crossing the country, immersing myself in its culture and observing and capturing the elements that best express its character. To make an 80-minute film I need to film about 10 hours during trips of varying lengths over four or five years. I travel by camper van in order to be as close as possible to my subject at the right moment. I usually work alone, as patience is the operative word. Opportunity and chance, and especially light, are my working partners, but I do have time on my side.

Nice week-end, snow in the mountains, Christmas party for my son :-)

Another acquisition from JBoss. Have a look at the official press release (pdf).

JBoss®, Inc., the Professional Open Source company, today announced it has acquired distributed transaction monitor and web services technologies owned by Arjuna Technologies and HP and will open source them for the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). In one strategic move, JBoss has propelled JEMS further into the high-end market long presided over by proprietary application platforms, while at the same time making pricey, enterprise-quality middleware software freely available to the mass market.

The acquisition includes Arjuna Transaction Service Suite (ArjunaTS), one of the most advanced and widely deployed transaction engines in the world with a 20-year pedigree, and Arjuna’s Web Services Transaction implementation, the market’s only implementation supporting both leading web services specifications Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) and Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF). This implementation is also one of the few that has demonstrated interoperability with other industry leaders such as Microsoft and IBM. The core Arjuna transaction engine will be the foundation of JBoss Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

[via Deloitte]

The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 program covers public and private companies across EMEA, and is based on five-year average percentage revenue growth. The awards are researched and sponsored by the Deloitte Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Industry Group. Key trends observed in this year’s rankings were:

• Total five-year revenue for the 500 ranked companies as a whole grew by an average of 935%, down 308% from last year;
• Software firms have increased their dominance of the ranking, making up 47% of all listed firms;
• Communications and networking firms are generally better represented than last year, at 16% of all listed firms;
• Northern Europe and Eastern Europe have increased their share of ranked firms this year, with 25% (up 8%) and 7% (up 3%), respectively;
• Number one ranked Norwegian broadband provider Catch Communications ASA achieves average five-year revenue growth of 77,682%.

Deloitte today published a survey of the Fast 500 CEOs in EMEA. Highlights of the survey include:

• Confidence in sustaining future growth has reached an all time high in the region, with 82% of CEOs either extremely or very confident that their company will sustain its growth over the next year;
• 66% of CEOs agreed that the quality of employees is the key to successful growth, and recruitment and personnel development are the key operational and personal challenges of CEOs. This is also true in Asia Pacific and North America this year;
• 62% of firms offer flexible working hours (far higher than in any other global region) and 46% offer a stake in the company like stock options to enhance motivation;
• 42% of CEOs see over 50% of their planned business revenues coming via IP-based applications. 16% expect between 30% and 50% of revenues to come from IP;
• CEOs see the greatest potential for growth over the next three years in Internet and IP-related segments.

So, my last inputs concerning our participation to the Life & Pension conference in Moscow. It is about our slides which were translated in Russian. Looks good ;-)

[via Dragos & PK]

Great! That remembers something. Umh, and we decided last week to take the time ;-)

I used to hire people that I knew in my gut weren’t right … because I was desperate to fill a position. We don’t do that any more, and we have some positions open for months and months. It costs a lot of money to hire someone and you waste a lot of time if it goes wrong. Then you have to fire people, and that’s not fun. So don’t rush it, wait until you find someone who really works.

I couldn’t attend to the end of the conference because I had a meeting in Paris. A great one :-) Now I am in the airport, again connected (I am addicted, wow).

My last words for Rodrigo (Sepulveda), Jeff (Clavier), Marc (Goldberg) and Robert (Scoble): it was a great pleasure to meet you “physically”, I really had a great time! Thanx for all the discussions and exchanges and advices and…. See you next time :-)

Thanks to all the other bloggers I could meet, great time also with you all ;-)

Bybye Les Blogs 2.0 and thanks to Loic Le Meur for the organization ==> Loic, il n’y avait vraiment pas assez à manger, sinon c’était super, bravo. Et dommage que l’on se soit croisés si vite ;-).

Update: oh oh, I forget to mention the very good discussions with Maryam (in Parisian taxis :-), the wife of Robert Scoble. She has started to blog too. Have a look!

Second day is starting with Mena Trott, President and co-founder of Six Apart. Her presentation is linked with “being more civilian while blogging”. Good point.

Yesterday evening, I had the chance to meet Rodrigo Sepulveda. At last! Very nice guy, interesting discussion about its new company vpod.tv, which is about Video Publishing On Demand. “On Demand”, outch, has it something to do with IBM On Demand ;-) More information “when we will be ready”, Rodrigo hates vaporware. It seems to be promising!

On the way to the Monday Evening Event, I met Adriana Cronin-Luka, who is a “special geek” in the sense that 1) she is female (you should have seen that ;-) and 2) she likes pretty much … guns. So, be careful! (hey, just to be sure, I am *joking*).

The Party was really crowdy, not so much to eat (it seems to be a constant common denominator – BUT, this time, I went to the McDonald’s before ;-). So, I decided to have a tour of Paris (I haven’t been here for quite a long time). Beautiful!

Galeries Lafayette

Tour Eiffel

Arc de Triomphe

Champs Elysees

I must admint, to close properly this evening, I “visited” the Virgin MegaStore ;-)

Dave Siffry, CEO of Technorati, is also participating and exchanging his blogger experience (about finding the time to run a company *and* blogging *and* having a family. Umh, it remains me something ;-).

Jeff has moderated a panel about VC, angel, buyer and entrepreneurs, represented by David Hornik, Jeff himself, Simon Levene, and Rodrigo Sepulveda. Some good stuff, nothing really new for myself. The message is clear: finding investements is possible, interest is again increasing for techno start-ups, back to the roots concerning business models and managing efficiently your company.

I will remember this presentation for a long time because Jeff did his presentation with a Mac (was that *really* necessary?) and he had some issues with the screen resolution :-) What a mess to change this little option. Dave Siffry had to help, have a look at the picture below.

The Mac myth is going down and down and down. Russell should agree, you remember?

So, Loic has opened the conference. About 350 participants (150 turning down), 25 countries. Wow, great atmosphere.

I already have great contact with great people: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Simon, Kevin Anderson (BBC journalist, no blog? come on Kevin ;-), Marc Canter, Anina, Jeff Clavier, Suw (who likes chocolate and vodka ;-), and Marc Goldberg. So, I think I can go home now :-)

Anina, Marc and Robert

Jeff and myself

Shel and Robert

It is now their turn!