I have told you here that we had exceptionnal snowfalls on March 5, 2006. About 60 cm within 24 hours, which blocked completely the whole streets. Some pictures from this day, after the snowfall.
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Laurent, who is working with us at ecenter solutions since October 2002, announced the great news on last Wednesday:
I was renewed as Microsoft MVP in the category Visual Developer – ASP/ASP.NET.
MVP means Most Valuable Professional, have a look at the MVP profile of Laurent and the definition of this Microsoft’s program.
Laurent is also the founder and editor of one of the most valuable and well-known French portal about Microsoft .NET technologies, Tech Head Brothers, where about 11 MVP’s are now publishing regularly.
We are all very honoured to have you on board!
[via Seth Godin]
Time after time, I am more and more confronted with smart, experienced but quite arrogant business people who “know exactly and perfectly how to manage successfully their business”. And, sure, they are bringing the best products to their customers. And you know what? Their customers are t-o-t-a-l-l-y happy with their products. And, yes, they know e-x-a-c-t-l-y how the business will develop in the coming years.
I am sure I have missed something here…
My perception was, is and will be that the world is changing *very* fast, that you have to be *very* careful each time you think you can rest yourself, these could be the last minutes before you disappear.
My perception was, is and will be that you have to be quite paranoiac and humble in the current business world because it is full of very smart, cheap, experienced and hungry competitors. Success is also so much linked with … luck :-)
I was very happy to read this post from Seth Godin, which is greatly representing what my thoughts are in this field:
A study by Bain & Company found that 80 percent of companies surveyed believed that they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers. But, when customers were asked to indicate their perceptions of the experiences they have in dealing with companies, they rated only 8 percent of companies as truly delivering a superior experience
Helvetia Patria Group, the Holding ecenter solutions is integrated in, published yesterday *impressive* record results for 2005 (IFRS standards):
Financial analysts were surprised by the level of profit, they expected an after tax profit of about CHF 200 mio :-) Consequently, the Helvetia Patria share (HEPN) gained yesterday exactly … 10.7%, in one day :-) This, after an outstanding performance in 2005 (price rise of 64.1% in 2005). I have already told you, you can buy these shares ;-)
The Group also decided to launch a single-brand throughout its subsidiaries. Below the new coming logo:
You can find more details about the results here.
Do you know ING Direct? You are perhaps already a customer of this Internet bank, who knows ;-)
ING Direct is a kind of Easy Jet of the Bank Industry. Their approach is quite fascinating, have a look:
JBoss announced last week that it is integrating two new open source projects to extent its JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS):
Have a look at the press release (pdf).
JBoss, Inc., the Professional Open Source company, today introduced two open source projects designed to further strengthen the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS) as the leading open source platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA): JBoss Messaging and JBoss Web Server (JBoss Web). These new technologies move JBoss further into the high-end market, which has long been presided over by expensive, proprietary application platforms. […]
JBoss Messaging 1.0 implements a high-performance, robust messaging core designed to support the largest and most heavily utilized SOAs, enterprise service buses (ESB) and other integration needs ranging from the simplest to the highest demand networks. […]
JBoss Web provides enterprises with a single, high-performance deployment platform for Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Servlet technologies, Microsoft ASP.NET, PHP and CGI. It uses an innovative, high-performance hybrid design that incorporates the best open source technologies for processing high-volume data with market-leading support for important Java Enterprise Edition (EE) specifications. This hybrid technology model makes JBoss Web one of the fastest and most scalable Web servers on the market. JBoss Web is built on Apache Tomcat – the de facto standard JSP/Servlet container – and incorporates the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and a Tomcat native layer to achieve dramatic scalability improvements, including the ability to handle over 10,000 concurrent connections.
Wikipedia is great, really. They also published a funny list of 2006 April hoaxes.
I find that this year was a good year, some great stuff.
Have a look, as an example, at this press release from Blizzard (the company which developped great video games as World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo, etc.) about … burgercraft :-)
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled BurgerCraft™, introducing the company’s latest business venture and revealing many details about the plans for its company-owned restaurant chain. The grand opening of the first BurgerCraft restaurant is set to take place on June 1, 2006 in downtown Los Angeles, California. At BurgerCraft, players will have a chance to truly taste the flavor of Blizzard’s games and savor traditional dishes from all the company’s popular game universes. BurgerCraft will be open to customers of all ages and will provide a fun environment for the whole family. […]
The BurgerCraft menu will include:
- Red Dragon Wings (extra spicy buffalo chicken wings – epic!)
- Arbiter (iceberg salad w/ grilled chicken breast served in an arbiter-shaped bowl)
- Marine Wedges (spicy potato wedges w/ sour cream)
- Zealot Fries (french fries with “special” sauce to stimulate your psychic potential)
- Yamato Burger
- Norad II Burger
Only 14 posts in March, sorry, I am feeling quite drained, a lot of operative stuff and, at the same time, the preparation of our new exciting strategy :-)
Anyway, and although the low posting, this blog received more than 75’000 unique visitors in March, visitors who generated more than 106’000 pageviews (first time over 100’000 pv monthly) and 12 GB transferred. Thanks again for your trust and your interest.
By the way, I still have a *lot* of pictures from Anguilla and St.Barth to post. But, this will be also annoying for myself …. to see them again. Pfuuuu.
Take care!
[via Seth Godin]
Does price matter or not? Some inputs from Seth.
check out the parking lot at Costco. Lots of $40,000 or more cars and SUVs in the lot, people who wasted a few shekels worth of gas to drive out of their way to invest an hour of time to save a dollar on a big jar of pickles. These are the same people who will spend an extra $100 on an airplane ticket to save a few minutes in getting home after a meeting.
My point, and I do have one, is that price is a signal, a story, a situational decision that is never absolute. It’s just part of what goes into making a decision, no matter what we’re buying.
