via Tom Peters

Don’t know if you follow the Tom Peters’ blog (yes THE Tom Peters), very interesting stuff there, very inspiring and empowering. In one of his last post, Tom is speaking about his “rules”. I personally like them a lot, very simple but very powerful. Have a look:

• Hire Great People (Resilient, Passionate)
• Try a Lot of Stuff (S.A.V.-Screw Around Vigorously/R.F.A.—Ready. Fire. Aim.)
• All “Wow” All the Time (Shoot for the moon—in every circumstance)
• Enjoy It While It Lasts (And it ain’t gonna last forever, so you might as well keep swinging)

In the same post, Tom is also bringing two very nice quotes:

From BusinessWeek
In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn’t work out, you promote them because they were willing to try new things. If people come back and tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.

From Bloomberg by Bloomberg
We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months.

So, again, let’s mark this very special day :-)

Take a lot of innovation on the business and technology sides – inno.
Put a Latin verb which means “I see” – veo.
Extended by some very nice solutions – solutions.

Add the most important and central part: the core, the “reason why”, the driver, a completely great motivated and compact team, made of very nice professionals who are sharing strong values, some dreams, and a vision. And who would absolutely like to continue to work together for some years.

And you have: innoveo solutions

Next chapter in some days/weeks. Stay tuned.

via Seth Godin

What kind of people are you hiring? Are you sure you are looking at the right kind of persons?

Most fast-growing organizations are looking for people who can get stuff done.
There is a fundamental shift in rules from manual-based work (where you follow instructions and an increase in productivity means doing the steps faster) to project-based work (where the instructions are unknown, and visualizing outcomes and then getting things done is what counts.)

And yet, we’re still trying to hire people who have shown an ability to follow instructions.

via Joi Ito

I am sick, at home, and … thinking ;-)
Just read this post from Joi Ito. Great!

I’m reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. In it, they suggest that we should focus on pursuing happiness as our goal in life and the we should be careful to make a distinction between happiness and pleasure. […]

We then realize that we need to develop patience to build compassion. Our patience grows by being challenged by annoying or hurtful people and events. It is these people and events that ultimately are our teachers. We should learn to cherish and be thankful for these annoying things, because without them we would not grow and become even happier. […]

Compassion vs greed is something that we’ve been talking a lot about in the context of amateur vs professional. I think that compassion and the happiness one gains from giving and sharing is one of the fundamental driving forces of the sharing economy just as greed and the “economic man” are fundamental elements of capitalism and neo-classical economics. I think that in order to really understand how the sharing economy works, we need to understand how happiness works and what makes people choose compassion over greed.

We often make decisions which involved trying to decide which decision will make us happier. Often, we mistake pleasure for happiness and make the choice that may be more pleasurable instead of the choice that would provide more long-term happiness. The Dalai Lama says that just framing questions to yourself in terms of what will give you more happiness and making a distinction between happiness and pleasure will help us make the right decisions. […]

[larger]

I would like to come back to our last trip to st barth in February/March 2007 more in detail. Why? Just because it was too fantastic and I would like to share parts of this moment with you. I will bring different posts in the coming days concerning this incredible experience.

[larger]

Introduction

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the places and moments that take our breath away.

Our last trip to St Barth beginning of March 2007 was a real “hit”. Our best holidays ever… As usual, difficult to explain exactly why it was so. On the other side, if you cannot have extraordinary holidays in St Barth, it will be difficult for you to have fun somewhere else ;-)

Again, some important very positive good points which are speaking for St Barth.

The weather

The weather was absolutely fantastic this year. During 18 days there, we had about 2 hours of rain. After the rain, it is quite clear why you need a 4-wheel car on St Barth… The roads, when wet, are very slippery! So, we had about 30-32°C during the day, 24°C during the night (which is very comfortable for having dinner and smoking some cigars on the terrace ;-), 27°C in the sea (we got the impression that the Atlantic side is a bit colder than the Caribbean side, but not sure).

I haven’t published any statistics of didierbeck.com since some months, mainly because nothing special has happened during the last months (on this side ;-). No real active blogging means … no increase in traffic. Quite logic ;-)

Actually, after a decrease till September last year, my blog is again gaining in traffic.

And April 2007 was my best month ever with 506’371 hits, 114’267 pageviews and 66’081 unique visitors, which have generated 15.65 GB of data transferred. Actually, I had already more unique visitors (more than 80’000 in Mai 2006), but with less hits, pageviews and data transferred. I must have a deeper look at the structure of the traffic, something is changing there.

via Jeremy Zawodny

Jeremy from Yahoo has published a very interesting presentation about the “Web service APIs: The Landscape and Opportunities”. Worth a read. You can find the pdf-presentation there.

Dear all
We are going to Le Croisic – France for one week. I need fresh air and to see and feel the (cold) ocean to re-load!
Take care!

via science photo gallery

A marvelous picture of a ladybird by Syred Andrew.

Coloured scanning electron micrograph of a seven-spot ladybird beetle (Coccinella septempunctata) hovering over a flower. The ladybird’s outer wings are strengthened into a hard covering (red) which protects the delicate flight wings underneath. In a scanning electron microscope (SEM), the specimen is scanned with a beam of electrons, creating photograph-like images with an exceptional depth of field. The raw black-and-white image has been naturalistically coloured on computer.

via st.barts online webcam

Today 11:23am (local time), current weather is quite cool at St Barth.
30°C (86°F), humidity 63%.
Too bad I am not here now, but have a look, good for our eyes and mood ;-)