Just another view of life

I recently decided to be serious about blogging and started with my new blog at Typepad. The new blog gives me better tools to track and communicate with my readers, but most importantly, a professional look without not much of effort.

When I look back at the topics that I am interested in, blogged about and got the most comments and interest, I realized that all of those come back to the same theme. In a sentence, it is: “Shift in business model and human behavior demands for new forms of organization, IT architecture and leadership styles.”. That’s why I name my new blog “The Next Organization“.

The new blog address is: thenextorg.com

and its feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/tienhnguyen/thenextorg

Please update your bookmarks, feed address in your readers, blog roll, etc. accordingly.

In the new blog, I have moved some of the most important posts from here and started a couple of new posts. The latest one is “From feeling under pressure to joyful – a new way to handle To-do list“. This post is about my own experience of transforming my personal planning system.

I look forward to continuing our conversations in my new blog.

Tien H. Nguyen.

Thought: Google’s YouTube headache, or there is still no model for social media sites

Last year, I wrote a block entry indicating that there was no good business model behind the social network sites. yet. Recent events, including Viacom and CBS’s pulling videos from YouTube and recent news that Viacom filed a $1B lawsuit against Google. Apparently, only deep-pocket, fast-growing companies like Google would pay such a price for a tiny revenue and no investor even cared. However, the share of attention that Google executives paying to YouTube may be too much. If it had been acquired by a media company, YouTube might have had less legal cases, but the business model is still not clear how copyrighted materials to be tracked and revenue to be shared with the owner.

Thought: Social networking will soon go mainstream

New wave of social network is changing the way employees communicate and collaborate. Small and distributed IT companies are pioneers in this area, in both usage and technology development. Big companies have been recently awaken. Among the examples are: IBM’s global meetings on SecondLife, Oracle’s inclusion of Web 2.0 into portal product, SAP’s alumni network, etc. Recently Cisco acquired Utah Street Networks just for its software knowhow in social networking and aimed at blending it into its Media Solution Group. Clearly, all signs point toward social networking’s going main stream not far in future, I believe.

Interesting stuffs: Social Network Shapes from Valdi Krebs

Thought: Anything-on-the-go and the iPod economy

I was amazed to know that my colleagues at SAP could bring the whole contents of a demo scenario on a Linux server blade to a big drive, then dump it on any standard PC and start immediately. Recently, RingCube has commercialized its software to allow mirroring software into a small storage device and start it again in a Windows-based machine. It seems that mobile computing may not only bring computing devices around, but also as simple as a small storage device… and one of the popular device that people bring along anyway is iPod.

Talking about iPod, on my trip to Vienna, I stayed in le Meridien and guess what, I saw iPod rental on the wall. Strolling last week in Saturn, a electronics chain similar to Circuit City or CompUSA in Germany, I encountered dictionaries for iPod, which are similar to Merriam-Webster’s here.

What I can see from these two different sets of events is the iPod-economy no longer stops at music- or video-on-the-go. It has been and will be more as new technologies enable anything go mobile, from telephone, PC, dictionary to map, calendar, and God knows what next… Welcome to the new world, where anything is on-the-go, and how many devices do you still have? I see some day, human will carry only a single tiny, easy-to-use, lightweight device with smart (but no need to be powerful) computing capability and a lot of storage. Maybe, I will go and buy Apple’s share now.

Uploaded in Heidelberg.

What’s I been doing recently

I’ve been in such a crazy time, skipping lunch almost every day, waking up early and still feel not getting anywhere. I want to get it out of my chest… and here are the things I did:
– Did mock interview for 4-5 students applying for US MBA program. Time-consuming to understand the person, read about school so that I can play well the role. Have to skip lunches to do this since it’s the only good time slot and avoid interfering with other obligations. I think it was helpful but no one even came back to me about what really happened in the real interview. Too sad.
– Connected to my classmates, colleagues and mentors through LinkedIn. Amazing result, lot’s of potentials and I have to think me what I can do with it. Will have to encourage my contacts to be on LinkedIn.
– Helped a couple of students to prepare for US graduate school. One of my best students, someone I always consider my younger brother, has a chance now to be there in Fall. Helped him to see the possibilities but skipped lunch again – his bike broke down and I was just waiting on Skype. Anyway, it well worth it. Go brother, go!
– Jotted down a lot of ideas and observations around me about organizational actions need to be done in my works, but still don’t know how to start selling it.
– Did a project for Connek to review its vision. A good project but not appreciated by many because it’s intangible and has long-term impact only. Will do something short-term, but will continue.
– Went for an enterprise SOA roadshow in Vienna. Success as expected. Walked around in town and got to know a couple of interesting colleagues and topics.
– Worked on some aspects of marketing and brand at works. No breakthrough because.

Things I plan to do next
– Get back to normal life, no more lunch skipping, no Internet in the evening.
– Create a career assistance service for Connek student members. Will have to involve all my contacts and old Connek members to do this.
– Make study-overseas sessions and arrange mentorship between Connek members in and out-side of Vietnam around this topic.
– Think about designing global organization before reading a new book on this topic. It has just arrived.
– Prepare for my vacation in April in Vietnam.
– Find a couple of friends also interested in Web 2.0, social networking to test tools, explore virtual collaboration and think if there is something we can do, maybe a business idea?
– Write to blog more about many ideas I have in my idea notes now.

Adobe is working on strategy to dominate Web- and desktop-user interface. Here is the latest podcast about release of Adobe Apollo platform.

This is also my test of Clipmarks.

Uploaded in Walldorf.

clipped from www.talkcrunch.com Steve Gillmor and I recently spoke with Adobe senior vice president and chief software architect Kevin Lynch about the upcoming release of the Apollo platform. Apollo, the code name for “a cross-operating system runtime” is a platform that will allow developers to create to desktop applications using existing web development skills such as Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax. Web applications can be run online or offline through Apollo, which will also have the traditional benefits of desktop applications – speed, drag and drop functionality from the desktop to the application, and accessing the file system. Apollo is cross-platform, meaning any application developed for it will run on Windows, Mac and Linux machines. And they are promising easy porting of existing web applications to the Apollo platform. Here Comes Adobe Apollo Time: 37:32 MinutesSize: 8.6 MB

Tool: Yubnub – Command line for Firefox
My favorite tool recently is Yubnub. As a social command line Web search tool, it allows users from the Web or Firefox search bar to go to multiple search engines or multiple common. It helps me greatly with reducing my list of bookmarks, and the commands are growing. To show the power of Yubnub, I will list out the ones that I use the most:

• cnn <content>, bbc <content>…: search the content on the sites
• am <book/author/etc/>: search on Amazon US
• am de <book/author/etc/>: search on Amazon Germany (I love this)
• li <name>: search on LinkedIn
• g <content>: Google search the content
• leo <word>, dic <word>: Search on German-English/English-English Directory
• wiki <term>: search on wikipaedia
• gc: Google mail composer
• gm: Google map
• gma: Google mail
• gdoc: Google Docs and Spreadsheets
• ym: Yahoo mail

You can download it here and try out yourself.

Update: Things I have been doing in the last few days out of work (in a random order)

• Reconnecting with my network after almost a year… Maintaining my network in LinkedIn.
• Trying to bring together traditional organizational design and development, Cynefin framework and social networking wave; and apply that to my division.
• Reading social network mapping theory of Karen Stephenson.
• Testing ClipMark, a tool for online bookmarking of all types of media and then mail/post to blog. I plan to use it to show interesting sites I visited in the day.
• Setting up a personal planning/tracking system for personal/personal development projects that lasts more than 2 weeks. Focus: available resources and efficiency.
• Reading German cartoons at my son’s order.
• Finishing pending items in my monthly plan. Almost a successful month. Just some items got delayed…
• Finding time to write to my blog more often.

Uploaded in Walldorf.

Tools: Web Calendars

Here is a nice review of good Web calendars from Wired News. I was testing Google Calendar and using Remember the Milk to manage my tasks. It was OK, but the fact that I have to go to another place to maintain the tasks in 50% of the cases was too bad. Also, the offline functionality made me to go back to the ancient Lotus Organizer.

And you, how you keep track of your appointments/events and tasks? Give me some feedback, will you?

Thought: Wireless Technology – Will China Set the World’s 3G Standard… Or Not

Two years ago in a discussion with Connek members, I mentioned that with a huge number of subscribers, China would probably decide the 3G (third generation) mobile standard. Looking at a wave of the big mobile companies fluxed into India recently and the surge in the number of subscribers in the last 1 year, I might have to rethink my statement.

First, according to this article from Red Herring, with the current growth rate, very soon India will challenge China as the world’s biggest mobile market. This also specially true as the Indian population is expected to surpass China in the next 10 years.

Second, the mobile market in India is not closely regulated by a government body and dominated by government-owned operators like in China. This give a healthier environment for equipment vendors to compete. I believe this will create a much better selection mechanism to create a superior standard in India than in China.

Finally, slow decision making and standard roll-out might as well cost China the 3G opportunity. New wireless data standards (coined as 4G), in which Chinese low-cost vendors have not a lot of advantage, may bypass 3G before China can make its move.

Maybe, a better statement now should be: “IC (India and China), which country is more open, will shape the next mobile standard”.

Uploaded in Heidelberg.

Thought: Interesting Renewal Innovations in Telecom and Media World

According to Red Herring, 19 mobile operators operating in over 100 countries had met to start a new payment system to ease international remittances. Being more popular than bank account, which is normally required for foreign remittance, among the foreign workers and their family back home, mobile phone account is one possible replacement. “The idea is that people can load cash on their mobile, and order it to be sent to a mobile phone number in another country, where the recipient receives a message that money has arrived, making it as easy as sending a text message.”

This is a creative version of M-commerce, but if successful, this can start a whole new dimension to the mature industry. I believe the need in this area is probably much more than in traditional M-commerce, where mobile network is merely a means of creating and transmitting transactions. A large billing system, distribution network, pre-paid capability and online authentication set mobile phone apart from its competitors.

The other renewal innovation is the new join-service by Amazon and Tivo. The service allows users to download the videos they purchase or rent from Amazon to the Tivo DVR associated with their Amazon account.

The innovation sets Amazon and Tivo ahead of the competition, and is a major step to bring together flexibility of Internet transaction and traditional TV transmission channel. After all, video transmission media is separated from video distribution channel, each in its optimal medium.

BTW, renewal innovations is the term coined by Geoffrey Moore in his book Dealing with Darwin referring to companies renew its mature offerings to a earlier stage in the adoption cycle. This type of innovation is probably something that companies in telecommunications and media industry should look for.

Thought: Social Network Mapping and a New Way of Cross-sell
I came across CNet the other day and a new way of mapping articles immediately caught my attention. The site provides a network map of articles, topics and companies in a dynamic format. From the map, I could see 3-dimension connections with other articles and immediately identified the next article I wanted to read. Click here for an example. For the first time in many years, I spent that much time reading many articles of the same site with such an interest.

The map changed completely my way of consuming the information. Before, I could only see links to related articles, but cannot see the relationship, nor form a good picture of my knowledge vs. what is available. With this type of map, I can easily identify where I want to go to complete my knowledge about the area.

The same concept can apply for Amazon or Wikipaedia. If I can see the network of the books I read and the books available based on topic, author and other readers’ recommendation, I will know which book I will buy next. Same can be done for structures of multiple items linked in different ways like Wikipaedia. Although the idea is not very new, I think it is a great way to extend knowledge and information, especially product information. A final note, LivePlasma, the company built the tool for CNet is a movie and music online seller.

Uploaded in Heidelberg.

I got frustrated with little information I got from WordPress about my blog subscription, though it’s a great blog tool. I therefore decided to move to a new RSS feed with FeedBurner. Please spend some time to change your RSS subscription to http://feeds.feedburner.com/JustAnotherViewOfLife. Thank you.

Thought: Intel Capital and Investment into FPT – Analysis From an Investor’s Viewpoint

A month ago in a talk about WTO and impact on Vietnam in Hanoi, I had a short conversation about the reason why Intel Capital decided to choose to invest in FPT. I said then that the reason Intel had chose FPT was more than just profitability or leadership, though these were important, but strategic alignment in the business between Intel and FPT. In fact, FPT is offering ISP service and at the same time owns the biggest Vietnamese PC assembling lines, one by its own and one in cooperation with CMC, another local IT company.

A couple of days back, when I read an article on Red Herring about Intel Capital’s investments exceeding $1 billion this year, I quickly did a reality check of what I said the other day. What I found from their Web site confirmed the strategic alignment, at least at the high-level. In addition to the three companies that received investment from Intel Capital announced in October also fit perfectly into this category.

Introduction about the group:
“With an overall strategy to stimulate advances in computing and communications, the Intel Capital team seeks out and invests in promising companies worldwide working together to:

• Establish new and innovative technologies
• Develop industry standard solutions
• Drive global Internet growth
• Enable new usage models
• Advance the computing and communications platforms”

Moreover, among Intel Equity funds, Intel Digital Home Fund’s investment strategy is detailed below:
“The Intel Digital Home Fund is a US$200 million private equity investment fund that invests in companies developing hardware and software, as well as connectivity and supporting technologies that are aligned with Intel’s strategic efforts to drive convergence of personal computer and consumer electronics devices in the home.”

Clearly, FPT was chosen for strategic fit for Intel Capital. Therefore, if the market rules apply, the price that Intel Capital paid for FPT’s shares would be higher than the simple expected value of the company. This suggests that FPT share is well over priced in the market right now. This might not be important for short-term investors, but it is for long-term investors to know.

Thought: Do China’s Tech Firms Gain on Multinational Rivals

From Wall Street Journal online:

“China’s technology companies are closing the gap with their foreign rivals in productivity, positioning themselves to become a bigger threat to multinationals both in China and abroad, according to a survey by McKinsey & Co. and China’s Tsinghua University.

The survey suggests that Chinese tech companies are gaining ground on multinationals in terms of size and in terms of the efficiency of their operations, as they learn to fine-tune processes that in the past relied strictly on China’s abundance of cheap labor to compete. It also found that Chinese tech companies are increasingly moving up from low and midprice product segments, which they have long dominated, into higher-end product segments that foreign companies have long dominated.”

From the first looks, the result was quite impressive. However, a couple of important points from the same paper issue helped me to understand more, and at the same time change my impression about the article.

• The companies surveyed are from different sectors, ranging from “fire-safety products to mobile phone and PC manufacturers“. No breakdown available made it impossible to determine the competitiveness of Chinese high-tech companies, which I am most interested in.
• Efficiency in the survey was defined as average revenue per worker. Taking R&D investment, salary and working regulations into consideration, if all labor conditions were the same, the number may not be that high.
• Average Return on Equity (ROE) of Chinese tech companies was 12.1% in comparison to 15.7% of their rivals in US, but up from 6.8% of the tech companies in Germany.

After all, the only firm conclusion I could find from this survey is foreign tech firms, especially European ones, got hurt because of rigid labor regulations, especially in presence of Intellectual Property issues in China. This is nothing new, of course. Then, I have problem understanding why McKinsey invested in this survey and why Wall Street Journal publish such a result, from which one cannot find any new insight.

Uploaded in Heidelberg, Germany.

Thought: On finding my own life mission

Having been back home after almost a year in September and October, I faced quite a tough time acknowledging how much the society I grew up from had changed, more in the bad direction than good. But the most important thing I gained from that trip was a great discovery, my life mission. Today, when I read a blog of a friend about to go back to Vietnam and at the same time thinking about changing his job, I suddenly had an “Aha” moment. I realized that I would not have found the mission for my life should I hadn’t been in touch with my root.

Self help books talk a lot about how to find a mission for one’s life. Many of them talk about finding what you want to do in life and what you’re good at, etc. Some mention values as selection criteria. Odd enough, one often has too many things one likes to do in life while quite a lot of uncertainty about one’s true talents. As a consequence, personal mission seems to be the most difficult thing to find.

What I found out is that my root helped me to understand who I am and where I am from. Being with my family, teaching my son how to read and write, meeting my best friends, doing some social works that I used to spend a lot of time on, and even sitting in my favorite place in West lake… Now I know I brought together all the things I identified myself with and recalled the major decisions in my life. And exactly that time, with a little clue from a meeting with a few young, capable and energetic people, I found it!

I found my life’s mission when I linked who I was, what choices I had made, and what I had done. The mission was nothing more than a natural extension of these factors, under the light of the new view of life and myself that I had. Being with the root helped me to single out what I really want to do in future. A personal mission is as much about the past and present, as about the future, now I know. And I remember Prof. Konsynski of Emory once told me: “if you know how to construct the past, you can see the future”, what I had so much doubt about and had spent a full semester just to realize how true it was.

Uploaded in Heidelberg, Germany