Philippe Paquet

I would like to speculate a bit about the future of mobile phones and take an educated guess on what is going to happen.

Up to June last year, mobile phones were closed platforms. You had to have the permission of both the network operators and the phone manufacturers to develop an application. Then, you had to go through the network operators to distribute that application. A long process that only large companies could afford to go through. On June 29, 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone, everything changed. Small independent developers were not only given the opportunity to develop applications for the iPhone but were given distribution independently of the network operators.

Let’s speculate about what is going to happen. After being exposed to the iPhone, I believe that consumers are going to require from their network operators to get phones that offers the same features, including the same diversity of applications. Pretty obvious, isn’t it? The problem is that, because of the differences between phones, you have to develop a specific version of your applications for every different phone. If you want to provide broad support, you have to produce hundreds of versions of your application. Small independent developers can’t afford to do that.

So, here is my guess: To solve that problem, network operators are going to require from phone manufacturers unified, open platforms. And the only way that phone manufacturers can achieve that will be through 3rd party operating systems. I believe that in the next two years, every mobile phone except maybe the very low end models, will be running one of following operating system: Windows CE, Android or MacOS (The iPhone runs a cut down version of MacOS).

Now, what is going to be very interesting is to see what network operators are going to try not to be transformed in dumb pipes and keep their control on the content market.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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There’s an excuse for everything and they will help you find it. If you’re running out of excuses, go to this website and get some ideas. You’ll find thousands of excuses on why you didn’t go to school, why you didn’t do your homework, why you have been speeding on the highway and many many more sensible subjects. Have a look, it’s totally hilarious: www.RandomExcuseGenerator.com.

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One the company I was working for regulary held large high level meetings. We would take an afternoon and review a good part of the product portfolio. In addition of the peoples responsibles for the products, all the executives, vice presidents and most of the directors were present. The CEO will arrive in the meeting room, look around and quietly comment “very expensive meeting”. Of course, he was right. If we were to add the hourly rate of all the peoples present, I have no doubt that we would be far from a $5000 meeting. Now, did we get any value for spending $5000 on a meeting. Sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t.

A very common problem is ownership. Very often, peoples expect the highest ranking person in the room to run the meeting. Why not? He’s the highest ranking after all. Well, that’s wrong. If you call it, you own it. If you call a meeting, it is your responsability to run it and by that I mean the following: It is your responsability to keep discipline in the meeting. It is your responsability to keep everyone focused and more importantly, it is your responsability to get an outcome. Who’s going to do what? If that is not clear for everyone, you wasted time and money.

Another common problem is the 5000 people meeting. Let’s invite everybody, just in case of. Maybe they need to know what we’re going to discuss about? Maybe I would get a promotion if the executives see me solving problems? Again, that’s wrong. You don’t want to waste people’s time and company money. You should only invite people that are necessary to get an outcome. First of all, make sure that your meeting invitation clearly state what you are going to talk about and what you are expecting as outcome of that discussion. That way, not only you will give the people you invite a chance to decide if their presence is required or not but you will have attendees that are prepared for the discussion to come. Then, instead of inviting people that won’t have an involvment in getting an outcome, consider sending them meeting minutes. You keep meeting minutes, don’t you?

So, save your company some money and save your co-workers some time by doing the following:

1. Only invite peoples that are required to get an outcome.
2. Make your meeting invitation clear, specifying what you are going to talk about and what outcome you expect.
3. Own the meetings you call by keeping discipline, keeping focus and making sure that you get an outcome.
4. Send minutes to the people that need to know about it.

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Fairy tales for sleepy children. You will find on this website all the classic fairy tales to read online or to download in the form of ebooks (free and easy to print). They have a different fairy tale on the front page every day. They just added a wallpaper section and started to add illustrations made by some of my favorite artists: Gustave Dore, Arthur Rackham, etc… Have a look, it’s a beautiful website: www.TonightsBedtimeStory.com.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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