Games
When we were kids, we loved to play. This was the thing we did everyday and if we liked the game, we played in it for hours. Todays kids and teenagers play video games and they also very fanatic about them. They beat top scores every time, participate in championships, play endless hours via internet. There are ratings of best players and ladders.
What is good about games is that you try to do your best there. Wouldn’t that be cool if you work as hard as they play? Or as you yourself sometimes played? You just need to love your work as they love their games.
Advantages of systems approach
Hello everyone, and this is my first post in 2009. I’ve spent the New Year in beautiful capital of Estonia - Tallin. It’s the third time being there, but the city turns to us from a very different perspective everytime. There will be some photos of the trip on my Flick page soon.
The theme of this post is Systems approach. As you may know, currently I spend a lot of time in researching it: I read books, read lectures and conduct trainings based on systems approach. The biggest problem in it is its explanation. People want to know in simple words, what is it all about and how it can help them. I’ll try to explain it on my personal example.
Read the rest of this entry »
Finally - blog update
So so so! Once again I write a post like this.
It’s been a long time since my last update. I was busy on many things, but the idea of my blog always stayed in the air. I thought about why I cannot update it regularly? And why some of my old posts are much more popular than the last ones. And I think I know the answer, but first, let me tell you a story.
I started my own blog in the beggining 2006 (almost three years before). I was encouraged by the literature about blogs, by Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki and other internet gurus. I thought of it - as a platform to share my ideas. And first posts were really “mine” - my thoughts, my experience. It was unique and thats why it attracted so much attention.
But reading more and more other blogs I began to copy them - copy style of posts, ideas of posts. But copying wasn’t so simple, because I cannot combine all those “not mine” ideas with my experiences and life examples. So the latests posts became boring and absolutely not usefull. Moreover I pretended to write on management, and limiting myself in such way made it even more difficult to write good content.
I hope that these are my real problems, and understanding them will help me continue blogging. Otherwise you won’t see another post for a few months here =).
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Good manners
First read the post here - http://simplicityitk.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-bad-manners-now-norm-in-buisness.html
And now my answer - Trevor you are absolutely right. Now let’s think why. I got a few ideas:
1. Being rude and demonstrate bad manners leads you to acquiring bad reputation. What’s about it, you will say. Well sure - the world is big, and if you do something wrong in England, nobody will know about it in Germany. But here we comes to the point 2:
2. You never know when and where the reaction on your today’s action will be. Everything is connected (check the butterfly effect) in our world, and acting bad today can result in getting negative feedback 10 years. Moreover with Internet info of your reputation spreads quite fast today.
I’m not even saying here, that demonstrating bad manners is bad by definition.
The Hitcher (1986)
Yesterday watched The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer. Highly recommended - old school classic movie. And it’s really frightening sometimes).
Why do you like movie of 80th?
paradox
It’s seems like - less I wrote, more subscribers I get. Paradox?)
just stuff
The weekends passed - again very quickly. They were full of events, I’ll tell you about some of them.
Friday evening we passed relaxing at home. Olga prepared super salad + fried chicken. I was a barmen and prepared some very nice "gluhende Wein". That was a good evening for sure.
Saturday was full of movement - we’ve visited tour company. This NY we will pass in Tallin with our friends. We will take 3 film cameras and shoot everything on our way =). Either VS cafe or Cafe Stereo will be ours NY party place. We are very excited about this 4 day trip. In the evening we met my co-alumni.
The weather is very bad - about +1 -1 degrees (Celcium) and it’s snowy-rainy. Moscow is extremely gray these days and it’s very easy to be depressed - just take a look at the window. Also elections are very close and political pr is everywhere - I’m so tied of it.
I have an idea of post series to this blog. It’s called "Fantastic Statistics". I will collect some interesting statistics information on all themes from Russian media. So stay tuned.
Old abilities return
Today I need to make a short audio clip for promotion of new book Funky Business Forever. I’ve downloaded some music software I haven’t used for months.
It’s been a year when I quit making music. So now it was a real experience to remember all the things I did before. I realized how cool it is to compose something - to create! The clip seems to be ok, but we are still deciding will we publish it or not.
Checked up the new episode of Heroes. There is one thing, that is much better in Heroes than in LOST. Producers give you answers, not only questions - contrary to LOST. In LOST we have a bunch of questions and this bunch is growing day by day. Only a few answers are given in the last season.
http://www.empatika.com/blog/vibor-logotipa - check out this post on our Empatika project blog. It’s in Russian - but anyway, please, visit the page. I need you help in choosing the logo for the project - just click which one (1st or 2nd) you like more.
Tags: tv series, modplug tracker, creativity, empatika, logotype
Heroes series and some life thoughts
I’m a big fan of Heroes TV series. I also like Lost and Jericho, but Heroes is very different.
In the center of the film are people with extraordinary abilities. It is shown how difficult for them to live in our society, how they adapt, how they find their own ways in life. This is more than just another aka-X-men. This is about how to be different. And what I think, it’s very common to some of us. There are a lot of people all around - that form the gray mass. They can be good, they can be bad - they can be just normal. But sometimes you find unique ones. I hope I’m one of those - but I can’t say for sure.
These unique ones are different in a lot of things, but primarily in their independence, in their own view, in their manner to think and to act. And, of course, in their dreams. What I matters me last days - are my dreams. Do I really do everything to fulfill them? It seems to me - a lot of work have to be done, before I can answer positively on this question.
What about you? Do you feel different? Do you want to be different?
Tags: being different, thoughts about life
Lost in web 2.0
I’m finally lost. As you see I update my blog very little these days. I really want to update it - but from the very beginning I tried to write about business issues. And one day I realized that:
- It’s hard to write only about business;
- I don’t want to write about business only.
It’s hard to change - but this is the only thing I’m left with. Otherwise I will not be able to continue force myself to write here. Maybe you have any ideas on how I can continue? What interests you in my blog? What would you want me to write about?
Also I have problems with all these social networks and web 2.0. Currently I’m registered in:
1. LinkedIn
2. Facebook
3-4. Two more Russia facebook-like sites (actually there are even 3 of these)
5. Livejournal
6. This blog
+ I write in corporate blog and Empatika blog (system thinking project of ours).
It seems like I need to make a choice, but it’s so hard to make…
Guys - please comment! I really want to know your opinion about all this stuff.
Tags: lost in web, blogs, social-networking, need help
Site update
Dear friends. It seem like I haven’t updated the site quite a long time. So I’ve decided to rework all the info here.
First of all - About me page is updated.
Second - reworked all the links. I don’t read some of blogs I’ve previously read, but there are new sources for you to check:
- Presentation Zen - this one is very popular today, but if you haven’t seen it - give it a try. Fantastic material on visual presentation of information.
- Daniel Pink - blog of Daniel Pink, author of "New agent nation" and "A whole new mind".
- Survival of the Sickest - blog about one fantastic idea, that humanity needed illnesses in the past to survive. Author of the blog (and the book) Dr. Sharon Moalem.
- Too much imagination - blog of Ben Mattes, guy from gaming industry. Just a nice blog of interesting person.
Check the links section on the right side of the page. More changes to come.
Tags: site update, links, Dmitry Linkov
How to conquer Apple?
I have a recipe for HP, Sony, Toshiba etc on how to conquer Apple. Let’s take a closer look at Apple Mac’s:
1. They have a consistency in their philosophy and it’s implementation.
2. They got fantastic design (Sony have good design too, so it’s only a matter of resources)
3. They got their own operating system that rocks.
The first one is idea - that’s a great work, but it’s done for most of the companies. You just have to reveal it and use it. The second thing is design that is achievable, and that has to reflect your idea. The third point is difficult - because it will take you time and enormous forces to do an OS. But what you can do is take Linux or even Windows and rework it. Make it significantly better - make your own design, make a pack of working tools for all essential tasks that usually computers are used for. Be unique, listen to the customers - it’s achievable. This is the only way to conquer.
I adore Steve Jobs presentations because when he tells "it was difficult to make a movie on 30 minutes, so we dramatically improved the application" there is an idea that sparks in my mind
HOW DID HE KNEW ABOUT MY PROBLEMS?
He is just listening to the customers..
leadership
Here you can read good lessons from Trevor. Check it out!
Tags: leadership
Close to the customer
Company that I work in does some fantastic practices. I’ll give you one example.
We are publishing house, and our final clients are readers. Where do readers get our books? Of course in the book-stores! So every month we go to the book store (the biggest one in Moscow) and work there for 2-3 hours as a book consultants. We talk to customers, recommend them books. But understand me correctly - of course we recommend our books a bit more (because we are sure of their quality), but also we recommend ALL good business books even if they are published by our competitors.
This process involves all the people from the company, even our directors take part in it.
And what do you do to stay close to you client?
Fantastic experience
I like Harry Potter books. In Moscow sales of English version of the last book started simultaneously with all the world (it was 3:00 am). I thought there will be enough books at the store so I was not in a hurry.
The next day we came to the store and began searching – without any success. After a few minutes We’ve met a sales guy (his name is Roman) I knew and we chatted for a few minutes. He said that at night it was a fantastic show and all the books were sold in three hours! It really disappointed us but we just continued our talk. After we were sure that there are no books left he suddenly disappeared for a moment and came back with the last example of the book giving it to us!!!
He kept this book until somebody cool and cute – and this was us! It’s hard to explain what we felt that moment. He sold us much more than a book.
