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Controlling the information in an open culture

May 25, 2009 | Author: Vinh

The culture of openness is clearly the trademark of Web2. 

Being open is cool. You share everything and people help you get idea about everything.
You turn your customers into salesmen… and in a split seconds the whole world knows about you.
Just because you show you are human and you can make mistakes.
Just because you talk to everyone as if they were your best friends.
That’s the stakhanovism behind that new marketing culture.
But – do you control your image?
No. Your messages are distorted. They are made juicy. And they turn into something sticky and worth spreading. And not exactly what you wanted.
This works only if you have sufficient coverage and influence in a community. (not like me though).
If you admit you are having difficulties, people start running away from your services.
If you talk about a product, people assume you are getting paid for it.
If you talk about something insignificant, people think you’re just trying to compensate for your lack of creativity.
Simple guidelines
-Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Repeat yourself. Be consistent. Be simple.
- Be open about what has no impact. And be overly talkative and find interesting facts to illustrate => avoid elusive meaningless content.
- Don’t answer embarassing questions. Say it’s not relevant – and NEVER lie.
- Repeat yourself. The message should be clear. And easily repeated without being too twisted.
- Use multiple ways to say again what you just said.
- Find different media to vehiculate the same consistent messages
- Make sure there is no way to distort the message to squeeze a negative interpretation. If that happens, reassess the positive message. Dismiss or ignore everything else.
So don’t forget to overuse impacting selling points.
PS: Use a PS. People always read PS.
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It’s late.

May 18, 2009 | Author: Vinh

2 am.

Things are going well.
Airbus marketing.
Back at Airbus. It’s good to have money flowing in. 
It’s good to feel the atmosphere around. 
Because airlines are facing tough times, it is important to stay close to them and understand what they are going though. Orders should be picking up soon. People need to travel :)
So it’s a very dynamic atmosphere here, and it’s great to be with people who love what they do.
Netclones
Using Tadaa as a previous experience, I aim at making that new company more efficient and more pragmatic. And here are the several lessons learnt from the What Went Wrong:
- Work with a skilled partner. There’s nothing like experience and motivation. Having top people to manage the company is definitely a key factor for success. He’s done it 3 times, I guess he can do it again. And he’s my age. 
- Navigate with cash flow in mind. No matter how important the task, look at how much it costs. Once you’re broke, the company is OUT.
- Get Real. Money is all there is. If you can’t make money in the first 3 months… then you’re dealing with innovation… which means you need to have investors. Leading to my last point:
- Avoid investors at all costs. They will want you to spend time on making detailed reporting, you will have to persuade them that you have the best investment project out there, get a patent, and all that leads to time waste! And there’s nothing moe precious than time.
Social life
I have been meeting some very interesting people lately.
- Learnt magic tricks from a magician
- Met and stayed close with entepreneurs betting their life on their projects. Commitment is a difficult choice. Until it is not a choice any more.
- Found motivating people to party with, and maybe plan holidays in an unknown country.
Millionaire at 30?
3 years left. 27th birthday coming soon.
Deadline is getting close. That’s going to be one hell of a sprint.
Overall
I’m fine thank you.
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Why I’ll become a badass super villain…

May 5, 2009 | Author: Vinh

Let’s face it.
Being a super-villain provides meaning and purpose for everyone.
Imagine a James Bond movie without a super-villain.

Nowadays, there’s nothing to fight for.

It’s pretty hard to find purpose in what we do.
It’s mind-boggling when you try to understand why you wake up in the morning, why you go to work, why you even bother having sex.
Is reproducing our only purpose? In that case, we’re just re-transmitting the issues.
Because, surviving is not an issue any more. For some of us, it’s not security or confort…

We’re going up the Maslow pyramid. We need self esteem.

And meanwhile life is getting damn boring.
You work your ass off to pay for your pension and your kids. Luckily, you have cable TV and you keep your mind busy and you shut those voices that tell you that you shoud TAKE OVER THE WORLD.

You just look around and there’s nothing you want. Your self-esteem is low, because whatever you do, it’s been done, and better than you could ever do.
Fight for world domination !

Minus : Brain, what are we doing tonight?
The Brain : What we’re doing every night, Minus. Take over the world… (tu tu… tu tu… tu tum…)
Because creativity is limited by ethics, you can afford to go further than most of the people.
Have you seen how cool super-villains are? Can you not admire Batman’s Joker?

Super-villains do not have contradictions. Their behavior is pure evil. They do everything they can for what they want.
Imagine Superman having to kill one person to save the planet. I can’t believe he can even do that. But Lex Luthor could go into a kindergarten full of baby penguins and strangle them with his bare hands if it would help his mad projects.

Well… if I were a super-villain I would order pizzas you don’t like and have them delivered to your house. Niaaaaaarkkkk. (evil laugh)

Create exceptional people

No Batman without Joker. Creating absolute evil unites the rest of the world.
Shape the world your way.

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The story of the Tadaa logo

April 25, 2009 | Author: Vinh

You guys must know that I have been outsourcing a lot with my previous company.

Just for fun, I compiled a small presentation about how we came up with the logo.
We worked a lot with that argentinian company and came up with something pretty cool.
I liked the funny robot, and mostly I really liked to put something not so serious in the company’s identity.

Looking back. Those were good times discussing with people all around the world on MSN, just to find out they’re just like us.

Yes, suppliers are people too.

Here’s the presentation:

Story Of Tadaa Bot
View more presentations from guest45911a.
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Partnership is like a wedding.

April 15, 2009 | Author: Vinh

Now that I have learnt from my previous mistakes in entrepreneurship, I’m trying to get a new business going.
One of the mistakes I made was to work alone.
It’s true that you can succeed alone. Especially if you can afford to outsource everything you can not do.

However, every little success becomes meaningless if it can’t be shared.

My new venture involves a partnership and the 50/50 share was a big issue.

Pros.
50/50 gives everyone the same importance. Nobody feels left behind and the commitments should be equal. As well everyone keeps control of the company.

Cons.
If the partnership goes bad, then the company is paralyzed. And that’s more common that you might think it would happen.

Planning for that is like planning for a wedding. You should start planning as if anything could go bad and imagine very possible cases. It’s not the most pleasant part of the process, but it should be done.

As the say, plan the for the worst, hope for the best.

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Hotmail : You don’t have an inbox yet …

April 10, 2009 | Author: Vinh

Hell with it.
My hotmail account says I don’t have an inbox yet.

What have I been doing for the last 6 years?

My life flashes before my eyes. All the mails that I received.
My friends leaving me their best wishes. Travel pictures.
Job applications.
A part of my life has vanished.

Have I been hacked?
Is someone sending porn to all my contacts?
Will I ever have that mail account any more?
Will I receive the future mails? Are people going to be notified?

Shaking, sweating, I feel a part of myself has been ripped away.

After a bit of search on the internet… Everyone is out of hotmail!!!
It is a global shutdown. France, US, Singapore…
I am not the only one.
I see people gathering in groups in forums… sharing their personal experiences.
They meet in yahoo and google groups to show their relief of not being alone.
Some people joke about a internet going down and nukes being launched.

We try to find support. We find nobody but ourselves.
This is a traumatic experience.
We share the anxiety together.

We’ll laugh about that later. Still, my account does not work.

We’ll talk about that.
We’ll smile.
We’ll sue Bill Gates.

Update: Now it’s working… thank god (how I got it back in comments). Now, let’s move to gmail…
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From weakness to strength…

April 7, 2009 | Author: Vinh
I came across that very inspirational story/fiction. I felt like sharing it with you.

Weakness to Strength
There was once a 10 year old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn’t understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.
“Sensei,” the boy finally said, “shouldn’t I be learning more moves?”
“This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you’ll ever need to know,” the sensei replied.
Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.
Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match.
Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals. This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a timeout. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened.
“No,” the sensei insisted, “Let him continue.”
Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.
On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind.
“Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?”
“You won for two reasons,” the sensei answered. “First, you’ve almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. Second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm.”
The boy’s biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, I experienced a stunning defeat at the national kung-fu championship.
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Memory and mind tricks

April 4, 2009 | Author: Vinh

Would you believe some people can’t understand why others have to take notes?

That’s because they have learnt very early in their life to use efficient memory techniques.

Why would you want to remember everything?
Well, you know, it has always a bad effect when you forget an appointment or the name of the girl you were talking to. You can always call her “Baby”, but that will wear out. Switching to “Honey” won’t make things better though.

Big principles.
-Multiply the sensory channels. This way you’ll have more chances remembering.
-Find associations between what you already know and what you want to remember. Sometimes, the weirder, the better.
-Make stories. Your grocery list can be a battle between HUGE CARROTS throwing PEAS at CRYING TOMATOES, spilling juice everywhere and pierced by every PEA bullet. You can see the TOMATO juice on the CARROTs faces.
-Group things in an intelligent way. YODKAERB is meaningless. KEYBOARD is easy to picture, therefore to remember.

Applying those should be a snap, if you do this on a regular basis. The trick is to shift those items from short-term memory to long-term memory.

The Peg system.
1-gun Visualize the first item being fired from a gun
2-zoo Visualize an association between the second thing and a zoo
3-tree Visualize the third item growing from a tree
4-door Visualize the 4th item associated with a door
5-hive Visualize the fifth item associated with a hive or with bees
6-bricks Visualize the sixth item associated with bricks
7-heaven Visualize the seventh item associated with heaven
8-plate Visualize the 8th item on a plate as if it is food
9-wine Visualize a glass containing the 9th item
10-hen Visualize the 10th item associated with a chicken.

The peg system has many variations including body parts, colors so that you can remember up to 4 digits number.

The Loci method.
Imagine a path you often take, and drop the items along the way. You’ll be able to remember them while taking that path again.

Face-Name trick.
When you see someone, and you’d like to remember the name, try to find specificities about the name. If that name recalls an object, imagine that person playing with it. I fit recalls an old friend, imagine them holding hands.

There are no bad techniques. The only requirements should be that it works for you.

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Use your mess for success

March 30, 2009 | Author: Vinh

This is a continuous project I intend to develop with several posts, with a Guru speech style approach.

Lots of self-help and personal development programs out there focus on helping people organize to be more productive. The classic GTD method (Getting Things Done)focuses on crunching your life into To-Do lists and creates handfuls of methods to make organizing complex and repulsive.
I have tried it, and as many, I experienced an epic fail.

You have your way of handling things, and you have your habits. Changing takes a lot of efforts, and I am not amongst those who can put in tremendous efforts without having immediate payoffs. I just see neverending tasks, creating neverending work.

Inspired by The Path of Least Resistence, a very helpful and thick book, I would like to put several thoughts on how you can use your mess for success.

The main principle would be to use your natural instincts and make them work for you. Instead of trying to change WHO you are, you will make slight changes in your environment to drastically change your productivity. Things should be easy, as you don’t need to change!

How can changes happen, if you don’t have to change?
Well knowing yourself will be the biggest step of all.
You will be able to work several scenarios in your mind to ensure that the global result will be achieved with the minimum real effort.

And the less effort you spend organizing your environment, the more effort you can spend on productivity.

But a lot more about that later.

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Why do I blog?

March 24, 2009 | Author: Vinh

Address simple questions with multiple answers – that’s the way of the consultant.

So what’s the point of all that?

Put my thoughts somewhere
When I have thoughts going on about some subjects, it is a real effort to formalize everything.
Making bullet points and examples. Give structure. Make some research.
And create meaning.
Finally in aout 20 minutes of work, the post is ready, and I had to dig into my message. And it’s out there.

Fame?
.This type of blog does not explore a specific niche and does not aim for traffic. Although it would be nice. I’m just happy my friends read it.

Web Presence?
I want to be the most famous “Vinh LY” on google.

Discover more about what I like.
Some posts require extensive research, and everytime, I am amazed about what we can find on the internet… Sometimes, I stumble on weird topics like “competitive eating” or other stuff. Structuring all that helps me remember it better.

YOU
You might not know me, I might not know you.
But we share common interests. Aircraft, marketing, robots, entrepreneurship, algorithms…
And maybe you have an idea, or anything we can work together.
Just mail me.

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