At eLiberatica conference a Microsoft evangelist answered to a question about why Microsoft is involving in Open Source with “you know, it is like in chess”

For sure this is not a corporate formal position but an employee perception of his company plans and policies.

Is Microsoft playing a gambit with open source?

A gambit is a chess opening in which the first player risks or sacrifices material, usually a pawn), with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position.

So this is an attack, and the “give away” is poisoned. Microsoft “sacrifices” material – money, intellectual property – with the hope to gain a future advantage.

It is also a temporary situation.

Microsoft still see open source as an enemy. They not accepted it as an integral part of the IT industry and still try fighting it – they aim for “check-mat”

In modern chess, the typical response to a moderately sound gambit is to accept the material and give the material back at an advantageous time.
For gambits that are less sound, the accepting player is more likely to try to hold onto his extra material.

It is expected for a company to chase profit. Of course a company giving away something should expect some kind of return.

I am only questioning the attitude: open source involvement: This should be a COLABORATION not a fight.

I still wonder if this a “sound” gambit or a “less sound” one?!

It is not V as in “five”, but V as in “virtual”. After “baby boomers” and “Generation X” get ready for “Generation V”

Adam Sarner, Principal Research Analyst with Gartner predicts:

In 10 years, the key influence on all business-to-consumer (B2C) purchases will be the online experiences associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent on marketing and selling to multiple, anonymous, online personas than marketing and selling offline.

The virtual environment levels the play field and creates the perfect meritocracy. Does not mater if one is beautiful or ugly, if is young or old, the only thing does matter is what he can achieve in this virtual environment. One can be a “40th-level half-elf” or a guru on creating tracks for Trackmania.

IT systems must begin to understand those multiple personas, must be able to analyze the online environment. Simply segmenting customers on age and location is no longer enough.

The corporate IT is invaded by the consumer world: wireless, PDA, messenger, Skype, you name it!

The peoples shops around for entertainment and convenience. While corporate IT is not expected to provide entertainment, it is judged by the convenience it provides.

I have heard countless times complain of IT senior executives about their users that demand convenience.

Users expect corporate intranet to rival Google, purchasing process to be friendly like Amazon, to contact workmates via messenger like they contact their friends.
They expect corporate phonebook to have at least LinkedIN functionalities, expect knowledge management systems like Wikipedia and the list can go on for ever.

The average IT executive thinks the corporate IT is like army: you have to suffer to strengthen yourself! Rough edges are not only accepted but expected. One has to fight with cumbersome processes, bloated web pages, and weird rules to perform even the most simple tasks.

They position themselves like the drill sergeant of corporate IT!

Even if your CFO will be happy with the cost reduction you achieved, it will be very hard to live with a crowd of angry customers.

Your users will compare your offering with the convenience industry outside and you will be in real trouble!

These days most employees are knowledge workers. They don’t need punch clocks, complicated processes or bloated software.

The first priority for you is to remove any obstacle preventing them to achieve highest intellectual productivity. Second give them tools they like and use happily. As Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth use to say:

Nice IS a feature!

It is now time to throw away your campaign hat and bring in a charmed flute!

I rediscovered today in Guy’s blog a great essay about writing by George Orwell (the original article is here).

I have to read (and write) almost daily a lot of English language documents: business cases, project initiations, reports, meeting minutes, etc.

Quote from George Orwell:

Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

All the current business documents are written using this “modern English” language or even worst.

Who is not tired of: “Time to Market”, “on the same page”, “at the end of the day”, “in a nutshell”, “total cost of ownership”, “business value” and so on.

Pages and pages of words voided of almost all the meaning. And we write like we speak. And we wander why staff is playing bullshit bingo in the meetings.

Even a business case must be written in good English. So, this is a letter to all writers:

Dear All,
Please read the great essay of George Orwell. Before starting to write anything, please read it again. After you finish writing read it again and correct you work.

Thank you,
Your Reader.

PS: And I don’t even mentioned vendor marketing materials. Another fine example of “business language”!

I found a little gem on “Project, Process & Business Improvement” blog:

Lesson One
An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.
A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing?”
The eagle answered: “Sure, why not.” So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested.
All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson #1
- To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Read the full article here.