Hamstaa!

For many years I've been interested in environmental concerns and the impact our "throw away" culture has.

I've previously talked about going out for coffee and so I felt it was high time I started bringing my own cup and hence reduce the amount of rubbish I was contributing with takeaway cups. I wanted to ensure whatever I bought would be accepted by my favourite barista so I raised it with Gemma at Stove. She immediately pointed me at Keep Cup.

The important thing about these cups is that they come in the standard coffee sizes that will fit under the group head of an expresso machine. This makes it so much easier for the barista and hence reduces the objection some may have to trying to make coffee into any old cup you bring in.

So, if like me, you buy a few coffees a week, consider getting something like the Keep Cup. Oh, and you can customise all the colours on it to make it your own.

It pays to keep your eyes open when walking around as you just never know what you will see.

I noticed a number of small insects near an access plate on the footpath. Upon closer inspection it looks like a Native Bee hive has taken up residence right in the middle of the West End cafe precinct.

I know, it seems obvious, but preparation is definitely crucial to the success of your presentation/demo.

The other day I watched a presentation by Jesse Desjardins called "You Suck at Powerpoint – 5 Shocking Design Mistakes You Need to Avoid".

Along with many useful design mistakes, he made an interesting observation that

Most experts say: An outstanding 1-hour presentation takes 30 hours or more of prep time.

– Slide 39

Shortly after I was doing a demo with our European sales rep. It was the first time we had demo'd together and during the post demo debrief our VP Sales, Tom Smith, observed that role playing the demo together could have smoothed out a few rough edges in our interaction. This was especially important given everyone on the call was remote from each other.

In the book "Great Demo", by Peter Cohan, he discusses the cost of a failed demo. As this can be quite significant, including loss of the sale, it pays to take the time to prepare properly.

Now this got me thinking – just how much time should we invest in preparing for a demo?

Obviously there’s the time spent setting up your demo environment, ensuring you have data/examples relevant to the customer and identifying the key features of your product that the prospect is really interested in. However there is also the time spent with the sale rep going over the "game plan" for this particular customer.

Now I normally work with our APAC sales rep and he and I have built a good report. Interestingly this was built initially face-to-face when he was on a sales trip to Australia. In the case of the demo with the European sales rep, while we had prep'd with the customer the technology to do the remote demo, we hadn't spent any time together going over how we would interact during the demo.

So, the time to prepare for a great demo can be quite significant and involve setting up the demo, and working through the approach with the sales rep. Of course, if you are doing a demo for the first time with a sales rep, then you need to invest even more time working out your interaction and how each of you prefers to work with the prospect during the demo.

At the end of the day, all of this effort is there to maximise your success in the demo and ensure you move even closer to closing the deal. So spending less time preparing could be lead to a failed demo.

When I lived in Melbourne and worked in some of the inner suburbs I often saw some amazing graffiti. Some of it I’d classify as Art. Now I differentiate this type of graffiti from the simplistic "tagging" where the person sprays a basic signature multiple times in an area, sometimes over the top of much better work.

I saw this particular piece of ”art” while walking down Montague Road past some of the more rundown industrial buildings. Upon closer inspection it appears to be a sticker as opposed to sprayed on. Despite this, I love the simplicity of it and the way it brightens up a rather drab bit of construction.

I was catching up on some blogs recently when I came across the article "Now that’s what I call service!" by Mike Taylor. Mike received some outstanding service from his local pub when he mistakenly left change behind. As an exponent of the Fish! Philosophy I can related to the idea that a business would want to "delight its customers" in this way.

His story reminded me of the differences in service I experienced earlier this year during the migration of our two phone lines when we moved offices.

We have one line for voice, and the other for internet, each provided by one of the two major telecommunication carriers in Australia. As such, migration was to be simply installation of a suitable line at our new office and termination of the existing line. Of course these things never go smoothly but it was the approach to customer service that surprised me.

When I wanted an update, or had an issue with the line Telstra was responsible for, I had to ring their support line, battle through the "voice recognition" system, explain to the person what we were doing, why it wasn't right, etc, then wait for a response. Everytime I did this I had a new person so the process was repeated.

Optus however allocated me an account migration manager and I was given their direct number. At any time I could call her up and she'd be able to give me an update, or get back to me with one if she didn't have details to hand.

Compared to the experience with Telstra, having one person to talk to with Optus greatly improved the process for me. This simple difference resulted in the customer service experience with Optus being a "delight" and contributed to a less stressful migration of their line than Telstra.

Not far from our offices in West End is a heavy transport recovery company. You know, the sort with really big tow trucks. As such, I was pretty surprised to see this sign near the entrance to their business. I’m guessing they’ve had problems with people parking across the driveway.

It just goes to show that even if it's obvious, you sometimes still have to spell it out.

Back in 2007 I published a post about "Capability versus Competence" in which I espoused the virtue of Capability over Competence in IT and the difficulty in measuring it during recruitment but the value it can provide.

I recently had a comment on my original post. In it the author indicated that "Competence" in their opinion was far better. As they put it,

Capability always indicate the “possibility” that the person have to do something, but may be he can not really do it.
“I have the capability of speak in Chineese because i have all the neccesary for this, but i can not because i dont know chineese language”.

Competence is always the capability but shown in practice, This is not the ” possibility” its real, practical.

While I agree, someone who may be capable of performing a task may not really be able to do it, in the real world of IT, there are many situation where limiting yourself to just a set of competent skills may be detrimental. For example, it may mean you overlook an outstanding developer with the right development mindset but not a particular language, who would be able to take you and your business along with the changing landscape in IT.

The other problem I have with the comment is the example. I don't believe you can draw a parallel between a spoken language and a computer language. For one thing, the grammatical rules or "syntax" of a spoken language are significantly larger and more complex than a programming one. Now while I can speak, I therefore have the Capability to speak another language, I don't yet have that Competence. However, I am Competent in many computer languages, and therefore have the Capability to quickly and easily master a new one.

In the IT world, competence does play an important part, but I believe if you rely entirely on that alone in your decision to hire someone then you are selling yourself very short.