New : Read what I read

You may have noticed a new green column on my start page. It aims at showing you which articles I found interesting in my daily Netvibes reading.



Technically it's again a Yahoo! Pipe (see the pipe here). They are just too easy to use.



I should re-publish a new picture on how I make my website because it has changed a lot these last months.

Kroll sur le site de Telemoustique

J'adore Kroll.

Je viens d'acheter un de ses derniers albums: Au pays des oranges bleues - P. Kroll - Petits dessins


Sur le site de telemoustique, on peut voir ses dessins qui sont publiés dans le magazine.

Google faced to the fishermen's problem

Google faces a lot of attacks from publishers to pay money for their supposedly non-authorized reuse of information.

There is a intellectual honesty that needs to be re-established around this "copyright" question.

When a company publishes something, it's means to give (or sell) it to the public. Can the public reuse that information once they access it ? Yes : they can at least talk about it. Now : what's the difference if Google takes it and talks about it on the web by indexing it and making it searchable ? If this information is not meant to be reused for free than why is it published and exposed without any serious protection ?

This makes me think about the fishermen's crisis in France. The fishermen's real problem is not the oil price : it's the fact that their real cost of fish is not reflected in their prices. They sell at loss.

Similarly if publishers have to claim money to Google it's because they just dumped their content on the web instead of finding ways to get something out of it from the start.

Claiming money to Google shows the weakness of those companies' business models which are outdated.


Links :

• Copiepresse réclame jusqu'à 49 millions d'euros à Google - Data News
• Report: Belgian publishers demand up to $77 million from Google | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Coup de Chapeau a Yannick Noah

Alors là, Coup de chapeau a Yannick Noah qui n'a même pas essayé d'être politiquement correct sur RTL alors qu'il était interrogé sur l'arrestation de son fils...


Brèves d'Afrique - afrik.com :

Yannick Noah n’en veut pas à Joakim
Réagissant sur RTL à l’arrestation en Floride (Etats-Unis) de son fils Joakim, qui possédait de la drogue et buvait sur la voie publique, Yannick Noah a raconté comment il a rassuré son fils. « Je lui ai dit que ce n’était pas grave, a indiqué l’ancien champion de tennis. De ne rien changer. Juste d’essayer ne pas se faire choper la prochaine fois. Je lui ai dit, regarde moi chéri : ça fait vingt ans que je fais le con mais je reste populaire parce que les gens pensent que je suis un mec bien. Essaie de faire la même chose. » (Mercredi 28 Mai - 11:40)

Bon, je ne dirais pas la même chose à mon fils, mais au moins il n'a pas caché ce qu'il pense. J'adore. Chapeau Bas.

Thomas fait du mini-golf

Oostende voor Anker

This weekend we went to Oostende for "Oostende voor Anker".

You can have a look at some pictures here : 20080524TallShipsOstende.

IBM : 7 "Stop Talking, Start Doing" Commandments

IBM has launched a campaign called "Stop Talking, Start Doing" recently and I really like the little movies associated with it.

1. The first one is really great : EMERGENCY

I sometimes have the feeling I attend meetings like that...

IBM TV Commercial on Business Resilience (When it Rains)

2. The second one is about Social networking...

IBM TV Commercial on Collaboration/Social Networking (BFF)

3. The third one... is on FLEXIBILITY

IBM TV Commercial on Business Flexibilty (Quicksand)

4. The 4th one : GREEN...

IBM TV Commercials on Energy Efficiency/Green (Tree Huggers)

5. The 5th one: GLOBALIZATION...

IBM TV Commercial on globalization (Tour)

6. The 6th : GENERATING IDEAS

IBM: Ideating

7. The 7th : MANAGING INFORMATION

IBM TV Commercial on Information Explosion (FYI)


And there are some more on YouTube...

Note : if this page doesn't display well in your browser (I have problems with my IE7 on this page), go to the Youtube site here .Or use FireFox.
Note 2 : I found the problem : it was a flash plugin problem....

Netlog is cool

Today I test Netlog, after a colleague tells me his son has invited him to join.

I already use/tested a lot of Social Networks.

I created a new Netlog profile : http://en.netlog.com/jfdeclercq.

Netlog is special to me because it has been created in Belgium (Gent). This make me want to use it. My first impression is really good. It could be a good alternative to Facebook if Microsoft buys it because they now support the Open Social standards.

Mon Commentaire sur "Et si Microsoft devenait le numéro 1 du Web ?"

J'ai posté un commentaire sur cet article : Et si Microsoft devenait le numéro 1 du Web ?

Pour moi c'est pas évident que Microsoft va en en coup devenir quelqu'un sur le web en rachetant Yahoo et Facebook....

Don't assume...

Assumptions can be the cause of a lot of misunderstandings in everyday life (private and work):

"With ASSUME we make an ASS of U and ME..."

Think about it...

Business Architecture

Last week I had a course on Business Architecture and it was fascinating.

As IT Architect, it's quiet easy to jump from IT Architecture to Business Architecture. The Service Oriented Entreprise (SOE) concepts are very close to the SOA concepts, except that instead of organizing systems and functions, it's about organizing businesses (services, products, people, processes and technology). The methodology proposed by Niels Klinkenberg results in Business Architectures which look like those of IBM's Component Business Modeling (CBM).

During the course, I liked how the Growth Phases Model of Larry Greiner was used to explain that the agile business architectures of tomorrow are a network of highly entrepreneurial Business Units (called Domains) which are specialized, higly efficient (benchmarked), have to obey the corporate "Playing Rules" and have to add value to the company. This makes of Governance (Corporate, IT, HR, Financial...) a central success factor. How to govern a large company that needs to be agile ? To answer this question, you'd better first have a good idea of its Business Architecture...

BicyCity

This Sunday, we took the chance to ride our bikes on the Highway (E411) and on the largest roads of Brussels (petite ceinture, De Brouckère...) during the BicyCity. Very pleasant. Good atmosphere. We'll do it again. Note that our target this year is to complete "De Gordel" (100 Km around Brussels).

Pride Concert @ Ancienne Belgique

This Saturday we went to the Belgian Lesbian & Gay Pride and we had a lot of fun. We went to the Pride Party because we tought the music would be good and it was... excellent.



The DJs were great and there were two concerts : Milk Inc and Kate Ryan. These two top artists are linked to each others with the tunes of DJ Richie 4Fingers (Phenomena, Apéro - Leuven; Cockpit XS/XL - Cologne).

Around 20:00, Milk Inc was super as last time we say them at the DruivenFeesten in Overijse. Unfortunately for them the Ancienne Belgique was not very crowded at that time. Not bad for us : we had a kind of private concert :-)

Around 22:00, Kate Ryan was good (but not as good as Milk Inc). The tracks of her new album sounded good : promissing ? We will see.

Visit of Nick Donofrio at IBM Belgium

Yesterday, Nick Donofrio gave a session on innovation at IBM Belgium.

I really had the feeling to be in front of a legend. For 44 years he has been working on the most innovative IBM projects : the transition to CMOS, the System/360, the RS6000... He has surfed all the important IT waves with style.



Mr Donofrio will retire in October this year and he mainly emphasized on what makes IBM a great company :

• IBM values
• IBM's strenght : the combination of Systems, Software and Services which allow to create value
• IBM's strategy
• Focus on open technologies and high value solutions
• Deliver innovation and integration to our clients
• Become the premier globally integrated company

Being global is an important topic for IBM, according to Nick Donofrio. And indeed IBM has lauched many initiatives around globalization:

• the global innovation outlook with global topics on the agenda like Water, Security and the society in a global world...
• the global citizenship portfolio which will provide IBMers with valuable tools to enhance their expertise and careers within a globally integrating economy.

To start and to finish his speech Mr Donofrio encouraged the IBMers to anticipate change and to use change as an opportunity. Or even better : create the change. He explained how his father created change for his family. He wanted the best for Nick and created the change by setting hard work as a mean to reach a better education level. (Was it a success ? Apparently yes.) The only explanation for this move was : "If nothing changes, nothing changes". Be an actor of change.

And for IBM one of the current changes is... globalization.


About Nick Donofrio

• Nick Donofrio's bio on ibm.com:
• Nick Donofrio on Wikipedia

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions

What famous leader are you ?

I took the "which leader are you ?" test recommended in the Bizz Blog,
I was very suprised to be a leader like ... Gandhi.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

And you what famous leader are you like ?