First, pass the post

It cannot escaped the notice of most people that the post is in meltdown at the moment. From a citizen point of view it shows how much we have come to NOT rely on the post. I for one had not noticed the strike so much because all I see is a lower amount of junk mail and a lower amount of bills (all paid electronically anyway). So no real big deal. I suspect that I am not typical in that respect but I am certainly not unique.

What is having an effect is the lack of post on businesses. As a Luddite I still pay many of my bills by post and most of my suppliers still bill me by post. But I do not know what I have not received. So I have received a number of invoices very late. I have been a good chap and paid them immediately, by cheque by post. But what is surprising is the complete lack of understanding from suppliers. I have now had two threats to cut off my services. Ouch! Both times I have explained the situation, both times I have pointed out the invoices were late, postal strikes etc and both times was told tough.

Come on suppliers, wake up. We all have cash flow issues caused by the strikes (well I haven't but many have). Its like a chain in a housing transaction. You all need to work together and be patient or the chain breaks down.

It is an interesting measure of your suppliers. When times are hard the crap floats to the top. Just remember those suppliers and when the time is right move from the rubbish ones and reward the patient ones. When the going gets tough, those who are your partners and those who are your suppliers really stick out.

Any volunteers?

Exciting times are here again. The build up to the next election is always an interesting time to look at politics and more importantly politicians. No shit. But this election will be interesting because it will show whether the politicians have really grasped the second order questions rather than the first order ones. We are all familiar with the parties extolling their various policies. In the good ol days (that never really existed) the party would lay out its vision and what it wanted for the country and, more importantly how it would achieve it. The people would trust the chaps at the top to be good chaps who would stand by their policies and their vision.

But today, we are not so lucky. Its not that people do not trust their politicians, its that they do not trust the idea of politicians. The whole concept is damaged even if the individuals are trusted (many are not). The brand is damaged and anyone using that brand is damaged automatically by it. The dilemma they face is simple. The mechanisms available to the politician to put this right are the very things that people do not trust. It is like the sceptic. The sceptic says that we can know nothing. You cannot engage the sceptic because to do so requires the use of knowledge to argue the case. Crudely, it is like trying to argue the case with someone who makes the case that all arguments are invalid. You have to use ‘arguments’ to engage him and by doing so you lose because his position is all arguments are invalid. The politician faces the same problem. The tools at their disposal to rebuild the brand of politician are the very things people do not trust buy and put forward by the very people who are not believed.

On the face of it, impossible to get out of. Well, not entirely but it will require some ingenious thinking and some foresight by a collective group of people who are able to see past the short term issues. I suspect this is not the parties we see today.

There are ways out. The first one requires that someone not just stand for policies but for the second order issue of standing for politics. Not just one party, but all parties. This seems unlikely to be successful as it is the job of opposition to undermine and challenge the government. For one party to take the right stance will need support from all parties. Given that any of them agree to what is needed to be done, they will disagree on how it is to be done and the divide will undermine the outcome.

What do I mean by this? Irrespective of the policies and ‘vision’ for this country, what is needed is the vision for politics. Someone needs to stand for rebuilding the brand. Both parties need to do this. To achieve this they will not be able to function as they do today. The change in culture cannot happen from within and it will take independent external help. It cannot be done by politicians for the very reasons above. So who? There are some candidates. There are enough international bodies out there. Those who go into old dictatorships and try and put in place the skeleton of new democracy. There are international arbitrators who successfully work with the warring parties to bring peace. And finally there is the people who are governed.

What is needed is a set of rules that dictate the framework within which politicians can work that sit outside of the control of the politicians that run the country (and the administrators). The US realised this and managed it. That is not to say that the US is not subject to the nonsense we suffer with our politicians but there are things that can be learned.

A constitution that
is not drawn up by politicians.
is not changeable without referendum.
contains the basic rules on rights as well as the controls on power.
is run and controlled by a new democratic framework which must be allegiance free to any country ruling party. Whose sole purpose is to protect the constitution and run the referendums.
must be voted in by the majority of the voting population and not the majority of the people that voted.
reports and answers to only the people and the crown (strengthens the role of the monarchy and more importantly provides a modern real purpose.)

Someone who controls what it is to be a politician and what politics is. Split the governance of the system from the governance of the country.

Any volunteers?

First mover

I was considering the difficulty of SME growth the other day. For the majority of IT it is very hard to break into the market. That is not to say impossible but very difficult. It led me to think how many of the really big successful companies have been around since the beginning and how many resulted from newish startups. It is hard to judge on a general note but what is clear is that once a particular IT 'function' is dominated it is hard to take market share. Why? I am no MBA but it strikes me that first mover really does take all if they play their cards right.

Look at the main functions. In terms of operating system the biggest and market dominator is Microsoft. Many OSs have gone and many have gone and none have dented MS significantly. They were the first main stream commercial OS for computers (ignoring the home computer market). If linux has showed one thing it is that first mover is almost impossible to remove.

IBM, again, around since the beginning of computing. IT services though is easier to compete against (EDS, Cap Gem etc) but still, IBM is significantly successful.

Oracle is leading the DB market and was there in the beginning.

So what is the trick to topple the corporations? Competing on product is hard. The cost of R&D is high and new products are either niche (so do not ever get to take on the big market shares by definition) or innovative versions of what the big guys produce in which case it is almost impossible to prevent them provding a similiar innovation into their product set making your obsolete and you unviable.

Dell got into the market not with their product quality or innovation but by simply (in my view) being able to produce at costs no other corp could reach from their bloated starting point.

If any of this has merit then it goes to show how bad Yahoo was. As one of the leading search engines it is incredible that it lost out to Google whose product was simply more innovative. Why could Yahoo not innovative to maintain market share? Who knows.

So how do you topple the giants? Views welcome. It cannot be through product. The giants are easily capable of copying anything you produce. Even if you have a patent if they want to copy it you then have to take them to court for YEARS and you will run out of money before you win and even if you win you lose as they will be out there and you will have been too busy fighting court cases.

The way to beat them must be the Dell approach. The big guys are simply not light enough to change fast. If you want to succeed you have to change either the way the product is delivered (so price) in ways that the corp guys cannot reduce to in time to compete (hard with their buying power) or change the market. If you cannot produce a product on equal terms with the corps then change the market so the customer base wants something different to what the corps supply and that you do. Fashion works this way. Don't copy Prada, produce something and change the fashion so yours is in and theirs is out.

Macs are doing that in my view. People like the interface. People no longer want what MS offers. By this I mean it is a technical product and Macs are a fashion lifestyle thing. MS will simply not be able to become a lifestyle product and for that reason MS will start to lose market share to Mac quite rapidly. Macs now produce things to be seen with. MS copy them but nobody will ever consider it cool to have the latest OS or software. Same for hardware. Nobody wants a clunky old black box. They want a cool looking device. Image and fashion. Company's no longer focus on product benefit, they change the fashion, they alter demand to the product they offer.

Web sites now need to do the same thing. web sites such as facebook are popular but they are not lifestyle. Not in a positive way. It did not change fashion or demand, it was simply first in. Future success will come from changing demand to position your product rather than changing your product to fit demand.

It will be interesting to see if any web sites will give this a go.

Bleeding edge

The race for the next big thing is on. Google has the edge on maps and search at the moment. Facebook is a novelty that has had its day. The novelty is wearing off and they do not know how to make money out of it. History shows that sites that do not know how to turn visits into revenue do not last the course. Twitter likewise offers little value but at least it now appears to be free. So again, how to make the money? Its days will be numbered and the fad will fade when people realize how little of interest is out there.

Humbug I hear you say. Yes I am always negative about these things because I think the world is lacking truly useful things on the web. Shopping is done. I buy my books online, my food shopping, my travel and my holidays. Useful because it reduces the human interaction overhead. It rarely saves me money (interesting how a visit to a travel agent is now the way to get cheaper travel). The middlemen fad will not last. I did my 'compare the market' the 'confused etc' and various money supermarkets. All produced quotes well over the price of the elephant.co.uk renewal price, including elephant.co.uk. Its not a surprise that the cost of such sites is paid for by, you guessed it, higher prices. But they will never gain control of the user experience enough to dominate a market.

What surprises me is because of this I am moving away from technology and not towards it except where it does truly add value to my life. So where are the real solutions out there. The ones that do not connect me to people I don't want to be connected to, the ones that do not show me who my friends used to be, the ones that ensure that I can write snippets of crap like school kids passing notes in class, these all do nothing for me except fill in a bit of space in my life that could be used doing something useful.

I wonder if the answer lies in consolidating our position. We have a lot of technology now. Take the bandwidth into the house. My bandwidth has increased almost in proportion to the amount my interest in what is delivered across it has dropped.

What I need is
1) A simple way to alarm my flat so I can see what is happening in a secure way while away.
2) Proper and easy video conf with people in high quality that does not require a degree in computing to operate. I have neither a beard or a tweed jacket with arm pads and do not want to learn anything about ports, bandwidth, add ins, dlls etc.

I want things integrated and easy to use.

The next revolution will be usability and that requires no new technology just the world to slow down and focus on quality rather than a quest for novelty.