Language: English

Predictions

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Bob May - localisation of function - bottom

Once, a friend asked me about creating a website to post memes (funny things, images, texts, perhaps videos, although it was a bit more complicated those years).

I told him that such ideas already exist in various forms, and his idea is doomed to fail.

9GAG was only founded in 2008, and, at least in Romania, only in recent years, it got very popular.

Did I advise him wrong? Sure!

What would I do now, would he ask me again?

I’d tell him it’s not the idea, but the execution that matters.

Even today you could make a funnier website.

And we’re extremely poor at predicting.

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Follow-up: Câteva idei de la “Summitul Încrederii” – “Wellbeing Institute”

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"Summitul Încrederii" - "Wellbeing Institute"

Am ascultat săptămâna aceasta, în fundal, mai multe cursuri de la “Summitul Încrederii” – “Wellbeing Institute”. (Relații armonioase, pline de încredere – Află sfaturi practice pentru a îmbunătăți relația cu tine și cu cei din jur.)

Cred că am trecut chiar prin toate, dar e posibil ca unele idei să îmi fi scăpat, că făceam și alte lucruri.

Câteva idei pe care mi le-am notat, mai jos.

Notă – ordinea e foarte aleatoare, și vă invit să considerați notițele mele ca fiind foarte vagi aproximări.

Sunt lucruri cu care mi-aș dori eu să rămân.

Nu sunt citate exacte, sunt niște idei mai importante, pentru mine.

Scuze că sunt unele și în engleză, altele în română, am scris în funcție de vorbitor, fără să fac traducerea, în general.

Ca o concluzie pentru cele de mai jos – mi-a plăcut foarte mult cursul, a fost foarte util.

Moderatorul întâlnirilor, Ruxandra Mercea, mi s-a părut că dă dovadă de foarte multă bună dispoziție.

Mi-a plăcut foarte mult să văd speakerii destinși, mulți dintre ei râzând și glumind, foarte relaxați și deschiși.

Mi-a adus aminte de cum moderează dna Andreea Esca podcasturile.

Recomand cumpărarea cursului, e de o calitate foarte ridicată, în opinia mea.

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How to write useful and respectful code reviews?

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Niklas Wikström - Sharing Is Caring - Fotosöndag

Addy Osmani on Twitter: “Tips for useful, respectful code reviews: – Assume competence (author may have a different context) – Provide specific, actionable feedback – Focus on the code (avoid personal criticism) – Clearly mark nitpicks & optional comments – Provide rationale (e.g refs to a style guide)” / Twitter:

  • Assume competence (author may have a different context)
  • Provide specific, actionable feedback
  • Focus on the code (avoid personal criticism)
  • Clearly mark nitpicks & optional comments
  • Provide rationale (e.g refs to a style guide)

I like this advice a lot!

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Non-linking

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rapid links

I visit quite a few websites due to my work, and I’m always amazed by some websites that don’t link out.

Wikipedia links to a lot of websites.

On another hand, some journalists tend to avoid this.

Some bloggers are a bit strange – they link a lot to the websites that pay them or give them an immediate advantage (via affiliate marketing), and few do not at all to websites that don’t give them an advantage.

I think life in general, and the Internet in particular, are a wonder.

It’s a shame to harm both of them (visitors, and search engines – both contribute to the Internet) by not linking out.

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Negative comments

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Marian Rainer-Harbach - Spring Cleaning, Negative

I think there’s a lot of value in negative comments.

They tend to offend me, but I tend to learn from them.

It’s a form of feedback, from which I can grow.

Sure, if a comment is a personal attack, or it doesn’t use polite words, I’ll delete it, but, generally, if someone tells me something bad, I try to learn from it, although that’s not my initial reaction (which is to feel offended, even if that’s not the case).

One guy on an online forum, long ago, told me something similar to: “Olivian, you wrote above that reading books helps with intelligence. Everybody, does it look to you that Olivian says smart things?”.

Boy, that comment really hurt me, I got so offended for it. But it was true, on multiple levels: I wasn’t a big reader (so I wasn’t speaking from direct experience), and I didn’t practice thinking about tough subjects that much. When I look at various messages written in those times (this happened almost 20 years ago), I feel rather ashamed on how silly I used to write.

That person was right.

Did the message motivate me? You bet.

I don’t think that there’s an upper limit on how much you should learn (Why You Don’t Need to Be Exceptional – YouTube).

You always need to learn a lot of things, there’s always a need to grow.

Still, since that message was posted, I tried to improve myself in various means.

It may be paradoxical, but I don’t think that just by reading books you can get very smart. So, I tried various means.

I’m not saying I’m a genius/wise man, I’m just saying that I think I’m a bit smarter than in ~2004, when that message was posted.

And the message was a motivating factor to me, all these years.

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Newsletters and Black Friday

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Schub@ - passive aggressive

I created a fake account and subscribed to a lot of newsletters, just for Black Friday.

Two opposite problems – too many emails or too few emails. At the same time.

A shop selling watches with almost daily emails is way too much.

Other stores, a bit too little (I forgot to which I subscribed, so if they don’t email me, I don’t even know about them).

Then, a lot of aggressiveness in some emails. Can-can emails, full of Spam, begging for attention, no care for the long-term, every pressure put on “Now! Now! Now!”.

Few questions to personalize the emails. Very little personalization based on my actions – do I click an email? Yes or No. Based on this answer, I’ll get lots or fewer emails.

Forcing people to also leave their phone numbers when subscribing to an email newsletter. (this might lead some people in not subscribing at all)

Yes, you need to sell today, but you also need to sell 10 years from now.

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The result of a business is a satisfied customer – Peter F. Drucker

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Prime Day Arrives on June 21 & 22—Two Days of Epic Savings on More than 2 Million Deals Globally | Business Wire

Finally, the single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer. The result of a hospital is a healed patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later. Inside an enterprise, there are only cost centers. Results exist only on the outside.

Peter F. Drucker – Management and the World’s Work, Harvard Business Review.

When you make a sale, you shouldn’t stop when the package leaves your store, you need to make sure your client is happy using the product.

If someone visits your medical practice, you don’t need to only solve that particular issue the patient came to you, you need to make sure the person is healthy, overall.

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About personalization for eCommerce – Some very *personal* notes from Karl Gilis’s presentation at GPeC, November 2021 (follow-up)

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Karl Gilis

I like watching Karl Gilis‘s presentations. He’s both an entertainer and a brain trainer. I learn a lot of things watching him, and do this while laughing. He has a lot of courage for showing so much vulnerability when he talks.

This year, on November 2021 GPeC event, he gave a presentation about user experience – Make it personal – Personalisation that really works.

Below, some personal notes. (note – don’t take this as 100% accurate quotes, but some things I wrote)

Try to catch him next time he comes in Romania at GPeC, he’s a very good speaker, in my opinion.

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Serendipity și întâmplările

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heights.18145 - Miracle cub's first veterinary exam (SNZ link below with video)

Întâlnirile întâmplătoare – Adrian Stanciu:

Eu nu sunt mare fan de făcut planuri, mai ales planuri elaborate și pe termen lung. Nu sunt pentru că în viața mea nu prea mi-a ieșit mimic așa cum am planificat în schimb mi-au ieșit multe lucruri pe care nu le-am planificat deloc. Am învățat, cu timpul, să apreciez și să caut întâlnirile întâmplătoare.

 

Rand Fishkin: Investing in Non-Measurable Serendipitous Marketing – Moz
I think it’s critically important, if you’re going to do some serendipitous investments, that you have no penalty whatsoever for failure. Essentially, you’re saying, “Hey, we know we’re going to make this investment. We know that it’s the one out of five kind of thing, but if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay. We’re going to keep trying again and again.”

 

Rand Fishkin: Manufacturing Serendipity – SparkToro

This manufacturing serendipity business breaks down pretty much like this:

  1. Go to places that are not your office (conferences, events, meetups, trains, etc)
  2. Participate in things, learn things, and be generally game for new experiences
  3. Meet interesting people in the process
  4. Build relationships
  5. Be generally awesome by helping the people you’ve met and doing good deeds with no expectation of a return
  6. Repeat 1-5 hundreds of times

Notă personală: Îmi place să fac lucrurile întâmplător. În general, sunt o persoană destul de prezentă în spațiul public. Merg la multe evenimente, mă bucur să întâlnesc oameni, încerc să postez lucruri în online.

Nu totul îmi iese, nu toate întâlnirile mă ajută, dar, la finalul zilei, asta face viața frumoasă.

În facultate, preferam să merg la un ONG (LEADERS România) decât să merg la toate cursurile de la școală.

Preferam amicii din cămin, majoritatea de la alte facultăți decât a mea, pentru perspectiva parțial diferită.

Încerc să fiu parte din comunități online, pe tot felul de planuri, de la forumuri la bloguri și rețele sociale și alte asemenea.

Viața e absolut uimitoare.

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“[…] the key to your freedom… was inside of you the entire time” – The Life of David Gale (2003)

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ababhastopographer - bamboo forest path

(spoiler alert!)

“You’re handcuffed, forced to swallow the key.”

[…]

“[…] you’re left there to suffocate. The Securitat did it to Romanians when they wouldn’t inform or confess.”

“Otherwise, you died knowing that the key to your freedom… was inside of you the entire time.”

Source » The Life of David Gale (2003)

It’s always the case, isn’t it?

100% of the time, you’re accountable for what happens to you.

You can find excuses, external factors, reasons to fail.

But, in the end, it’s all you.

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