Legnered

My first day at the new job

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:23:00 -0800

Holy schmoly,

My first day as an Account Manager at ZN is about to end any minute now. My dearest is soon coming to meet me for a bite to eat at Café Belga just around the corner.

It has been a really exciting day starting off with my over ambitious introduction of myself with prezi. I think it spiked at least a couple of laughs. I love prezi without a doubt and it was even enjoyable making the presentation. Hope a greater part of the human kind will discover the amazingly fun and impactful presentation editor.

We had some training sessions on the internal tools for client management and invoicing, managing timesheets etc.

I have been introduced to mainly two clients I will be working with. Already the day after tomorrow I will be taking part in a meeting with one of them.

Really look forward starting new relationships and participating in making things happen.

Over and out from the ZN office at Flagey, Brussels

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Warming up for TEDxBrussels 2011

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:50:00 -0800

Oboy oboy, I'm here at TEDxBrussels for A day in the deep future!

How I've been waiting for this day to arrive. My first TEDx event was in Brussels last year. The theme was then Who will save the world? Many different perspectives and lots of inspiration. One year later I'm backstage with the official TEDxBrussels Social Media Team, bringing you live coverage from the spot.

Today we're gonna be head to head with top notch ladies and gents taking us into the future. We'll be introduced by the Geminoid coming all the way from Denmark. And further on the topic of technology we'll for example hear from Raul Rojas about cars that think. How will the future look when it comes to Politics and Economics? Mikko Hypponen will give us a talk on Defending the net.

Science from Fiction? Yes, many futurists have quite accurately been able to predict what our lives will look like and we'll hear it from 3 renowned gentlemen. One very exceptional performance will be by the Paraorchestra conducted by none other than Charles Hazlewood. Want to know the opposite of Death by Powerpoint? Mr John Bohannon who created the Dance your PhD contest will also honor us on stage.

This just few of many great speakers at TEDxBrussels this year of 2011.

See the full program and livestreaming on www.tedxbrussels.eu

LET'S START =)

Image Courtesy of Alejandra Laiton

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Effective society

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:30:00 -0700

I'm not sure effective is the right word for my message today but let's start.

One key objective for any business is to have an effective organisation to either get profitable or maximize profitability.

Being effective. What does that mean? I take help from the concept of Lean Manufacturing, or Lean Production.

Essentially lean is centered on preserving value with less work

So when we talk business - things like this is very evident - ofcourse we must strive to preserve value to the greatest extent but with as little work as possible. Even when we talk individual - at least I for one think daily in terms of how I can be more effective. Why? Because I want to preserve value (energy) with less work. It's not that I am lazy. I just want to maximize my days. Maximize my life.

Let's talk society. How is society at large contributing to preserving value with less work? Perhaps a very open and fuzzy question, but it's because I am just starting to reflect on it.

I'll give you an example: The process of collecting personal information. Today I send my personal information to multiple institutions or businesses asking or needing my information. Unless we're talking about bank accounts and pincodes, most of my personal information is actually not so personal in the sense of me needing to keep it a secret. Not to anyone really. And it should be the same for everyone? We could for example have a standard of what info is available and by that seriously improving this continuous process.

Mr John McCarthy has passed away and leaves a huge Artificial Intelligence community in mourning. John McCarthy created the programming language LISP and coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" 1956. What he also did was to strive for a great society. On his website he writes:

Here's a standard curriculum vita.

Remark: Ideally one would put all the information that one considers public about oneself on a page like this. When asked to fill out a form, one would simply put down the URL in place of any information that is on the page and tell the recipient of the form to just look it up.

One step beyond that is that any program needing this public information would just take it from the somewhat standardized web page.

More precisely, here's a proposed new civil right. No Government agency, educational institution or business should ever be able to require anyone to supply anew information that the institution already has or is publicly available.

Mr John McCarthy was a genius.

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Lecture number one

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:54:00 -0700

I just finished my first virtual lecture ever. This course rocks! The connection through Adobe Connect worked smoothly although I kinda missed having the actual faces of the people available. We were 11 participants in total and I would have liked to see who’s who. Best of all would be if everyone had the video connection but c’mon, at least let me see who’s who in the class? As it is a distance course I would aim to make the course as personalized and engaging as possible. But that’s just me. I actually expected to see the teacher talking via video but there was only audio. No picture. Only traditional powerpoint presentation. Ok, it did work out quite well though and I am now in a risen state of knowledge acquirement.

We have one more virtual lesson to come in October and other than that it’s all about using the collaboration tool “Fronter”. It’s basically the University collaboration platform for submitting papers, taking part of course material and interacting with fellow classmates.

I hope that future courses will be like fully blown Google Hangouts. Or maybe they are already, just that I don’t have the experience yet.

Now gotta go find myself some members and build a study group for the assignments.

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First assignment submitted

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:53:00 -0700

In the late hours of this evening I submitted my first assignment to the course in Knowledge Management at Luleå University of Technology. I was asked to present myself, explain why I am taking the course and what Knowledge Management means to me. I like the fact that this is such a broad subject with no rights or wrongs.

Anyways, thought I could share the important piece of it:

I would say that Knowledge Management is a method to help organizations be more effective. It should involve mapping “who knows what”. In large organizations there should to be a clear route to knowledge - and that route differs from the hierarchical structures. I can imagine the management of knowledge can be easier or harder to implement depending on cultural differences. So I hope to learn about capturing and storing knowledge. About tools to share and collaborate, connecting people, creating networks, shaping behaviours and mapping processes.

And as closure - I just love the fact that I can quote my favourite management guru Peter Drucker in this paper (and surely in coming ones as well) - Mr Drucker once said:
“Information only becomes knowledge in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it.”

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Knowledge Management - here we go

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:45:00 -0700

Back from Barcelona I am and ready to become wiser.

Today my studies in Knowledge Management starts. I applied for the course already in April as a result of feeling the need of a revitalization of my brain. Starting to be critical again and improving what I do.

After having experienced working in multiple projects and each time being confronted with gathering of information and knowledge in way to complicated routes - I decided to do something about it. Learn how to successfully manage knowledge.

Imagine you are starting up a project. Normally there is a period of data and information gathering. This information can come from previous projects, other sources or people in the organization. Imagine how long the phase of the project can be if there’s no proper preserving of previous projects knowledge and results, if there’s no route to who has what information? And then imagine the opposite: How effective the data gathering phase could be if the information was easily search-able, if people’s expertise was visible. Yes, now we’re talking. Each project would be more effective. Each project would have a greater return on investment. As the intangibles of the project becomes tangible the value becomes visible. Makes sense right?

These days we (read: the world/companies/corporations) invest mucho time and money in creating new projects but we forget to invest in the managing of the projects, which should require a knowledge preserving and sharing method. There is always a logical reasoning behind the fact that we are so poor in collecting and sharing the knowledge, such as the fact that a project has a goal to deliver and that will be the focus of the leader and the members. But, it should not be an excuse. Every individual is responsible to strive for the common good of the company. If this is not embedded in the company culture then there is a long road ahead. So yes, Knowledge Management is not an easy concept as it is multifaceted and intertwining people, technology, behaviours and culture. To mention a few.

I look forward to the coming months of learning and practising the management of knowledge.

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Warming up for TEDxBrussels 2010

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:05:00 -0800

I've almost endlessly been walking around the inner core of Brussels from the point I got off the flight this morning, trying to find (a) a restaurant serving vegetarian dishes and (b) a café with free wifi acceess. Tired of walking I found myself buying a daypass to the metro, randomly jumping aboard carts and following people around. Good idea, one pie looking pizza slice and one Christmas market later I've found my "natural, fresh and ready" Cappuchino and wifi.

This year's TEDxBrussels is all about, well, us developing into Borgs with open attitudes trying to get everyone and everything onboard.

I very much look forward listening to Nicholas Negroponte's talk "Schools without schools", the founder of One Laptop Per Child, and Walter Bender's "Sugar on a stick" talking about the open and independent Sugar operating system for kids, which powers the OLPC XO-1.

OLPC Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

While we focus on developing open information infrastructure for urban communities, the OLPC project is all about spreading information and education to remote and rural communities with the help of low cost and easy to use technology. What fascinates me the most about the OLPC is its ability to connect to other OLPC's without the need for a central access point. Sitting in a classroom, the students can wirelessly connect to eachother and teacher to collaborate on classwork and share information. Being used in places where there exist no internet connectivity, this will engage users to physically meet for information exchange.

This combined with the user interface for Sugar OS, reminds me of the days when we weren't being spoiled with online 24/7, no brainer user interfaces and shiny but shamelessly closed devices (hello iPad). Don't get me wrong, I like my iPhone and Asus Netbook and free wifi, but knowing that you can tinker with the hardware and use computers for more than just passively consuming information tickles the imagination in a wholly different way. I like to think the OLPC can open up a new way, or maybe I should say: inspire us, here in the developed world, to think differently on how we can develop our own services and technology; towards more openness.

Well, technology... Then there's the talks about conciousness and immortality, which proably will leave me with a good mindfsck as I fly home.

Knowledge is like love, the more you put in the more you get out.

- Marc Luyckx Ghisi

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