Current Role:Dublin City University ('01-'06) | Reuters Academy (Sep'06) |
Operations Project Manager (Oct'06-Mar'07) |
Problem Analyst (Apr'07-Sep'07) |
Business Analyst (Sep'07-Oct'07) |
Strategic Technology Relationship Management (Oct'07-Jan'08) |
Chief Enterprise Architecture Office, Asia (Jan'08-Aug'08)
SINGAPORE - A bit of news from last night, my decision to leave Thomson Reuters on May 22nd was announced.
…Robin has been an excellent ambassador for the Technical Graduate Scheme and has made a long and lasting impression on everyone he has interacted with during his time here … Robin has decided to devote himself to running his own company…
My feelings towards the graduate scheme and Thomson Reuters remain extremely positive. It is a highly advantageous step-up into a career with great training, great mentors and great management opportunities for those who complete it. Any Irish final year students who would like interview help for the ‘09 intake for this scheme, please make contact with me.
My passion for my own projects, the instinct that everything has lined up very nicely and the risk vs consequences have now outweighed everything else. I’m counting on my instinct being very right - otherwise this post would have been about accepting a great offer of an innovation role at Thomson Reuters instead.
I thought it would be nice to link back to some of the past blog posts I did since 2005:
I’m psyched about doing something like this, it seems to be a great opportunity. –After Recruitment Presentation (Nov ‘05)
We should hear within a week of our success although while I’d clearly love the opportunity a sudden realisation that allot of other very worthy candidates are in the running makes me happy to have simply made it to this stage. –After The Assessment Day (Feb ‘06)
I’m very happy to have accepted a position on the Reuters Graduate Programme. –Accepting Position (Feb ‘06)
Eventually it was announced our team ‘Novo - Refresh, Revive, Change’ had won! –Winning Reuters Academy (Sep ‘06)
I can not personally recommend this opportunity enough, and encourage anyone studying Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Maths or any other technical course. –Trying to spread the word! (Oct ‘07)
For a more detailed reasoning of my decision I’m going to leave my set of slides on Seth Godin’s book called The Dip to explain (Slide 6 is most important):
SINGAPORE - A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a
single integrated tool, creating a new and distinct web service or visualization that was not originally intended by the sources.
This name for this method of aggregating and stitching together third-party data was borrowed from the pop music scene, where a mashup is a new song that is mixed from the vocal and instrumental tracks from two different source songs (usually belonging to different genres).
And that’s just how we should think about them on the web.
My cousin Derry (reli.sh), a guy with old-school record DJ mixing decks in his living room, writes about his understanding of the term mashup during his Mashup Delta project for a MSc in Electronic Publishing. Derry links to some inspiration in the form of a music video mashup of Prodigy and Enya, two completely different sources beautifully mixed.
Isn’t this how a web application should be? A perfect mashup that just feels smooth to use.
You can’t tell it’s been made from different sources. Your web app shouldn’t let on either as the consumer doesn’t actually care.
If you’d never seen the originals you can’t differentiate which bit of that video is from which source. It just works beautifully together in contrasts, speed of movement, beat - so should your app. Standardise the data sources.
The added value is the experts ability. If I gave you those two tracks as a consumer, you could not replicate that if you tried. Equivalently your user should not be able to create the mashup with an excel macro either. As an expert you should add value.
Listening to a badly mixed song hurts my senses, so will interacting with your badly mashed-up web application. Be smooth.
-Robin.
(Image Credit: Mashup of old and new towering objects at Raffles Place, Singapore. Taken from the Asian Civilisations Museum. By Author.)
The average customer is so far down the line that all of us as voice/data operators need to give them a little time to catch up with us.
…and what, stop innovation? No!
If the consumer has been abandoned by us so far down the line it means we have been blinded by our passion. Early adopters become comfortable hooking wires, swapping sims, making stuttery calls, testing and poking the system - because that’s their passion. It excites them to know they can voice-dial South Africa over TCP/IP on their noise-cancelling bluetooth headset with just their neighbours stolen wifi connection - and do it for free. They care.
Consumers don’t care.
Consumers don’t care about their connection protocol or how many saved pence they made by dialling a number to be called back cheaper. It’s all hassle. In their eyes, their phone is for speaking to people on like their watch is for reading the time. All they want, is for it to just work as it always has.
Comparing it to an inkjet printer, that beige box that prints out a page every now & again. Would you care if the ink was a few pence cheaper if you had to refill it yourself? Would you upgrade if it did an extra page per minute? Would you change your behaviour and remember to queue all print items until the end of the day instead of instant [File][Print] if you were told it ‘improved tonal ink quality’ that way?
Me neither, but I’m not passionate about printers.
So how far ahead of the loop are the early adopters? Far.
It gets worse too. the innovation rate will speed up. Technology will race ahead into everything from your fridge to your iron and you will rely on your category experts for advice on the latest model, methods, trends unless it’s your passion. You will expect all of these ancillary tools to just work - just like I do with my printer.
For commercial success in the telecommunications world, companies will have to be careful not to get caught in the middle “great tech, hard to use”. The true innovation will either completely disrupt the market with a new form factor “great tech, intuitive to use” or will innovate within the behaviours consumers are comfortable with on their own handset “great tech, same to use”.
-Robin.
(Image Credit: New vs Old - real innovation side-by-side in Singapore. By Author.)
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07/05/08 gregory yep, gonna be two races soon... those descended from the ones now who can afford[...] »
The best message? Listen. Decode. Interpret. Listen. Decode. Interpret.
If I had of asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses –Henry Ford.
So when your problem group say “we need a faster horse” you should learn to decode this to “My transport is too slow”.
“that’s impossible” decodes to “according to my experiences and current field of view, I can’t do it”… so change your current field of view.
For the launch of Gmail, Eric Schmidt set them a challenge of getting 100 happy internal users first. They actually went to 100 employees individually and developed 100 features that made each of happy. As they neared the end of their happy 100 launch target, they found that by having followed happiness they had already made the others happy. Great idea.
Listen to Success: Tune-in to happy users, tweak for them. Find success in your product.
Listen to Yourself, Listen to Opportunity: Are you happy where you are now? Are you at your full potential?
SINGAPORE - I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I thought it was actually written by a cheap biographer… but no, Screw It…Let’s Do It is Richard Branson himself, and he’s good!
I picked this up while waiting for a flight to Taiwan and had it read by the end of my journey. A great easy read with lots of good points. I’ve taken the best ones and summarised them in the slideshow embedded below.
When I read a book now, I bring along a biro and underline & star things in it to reflect on later. This time, these two got my stars…
Money is to make things happen.
The system is not sacred. To win, you have to break the rules.
While light, it’s hugely motivating book. Recommended.
SINGAPORE - The web has boomed with services. Developers have learned that there’s value in knowing who your users are and how to contact them. As we generate hundreds of username/password combinations as we trawl the internet we also make a new friend in our address book…
noreply@xxx.com
Before you know it they’re dropping you automated emails to keep you engaged. They’re genuinely helpful reminders, sure. Here’s a sample of mine…
Well - I’m on a campaign for human contact. As my email volume increases, if its not important enough to contain a message from a human then it can wait. I will read it when I am ready, not when your scheduled bot decides, but thanks for offering. I am now filtering out everything [bot] from my inbox to a sub-folder.
What does this include?
Anything that is mass-mailed and non-critical or is initiated as a notification by a website due to a user action. Newsletters, special offers, new contacts on services, new content available, corporate mails, new subscribers etc.
What does it not include?
Anything written to me, a note, a message, an announcement, or is content that could be time-critical.
Why? Well I believe that email is my central nervous system - everything should come to it. I do not wish for private mail boxes with services (like facebook, bebo mail, linked in mail etc.) It should all come here, not to my separate accounts.
One day this will break-out again to a distributed model where you have multiple notifications with different personas stored all over the place. Shared ones, secure ones, private ones, kids ones, work ones, super-fast ones. The value will be in the aggregation of them all to a single client - and just like the feedreaders of today, you’ll have the volume control, priorities and simple ability to drop them with a single click.
-Robin.
(Image Credit: Trying to pop the right balloons at a fair in Taiwan. By Author.)
2 Comments
30/04/08 Andy Waite Almost all my non-personal mail is automatically redirected to special Bloglines[...] »
SINGAPORE - Today, I got this autoreply from my Blackberry account manager (they’ve charged me someone else’s bill for 4 months now)…
“I’m now away on annual leave. I appreciate that with [Mobile Operator’s] mobile working solutions and global network you can contact me just about anytime, anywhere. However, in my absence if you need a swift response you may wish to contact us on [XXX XXXX XXXX].”
Even worse (no names, but, I got this after commenting on a blog today) are people who compose this type of stuff…
“If your mail is important, then please resend it again after my return date.”
That reads, “I know you already shipped me that parcel but I wasn’t in. Look, I can’t be bothered going to the post office to collect it so just send me another one.”
Setting an autoreply to tell people you’re not actually checking the mail address you’ve given them is like getting stood up on a date (never happened me, once she was 1.5 hours late - but that doesn’t count). You go to all that effort to write a long email about something that is time sensitive like asking advice on how not to get stood up on your date tonight. 1 hour later you proudly press send. 0.5sec later you have a new message in your inbox “Out Of Office [Autoreply] - I’ll be back on the 28th May. Apologies.” - you’re gutted, an hour of hard graft wasted.
So who’s going to kill it? Who’s gonna build a killer email service that first before you start typing, checks the status of the recipient. If the person is ‘out of office’ tell me first, even better, make the out of office date machine-readable and let me schedule my message to be automatically sent on the day after the day they return.
Gmail could easily implement this between gmail users - when I mark myself as away it should put a little palm tree or sun umbrella beside my name in their contacts drop down. Easy!
-Robin.
(Image Credit: ‘Ting’ my good friend guided me around this Temple last weekend in Taipei, Taiwan. By Author.)
SINGAPORE - I’ve been trying to observe the potential trends in technology out in Asia. It’s not that they’re behind or following the west - rather they are coming in on a totally different trajectory making it rather interesting to watch. Something I have definately spotted is that the mobile internet is going to be all about emerging markets - there are too many phones (and great signal coverage) to ignore.
India has 60 million internet users…
but 150 million mobile users.
South Africa has 5 million internet users…
but 35 million mobile users.
Do the calculation. Mobile internet is not a zero sum game.
We do not lose an internet user every time we gain a mobile one. These are new customers for the internet and their first and possibly only access to the internet will be through that tiny 2 x 3 inch screen.
The mobile internet is not about squeezing existing content onto a smaller screen. It is about creating new applications designed for mobile users from the ground up. –Dr Lai Kok Fung
A true mobile application should not be a companion to a larger site. It should be fully usable and independent. Do not assume the user has any other access to the internet just because they own the latest smartphone.
The current trend for success in the mobile space are time-saving applications that take a single physical task and make it virtual. e.g. book a ticket, reserve a seat.
It is better to offer to complete a task that requires very little information to make a decision.
Micro-payments will be huge but there will be no credit-cards. Instead people with no bank account will pay with their credit-phone.
Commission charged by the carrier billing systems is so high that it is impossible to sell physical objects. You can only sell replicable digital items at no cost to you per unit.
-Robin.
Sources: I took many of these figures, trends, quotes and predictions from talking to people at the S@S event at Microsoft Singapore.
(Image Credit: The view of Taipei City, Taiwan, from the top of Taipei 101, world’s tallest building since 2004 until this is finished.)
SINGAPORE - This person wants to work in an established (re-phrased, thanks @micheleneylon@irishstu@smccarron - I meant with cashflow already) start-up in Dublin. They get a total buzz by using digital methods to market things. They are trying to be a digital media category ‘expert‘. They like to gather, commentate and distribute information on the competitive landscape and industry. They even regularly read all the periodicals relevant to different industries and internet marketing to find ground-breaking creative work. They’re great at providing clear strategic input to digital communication campaigns through active development work with web applications, widgets, social networks, e-commerce, eCRM and other digital marketing projects. They think they have great communication skills and have experienced the entire customer journey. If asked, they would say they have incredible commercial understanding and ability to identify, articulate and defend insights and recommendations.
So, who was I describing? Was it you?
(If so, I may have just been made an offer of having your dream job. Unfortunately it’s a “I would if I could but I can’t” for me. Considering this job looks so exciting for someone and it would be nice if I knew them, if it’s a “I would if I could and I can” for you - I have permission from the director to ask on here if you’d like your contact details passed on them before their job ad goes public. You know my email or even just ‘d robinb’ on Twitter.)
SINGAPORE - Have you ever stood in a large financial data-centre in between the towering racks on the aisles that do real-time share transactions? If you go there at 1359hrs in London you can wait in anticipation amongst the humming fans for the big red server clock to click to 1400hrs. It’s at 1400hrs GMT+0 that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) opens for business and thousands of overnight trades and position changes get processed in real-time. Everything begins whirring around you, walls of red, amber & green flashing LEDs light up and the low hum turns into a vast orchestra of clicking of hard-disk read/write operations. Seeing it the first time was really exciting.
As people look for the work/blog balance they discover auto-pilot mode (I came across it via Damien). It’s something I use a lot to write a set of posts and then automatically publish them off one-by-one throughout the week by setting the post-date into the future.
One of my biggest questions to answer has been around timing (and I’ve been experimenting by off-setting all mine and looking at click-through rates). When people have 1000’s of subscriptions (I’ve 490 still unread from just last night) and a [Mark All As Read] button, how do you get seen? What is the optimum posting time? Morning? Just before Lunch? Just After Lunch? End of Day? Evening? Friday Afternoon? Who knows…
What I do know is people like auto-posting at 7am. Just 22 minutes ago, it clicked 0700hrs GMT+0 and I was watching my Google-Reader window. The left-frame went solid yellow (implying a new update arrived) and the count of unread posts leapt up. While I’m sure Google feed-fetcher isn’t real-time, I’d swear you could see the difference in the servers clocks as each clicked onto 7am and publishing within 20 seconds of each other.
For a tiny second, it was like watching the opening bell on my very own NYSE.
(Image Credit: Standing with the guards of the Traditional Arts & Culture Museum in Yilan, Taiwan last weekend. By Author.)
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