Defining what it's like to be an IBMer

Mid-March 2013 was organized a second JAM at IBM, seven years after the first one. You're asking yourself "what the heck is a JAM?" It is that thing. It's like a huge online gathering where all the employees are given the opportunity to define what it's like to be an IBMer. There are forums, polls, etc. The company collects a huge amount of data and interprets them.

As an IBM employee, I was really impressed by the company's willingness to listen to its employees. And I can tell you it's not bullshit. This is what I could read on IBM's intranet a few days ago:

I had the pleasure of jamming with colleagues while in Nairobi. The experience reminded me of the amazing power of what we have in common. Our jam analytics will help us to define the behaviors; our values will help us live them.
IBM reinventing how to reinvent through the power of 250,000 participants. Just amazing and just one reason why IBM is different and will continue to thrive.
I am VERY encouraged to hear about further analysis of the jam outcomes and that positive action will result as a consequence. The very act of doing this (jam + data analysis + recommendation = action) is a demonstration of IBM prowess in "Smarter stuff." This is one of those "proud to be an IBMer" moments!

How great is that? How often do you see employees of such a huge structure happy about what their company represents?

Well very few companies actually make that effort.

So let's be more precise, what was it really like?

  • The JAM represented 57% of the company (about 257,000 employees out of 434,000).
  • Came from 92 countries; all business units.
  • Spent four days – technically 98 hours – in continuous jamming.
  • Slammed the servers at the same time: 46,273 at peak. Well over 18,000 concurrent users all four days.
  • Posted 11,753,031 words across the Jam forums – the equivalent of writing nearly 200 novels in four days!

For a startup lover, it is a very surprising experience. I didn't think I would ever write a post about how well a big company deals with its "bigness". But I think this is a good example of how a company can transform its intranet into a robust social computing platform.

California

From the movie Blow. My favorite scene. George (Johnny Depp) is talking to his daughter, Kristina.

GEORGE Let me ask you something. If you could go anywhere in the world, anywhere, where would you want to go?

KRISTINA You mean, like a trip?

GEORGE Yeah, sure, whatever.
Kristina thinks about it.

KRISTINA I don't know. Maybe California.
George is amused by her answer.

GEORGE California? You can go anywhere in the world. India. Tibet. Australia. Paris. And you choose California?

KRISTINA Yeah.

GEORGE What is it? A Disneyland thing?

KRISTINA No. I just kind of like the sound of it.

GEORGE California, huh?

KRISTINA California.

Wireless

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." 
― Albert Einstein

Should you train your memory?

I have always been frustrated that I was forgetting fundamental historical anniversaries or the names of capital cities. Every time I can't associate a capital to a country, I feel like a hick lost in the middle of nowhere with no awareness of the world surrounding me.

I had heard about memory tricks but never tried to use them in real life. I already play chess and read tech blogs so I guess I already do way too many geeky stuff during my spare time.

Pure luck, I have come accross Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, a book that I really encourage you to read, not to learn about memory techniques, but rather to follow the experimentation of an American journalist who decided to compete in the US Memory Championship, and ended up winning it pretty brilliantly.

After a year spent training his memory, Foer's conclusions are the followings:

"What I had really trained my brain to do, as much as to memorize, was to be more mindful, and to pay attention to the world around me. Remembering can only happen if you decide to take notice."

The book goes through different aspects of memory, from history to science. There are also also interviews with people who can't remember any recent event, or on the contrary people who remember everything they hear or see.

Foer raises the issue of the decreasing importance of memory in today's society, due to (or thanks to) the easy access to information provided by technology and the internet.

"Why bother investing in one’s memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one that I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself in time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember."


Hey Apple, here are a few ideas for you

Over the past few years, Apple has given me a very bad habit. Follow the Keynote, wait for the latest great super Apple products, and expect them to be perfect.

The problem is that I haven't seen any great disruptive Apple product for a while now. The new iPad is the best iPad Apple has ever created. The new iPhone is the best iPhone Apple has ever created. And obviously, the iPad Mini is the best iPad Mini Apple has ever created.

That's right. And if you listen to Jonathan Ive, these products are marvelous, fantastic, phenomenal. But, let's be honest, there's almost nothing new for the end user.

Worse, some of the new products miss some fundamental elements. The most striking is the absence of a security slot on the MacBook Pro Retina. I could go on and on about all the reasons why I dislike the MBPr, and several other new Apple products.

But that's already the past and this is not what I care about. I'm just going to give short list of what I think should be in Apple's pipeline these days:

  • A new iTunes. I'm tired of hearing people complaining about this shitty software. How do you want to convince people to get an iPad if they have to deal with iTunes just to transfer a video?
  • A new iOS with an efficient multitasking system, not just a full-screen mode that can only display one application.
  • A 27" Thunderbolt Retina display. Come one Apple, the resolution of a 15" MBPr (2880x1800) is higher than that of a 27" Thunderbolt display (2560x1440).
  • A new Mac Pro. Yes, a Mac Pro, that sounds surrealistic. The computer made for people who need power. It won't make as much money as the iPhone/iPad or even the iPad Mini (which has a significantly lower gross margin than the iPad) but it is still a computer lots of people would buy.

Yes, money is what matters at the end of the day, but building toys for the mass market is not an end in itself. There's a lot more to do Apple and the products I just mentioned should have been released months, or even years ago.