For sale: Me

Putting your resume up on job sites is like putting your house up for sale. You need to share all the mandatory information, some particulars, and perhaps some pictures(!). You need to find out what potential buyers are looking for... what are the keywords that are important to them?

Job hunting via job sites thus becomes a game - can you attract that one single interested party, by just showing the right assets? Maybe recruiting agencies should move into more of a realtor role... supporting professionals in selling themselves best.

Same Motive, Different Crime

Do the ends justify the means, or vice versa? If you wanted to catch Osama, would you torture his underlings to find out where he is? Is prostitution permissible? Or abortion?

I think the Japanese have probably found the principle that trumps both ends and means. The motivation that a person holds for performing the means and achieving the ends, determines whether each is good or bad. The question at the top of the article is not even relevant, rather the simple WHY.

Two people are in prostitution, but the one who does it to take care of her child, may get more kudos than one who simply needs a new fix to satisfy her addiction.

This principle also implies that ends and means always need to be seen in combination. Separately they mean nothing, lack context. Together they shape if the motivations are consistent.

The HHG: NHL Stanley Cup Finals 2011

Another Canadian team makes the trip to the Finals... but can Vancouver finally break a 17-year winless streak for Canadian teams?

The Heart hopes the Canucks win the Cup. Besides wanting Canada to celebrate one after what feels like an eternity, Vancouver could finally live up to their potential.

The Head thinks Vancouver has the best weapons to win. Boston seems a little inconsistent and could still make critical mistakes at key moments. The Canucks have been solid from the start of the season, and despite a scare in the first round with Chicago, Vancouver has been the clear favorite in the Western Conference.

The Gut feels Boston just might spoil the party for Canada. Tim Thomas could just as easily turn it on and become invincible, just like Roberto Luongo could for Vancouver. However Boston has an air about them to eak out a win in Canada, which will bring them home ice advantage.

The HHG: NBA Finals 2011

Hmmm... I might as well recycle the HHG of 2006 for this one... Maybe not.

The Heart hopes Dallas gets the championship, and makes good on what happened five years ago. And Dirk and J-Kidd deserve to get championship rings. And LeBron needs to wait a year before winning his, after his ridiculous off-season decision making.

The Head thinks that Miami is too strong when the Big Three are in the starting line-up. LeBron, D-Wade and CB4 can really overpower their counterparts. It's difficult to see who the Mavs will use to match up consistently, apart from Nowitzki.

The Gut feels that Miami will win again, repeating their 2006 success. And LeBron will silence his critics and justify his charade this past summer with a championship ring.

The HHG: Champions League Final 2011

It's Manchester United, the new and record-breaking Premier League champions versus Spanish champions FC Barcelona - the rematch of the 2009 Final.

The Heart wants ManU to win, even if it was for the clear underdog in this match. And Edwin van der Sar deserves to go into retirement holding a Champions League trophy.

The Head thinks Barcelona will win. With the best soccer player in the world right now in the lineup (Messi), and a squad that includes several starters for the Spanish World Cup winning team, who will bet against them?

The Gut feels Barca will win by a goal. Scored by Messi. And I'll be sad.

Red Flags on Your Project

Projects, jobs don't always turn out great. Sometimes these just fall down to pieces. Most people will be somewhat surprised, even though there were some clear signs of pending failure before. The most common red flags are below. Make sure you are safely out of the way when you notice these things around you...

1) The Town Hall meeting. Usually hosted by upper level management for the general workforce, given at the biggest conference room in the neighbourhood of the office. This is the moment where big strategic announcements are made, an IPO, layoffs, change of leadership or ownership, new investments or ways of working. Often if not always attendance is mandatory.

Now Town Hall meetings are quite useful under normal circumstances. But start worrying if the frequency of Town Hall meetings exceed once per quarter. That means senior management has no control over the proceedings, changes its opinions and plans a lot, and makes hasty ill-advised decisions. Open communication is one things. Looking like you can't make up your mind is something else.

2) Time is a precious commodity, of which free there's little. At the job it seems we always run out of it, and we always need more. To argue why we need it, we make plans, do estimates and try to make it with minute-by-minute activity scripts. As a general rule though, time is always short, and everything needs to be faster and arrive more quickly.

However it is our great delusion to think our time the most important in the world. The great red flag on projects is when people deem a minute of their time more precious than the Pope's or the President's. When lunch breaks are capped to 15 minutes. When you must start work at 8:00 and continue until 18:00 - not a second more, not a second less. I'm very sorry guys, but unless you work in an Emergency Room, for the armed forces or in the space program, time cannot be the most critical thing for you. Your time is certainly not more important than theirs. Not every second you lose is a life-and-death situation.

So if all people start budgeting their time and yours on the job like it is the last drop of water in the desert, be afraid. Be very afraid.

3) Too many changes of leadership. Town Hall meetings are usually where important decisions are broadcasted, including leadership changes. Now leadership changes are sometimes necessary. People might rally behind new ideas of the new lead, freshen things up a bit and perhaps allow some rough diamonds to shine through. Like in sports, sometimes the new leadership places some different emphases, which in turn lead to success.

More often than not leadership changes don't really achieve quick tangible results. Leaders need time to forge their path, and as you see from red flag #2, time is not something many of us will be blessed with. So leadership changes begets more leadership changes, simply because the desired immediate results were not met.

So if your department suffers one change, that may be quite alright. If you suffer about one per month, something is going very wrong.

4) Politicking. Quite simply, if people are preoccupied with something other than the goal, than you are not getting the optimal results. In fact, it might be extremely dangerous as politicking can actually damage the success of the job or the project beyond repair. Because of politicking you might be drawn to spend time (there it is again) on something that is of no value to the goal itself, only to serve somebody else's agenda. It might be creating meaningless diagrams, about non-relevant data. It might be running errands just to look busy. It might be making fun of a colleague during a critical status update meeting.

A department in which politics supersede the actual production or the completion of the job, that's a red flag.

5) Giving indicators more worth than they have. Any project or job deserves to be judged fairly and its progress measured accurately. The metrics to use are difficult to relate to what's actually going on at the factory level, but more often than not, correlation is definitely there.

However if your department or project takes indicators more seriously than they are, you enter the realm of the weird. You start manipulating numbers to make them look good. You start behaving and taking action in such a way that the numbers get improved artificially. In some shape of form, this behaviour correlates with #4, you simply don't want to look bad on paper.

If your project takes more care of its numbers than it understands its meaning, then your project is in trouble. Red Flag.

And We're Back

So the PlayStation Network is back online, after suffering a severe data breach and a self-imposed three-week shutdown.

Of course, it is nothing compared to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown/Miyagi prefecture earthquake, or the revolutions in Egypt/Libya or even the super-twisters in Mid-US. Though I'm sure many gamers won't look at it that way. They sure play it up like that.

Getting used to things quickly

Ten years ago mobiles were just becoming commonplace. Five years ago we were still Hyving and barely getting onto Facebook. In 2000 I could still carry waterbottles on the airplane without throwing them away at customs. In 2005 I was still using printed driving instructions.

How quickly things change. Today there's no life without facebook, your smartphone, google maps. We take our shoes off, leave bottles behind and follow all the strange airline customs. We curse establishments that don't carry free wifi, we don't trust potential hires that don't have a linkedin profile, and we need to tweet everything anytime anyplace.

Five years from now? I shudder to think.

The Over/Under On No Season

The NFL lockout and the impending NBA labor strife are a way for these industries to test their value to the general public. These sports leagues are responsible for billions of dollars in revenues for players, owners, businesses, coming from spectators. At least as long as there's actually games to be played.

Sports leagues like the NFL and NBA started as mere pastimes, without competitive foundation; as a sport matures, competition becomes a bigger driver to play, over recreation. Further maturing sees organization enter the sport to regulate competition; later on monetary incentives are increased (e.g. prize money; appearance fees), drawing attention from people outside the sport, the spectators. If the attention becomes big enough, if the exposure is intense enough, spectators will become addicts to the sport in question.

What the leagues are hoping for, is that they are too big to fail, or more accurately too important to ignore. The leagues and owners behave on the premise, that the public will simply have to accept there not being a season this year, because the public crave NBA/NFL so much, any season that does get played afterwards, is immediately flocked to. Both leagues would be acting rather differently, if their fans do not come back when the lockout ends, because they have found something else to do. It is the risk these leagues take, if they prove to overestimate their value.

It is not an unrealistic view. All the public sees, is multi-millionaires bickering with multi-millionaires about billions of dollars, which 99 percent of the fans will never see in their lifetimes. Also most people will have limited money available for frivolous consumption (such as visiting a sports event), especially in this unstable economy.

But the NFL lockout is here, so obviously BOTH the NFL players and the NFL owners think they can actually get away with it. All the while the media is crying foul, pointing to disappointed fans, and troubled businesses. The NFL have facts on their side; revenues in the league have never been higher than the last three years. Demand for the NFL product definitely exists.

So currently the fans have little to work with but hope. Rich people fighting over money is not something the average fan can influence, unless he is willing to take drastic measures, such as going cold turkey, go into rehab or find something worse. My guess is, and I suppose it's the NFL's as well, the average fan is not able to. Just like people coming back (to some degree) to NHL after their lockout in 2005, the expectation is that people will come back to NFL after this lockout.

The NFL is a bit like a beautiful woman, who knows all too well she is. No matter what terrible things she does, you'll always loop back around to see her. And here, she will not put out. And there will be no season. Just because she can. Just because THEY can.

Lost Opportunity

Spotify has always been a must-have app and service, streaming music to your desktop, or - if you're willing to pay a fee - to every mobile device you have. Their Free service served a great purpose, providing a set number of hours of free listening per month. If you were willing to limit your listening to your home computer and stay under five hours or so per week, you could listen to whatever you wanted (as long as it exists in the Spotify database) into infinity.

Now that is going away. The Free service will still be free, the free hours will still be there, but the infinity part will not. All songs will be limited to five plays lifetime per user.

Considering Spotify had a slightly bewildering business model - one where people were actually wondering how Spotify could actually make money - it should be expected that additional constraints would be introduced at some point. In the battle between content demand and supply, I surmise supply has dealt demand a sharp blow. Well Met, though.

Truthfully, my interests would be best met if people wouldn't steal my money all the time. Spotify fulfilled a need for occasional music listening of hard to find tracks, and new song discovery. I suppose that's something that I could potentially pay for.

Bad thing's even if I could pay for it, I am not able to. For a large number of tracks some music label has determined it should not be sold in my country. It's the same with DRM, and region locks, content for some reason cannot be transported across borders. Which is ridiculous, since I don't suddenly stop liking a piece of music if I pass customs.

That's why I liked and used Spotify (and before Pandora). I want the option of listening to ANY music I like, regardless if a music label made a business decision not to release the track in my region. If I have to pay cash for it, that's fair, but GIVE ME THE CHOICE.

With Spotify moving its business model with limited plays, my choice is somewhat hurt. In practice I may not actually reach the upper limit on borderline tracks, but for some others I might, and if those are tracks I can't get here, I feel screwed. And so should the music artist (after all they've got a listener here, a potential buyer, and they cannot sell here - that's just lost dollars).

Scariest Text Message You Ever Will Get

You know I have to write about this...

So basically right across the street someone shot up the local shopping center, killing at least six others, and apparently shooting himself.

Now I wasn't in the area at the time, I just noticed the huge amounts of police cars and ambulances driving up. Probably the only time apart from the WTC attack that you can get a scary text message like this: "TURN ON THE TELEVISION". No additional explanation.

I feel for the victims' families and friends.

I must admit though that my first reaction was hoping nobody I know personally was at the shopping center at the moment the shooting happened. Apparently a lot of other people had the same reaction, judging from the crowds, and the interviews.

Emotions Run Free

As the day progresses a number of typical human interactions appear, which are rooted in emotion rather than rationality:

• curiosity, people coming out and trying to look into the shopping center to see what's going on. Only to get turned away by the police.
• sorrow, or at least a declaration of feeling sorry for the victims
• disbelief, "how can this happen in our small town"
• emotional trauma, especially for the people who were actually there

The need for explanation is clear; "how did this happen", "who did this", "why"; and then not getting any because the authorities are still trying to find out; and if people don't get explanation, they invent an explanation. That's how rumors start.

Then within no time at all, somebody put up the race question. For me it is the sad state of modern society that this continues to be a valid justification for prejudice. I have to say the media were extremely quick to disarm the argument, by describing the shooter as a young white male. To me it is a clear signal of the immaturity of society, but also a display of strong awareness of the media what people needed and how.

I Value Who Tells Me Which Facts

People praised the municipal government for their use of social media (i.e. twitter) in informing the people. We should be careful in this. These are channels, which are easy to misuse, easy to introduce noise to. For pure news casting the new media are good enough to tell me something has happened - although I'm a bit on the fence about particularly sensitive subjects.

About the why, the how, and the details I don't want the local neighborhood youth tell me. That's for the police and the mayor to do. That's their job, and responsibility.

Keep following the proceedings on twitter @gemeenteaadr, or on the municipal government website.

Moving Targets

Recruiters want to know what kind of superstar you are, so everybody sends in resumes how awesome their past and present roles are. Because if it is not superstar-worthy, why bother inviting them over?

Applicants then inflate their roles and responsibilities, fluff their achievements, and try to fool the recruiters into thinking "this guy is Superman, we need to hire him pronto".

Of course recruiters now do their background checking, using the social media to their best advantage. And new applicants are doing their best to use the social media in the way it suits their value the best.

It's basically the case of nature versus the mousetrap. Someone invents a better mousetrap, nature comes up with a better mouse. So too are LinkedIn and Twitter; recruiter finds new tools to determine a candidate's value, the candidate finds a new way to artificially increase his value.

And in the end both sides have more work to do...

Example of Brand Prejudice

In the West Hyundai is known primarily for its cheap, small cars. People living on a tight budget will find it's the only car they can afford to drive. Rich people don't choose to drive a Hyundai, at least not if they want to impress their other rich friends.

The image of Hyundai in the west is low budget, cheap. It's alright to have if there's nothing better to upgrade to...

In Korea Hyundai is The Brand. Part of a huge Jaebol (similar to conglomerate), Hyundai produces not just cheap cars, but big luxurious cars as well. And not just cars per se. Clothes, household appliances, industrial products. Korea's got the biggest and most luxurious department stores, and they are branded Hyundai. In Korea Hyundai is king, and everybody aspires to have Hyundai in whatever shape or form.

Funny how a brand can be nothing in one part of the world, and be everything in another. Remember the Eddie Murphy movie 'Coming to America'? Same thing. One person's floor sweeper might be another person's prince and ruler.

So all in all, don't jump to conclusions; don't judge a book by its cover.

Interested But Not Inquisitive

I'm quite confident I can judge people without being prejudiced with a person's heritage, or religion. Therefore, I never start a conversation in that way and use other topics. Any person is welcome to surrender this information though.

If people are inquiring about race or religion just to fuel their own prejudices, that's lazy, offensive and defeats the purpose of conversation. Only your own direct interactions and intentions should be relevant for forming an opinion about each other. Anything indirect is of secondary importance.

A Sorry Food Culture

Put simply Holland doesn't have a food culture. Sure people eat, abundantly even. But when people's idea of a decent lunch is a cold piece of bread and a cut of meat and a slice of cheese, then you don't have a food culture. Not a rich one at least. People don't go out for lunch. People hardly go out for dinner.

Sure, Holland has its signature dishes, like boerenkool met worst, or erwtensoep. And there are plenty of restaurants and cafe's where you can eat. But all too often it's a French restaurant, or an Italian, or a Chinese... or McDonald's. All the real Dutch stuff is made at home. Not much more needed, but it doesn't fuel the appetite either.

And if you do go out to dinner in the Netherlands, it will cost you. Actually many other countries' upscale establishments are more expensive than anything the Low Countries can offer (try Tokyo), but you're not getting anything extraordinary for your Euro. Comparatively you can eat a better dinner for less money if you are not in the Netherlands.

Not that the Dutch need a food culture obviously. I mean, they're tall enough.

Asian Characters

Language barriers do exist for travelers, unless you're blessed with a knack for picking up new languages. The Asian characters are especially hard to fathom for Western natives. Most of those languages merely have an alphabet and then just rearrange their order to form words, sentences and so on. It's the words that have meaning, rather than the characters themselves.

Chinese definitely works differently, in that characters themselves have meaning. The sequence of characters describes context, meaning and intent. If you're a native speaker/reader, you have gained years of experience understanding that background. If you're a Westerner, you don't have that experience, so you wonder what the heck the characters for person, competition and wind are supposed to say.

Korean and Japanese are supposed to be a little less difficult to pick up. Korean actually consists of an alphabet, but then composes single characters from the individual alphabet components. Those single characters form sounds, which in sequence form words. Japanese doesn't form characters from alphabet components, but it does have two different alphabet systems, which it uses interchangeably. Also Japanese doesn't get away with completely losing Chinese characters, so a Westerner will very often see characters not covered in the alphabet.

Asian character systems are very efficient with regards to footprint. You can imply a lot using only a few characters. It also seems like some people have to say huge amounts of text, but don't write it down. It pays to have the common history, so that you know why people say so much with so little text.

All this makes it unrealistic to just head off to Tokyo, Beijing, Taiwan or Seoul without any language training, and just expect to do well with a small English-to-something else dictionary. You need to learn some simple gestures and the basics, otherwise you're going to remain lost in translation.

Or you could, you know, just go to Belgium instead.

Stop The Nerddom

Nerd style has found a place in the world's fashion scene. Which I guess beats getting bullied all the time. Now boys and girls from all ages take a spin on the nerd side, and manage to make it somewhat hip and happening.

Still I don't agree.

• No matter what you say, thick-rimmed glasses need to die.
• Any girl over the age of three must not wear bangs. Any boy also.
• Please for the love of god, clean up. You smell awful.

Addendum to How a Subway System Matures a Metropolis

Honorable mentions: Paris, Moscow, Singapore, Hong Kong

New York isn't in the top five, because the system is unclear (especially the distinction between express and regular cars), MTA just killed the one-day pass, and the stations just look old and dank, especially north of Central Park. For a country always looking for someone to sue, it's surprising they haven't built the barriers next to the tracks at the platforms, like Asian metro systems have.

Amsterdam isn't in the top five, because there aren't enough stations near locations people actually want to go to (more built according to distance, rather than need). The payment system does not cater for visitors, (no day passes) but then again everything visitors need to go to in the city, is within walking distance anyway.

And Dubai's subway isn't actually done.

Skewed Priorities

I work with a lot of foreign colleagues, who all wonder why the Dutch are such limited eaters. For many Dutch people a lunch consists of a cold sandwich, with a piece of cheese, and if you are lucky, some butter as well.

That's it. Also this sandwich costs 1.50 EUR. Unless you prepare a couple of sandwiches at home of course.

Compare this to France, where lunch and dinner are almost equivalent in length, and also just as important. Two-course, three-course, big slabs of meat, succulent pieces of fish, carefully marinated and prepared to the best possible standards. Compare this to Asia, where in virtually no time at all a well prepared dish is served, with copious amounts of rice, pastes and spices.

The French lunch is not cheap, but you're getting what you are paying for. However the Asians have taken cheap lunches to the next level. For the price of two sandwiches in Holland, you can get a proper Karaage Beef on Fried Rice, plus soup and various condiments.

I believe that the priorities of a nation are reflected in the food and in the dishes of its inhabitants. In this case the Dutch are clearly a reflection of their lunches. Basic, and you're getting just enough, and not a grain more.

How a Subway System Matures a Metropolis

Metro systems and other mass transit infrastructure is critical for the maturation and success of modern metropolis. A city needs a way for the native population and visitors to move around in an orderly fashion. And for me buses are bare necessities, but it's the subway that makes the city come alive.

Subways don't just bring people from location to location, they also show where people are most likely to meet - either at or beyond the stations, or inside the metro car itself. It also shows the world the city is capable. London, New York, Tokyo all have world famous subway systems that are even part of the local folklore. Movies get made with these famous tracks part of the plot.

You can't just have any subway system though. Certain qualities must exist:

• obviously the subway needs to connect locations in the city that people want to go to: (tourist) attractions, trade centers, shopping malls, parks, airports and railway stations etc.
• transferring between subway lines needs to be seamless and clear.
• directions and signs should be in multiple languages, at least english and likely some mandarin chinese
• a payment system (a general mass transit card) that balances the need to cover the cost of the subway, with practical, first-time right logistics. You can't have travellers faff about with paper tickets that need to be checked by a human subway worker, or with complex payment systems that require you to go to three different offices.
• people need to be able to reverse course easily, without cost to them. The way metro stations and platforms are built, influences this ability.
• most importantly, subway stations and cars need to be safe and promote good behaviour.

The best I've seen:

1. Tokyo; Clean. Efficient. Always on time. Easily accessible. Clear directions (when you get the hang of it), which is not easy for a place where Hiragana is the norm. Unfortunately need several travel cards to use all the lines.
2. Shanghai; the Chinese seemingly built this subway up from scratch, and it shows. All the modern amenities have been thought about, train information is clear from flat-screen monitors, and it is dirt cheap to take a trip. A bit illogical though that sometimes you can't transfer without having to pay extra, and when you make a mistake and check in, you cannot check out immediately for free.
3. Seoul; user friendly payment system, sprawling network of stations. Transferring between lines is a trip in itself. Seems to take a long time to travel from point to point.
4. London; Practical. The oldest working metro system, but one that has clearly grown and matured over time. Amazing how basically every line is operated by a different company, yet to the traveler it is completely transparent. A bit cramped in places.
5. Montreal; esthetically one of the finest systems in the world, rivaling Moscow and Paris. Safe and effective, a clear reflection of the city's population.