James Nash: Technology: Share your mind

Ch ch ch changes...

Sun, 26 Jun 2005 10:20:51 GMT

yep - this site has not been updated in a while..thats due to a whole bunch of stuff which is much better explored by going to the sexier, sleeker, sassier new site by clicking here

You can get downloads of training material - Presentations, slideshows, files, training manuals, content for leadership develop and more (Gosh!!) in english AND Chinese here

You can get more information on the Onevoice manifesto (Chinese) by clicking here

Please update your bookmarks!

IBM China Vs. China IBM

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 06:13:43 GMT

They couldn't resist it. As Chinese firms repeatedly fail to create a brand of any consequence the purchase of the consistently loss making IBM computers has been further politicised as some kind of patriotic business touchstone. Naturally, this means that the chances of China IBM (previously IBM China: the China now comes first to reflect the "pride" of purchasing an American business that has lost more than USD$5bn) actually surviving the next few years, let alone growing anything except its debt has been shrunk to almost zero.

The chairman of IBM China, Daniel Chow, said that it was the aim of the company to become a completely local Chinese company, and to be viewed by Chinese and the Chinese authorities as a "national asset of the country". Chinese economic and trade policy is based on having at least one Chinese company which can compete on a global scale with other multinationals in each sector. Obviously buying something that is clearly kneck deep in shit is not an intelligent move - all kinds of people are going to have egg on thier faces with this, when will they learn not to intefere by politicising everything...there is this bizarre illusion that political support will help the business. While this is a samrt move in some areas, it is fraught with problems in an area that is highly commoditized like PC's - the business model is largely based on aggressive efficiency (Dell, Dell and Dell) - something that government support simply cannot provide...how far will they go in supporting the losses to "gain" and then save face? What a waste in a country where many schools dont have enough books for children in school.

A good reason why Lenovo, Haier etc have bombed out is repeated government intervention and encouragement to diversify and expand in a desperate attempt to be "successful". The governments hunger for international recognition in business has consistently failed and is fast becoming the kiss of death on any business venture - support is based on the businesses relationship with the goernment rather than its customers. Not tooclever in a deregulated tech markets.

Government support is great for a business that has been looked at in depth and with objectivity - yet again, any inteligence has been tossed out of the window in favor of irrational and unsubstatiated ranting about patriotism, "face" and other politically tinged blurb as if this is somehow helpful.

Free business revolution stuff

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 06:04:51 GMT

We are developing a bunch of material and making it available for download - here is a couple of seminars we do (in Chinese): Brand Inside and The new new leaders (no audio as yet, i'll pop that in later). Both are are refreshing take on how we need to change as organizations and create genuine organizations to prosper in the 21st century.

I am going to make lots of material available as we get it done through this blog as it is developed. It will be in Chinese and be put on our new website to promote the concept of "one voice" organizations in China and will include our leadership and systems training that will be available online through our LMS sometime in the next 6 weeks.

Just click to view:

Brand Inside

The new new leaders

Team V2.0

If you want to have the original ppts; email me the request and i'll get them to you

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, china+marketing, elearning

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 05:44:59 GMT

Yeah yeah, some of you may think its a little bit late - but most who need to read (I mean UNDERSTAND!!) this are oblivious to its existence. I have argued for a long time now that business's should quit behaving like businesses and start behaving like a group of human beings. The sooner a business emerges from behind an expanded concept of "professionalism" delivering its cleaned up "mission statements", marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. the better: Same old tone, same old lies same old bullshit. Its about time business grew up and did something genuine...Click here for more...

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, china+marketing, cluetrain

China businessweek sucks

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 07:29:25 GMT

Businessweek online is available in Chinese!!! Wow!! It appears that the people running the Chinese operation have modified it
down to the standard of a D grade high school project - to accomadate what they think are thier dumb local customers (why else would it be so impossibly crap?). What gives! Check out the utter lack of attention to such details as:

Forgetting to put any content on your pages

Putting ALL your content on a homepage that takes 2 minutes to scroll down

The whole site shows a complete lack of understanding about what a website is and a contempt for the customer - how big is the gap between the English language version and the Chinese? BIG: Compare them. It is emblematic of the quality issue here and the disregard for the customer by many businesses that believe that government support will get them the customers they need - how short sighted of businessweek to prostiute their brand so mindlessly!!

This is done in "cooperation" with the "China commerce and trade press" I am guessing (wildly? I dont think so!) that the government
departmnet is resonsbile for systematically damaging businesweeks brand in Asia. What on earth are they thinking!!

Editor training? - to much trouble!

What about content design? Can't be arsed!

Knowledge transfer from one team to another - you know, communication! To busy having blahblahblah meetings!!!

Get a grip. Both of you.

Managing knowledge? Its a CULTURE thing NOT a TECH thing:

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:09:26 GMT

“To successfully understand and manage knowledge in an organization, we need to have a fundamental grasp of an organization’s origins and intent. Why it was founded and what it was supposed to achieve. What are the inputs and what is the planned output?

Only humans can communicate those ideas that are the foundation for an organization. Ideas are clearly rooted in the knowledge of the founder. We can all agree that without ideas and the means to communicate, a founder’s knowledge could not be used or useful to an organization.”

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, elearning

Converting PowerPoint to Flash

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 01:51:01 GMT

Here is a detailed list of the key advantages you would have in converting a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash file. A Flash-based presentation goes a long way in making your content become easily accessible, ubiquitous and easily distributable - all good things.

Conversion is easy and vary from free (Powerbullet) to horrendously expensive server based applications like Macromedia Breeze <We are blessed with a Breeze server!>)

I recommended that unless you're pockets are deep you start with Powerbullet, its simple - and free - download it here.

Why Bother?

1) Greater Accessibility
Once converted to Flash a PowerPoint presentation can be easily viewed in any Internet browser...... (Continue reading)

Technorati Tags: china+business, china, elearning, knowledge+management

Geek friendly baby name generating Java magic!

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 13:45:10 GMT

The hunt is over for a really geek friendly baby name generator. It has taken alot of time and energy but someone has created this little piece of Java magic just in time for my babies arrival! If anyone has any good ideas for a name (its a boy) - play with it and let me know. Have fun!

Podcasting: English / Chinese call to action!

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:58:37 GMT

Download your ipodder software here and install this little sucker.

I am going to establish podcasts on this site so you can listen to my wild ranting to companies in China about change, marketing and the news de jour. The podcasts will be in English AND Chinese. Good for you to practice your English language skills (for the Chinese readers of this blog) AND get some cool new ideas!! You lucky people!!

Technorati Tags: ipodder, China+business, podcast, china

F*** the rules! (click to download: .pdf 16k)

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:31:42 GMT

Download this! Chinese innovation (huh?) is snuffed out, drowned (murdered) at as young an age as possible (read school) and then kept locked away in the heads of the gifted for fear of being different – gotta follow the rules!! Or the company will descend into chaos! (INSTABILITY!!) Can’t have people think for themselves, (INSTABILITY and INSUBORDINATION!!). Gotta follow the rules, don’t stick out, don’t be different, don’t do anything new, wait until it is PROVEN (obviously, by someone else first - duh!), don’t change the status quo and rock the boat!

PROBLEM: Quality in China

PROBLEM: Chinese brands getting BATTERED

PROBLEM: Brain drain from big Chinese companies

REACTION > MORE CONTROL!!! GOTTA CONTROL EVERYTHING THEN QUALITY WILL GO UP / CUSTOMERS WILL BELIEVE US / YADDA YADDA!!

"I believe that The Rules are the leading cause of crap products, frustrated users, and unhappy relationships. I'm not talking about all rules and standards of course, just the largely-unstated-but-blindly-accepted ones that:

Never made sense.
No longer make sense.
Make sense, but only in a different context."

F*** the rules! on Knowledge management: "Trying to capture and express experts' knowledge in rules is like trying to reach the moon with a bicycle: that's damn fun, but if your goal is really to walk in Armstrong's steps, that's far to be the most efficient solution."

This little .pdf is great. In fact, I am going to translate this into Chinese and throw it around in some of our seminars. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you Dave and Passionate!

Technorati Tags: elearning,, china,, marketing,, china+business

The future is not in learning...

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:11:40 GMT

Think of all the things you might have to unlearn, even in the course of a year:

* Unlearn what your target market is (because it just changed).

* Unlearn the way you advertise and market (because your market just got a lot smarter).

* Unlearn the way you approach your brand (because it's no longer within your control).

* Unlearn the way you teach (because learners need to unlearn and learn simultaneously)

* Unlearn the way you treat your employees (because before you know it, that "meets expectations" review might come back to haunt you on a blog ; )

* Unlearn the technology you use (self-explanatory... we're all living this one)

* Unlearn the methodology you use

* Unlearn the designs you use

* Unlearn the words you use to describe your business

Technorati Tags: learning,, elearning,, china+business

Online education is back and bigger than ever

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 11:44:17 GMT

"As distance learning grows into a $5 billion a year market -- up 38 percent in 2004 alone -- virtual classrooms are no longer the sole province of dot-coms into the mainstream."

Think3 Solutions is developing a learning management system to deliver customized training in flash accessable accross China to clients to promote the rapid and standardised dissemination of knowledge throughout a business.

We forsee a growth in what we call the "Knowledge object economy" where KO's (knowledge objects) can be "unplugged" from one system and used in another, traded and so on. Imagine a library of flash files that test you, delivers reminders to your scheduled training for the quarter / year and informs the HR department of performance. Sounds cool? Thats because it is! There is going to be alot more about this exciting project in the coming months....

In the article link below, Salon outlines what all the fuss is about...

(See orginal Salon article here)

Technorati Tags: learning,, china+business,, knowledge+management

Click it - read it - learn it - do it

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 06:18:44 GMT

You need to know this:

"Why this internet thing is about to really blast off"

"So, what will it take to suceed?"

Technorati Tags: china, marketing,

Technorati tags

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 03:24:22 GMT

I am trying out tags from Technorati. "Tags" label each post and make content management easier - each posting has a particular "tag" then sends it to Technorati for easy searching and information sharing. In order to tag a post, you need to add some code - this is a pain in the ass, so you can bookmark this instead. Simply click it when you make a post and add in the tags you think are relevant to the post, it creates the tag for you, then copy and paste it into the end of the entry, then post it. Cool stuff!

Thanks to oddiophile for the code.

Technorati Tags: china, tag, bookmarklet, technorati, tagging