Archive for the Category ◊ Business ◊

Let’s talk, tell me about yourself…
Friday, September 09th, 2005 | Author: kevin

I liked the format of the last entry, the core dump blog, let’s call it a dump blog entry. Now that’s a name people will either love or hate! Moving on, this will be a speed blog entry. My goal is to complete my entry in less than 30 minutes. Most of the time a well thought out entry will take at least a couple of hours. This is why it sometimes is hard to post, because I don’t always have that much time available.

Picking up on the theme of the Cluetrain Manifesto, where in the authors put the Internet and E-Commerce in the framework of a conversation. The esteemed Jenius puts it this way in his tagline: “The Internet’s a dialogue–not a monologue–so speak up!”

One of the bible’s for this framework is “The One to One Future” by Don Pepper and Martha Rogers. I’m slowing working my way through this fascinating book. I found a couple of things that bring this perspective into very clear focus. The first quote attempts to contrast what most marketers do by filling their interaction with a strong sell message (which we are all extremely tired of hearing and will tune out the message), the model for advertising on TV, Radio, Magazines, or Newspapers which is: “Watch my commercials and I’ll bring you this content for free.”

…for the dialogue marketer – the 1:1 marketer – the bargain will be an increasingly explicit bargain, made with one customer at a time. “Ti’m bringing you something of value, some information or entertainment that you want, and in return I want to hear from you. Tell me about yourself.”

The essence of this philosophy is embodied in four criteria Rogers and Pepper identify that any marketing communication must meet before it can be considered to be a dialogue with individual consumers:

  1. All parties to a dialogue must be able to participate in it. — Each party must have the means to communicate with the other.
  2. All parties to a dialogue must want to participate in it. — In most cases, this means that the subject of a 1:1 dialogue must be of interest to both parties in the conversation.
  3. Dialogues can be controlled by anyone in the exchange. — Monologues are totally controlled by one party-the speaker, so a dialogue cannot be totally controlled by either party.
  4. Your dialogue with an individual customer will change your behavior toward that single individual, and change that individual’s behavior toward you. — You can only be engaging in a genuine dialogue with an individual customer if you alter your future course of action in some way as a result of the exchange

I believe that the power of this sentiment extends to many other scenarios of our lives. How many conversations are you having that are monologues and how many are dialogues? Our lives are dominated by monologues that leave us feeling un-actualized, un-empowered, and vulnerable. No wonder why we seem un-enthusiastic, de-motivated, and without passion. Think about it…

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Total immersive way of getting things done
Sunday, August 28th, 2005 | Author: kevin

Just the other day, Kathy Sierra on her “Creating Passionate Users” blog shared an excellent idea for getting something done. Fresh from her participation at Foo Camp, she shared the results of a session she attended that was focused on “total immersion / ultra-rapid game development” from one of the leaders of the The Ad-Lib Game Society.

Briefly, this concept involves organizing a small group or team and having this team dedicate 48 hours on getting something done. Everyone agrees to invest 48 hours on completing a task and then you make it happen.

I like this concept for many reasons:

  • If everyone is willing to make that type of investment, you can bet that everyone is motivated, dedicated, and committed.
  • It is easy to set ground rules to minimize disruptions and time wasters: Minimal cell phone usage, no pointless Internet surfing, or blog reading. The task should be clear and foremost on everyone’s mind.
  • With a little preparation you can have everything ready before getting together. Including installing wireless networks, servers, and acquiring any supplies required. It should be everyone’s goal to maximize their output during the 48 hours and completing the “push” goal.
  • Again, once started, there will be no trips to the bank, the pharmacy, to pick up the kids, or whatever. No one should leave the activity until you are complete or if there is an emergency.
  • Building on this further, don’t think you can pull off the same thing by just concentrating on something for two days. Once everyone leaves the office, who knows if they’ll make it back? There will always be something interrupting the flow.
  • The limited time frame helps keep the goal achievable. It should be big enough to be a challenge, but not too big. That can be debilitating as everyone struggles to get their heads around the task.

Of course, this all requires having a location that will allow the team to be comfortable and productive. It should be well stocked with snacks and coffee, and have enough space for everyone to sleep horizontally. It should also be close to some restaurants or within the delivery area of some, which is even better. Try to remove reasons for people leaving. It should be clear, pick a team, pick a goal, prepare for the activity, get to work, have fun, and walk away with something everyone can point to and say see; “We did that!”

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Category: Business, Opportunity, Software Development, Writing  | 2 Comments
10 things we should have been told…
Sunday, August 21st, 2005 | Author: kevin

A friend of mine gave a folded up article his uncle had sent him. The article was from a Georgia Tech alumni magazine. The author, Amol Joshi, co-founder of BayPackets, Inc., shared this list with a gathering of students. I wanted to share it too, as well, I wanted to document the list so that I would not forget them. A good way to remember something is to think about how it applies to your life. Often relating things to our lives we build stronger links to them. Then we need to recall them, they are easier to find. So beneath each item, is my attempt to make it real for me.

10. Youth and inexperience are often an asset when starting a company.

I have a great anchor around my neck. It keeps me from exploding with optimism and holds me back. It is called cynicism. To make truly impossible things become reality, I know that I have to throw off this anchor and make unbridled optimism my mantra. Although I can’t turn back the clock and regain my youth and inexperience, I can do two things. First, I can keep my mind and perspective locked on staying and thinking youthfully. Second, I can surround myself whenever possible with youthful and inexperienced dreamers. One great reward from working on SNAP these last 18 months has been working with some of the great students from the Inter American University.

9. Education is the only investment guaranteed never to decrease in value.

What an understatement! However, a perspective I would add, especially in these globalized and rapidly advancing times, is that education is an investment we all must make throughout our lives. There is no end to education. I think it keeps our brains young, which I just read from Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog. I agree completely.

8. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, be afraid of not making them quickly enough.

This is straight out of Tom Peter’s Re-Imagine. Tom’s rant is that the faster we make our mistakes, the faster we will succeed. Amen. I think the corollary to this is that we all have illusions of greatness. Our mistake, is that we believe that we can achieve greatness on the first try. There is no short cut to greatness. Usually what is required is countless iterations. We try something. We determine if it is moving us towards our goal. If it is not we try something else and repeat the process. Oh yes, it is a process. Most paths to success are just that. And the faster we can complete each iteration of the process, refine it, and improve it; the faster we will achieve our success.

7. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.

Leadership by example has long been one of my principles. When we show that we are just as willing as anyone to do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals, then I believe that it empowers everyone to achieve their own goals.

6. Be a team player.

Time to eat more crow. I think this is another area that I could stand to improve. I still tend to forget that almost all paths to success will involve other people (team members, partners, competitors, suppliers, customers). I believe that success is directly tied to the quality of the relationships created with other people. One way to improve relationships is to focus our perspective on other people. When we are thinking of our customers, our partners, or our team members first, success will surely follow.

5. Your most important team is your family and friends.

Your family and friends are just an extension of the very same sentiment. Which brings up a very pertinent and important message. Choose very wisely when you choose a spouse. They will become your family. Your nearest, most influential, and powerful family member. Choose well. Take your time. If your like me and and are going to try to change the world, then having a supportive spouse could make all the difference in the world.

4. Sales and marketing is not the “dark side of the force.”

Remember, it’s all about business. We spend the greatest part of our lives working. And work is almost always about business. If we don’t understand how businesses work, then we are unable to understand our role. If we don’t understand our role. Then we are just wasting everyones time. One of the key activities of any business is sales and marketing. Over the last few years I have really become excited about learning more about both of these areas. I encourage everyone to learn more about them as well. Anyway, I now know that management and the route to become a senior executive is the dark side.

3. Learn how to raise money.

This is most definitely an area I want to get much better at. Many of my dreams will involve this so I guess I better get turned down. The sooner I get past the denials, the faster I’ll get to the approvals.

2. Build your personal brand.

Yet another key Peter-ism. I’ve been working on this for quite a while. In fact, x-cito.com is the manifestation of creating Kevin Inc.

1. Dream big.

One of the greatest gifts I ever got from my Father was his encouragement. I could do anything I set my mind to. For me, it is one of the key ideals that drives me. My life is proof that this ideal is beautifully perfect. However, I have also learned that there is more to that ideal. That’s the short version. The longer version goes something like this: “You can do anything you set your mind to. As long as you are willing to creating a plan on how to obtain your goal. And you are willing to accept the consequences and sacrifices necessary to execute your plan.” The Jenius pointed out to me that it could also be if you are willing to invest what is required in the execution of your plan. The former being the cynic’s view and the latter the optimists view. Guess which I now use?

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An appeal for more do-ers
Thursday, August 18th, 2005 | Author: kevin

Tonight I had one of those moments on the Web that fills me with excitement and motivation. So here goes a wild unplanned stream of observations:

  • Ever since OSCON I’ve been thrilled to read the “Creating Passionate Users” weblog by Kathy Sierra. This stuff is just what I needed to find.
  • Her latest blog entry talks about her return to Foo Camp. Which is a pretty cool idea that Tim O’Reilly put together a while back. Well apprently this year people were blogging about not getting an invitation (it’s invitation only) and Kathy had the links in her blog.
  • From there I was lost down a wild rabbit hole bouncing around blogs from some of the most notable bloggers around, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, and Ross Mayfield (which believe it or not I had never been to Robert Scoble’s blog before), but I ended up thinking Silicon Valley (San Francisco) is a pretty cool place to be if your into software. I know, duh, but really this is a relatively recent discovery for me.
  • I learned that some past Foo campers are putting together an open door version called Bar Camp. Which they will host the same weekend as Foo Camp. Once again wishing I was in SF, but it really made me think. If they hope this spreads next year, why not to San Juan?
  • Which then lead me to think that time must work differently in Silicon Valley; for there are a lot of people leading companies, holding key tech positions, and such that seem to post an awful lot and also attend cool events like this fairly constantly. Which again makes me think that Silicon Valley is really really cool. Either these people are dynamos working 20 hour days or this kind of thing is business as usual.
  • Which, as always, leads me back to home. What is going on here? Where are all the doers? Why doesn’t anything cool ever happen around here? Where are all the bloggers? Why do we keep everything to ourselves? Why if we are screaming for a conversation is there still mostly a void on the Internet about Puerto Rico?
  • Finally, I’m left feeling like this has to change! I’m so past waiting for more people to wake up and realize what is happening. Puerto Rico missed the first Internet boom, and I’m going to work to make sure that we don’t miss it the second time around. So here’s what I am going to do:
    1. Make sure that when the Bar-Camp/Do-Camp happens next year we are ready.
    2. Work to formalize my idea to setup a Web 2.0 incubator. I’ll be in Boston later this year, maybe Paul Graham over at Y Combinator will give me some ideas.
    3. I’m going to write a letter and send it to some of the biggest companies on the island; so that they will hopefully take a quick minute to at least see/hear/feel how importanly I feel about us not missing a new opportunity.
    4. I’m going to become more supportive of the Open Source Minds that Gilberto and Gil are sponsoring. That means that I’ll become more vocal about us focusing on doing, and what this might mean.
    5. With the remaining strength and resources left in SNAP, organize an event that will crystalize movement towards these new opportunities. Hopefully this will draw enough attention to Puerto Rico to start a self-feeding system that will build our momentum.
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Category: Business, Computer, Internet, Opportunity, Puerto Rico, Software Development  | 2 Comments
We can only do, what we can do.
Friday, August 12th, 2005 | Author: kevin

As a long time Tom Peters fan, I was ecstatic when I heard “Gil the Jenius” had found words of hope from something new from Tom Peters. So on Gil’s suggestion I rushed over to Change This and read the new material. The Tomato Manifesto was a good reminder of why I think Tom Peters is so great. However, having read his book Re-imagine, this manifesto doesn’t cover much new ground.

Still it is great to read Tom’s stuff. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel drunk with a promise. A promise that other people see the systems we work within and perpetuate as they are, are just plain wrong. Inside, where it counts, I find myself screaming “Hell yes!” and “That’s what I’m talking about”! As my super-ego driven, politically correct, worker/diplomat inhibitions recede, I get more woozy greedily drinking in Tom’s positive vibes. As long as I keep reading, all is right with the world – I have hope, I see new opportunity, I believe that the impossible seems suddenly possible.

Now if you’ve ever celebrated too much, you know that eventually the good times come to an end. You may feel pretty good just before you go to sleep, but when you wake up your perspective changes 180 degrees. Your new outlook after waking can be pretty painful, or at least so I’m told. The reason I bring in this analogy is because it is the way I feel after reading Tom Peters. While I’m reading I feel pumped, but when I have to go back to work or read the newspaper or watch the news, I’m flooded with this feeling of disappointment. I feel as if I’ve been fooled. Perhaps this is a harsh reaction, but the contrasts that the manifesto illustrates is exactly what I’m talking about. While reading Tom’s rants there is feeling that someone understands that there is a better way, but when I try to reconcile or connect Tom’s positions to reality, I become immediately aware of the chasm between the two opposites.

I’m often shocked that most companies remain viable and, dare I say, profitable. Most business are full of unproductive, uncooperative, and damaging people, policies, and processes. The only way these companies remain alive is through the personal sacrifice, passion and diligence of a few “freaks” (as Tom refers to them). In software development there is a model that attempts to grade a software development process. Within this model there are five different levels (grades). The first level is called chaos and the freaks I mentioned are called champions. Almost all software development processes are at level one.

If we assume that conducting business is essentially no different than creating software development. They are both collections of people attempting to complete a task (or collection of tasks) to attain a specific result. What I would suggest is that if there were a comparable grading system for companies, most companies would be graded as being at level one, chaos. If you agree, then the big question becomes: “How do we get our companies to receive a better grade?”

Staying with our drinking metaphor, companies are like alcoholics. Often most companies live in denial. Typically there are people close to the company, front-line employees for example, that attempt to tell the leadership of the company that they have a problem. But what does the company usually do when people tell them about the problem? They deny that there is a problem. So counselors then advise family that the only thing left to do when an alcoholic lives in denial is to wait until they hit bottom and be ready to catch them. Only with companies, when they hit bottom they fire (I mean lay off) everyone that would be able to catch the company.

It all sounds pretty hopeless then, right? Well one more analogy and I’ll bring this to a close. Gil is right, there is only one thing we can do. This is like religion: we need to have faith and believe. Within our churches, mosques, synagogues, and cathedrals we hear and learn that there are higher ideals, let’s use loving your neighbor as yourself as an example. In a world full of terror, greed, and fools it can be extremely challenging to love your neighbor. The approach I take is to keep it simple. Do what you can, attempt to live the ideal as much as humanly possible, don’t sweat the rest, and hope that others take notice and see that it is possible to live the ideal (at least some of the time).

Tom Peters actually has his own similar approach. It is called “Brand You”. We may not be able to convince our friends, our peers, or our bosses that this Tom Peter’s guy is onto something, but as individuals we can choose to do what we can do to live up to the ideals. We can change the way we approach our work. We can embrace the Internet, we can embrace globalization, we can hire quirky, creative, and multi-cultural, we can hire people smarter than ourselves and then hang on for the ride, we can pursue great design, and we can accept that safe is risky (That one is from Seth Godin). We can only do, what we can do. When we are in a position to embrace change and influence others, then we should. We need to look for ways to try new things. Just because something has always worked for us, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a better way!

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Moving forward
Monday, July 25th, 2005 | Author: kevin

As we wake up to the anniversary of the Puerto Rico constitution and celebrate yet another national holiday, I can’t help wonder what the events of last week foretell of the future of Puerto Rico. For me it was difficult to see a society regress so rapidly without wondering about the motivations and causes for everyone’s behavior.

As a quick detour, I would like to acknowledge the writings of Malcolm Gladwell from his best seller “The Tipping Point.” In my opinion, last week in Puerto Rico we witnessed a small example of what he meant in this book. It’s funny how a couple of quotes in the daily news sent the country into chaos. Essentially, what I believe we witnessed was exactly what Gladwell claims: “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”

Without question, living in Puerto Rico in 2005 has been difficult. The latest truckers strike was the last little push everyone needed to completely loose common sense. I would agree with my friend Gil Schmidt and his analysis of these events, but I can’t resist digging deeper into this mess. Hey, I’m an highly analytical person, I can’t help myself. Let’s start with something simple. First, do you know why strikes are like terrorism? Each involves a threat of force or consequence if demands are not met. Which basically means it is a lose lose scenario. To start with it typically starts with a person or group of people with a complaint or some type of sufferage. Then to end each of them requires some one to give in, or the suffering continues. Finally in either case, once a party “gives-in” it completely eliminates any ability to not give in later. Once you meet the demands of strikers, then just like terrorists, every future striker knows that if the situation becomes unbearable, demands will be met. There can be only one position for a highly developed society to take in each of these scenarios, zero tolerance. It is extremely harsh and I hope I never find myself on either side of this lose-lose situation.

In many different situations, sometimes your very first response to something can be the most accurate. Later with more conflicting information and personal opinions, things become muddled and our responses become less appropriate or correct. My first thoughts after witnessing the chaos surrounding the mass hysteria were of entitlements. According to my aging copy of a popular CD-ROM reference, entitlement means to furnish with a right or claim to something: such as “Every citizen is entitled to equal protection under the law.
Simply I believe that most people rushed to join the growing line of cars because they felt entitled to their fair share of gasoline. If supplies were going to run dry, then “Por Dios” I’m going to get mine first. Once again I agree with Gil, we still live in the illusion of fairness. What is my fair share of gasoline if I already have enough gasoline for at least a week? After the strike was resolved and the gasoline started to flow, why else did people line-up AGAIN if not out of a sense of entitlement? Well I missed out in the first mad rush to suck the pumps dry, “Por Dios” I’m not going to miss my share now. As a society we need to eliminate our dependence on entitlements. There are only a few rights that we are entitled. Nearly everything else we have allowed our false sense of comfort to expand these entitlements. Now this ever-expanding sphere of entitlements have begun to jeopardize our mutual ability to fulfill the basic needs of our developed society.

I have been telling everyone that we are about three major strikes away from complete collapse of Puerto Rico’s economy. I believe that last week proved my point. I know that I’m not an economist, so my opinion is worth squat. However, as a citizen of Puerto Rico I’m entitled to my views. I think one thing to consider first is cycles. I believe that the massive over-population in Puerto Rico requires adjusting. I believe that we have reached saturation. Our little island can not handle the pressures currently being applied. I believe a mass migration is necessary to establish a more sustainable balance. This finally leads me to the opposite of entitlements, sacrifice. I believe that we are very near to this major adjustment. When it occurs, it will breath new life into Puerto Rico. What is not clear to me is who will be around to get the economy rolling again. As Ross Perot used to say, when the adjustment comes, you will be able to hear a huge sucking sound from all of the human capital leaving Puerto Rico. However, with great change comes great opportunity. So here is the big question: “What sacrifices do we need to make now, or when this adjustment occurs, in order to rebuild the economy based on a globalized and entrepreneurial view of the world?” Sacrifice is defined as the forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim.
It is clear to me as I write this, that the time to establish what is the greater value or claim is right now. We have seen how well we as a nation is prepared to face potential sacrifice and it isn’t (wasn’t) pretty. I wonder, do people actually plan for the type of adjustment I’m predicting? Is there an office somewhere in our incompetent government with a plan? I’m sure of the answer and it makes me want to wet my pants right now. And if not the government, then who else might have a plan. Now that I think of it, we don’t even have a plan to improve the economy even during these days of wine and roses. That is probably even more scary.

Definitions excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V., further reproduction and distribution restricted in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

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ITHET Trip Summary
Friday, July 22nd, 2005 | Author: kevin

In an effort to get back “in shape” for OSCon, I really got to pump this out. If I head into Portland with my current habits, it will be tough to keep up. So here it goes.

Well, my participation in my first ever scientific (or should I say academic) convference was a mixed bag of experiences. As mentioned in the brief posts I made while I was there, not having consistent and reliable Internet access was a shock. I think it was such a shock that I never really recovered my balance and established a rhythm. I mention this because I believe that it is very important while attending a conference to have a smooth rhythm. It’s all about habit and accustom. In different environments some people refer to this as being in the flow or in the zone. When behavior is second-nature we are more productive. So without the Internet I lost my rhythm and never really recovered.

Additional factors also kept me off balance. My expectation was that because the conference was about Information Technology, that most of the participants would be software related. This assumption was wrong, because most of the speakers were engineers. I’m totally believe that mixing different areas of specialties together it creates a more powerful team, however in this situation I felt like the odd man out. This feeling was amplified by the fact that I am from private industry and everyone else was from academia. I know, duh, it was an academic conference.

One of the things that further disoriented me was the disorganization of the conference. The president of the Domincan Republic opened the conference and that screwed the schedule for the whole first day. Unfortunately this trend continued on the second day, even though there were no major disruptions. Finally some minor irritations added fuel to the fire: the food sucked, the conference facilities were divided, the Internet at the conference went out for almost 24 hours, and a bunch of speakers never showed up at the conference which caused the organizers to move speeches

I’ll stop my whining now and share my take aways. Despite everything I still managed to meet some fantastic people. I came away inspired by the great passion most of the educators there had for their students and areas of research. A couple of themes kept appearing in speech after speech. First, globalization is also influencing the academic arena. This most definitely dove tails with my research and observations. Something to consider when my daughters get ready to begin their higher education is the recommendation by some speakers to internationalize their education. The basic premise is that it will be easier to understand globalization if you witness it first hand. A second trend was the emphasis on collaboration. Again, I say right on brother. Collaboration, competitive cooperation, sharing, and partnering I believe will become “steroids” (As Thomas Friedman calls certain world flatteners). They will make small and medium sized business bigger and better able to compete with multinationals. It will also make the lone researcher or entrepreneur reap the very same benefits. The final trend was the coincidence of multiple projects reaching the same conclusions, but from different perspectives, environments, and objectives A curiosity indeed, but also proof, for me, that research and investigation is an endeavor this connects us all. Regardless of the differences we insist we have, we are all basically the same and we are all moving in the same basic direction.

In the end, attending the 6th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training was extremely rewarding. I met someone from the Domincan Republic that would like some Linux training and others that represent future collaborators from around the world. Preparing the SNAP Development Center’s paper “Using Open Source to Enhance Learning” was a great experience. In addition, it ensures that the legacy of the project will always be available from the IEEE archives.

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You have to what?
Tuesday, June 07th, 2005 | Author: kevin

Someone left a comment on my post about the Forteleza requiring registration. So I said, why not I’ll bite. Let’s go register. But as the poster also offered, (you really have to appreciate the irony and sarcasm it inspires) you can’t register for the e-Government site on-line. LOL

From the FAQ:

¿Dónde me puedo registrar?
El proceso de registro de datos se llevará acabo en las Colecturías Participantes del Departamento de Hacienda, llamando a la división de Tecnologías de Información Gubernamentales de la Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto al (787) 977-9200 o en las Oficinas Regionales de PRFAA en Estados Unidos.

¿Puedo registrarme sin visitar una colecturía? SubirSubir
NO, para proteger su privacidad todo ciudadano tiene que asistir a una colecturía o un centro comercial participante para iniciar el proceso de registro. Luego será el ciudadano el que active este proceso en línea.

Alright, so it is not so stupid. Protecting citizens against identity fraud is serious business, but is there no other way?

UPDATE: I’m still trying to determine whether the Governor’s statements at the Microsoft convention have been publicly announced. There are few news items that look related, but further research is necessary.

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Category: Business, Computer, Internet, Puerto Rico  | 2 Comments
The biggest question of all for “Taking Puerto Rico to the Next Level”
Sunday, May 01st, 2005 | Author: kevin

On Tuesday of last week, Governor Acevedo Vila attended Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum. As an advocate for the adoption of open source software in our Government, this disturbs me. Even so, I’ll try to keep the open source rhetoric to a minimum. I don’t want this to be about proprietary versus free software. I want this discussion to be about choice. I want this discussion to be about the future stability of the Puerto Rican economy. So I couldn’t agree more with the Governor as he opened his speech at this prestigious forum: “The decisions Puerto Rico will make in the first decade of this new millennium will have a profound effect on our future quality of life. We sit at an important juncture in transforming our economy.” So if we are to make decisions, what are the choices? Have we properly prepared ourselves to make these decisions? Have we thoroughly analyzed the context of these decisions to determine all of the valid options?

I encourage you all to read the Governor’s speech. It is full of optimism and hope. It is a well-crafted speech that paints a fantastic picture of Puerto Rico today, and an even better Puerto Rico tomorrow. Unfortunately I live here and it sounds hollow when the facts, figures, and themes don’t match my personal observations. For example, the key to his entire speech was based on his strategy to build a new Commonwealth based on moving Puerto Rico to the new knowledge-based economy. He intends to accomplish this by leveraging two fundamental advantages of our beautiful and strategically located Island: 1) our sophisticated, highly educated, experienced and hard working people; and 2) our state-of-the-art telecommunications, transportation and utilities infrastructure, with an advanced e-government focus. As a leader myslef, I find this a pretty thin strategy.

Later in his speech he elaborates more on why these are fundamental advantages. As you might expect, in what was probably a fifteen minute speech, there are not many surprises announced that will make a dramatic difference. I would certainly like to know, however, how the begin the seventh busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere; having 40 shipping lines; and having International and regional airports with 4,300 cargo flights per month will help us build a knowledge economy.

One initiative in particular, I would welcome eagerly. Too bad, I’ve been hearing about it for about two years already. According to Acevedo Vila “We are also expanding the amount of on-line services and transactions to facilitate the process of starting and operating a business in Puerto Rico to reduce the amount of time required to process permits and payments and comply with legal requirements.” This is something that is desperately needed, I just can’t remember seeing anything about this anywhere else than this speech. There were several other announcements that seem to only exist in this speech as well. I hope that I’m just misinformed.

We are certainly an unusual species. We promise things that we have no intention of doing. We forcefully claim positions, and then invalidate those positions with our actions. We do things that are good, but allow them to fade away which is bad. These things trouble me, they mystify me. I’m a computer scientist, logic rules my life. However, logic is useless in understanding our behavior. For when we say that we want our government to leverage information technology to its fullest, making it a more accessible, transparent and effective in our organization through the adoption of information technologies and improved processes, that sounds like an awesome ideal. However, when we allow companies with deep pockets to compromise our decisions, then can we be sure that we are going to leverage information technology to its fullest? Further, when there are options that do not require significant license fees, why would we pledge we are making a significant investment in technology? When we compare ourselves to other governments doing the same thing, which are these governments? It is unlikely they are Chile, Brazil, China, Malaysia, Philippines, or India. Each of these countries are investing deeply in open source software, does that mean that we will?

The stakes are high indeed for how we answer these questions. Since our government is the largest employer, it is the standard bearer for Puerto Rico. Many companies will do as our government leads. According to El Nuevo Dia, our government already has $37 million worth of contracts with Microsoft. Again, my observations place that number closer to $150 million. With Gold Partners and many other Microsoft business partners, what this leadership means is significant persuasion on how Puerto Rican companies and therefore households spend their information technology dollars.

I’ll leave you to ponder the biggest question of all. With nearly four million residents, the Governor was proud to claim that the Puerto Rican e-government site processes an average of 400 transactions per month. That volume of transactions means that 1/10,000th percent of the population completes transactions monthly. For $150 million dollars, do you think that is a good investment of our valuable tax dollars?

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Category: Business, Computer, Internet, Opportunity, Puerto Rico  | One Comment
Radio WOSO
Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 | Author: kevin

On April 14th, Gil Schmidt and I participated in the taping of a radio program for AM 1030, Radio WOSO. The program is the Business Puerto Rico Update with David Garcia. The show will be on this Friday, April 29, at 6:35. The subject of the show is…well what else, open source software and the SNAP Development Center. Please tune-in and see how difficult it is to explain open source software in 21 minutes. We tried the best we could, and according to David, he thought the end-result was a useful and very informative show. I hope you agree.

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Category: Business, Internet, Opportunity, Puerto Rico  | Comments off
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