Archive for December, 2016

Harold Jarche’s Best Finds in 2016

Friday, December 30th, 2016

Harold Jarche (@hjarche) shares its best finds in 2016, and I specially liked his "quotes" chapter:

@Tom_Peters: "Presidents rarely get good advice. Every ‘presenter’ presents a totally biased solution–often suppressing competing evidence."

@atduskgreg: "Machine learning is automated bureaucracy. It spits back the systemic biases we feed it in feature vectors, training sets, reward functions."

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." ‐ H.L. Mencken via @normsmusic

@HughCards: "As the Internet makes everything cheaper, access to real networks (Harvard, Wall St., Silicon Valley etc) gets even more expensive."

"Power not only corrupts, it addicts." ‐ Ursula Le Guin via @ndcollaborative

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." ‐ Marcus Aurelius via @MickFealty

Michèle Morgan

Wednesday, December 21st, 2016

The most beautiful eyes in cinema were permanently closed this morning… and it makes me sad because I must confess that I have always considered Michèle Morgan as very close from the perfect woman.


Image from Passage to Marseille (1944)


Portrait by Ernest Bachrach (1940)

Welcome to Nobody Cares

Tuesday, December 20th, 2016

This image is a riff on Seth’s Godin’s first lesson of marketing in the Internet Age: "Nobody Cares About You".

i.e. Nobody is going to click on your link/download your app/buy your product/read your blog because you’re so utterly fascinating, Darling. They do it because there’s something in it for them- and no, you’re not the one who gets to decide what that something is.

But then again, that’s quite liberating. It frees you up to think about what what matters to other people, not what emotional bauble strokes your ego.

It makes it much easier to be engaged. Which, in the Holiday Season, is no bad thing.

Image and text by @gapingvoid

The idea awareness cycle

Friday, December 9th, 2016

Yet another great post by Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) describing the typical idea awareness cycle.

Ignorance We’re too busy doing our jobs to notice that.
Dismissal That? It’s trivial. Kids.
Nervousness Let’s take a look at what they’re up to, benchmark it, buy a research report… Bob, can you handle this?
Poor Copies See, I told you it was no big deal. Our new model is almost the same.
Admiration Wow, look at them go. Every once in awhile, someone comes up with something special. Good for them.
Special case Of course, this won’t effect our core business. It’s working really well here because that’s unique.
Superman Holy smokes. Who is this guy?
Catastrophe/Doomsday Run for your lives. It’s over. Over forever and ever.
  Repeat

Make the invisible visible

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

Listening to your customers isn’t figuring out what they want — it’s figuring out their needs.

We don’t always know what’s missing. Sometimes thirst feels like hunger. Sometimes a headache means stress. Sometimes we’re so deep within ourselves that we can’t read ourselves.

The art of business is anticipating needs. It’s going above and beyond. It’s being so attuned to your customers’ needs that you figure out their solution before they’ve identified the problem.

Naming the invisible problem is the first step to creating the visible solution.

Image and text by @gapingvoid

You may feel that it is yet another interpretation of the apocryphal Henry Ford quote: If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse".

It is also close from the theories behind Interaction Design: you shouldn’t ask people to describe the products or services they would need, but what wishes they would ask the "genius out of the lamp" to fulfill for them… then build accurate enough Personas to be able to design the solutions that fit.

Finally, it is less about asking good questions (any question can lead to the proper answers if you listen properly) than it is about keeping in mind that innovation occurs out of the box and that, if innovators must have enough skin in the game to deliver consistent solutions, they also must keep dreaming in the wild.

Voices from Trumpland: Have malice toward none, with charity for all

Sunday, December 4th, 2016

  1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.
  2. Identify and follow many credible sources of news. Be very well informed and learn to discern truth from untruth.
  3. Watch every word, decision and action of Trump and his administration extremely closely, like we have never done before in America.
  4. Be very vocal in every forum available to us when we observe Trump’s violations of our rights and our democracy. Write, speak, act.
  5. Support journalists, artists, academics, clergy and others who speak truth and who inform, inspire and unite us.
  6. Build bridges with Americans from the other side of the traditional political spectrum and with members of diverse American communities.
  7. Defend others who may be threatened by Trump even if they don’t look, think or believe like us. An attack on one is an attack on all.
  8. Organize online and in person with other Americans who understand the danger Trump poses and who are also willing to speak up.
  9. Hold members of Congress accountable for protecting our rights and democracy through elections and by making public demands of them now.
  10. And finally, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, have "malice toward none, with charity for all" and never ever lose hope!

Health Creation

Friday, December 2nd, 2016

The NHS Alliance’s 2016 Action Summit just occurred on December 1, 2016. It titled "In search of health creation: community by community". The subtitle read "None of us as smart than all of us" and I guess that I would have loved being there.

I discovered this Change Agents plot from this image embedded in a tweet:

Since the brits are often "borderline punks", I was not that astonished that they can write such things as Our mission is to infect the NHS with wellness. And what follows is rock’n'roll as well:


We’ve committed to address health inequalities through the concept and practice of Health Creation. Our mission is to infect the NHS with wellness.

We think Health Creation is the single most important driver to change our thinking around delivering health care. We want to press a cultural reset button, which will move us towards a health service that focuses on what keeps people well.

Our Summit on December 1 is all about being forward thinking. It’ll be highly interactive and focus on how we can achieve big change. If you’d like to attend – and be part of a new, determined movement, please get in touch with us at conference@nhsalliance.org.

The complete program is there… but it is unfortunately too late to attend to it.

Au large des Kerguelen

Thursday, December 1st, 2016

Superbe spectacle de deux Imoca à foils, Banque Populaire VIII (Armel Le Cléac’h) et Hugo Boss (Alex Thomson), lancés à plus de 20 nœuds en plein océan Indien et filmés depuis un hélicoptère de la Frégate Nivôse, dont la mission est d’assurer la souveraineté de l’état français au sein des TAAF (Terre Australe et Antarctiques Françaises).

Saisissant contraste entre un Armel Le Cléac’h toujours flegmatique et un Alex Thomson exhubérant, qui grimpe sur son cockpit pour aller débusquer l’Union Jack dont il a avoué qu’il rêve de le brandir en franchissant la ligne d’arrivée en vaiqueur.

Très intéressant également de voir la différence d’attitude des deux bateaux à une amure où le foil cassé d’Hugo Boss ne contribue pas à l’équilibre du bateau. Banque Populaire VIII navigue à plat sous grand-voile à un ris et J2 tandis Hugo Boss navigue plutôt gité sous deux ris, petit gennaker et trinquette.

On comprend mieux, sur ces images de mer formée, de temps gris et de vent fort le sentiment d’isolement des marins. Même Armel avouait lors d’une vacation "Il y a des moments où tout va bien à bord et d’autres où le moral est un petit peu plus bas, car il y a encore beaucoup de chemin à parcourir. J’essaie de ne pas trop y penser, de prendre les choses au jour le jour. Il faut prendre son rythme et essayer de tenir mentalement et physiquement avec la fatigue, le froid, le décalage horaire aussi. La route est longue et on n’est pas à l’abri de problèmes.".

Quant à Alex Thomson, qui a affirmé avant le départ "J’aime le Vendée Globe et la mer, mais surtout si je marche bien. Sinon, c’est plus sûr et plus confortable de passer 80 jours en prison. Cette course, c’est une violation des droits de l’homme !", il avoue dans cette vidéo que, dans ces latitudes "you definitely feel isolated".

Il s’était d’ailleurs épanché lors d’une vacation avec la direction de course : "Ici c’est un autre monde. C’est dans ces environs en 2007 lors de la Barcelona World Race que j’ai appris que mon père avait fait un infarctus. Je n’oublierai jamais le sentiment d’avoir été complètement inutile et isolé, et il était même difficile de téléphoner. Je me méfie de cet endroit. Ce n’est pas que je me sens seul. Il y a des centaines de milliers de gens qui me suivent. Je suis à une vingtaine de milles d’Armel. Ce n’est pas la solitude. Je me sens isolé, et non pas seul."

[Ajout au 2/12/2016] Réaction de Tanguy de Lamotte pour Tip & Shaft :


On voit de manière flagrante la différence dans la manière dont les bateaux sont menés : Alex est sur le côté où il n’a pas son foil (tribord), il est à l’attaque avec un plan de voilure qui démontre qu’il charge pour compenser, à savoir un petit gennak avec un J3 et deux ris dans la grand-voile. Privé de son foil, il n’a pas autant de couple de redressement donc son plan de voilure est assez bas avec un max de bâche, alors qu’Armel a un centre de voilure plus élevé parce qu’il a de l’appui avec son foil. On le voit un moment sous code zéro, après sous J2, c’est beaucoup plus conservateur comme plan de voilure. Les deux ont des styles très différents : Armel est hyper patient, il tente d’y aller à l’usure, tandis qu’Alex est un impulsif qui essaie d’être à fond quitte à aller taper dans les coins. Je suis hyper admiratif de son Vendée Globe, beaucoup de gens sont souvent assez dubitatifs sur sa manière de faire, je trouve que là, il fait une sacrée belle démonstration, il me surprend de façon positive.

Autre belle rencontre faite par la Frégate Nivôse, celle de Sébastien Josse :


css.php