Google, please!

Whatever one might think about using Google Drive in this times, there is another story to tell today, again.
If you have any interest in Open Source or Desktop alternatives to Win or Mac, you should join this petition.

More than a year ago Google has announced a Linux client for Drive, not only once.

Giant Google, what is your problem? Why are you so bad in customer response? You announced a Linux client is coming. But when? Why not tell us?

Google: your business model would not work without Linux, without Free Software. Why do you bite the hand that feeds you, the one that made you grow to world domination? Give us the respect we deserve. Give us a native Linux client for Drive. Thank You.

Consumers buy products, not a management structure

Not that a management structure is not important, steering a big ship needs some structure. But the structure is just one thing you need to keep a large group alive. Management structures tends to deal with themself, and managers tend to deal with themselves. The benefits of structual changes are overestimated.

 

It's the content, not the form that really counts.

Microsoft is a perfect example. It has had huge successes in the past. It still has strong market positions. It has billions of dollars. It seemed to be too big to fail. But in fact we can study a downward spiral in real time.

In germany we learned, that if our chancelor Angela Merkel says: "I stand fully behind my minister," it's time for him to go. In economics we learned that changing the management structure is the last thing the CEO does, before he has to go. 

So when we read about Ballmers desperate attempts after having missed to be a driver in  the last 3 big IT innovations (mobile, internet, cloud), we understand to well the unnamed Microsoft insider: "If this is all about an org chart and not how to build great products, it does not matter what org chart Ballmer presents. Consumers buy products, not a management structure."

It is as simple as it is true: Bye Steve! 

Follow the money!

Hey Startups! In case you want to follow the VC money here is the list of the Top 20 locations in the US. BTW: Silicon Valley dominance is over, now San Francisco is on top. And: the east coast comes closer, which is a good thing for european startups (at least the flight is much shorter;).

Ever heard of Provo-Orem? It's a small city in Utah, a bit more than 500,000 people live there. And guess what? They generate 168m/year VC capital. How much does  Berlin? I think there is no correlation of being a Partytown/Hip Place and the money which is raised. Sorry for that, Berlin, but you better focus on being an event park. The race is over, dont start to run now.

Top 20 Locations for Venture Capital Investment (taken from from theatlantic)
		Investments		Deals
Rank	Metropolitan Area (listed by core city)	Dollars (Millions)	Share of Total	Number	Share of Total
1	San Francisco-Oakland, CA	$6,896	25.6%	744	19.7%
2	San Jose-Sunnyvale, CA	$3,985	14.8%	415	11.0%
3	Boston, MA	$3,101	11.5%	408	10.8%
4	New York, NY	$2,269	8.4%	379	10.0%
5	Los Angeles, CA	$1,677	6.2%	232	6.1%
6	San Diego, CA	$1,134	4.2%	103	2.7%
7	Seattle, WA	$886	3.3%	112	3.0%
8	Austin, TX	$626	2.3%	87	2.3%
9	Chicago, IL	$547	2.0%	71	1.9%
10	Washington, DC	$484	1.8%	117	3.1%
11	Philadelphia, PA	$347	1.3%	105	2.8%
12	Denver, CO	$264	1.0%	53	1.4%
13	Atlanta, GA	$262	1.0%	53	1.4%
14	Boulder, CO	$256	1.0%	40	1.1%
15	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN	$256	0.9%	29	0.8%
16	Santa Barbara, CA	$251	0.9%	14	0.4%
17	Phoenix, AZ	$214	0.8%	15	0.4%
18	Raleigh-Cary, NC	$184	0.7%	28	0.7%
19	Pittsburgh, PA	$167	0.6%	76	2.0%
20	Provo-Orem, UT	$162	0.6%	14	0.4%

The power of community - in realtime

It is an astonishing impression to watch how free knowledge grows. Wikipedia edits (by anonymous, thus covering only 15% of all) on a realtime map. The message is clear: Community matters. It generates value - on Wikipedia, Open Streetmap and countless other projects.. Shared knowledge everywhere, thanks to millions of contributors. GNU/Linux, LibreOffice, Debian, Cyagenmod, Vlc, Python so many others to name. Today I just want to say:
Many thanks to all of you! We need you! Keep Contributing! May the source be with you!

How prism fosters free software

2 days ago I was participating at the google atmosphere event. Goal of the event is marketing for google's enterprise offers. No matter what the presentation was about, questions from the audience were always the same:

Do you offer a place for our data, where it is really save? 

The answer was, no surprise, always  the same too: " we always respect the law".

Being asked: which law? US law? EU law. Or even german law?, the answer was:

We respect all laws.

Funny, isn't it? No offence to google sales, that's the way they are briefed to deal with acceptance problems. Netherless this answer is, as we all know, absurd.
I personally thought that privacy issues would really not block enterprise adoption of cloud services. I thought, people will complain (like they do about facebook sometimes) but in the end they will accept and join. I have to admit I was wrong. They do not.

Is this the chance for european, national, regional clouds? As long they are hosted by non US companies it might be a little bit better. But this is academic as we dont see the real offers out there, which have the ability to compete with Google, Amazon. Microsoft.

The only chance, again, lies in Free Software. As soon as we have alternative software, we will have alternative solutions. Therefore it is a good idea for IT enterprises to invest in projects Open Stack, Cloud Stack and others. Let us gain knowledge and expertise, make them relieable, integrate the important features and robustness we need!

This will happen. Let it take years until it is really there and competitive (Yes, I know its there, but it's not competitive by now), but it will. In the end every single vendor stack will die. Prism speeds this up.

Business Model Generation

Business model generation sounds promising.Who would not like a generator which produces valid and working business models? Does that sound like entrepreneur's paradise? Yes, it does.

But don' t mix a business model with a business plan, which is ususally more like a fictional piece of literature, based on lots of hypothesis' described as facts and containing some cool charts. For this kind of literature generators are easy to provide But they do not create any business, just blabla and blingbling.

Alex Osterwalder defines a business model as " the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value." I like Alex' presentation style (and the the contents too). Especially when it is about two things which have my special attention: business models and innovation. Get it all in one presentation, which is really funny too, especially the part with the desperated record company guy, who has no idea how to face the download culture business threads. Enjoy!

The Game has changed

It sounds odd,  but startups and large companies have one thing in  common. It is this massive amount of bullshit talking when it comes to business. Let it be presentation slides or business plan creativity, it seems to be a system where lies a better honored than telling the truth.

1. Most companies are not customer driven, but pretend to be.
2. Most product features are obsolete.
3. Slides and spreadsheets do not generate money.  
4. ... i could continue for hours ...

I like the idea of talking about real things in business, and I like just telling the truth. In plain and simple words, not in a consultant style bullshit bingo way.

For this reason I like the lean startup ideas, I like pretotyping, in short any approach which involves the customer instead of just guessing.

Terms like MVP (Minimal viable product) or pretotyping show us that there is a new business style establishing out there. Let's hope that it will reach even the bigger companies which might take the chance to learn and stop their managers mixing constantly the terms hypothesis and truth.