Various talented artists with work of art - paintings, sketches, handicrafts, jewelery, patch-works and independent T-Shirt designers, every Saturday and Sunday at The Podium, Menara Hap Seng, KL. Enjoy!

My busineses friends always told me that the people working for them are their greatest assets. If you do a search, I bet you can find lot of companies here are including this in their corporate mission too. But how many of them are practicing this, in heart?

IKEA know how to make good use of free empty advertising space, and the real way of valuing their team members!

Yet, businesses who want to focus on their business may not mind to pay few hundred dollars to get someone or their web hosting company to do this for them. Therefore, signing up a WordPress hosting that promise timely upgrade on new release of WordPress is important!

Multiple Blogs in single installation

Steve Jobs said he never listens to people. People would have said they want a faster horse (Henry Ford). Companies do it more as gestures, more than mining people for their ideas.

Lot of time, people don’t know what they want until you have get put the final product in front of them! If Akio Morita listen to their customers, we will never get the Walkman today.

Why? Steve and Akio Morita doesn’t spend time to study their users, because they themselves are already the best user experience expert!

When asked why iTunes works? Steve explained that illegal download through is free but taking some time to find the right song. iTunes, provides a better User Experience and you are assured with song quality and reliability. We can’t talk someone to stop downloading songs illegally, but we can give you Carrot. “Our carrot is, better User Experience… and that will cost you USD1 only,” said Steve.

Recently, we are revamping our travel guidebook. It is not rocket science or any marketing research on age-group of our travelers, or any ‘convenient’ information to fill in the guidebook - it is User Experience, to spent less than 3USD before the trip.

“I want a ‘car’!,” said Pin

Some other reading on User Experience:
How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
Upload your picture to complete order?
What is the word?

My partner, Yowchuan was one of the few entrepreneurs invited to MMU’s Centre for Commercialization and Technopreneur Development (CCTD) 8 years ago. Through it was merely a 300 sqf of space, but was already big enough for our dream to wonder far. Having the first office there, we never look back again.

If I’m not wrong, there are few incubators in Malaysia, check out the full list of MSC Malaysia status incubators. Looking back, some incubators are just like another MSC, both work like The Real Estate Corridor.

Not only this, some trying to confuse our technopreneur to make them believe that all big dream need some big funding. Yet, at many times, they can’t even tell you if your business model is right? You spent lot of your time attending entrepreneur-related talk and meet up with those ’successful’ businessman who shows you where they are now, but not how to get there!

Working with my interns over the years, I believe we have talented graduates for sure. They are lacking of confident, instead of funding and cubicle space. Talking about this, schools should actually allow them to pursue their dream as early as during their final year project stage, than working on those impractical project to look good in GPA/CPA. If they start earlier, they save more time and prepare themselves better before graduating!

What entrepreneurs want?

The physical space of where they work is never bigger than their dream. When you’re the only one to go off the beaten road after graduating, you need more than the incubator to realize your dream!

Long Way Home of a Web Developer
Decide Your Business Model Today!
Classified Companies
Google’s Web Design Company

To have a recurring revenue for a business is kinda important. Same goes to empty vases in your office. We are lucky enough to have Ammie to refill it for us just when our first two roses quit.

Who says flower arrangement is easy? There are few things to make this works (ignore the girl in the picture). Ammie added a lily and match it with two beautiful roses. Some addictive (Flower food?) was added to make them stay alert for few more days in your office.

8 roses with lilies in vase. This was placed in the meeting room - order one for your office today! It makes some changes, without pain! :)

5 Reasons Why You Should Send Flowers in a Vase
What is Guardian Petals?

I used to think of how those amazing company still indulged themselves in their own sweet dream of having many years of existence, in decades. It doesn’t take Friendster or WordPress long to become successful. If you need a more solid example, check out Google.

I was talking to one of the biggest property developer in Malaysia recently, over the revamp of their website. This is the second revamp after 4 years time, and I expect them to have clearer understanding on the importance of what to achieve now. Change is pain, and when every web developers walk in and tell you the same thing about mockup, fancy flash animation, they have finally chosen to measure something unmeasurable - branding.

They have chosen Leo Burnett, one of the famous creative company. I’m not sure how much opportunity cost will be lost to this property developer after visiting Leo Burnett’s website. My mouse turned into a big pencil, to match with their tag line ‘All big ideas come out from big pencil’. What has this to do with me? The website is in ALL-Flash version. The navigation does not impress me at all (perhaps, to the group’s decision maker, yes).

Creative agencies are in the market for many years, long before any web design company. In those days, TV, Radio and other non-online media are the main advertising channel. Over the years, creative agencies are moving into the online channel and this directly put themselves as the role of web developers, without knowing what and how website can really help - another example of Meatball Sundae.

It is not that you are big and the golden words ’starting since 18xx’..’ that makes you outstanding. It is about change!

Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple.

This is unfamiliar territory for Nokia, which got its start in the mid-1800s as a paper maker. But as Mr. Ojanpera explained, companies like his have no choice. “Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be successful,” said Mr. Ojanpera, who is based in White Plains. “The question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”

Further Reading: Criteria for selecting good web developer

(I’ve talked to another lawyer today, it seems life of a lawyer is always busy. A lawyer works like a web designer. It’s a project after project lifestyles. Who says lawyer can’t change their business model and apply their experience, skills and knowledge into something that can benefit them in a recurring way, without much noise.)

Just like Michelin (yes, the famous tyre manufacturer) with its annual guide books ‘The Michelin Guide‘, Mercedes-Benz also has their tradition of presenting ten handpicked tracks by international newcomers as a free download compilation called Mixed Tape.

What is Mixed Tape to do with Automotive giant? Just like every successful online business has their story, I believe Mixed Tape is the story of offline business… :)

What’s next? I asked myself after we switch to 4 day work week last week.

My Glande Latte reminds me something. It’s possible to move an office to Starbucks? Occupying a corner with glass partition, from walk-in customer. This fixed and dedicated location with private LAN/WIFI - sounds like a reality show :)

“Starbucks in Malaysia is jointly owned by Starbucks Coffee International and Berjaya Group Berhad. The first Starbucks retail store in Malaysia was opened in KL Plaza since 1998. Today, we have 109 stores through out Malaysia.”

If this is possible, what would be the values of story to Starbucks and that company?

Just received a quick email from Karen, inviting us to check out the pictures taken during her recent trip to Cameron Highland. Cosmic Favorite, I never get it right to be frank, but I can never forget those amazing pictures in it. Must ask Karen why use this name next time? :)

I love the way how Karen compose each picture. I been to some of the places visited by Karen, you will be surprised how great photographer see from different angles. I particularly like those Black and White pictures!

I got myself two roses and a small beautiful vase from IKEA today, thinking of brighten no-one’s day, but to make the meeting room a nicer place than just discussion. The simple two roses arrangement is sure to leave a lasting impression.

Imported roses from China. Cost RM2 each. Certainly, they are not the best roses, compared to those super-grade-A roses from Ammie last two weeks.

The vase is small, and you need one or two roses.

The vase cost RM3. Suits small office table. I’m sure you would love to have one on your desk. See, vase bouquet means you can share it and look at it while you work, I bet you will like it far more than a hand bouquet!

Arrange the roses in this simple arrangement, it helps you to mark the cutting point.

Mark the cutting point with maker pen. If you can skip this if you are a Pro :)

Cut the unwanted stern off

Remove guard petals.

Fill in the water, about half of the vase.

Working for others

Our graduates love this for sure, climbing corporate ladder. The higher you’re, the lower risk you can take. Is this comfort zone a permanent one, I doubt!

Yet, if not this, what else? It’s a highway. You are told it is fastest, closest and the most comfortable one. Except one thing, the high price to pay. Your parents, lecturers, buddies and our society shape this road and you are just following, what’s wrong with it?

Graduate, find a good job, get your first pay check, buy your first car and follow by a house. Pay your loans and when you’ve little money in your bank - almost the time to get married. Sounds familiar? Indeed, it is just another NKVE.

Start your own business - Type A

I always believe everyone has their own dream. I interviewed some, digging from their memory deep inside and yes - from cycling to setting up bakery. Many of these dreams are buried, less important than getting higher GPA and busy fighting to secure the best job in the most ‘well-known’ company with highest salary.

Only few of them, make the hard decision to roam the trunk road than going straight to the highway. It isn’t easy at all. You have spent your crucial 3 or 4 years in University, learning how to complete your final year project without a business model, without knowing how to market it, managing people, applying your MSC…

What’s Type A? Type A entrepreneurs, through not working for others, but decide to venture into business model that providing customized service, such as web design. They accumulate skills and experience, but sadly to say, this is a dead-end business model after 3 to 5 years. You find yourself getting busier, having lot of noise, probably a bigger team but also mean you have to make sure projects keep coming in every month, in time!

Start your own business - Type B

Type B entrepreneurs decide to start their own project. This can be, for example an online florist selling just roses. It starts small and no one sure how far this can go. This single project get 100% attention from the founder.

Put it this way, Type A’s business is to setup and take care of a garden for someone. It is an example of outsource. Type A, at the same time, taking care of more other gardens.

Type B, setup his own garden and plant just one tree in the garden. It is nothing but the tree. All focus, resources, time are investing into it.

Let’s fast forward to 5 years later. All trees in both garden yield fruits, but who owns it? In fact, the owner of the garden managed by Type A, are type B too. Type B has more time to think to grow his business while Type A busy managing garden after garden.

By the way, do you know who are those working in the garden, climbing up to the tree? You’re right, those in ‘Working-for-others’ with good climbing skills after years of training :)

If you are graduating soon, can I talk to you?

I was talking to my friend who worked in a Classified company. His company is into producing an inche thick printed classified and distributed free to businesses. The revenue model is simple, to get more companies to advertise, the better. You can choose from point form listing to full-page color advertisement, as long as you can pay for it.

We both agreed that this industries won’t last long. My friend estimating it would last for another 10 years and will start to go down. Why?

1. Customers are getting smarter now. See, you can’t pay Google for a clean high listing, but you can do it in Classified. Google use several method to find out the most useful and popular website and list them high, in a more technical term, PageRank. Yet, Classified companies spent more time to recruit more sales rep to sell more ads than focusing in improving their Classified.

2. It wasn’t hany. Printed classifed is thick and heavy. It requires you to go through the whole Klang Valley to find one Plumber who is near your house. Search engines solved this problem, presenting you with a weight-less solution, as long as you are connected. You get information you need, most targetted and updated.

3. There are too many medias now. Google will not be as successful if they start their company as one that sell and allow people to subscribe to their pay per click model. See, you need a story, a story that is truly benefiting your visitors.

At least there are few things Classified companies can do to improve this

Colored and box listing are free for those who deserve it, those with lot of good testimonials, those offering responsible customer support service. Companies who advertised should somehow find a way to prove their are qualified for a listing of their rank. In fact, all listing should be free!

Then, how to keep this Classified company survive if not selling advertisement? I don’t know actually, it can be many ways. Think about how to make your product useful to your customers and the readers of the Classified. Who knows, one day, the revenue could be from the selling of the Classified? Subscription fee? Adsense?

If you’re sure what will happen in the 10 years time, why not change today? Afraid of short-term pains?

Group A: Hair stylists, web developers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, teacher, contractor, media planner, photographer, graphic designer…

(Group A’s customers want a customize solution. The solution is unique to each of them. Skill of Group A improved but limited to the person who is offering the service. The value of that person who offer the solution increases)

Group B: Online florist, broadband service provider, medical supplier, Google, Jobstreet, housing developers, scientist…

(Group B come out with their solution first. They customers made their decision to choose or reject the solution. The solution itself get improved and the values of the solution increases.)

Decide today! You don’t have many 5 or 10 years to change your business model!

Share with us your experience, post it here

2. No verbal agreement. When putting it to words, you’ll find it more serious. I’d agree that it was not easy to put everything into writing, especially things like expectation. There must be certain kind of measurement. If there is no, how would you be able to value the performance of someone? The harder it is, the more important an agreement to be signed.

3. Agreement must be offer-to-offer. This means, it supposes to sound ‘you are getting xxx% of share for xxx amount of work done’ or ‘I will work xxx amount of work to get xxx% of share’. I found this missing in most of Chinaman’s ageement, it’s more like a offer-to-accept or accept-to-offer. I blame ‘儒家思想‘ on this matter!

Looking back - 10 years, from one project to another, we have completed countless project for our customers, big and small. I’m glad we did. Through I found them to certain extend becoming noise, but noise is good.

We was once occupied by web design projects. We spent most of our time solving problems for our customers. It keeps us really busy. To cope with it, we get more staff. And when we realize we have more mouth to feed every month, we struggle to get more projects. This can be done only if your team never fall sick, your sales persons close deal timely, your designer produce the same good quality on every project, you have same less-fussy customers every time…

While your customers happily passing all the noises to you in their so-called outsource process, you are scratching your head to manage unnecessary noise over and over. You engage more staff than automating the process, you use your time to help your customers grow than your own.

Not only this, you find the red ocean spreading across in front of you. Web design firms fighting each other from getting drown. You try to find out why customers pay little on their website, when you think you should deserve more? You’re no longer satisfied been paid of your time spent, instead of values created.

Never underestimate your values. We can create wonders if we start something today, together.

When asked why? This is definitely not another be-the-first kind of Malaysia Boleh campaign. It’s also not the Meatball Sundae like what Seth’s said in this book.

The change just happened. I can remember this suggestion was raised last year. We find no solid answers to how are we going to handle calls coming in on Friday, how our team members are able to check their email when they are not in the office, how to access the file servers without a VPN - We are not ready!

Again, change is pain but we are not afraid of it. Yet, to take every measure to make sure all our customers & team members will be benefited from this process.

I must admit that I’m the fan of National Geographic magazine. My earlier NI collection mainly on those featuring animals. Well, everything changed when I am getting older (older, serious…), I’d love to read more on places and people with different cultures. It was no more Savana lion’s picture with teeth dig into a wild buffalo’s back that attracted me now :)

I usually bought those outdated NI magazines, most of them dated 1980 - 2000, cost about RM8 each. I would consider them my little weekend retreat, besides cycling! Then it comes, last weekend. I was in Cineleisure looking for a gift for Shirley, our Langkawi writer. You won’t believe the number of NI magazines spread in 4 10-metre long table, full of them. They are really old magaizines, anything between 192x to 193x. You name it!

I picked one - an oldest I can find there! It wasn’t RM8 each, but RM80!

One of the reason I have decided to buy one, is to find out how advertisement looks like in those days. Here, some of the interesting advertisement I wish to share,

In the dead of night? Who would has think of that this is an advertisment from Bell Company. Yes, the one who invented Telephone. I couldn’t find any telephone numbers in all advertisements, perhaps this explains telephone still remains as for emergency use only.

New joys for Radio - What happen if they have an IPOP?

Colgate, still a dental cream

Sedan for $1,075??

Camera?

Modern bathroon has a shower?

To answer your question, yes, there are people who speak Latin, but we are few, possibly numbering in the low thousands. Many more know it as a written language, a few hundred thousand fluent readers worldwide. Millions of current and former students, again worldwide. All of us speak another language as our mother tongue. It’s a fabulous equalizer that way: no one is speaking their mother tongue at a spoken Latin conference.

Spanish on the other hand is one of the most spoken languages on Earth. Hundreds of millions of native speakers in dozens of countries. Even more as a second language. The confusion between Latin and Spanish arises because the part of the Americas where Spanish is spoken is usually called Latin America.

Thanks to Peter Sipes. In his recent talk to our team member Eunice, we have finally got a clearer view of how to make our website even more localize for all.

“Changing the water for the roses is becoming the very first thing we wanted to do before we start our daily morning meeting. Never we know this little change bring so much difference!” Said Pin

“Also, thanks Ammie for the lovely roses. They really light up our day!” Said Wanching

5 Reasons you should order one for your office:
- 8 freshly choosen grade A roses by Le Fiores florist
- Beautiful IKEA vase carefully wrapped in box
- Eco friendly, ready to put into vase
- Free delivery within Klang Valley
- Quick design guide from Ammie

To order, email ammie@lefiores.com with your company name, address and contact numbers. The flowers will be delivered to you in less than 3 working days and please write your check payable to Chua Sok Wei with amount RM80. Check will be collected on delivery. No-question-asked refund policy. Please download the invoice here.

In sweden, online buyers are so used to getting the product first before paying. Well, most of their e-commerce websites support two payment options, Faktura and credit card. Faktura remains as the preferred one where the owners value the return rights of their customer more than anything. Invoices are sent together with the products. Buyers will have to just pay the invoice through their local bank account.

Another thing I might it interesting is the introduction of additional fee for a greener-packaging method. Yes, paying extra to have the website owner wrap your product in a more eco-friendly way. It costs 10 kr extra, but makes huge difference. So, opt in for MILJO next time :)

Thanks to Jian for sharing this. Jian just returned from Sweden, he was sent there to do research on how Nordic countries run their online business sustainable environmental…

I found this interesting post from SlowCatchUpKuan in her post on this small pitiful little stray dog. Read more.

I found this particularly interesting. Is that chooing priority ‘Low’ also means I will get my responce slower? If everyone goes for priority ‘High’, then why bother to ask?

This reminds me the one of a song from Shakira, Illegal - “question my own questions on and on..”

It takes you 2-minutes to listen to a real customer about how should the form looks like. I bet almost all customers will prefer a simple one than above.

1. Instruction kills creativity, makes people think less. The person who built this form is probably just want to get work done than how this form can help those who use it.

2. Change is pain. The original paper-based form could look exactly like this online form. Why bother to change it?

3. Users are passive. The form is viewed by countless visitors, yet no change has been done. Design of a building is done first than its construction. When the building is done, it is often too late to change, and suggestions are limited to what is already there.

But after a while, you start to think why the result was not as expected. Your cost acquiring new visitors is high, the Blog is not active, no one seems to use the tell-a-friend box in your website…

But, someone next door - without any experience in selling books, started an online book store. They have some funny story and people are spreading the news for them, their CEO can be reached anytime by an email, the way they reply the customer support email is fun.

Start an online business, never extend it from a conventional one!

With Internet flatten the world, you can now take an order from your website without meeting your customer. They are required to fill in a boring and long order form (all the way from first name to where they stay).

You have them all kept in a customer database. A literate society comes to believe that everything can be explained in words. What you’ve just seen is an example of how great a fallacy that is.

I bet the name of customer means nothing to you, especially if you have thousand of orders a day. They are just another must-have record in your customer database, because all online forms are designed the same!

I’m surprised! Most of us only add a friend from Meetic when a picture was attached with a profile, same goes to facebook and frienster! Same goes to the fact that you will never fall in love with someone by just their name!

I wish I don’t have to fill in anything while making an order. Instead, just to upload my picture, why not? At least, I don’t become ‘another record’ in the database, but becoming a friend to the online store owner.

A customer database made up of faces, indexed by nick name! I would love to have this!

When it comes to annual event, what is the best domain to be used? By including the year 2008 after the domain (yes, someone may already registered wcit.com), it is therefore a must to register a new name wcit2009 next year. New domain means you have to start all over again and build your ranking in search engine again! To solve this, if you are using a Blog, you can create categories like 2007, 2008, 2009, etc and assign your post respectively.

What is the most memorable experience?

A nice framed picture, from Henny, Jingkai and Alex!

Do you feel that you are sacrificing a lot when training the students?

We may be spending about couple hours for their training, but they are spending their eight hours here, finding a temporarily stay for just three months, get here by bus.. you realize it is unfair if they can’t learn anything here.

Say you buy a camera with 1 year warranty. The serial number doesn’t hold the date of your actual purchase. That is why, you are asked to send back the Warranty card, which most of us never do.

It is unfair to say that manufacturer do not wish to get the actual purchase date. If they do, they won’t include the Postal-paid thingy on the card. So, where goes wrong?

No one say you must follow the long-winded template of warranty-card design. Make the change!