I finally had some time tonight to update the website and add all the stuff that I had been meaning to. First of all, a big thanks to the guys at Site5 for a wonderful free WordPress 3 theme which I was able to work on top of.

So basically, three new pages to the website:

• Marketing and Management Portfolio – stuff which I’ve done related to marketing, management and business development.
• Web Development Portfolio – mostly technical stuff that I’ve worked on.
• Publications – books and articles that I worked on.

When someone screws up, we tend to always feel better when that person says, “Mea culpa”. A simple, “Yup my bad.” is good enough to diffuse most situations. I’ve worked in a number of companies now where I’ve seen major major screw ups happen. Products get released that are overpriced. Products don’t perform well in the market. Companies get acquired and the products are put on the backburner. I’ve seen a lot of stuff which has angered customers and driven employees to resign out of frustration.

In every single one of those cases, the company has always put face value over customer value. Rather than saying, “Yup…we screwed up. Sorry.” the company tries to cover everything up. Products that are failures aren’t fixed or end-of-life’d. Products that are priced incorrectly aren’t corrected. Products that are no longer a core part of strategy (due to acquisitions, or other circumstances) aren’t end-of-life’d or planned to merge with other product lines.  In almost all these cases, I’ve seen the wayward product(s) continued for years on a shoestring with almost no resources, still booking sales, angering customers and de-motivating staff.

Google is a fine example of a company that admits its mistakes and sorts them out. Today, Google announced that Google Wave has been end of life’d.

“… despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.” Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

This is not unlike the also obitted Google Lively project, which was Google’s alternative to Second Life.

“Lively was a network of avatars and virtual rooms created and decorated by its users. Google launched Lively on July 8, 2008 as an experiment in providing people with more ways to express themselves on the Web.

Lively’s users created thousands of cafes, bars, discos, tropical islands, treehouses, space stations, galleries, bedrooms and more. Lively’s users shared their rooms with people from all over the real world, meeting and chatting with each other via their customized avatars.

The experiment ended December 31, 2008.”

It’s actually very cool that Google actually admits mistakes and moves on. It’s healthy for its employees, and its customers. Employees who worked on the project can move on to the next thing, rather than get told lies by management that their project is important (when it’s dead), and asked to continue working on a project that few people care about. Customers can also move on, rather than get told lies by the company that they are still developing and developing and supporting the product — with shoestring staff who aren’t motivated at all about the product.

Companies (in fact, all of us) can learn a lesson or two from Google on this. If you screw up, say so, and move on.

Here’s a great new ad by Pedigree for its line of dog food. I want to point out that from a marketing angle, the ad is very very good.

The marketing message that is communicated through the video is that “dogs love Pedigree”. It is wonderfully communicated through the commercial without a word ever being said or spelled out. Dogs flying in the air slow motion, catching their treat and smacking their lips? Just about perfect in my books!

According to the YouTube comments, it may be a knock off of a film by Pleix called ‘Birds’. Nevertheless….very effective.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Cologne, Germany for the Game Developers Conference and Gamescom conventions. When I arrived in Cologne, I was greeted by an amazing, towering cathedral larger than any historical building that I’ve ever seen.

Look at the photo above (I didn’t take this btw, I swiped it off Wikipedia as I didn’t bring a camera with me). Check out how small the people are in relation to the cathedral. That’s just insane.

The story goes that the Dom commenced construction in 1248 and stopped in 1473, then commenced again in 1842 and was completed in 1880. The structure is beautiful, made of solid stone and carved to perfection. There is so much detail as you walk up to the walls to check out the intricacies of its exterior.

As I walked into the interior, I couldn’t believe it. It looked like a matte painting from a movie. This was not something that I was expecting to see in real life.

The Dom was built in an era where they had no computers and no power machinery. Granted, they probably had lot’s of slaves or peasants who worked their entire lives on the Dom without much to survive on. But my point is that they somehow managed to build this structure without all the technological wizardry that we have today.

Today, our construction methods involve using a lot of CAD, BIM and software to design and visualize the construction project before it gets built. Dom had none of that. In fact, I learned from a colleague that the Dom is technically not supposed to be standing. Apparently, if you put the Dom into a software simulation, it should actually fall down!

Construction-wise, the Dom is literally rock solid. I’m just amazed at how much stone they moved, cut and put into place! This was all done by hand with no powertools, heavy machinery and powercranes to haul up the materials.

I can’t help but make comparisons. Here is a structure that was built hundreds of years ago, without the aid of technology. Not only is it more beautiful than most of the concrete monstrosities that we create today, it’s still standing strong and not falling down any time soon! Compare that with the structures in Montreal which are all crumbling to pieces after only a few years!