Crank That Beijing

I know it’s old, but it has to be done in Beijing.

On The Great Wall of China.

In front of National Stadium.

In front of National Aquatics Center.

And on the security monitor at the Huixinxijie Nankou station.
I hope that guy staring at me wasn’t the Chinese Secret Service.

For reference, check out the HOWTO, Dwight Howard style, MIT style, Filipino Prison style, more stuffs on YouTube.

Quotes From 37signals Rework

Pictured above is my copy of Rework. The photo was taken by Latte Girl at the State Library of Victoria.

If there’s ever going to be anyone changing the way we work and the way we run a business, then I’ll bet my money on the 37signals guys. Rework is one book I’d suggest everyone to read (unless you’re filthy rich and never have to work). I see Rework as the agile movement for the broader working industry. There are so many practices that are just brain-dead-absolute-must pick ups. The challenge out of this will be on the natural fact that people are uncomfortable with change, even when the change is for the better.

I finished reading Rework several months ago, and as usual, I kept a list of my favourite lines from the book. 37signals (via Jason Fried) kindly gave me permission to share those lines on my blog, so here they are:

Cover – What you need to do is stop talking and start working.

Ignore the real world

p14 – The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Failure is not a rite of passage

p17 – Success is the experience that actually counts.

Work work work work work

p25 – They (the workaholics) try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.

Be a starter

p28 – You just need an idea, a touch of confidence, and a push to get started.

Make a dent in the universe

p31 – Don’t sit around and wait for someone else to make the change you want to see.

Scratch of your own itch

p34 – The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use.

Start

p38 – The most important thing is to begin.
p38 – The real question is how well you execute.

Not an excuse!

p40 – The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough.

Startup

p57 – Actual businesses worry about profit from day one.

You need a commitment strategy not an exit strategy

p59 – You should be thinking about how to make your project grow and succeed, not how you’re going to jump ship.

Less is a good thing

p68 – So before you sing the “not enough” blues, see how far you can get with what you have.

Basics

p74 – Nail the basics first and worry about the specifics later.
p75 – Details just don’t buy you anything in the early stages.

Decisions are progress

p77 – Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.
p78 – Don’t make things worse by overanalysing and delaying before you even get going.

Get it out there

p93-94 – So we used the time before launch to solve more urgent problems that actually mattered on day one. Day 30 could wait.
p94 – … the best way to get there is through iterations. Stop imagining what’s going to work. Find out for real.

Pour yourself into your product

p139 – Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too: how you sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you deliver it. Competitors can never copy the you in your product.

Focus on you instead of they

p149 – It’s not a win-or-lose battle. Their profits and costs are their. Yours are yours.

Let your customers outgrow you

p157 – Scaring away new customers is worse than losing old customers.

Don’t out-spend, out-teach

p173 – Buying people’s attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They’ll trust you more. They’ll respect you more.

Fake fake fake

p183 – It’s OK if it’s not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

Everything is marketing

p193 – Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

Pass on great people

p206 – Great has nothing to do with it. If you don’t need someone, you don’t need someone.

What does 5 years experience mean anyway?

p213 – How long someone’s been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.

Hire managers of 1

p220 – Managers of one are people who come up with their own goals and execute them. … How can you spot these people? … They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.

Hire the better writer

p222 – Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.

Everyone on the front lines

p242 – It’s feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating.

Culture is the by-product of consistent behaviour

p249 – You can’t install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you’ve got to give it time to develop.

Decisions are temporary

p251 – Optimize for now and worry about the future later.

Build a rockstar environment

p253 – Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work.

Send people home at five

p 258 – You want busy people. People who have a life outside of work. People who care about more than one thing. You shouldn’t expect the job to be someone’s entire life – at least not if you want to keep them around for a long time.

Inspiration expires now

p271 – Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you.

As I read through the book, I couldn’t stop relating each chapter with my own experience working in the industry for the past 9 years. And here’s hoping the next 9 years will be more rework-able.

My Take On People’s Takes On Google’s QR Code Push

So Google made a big push for QR Code usage in the US by sending window decals containing QR Code links to their top 100,000 business listings (via Favorite Places). This effort was covered by TechCrunch (TC) and Mobile Marketing Watch (MMW) among many other tech blogs / news sites out there. For the most part of the articles, they were only a rehash of Google’s original blog post, while the rest contained some original opinions from the authors, and this, along with some short sighted comments, was the part that bugged me.

Let’s start with a paragraph from TC article

Local businesses can also set up coupon offers through their Google directory page, which would turn the QR code into a mobile coupon, and help entice someone standing outside a store to come in: “If you found us on Google, you get 20% off.”

MMW not only copied exactly the same paragraph, but also added

This is where the true benefit lies.

And my take is… Coupon only benefits if you want to attract potential customers not standing outside a store, e.g. if you do a Google search and you find the Google directory page along with a coupon from the said business. On the other hand, if you do want to attract someone nearby your store, surely a large 20% discount or a SALE sign will do a better job than a garble of black and white dots inside a square.

I think the true benefits of having those QR Codes placed on the door of your restaurant/store are

1. To convince the potential customers to use your business by exposing them to positive reviews and ratings.
   This is why Google only sent the window decals to their top listings, businesses having negative reviews might not be so keen.
2. To increase the possibility of those (potential) customers revisiting your business by providing them with the address, map, and contact details.
   This replaces the traditional role of business cards.

Both points are nothing new, they already exist all along with print media (brochures, business cards) and human interaction (conversation, words of mouth). Brochures and business cards will eventually run out and there’s a limit to the number of people you can reach by talking directly to the person. So you move those content online, in this case as a Google business listing. And what is the easiest way to link you and those online content? QR Code! QR Code is the simplest mechanism to retrieve those content (point and click) and to keep the content with you (as a url bookmark on your mobile phone).