I'm an Australian, based in the Washington, DC, area of the United States. I spend a lot of time there with Jasmine, Australia's best-known speedsolver of the Rubik's Cube. Prior to the US, Jasmine and I were based in London, UK. We have also lived previously in the United States and Australia.

I have worked for an Australian business rules and compliance company since 1999 in Australia, the US and the UK. I have also lectured in IT and Law related topics at King's College, London, and at The Australian National University.

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- February 2007
- January 2007
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These are a few of my favourite links:
- Jasmine's site
- Jasmine's blog
- Mikal
- Daveydweeb
- Beth
- Lyn
- Doug
- Marissa
- Lisaloha
- David (Greenomics)
- Paul's Ramblings (music)

Hits since 1 Sep 2004

[/Business] permanent link

"Almost a home run" doesn't count

I have been working in business development-related areas for a number of years now. I don't know how many times I have met people from companies who have "just about" sewn up a major deal, which "will" make their company huge.

Seth Godin has an interesting post on this topic. He refers to a conversation where:

Just got a phone call from someone in the UK. He was in Buffalo, NY, excited to share the news about a meeting he just left. This was the beginning of his breakthrough, he said. 400 stores around the country would be carrying his new product (up from zero). It was (about to be) a home run.

The problem is that these deals often don't work out. Every company wants a huge deal to make growth easy... but in fact, these are hard work and quite frustrating to pursue. Godin points out the importance of smaller, but more frequent, deals which he refers to as "singles" (to continue the baseball analogy):

Singles are less thrilling and require way too much work, but they build on each other. Over time, if you grow by 10 or 15% every week or month, you grow, reliably. And that steady growth transforms into every faster growth.

This reminds me of an interesting article which was run in The Register about a week ago. The Register reported that Intel was not the only candidate to supply chips for new Apple models. It points to PA Semi as another candidate:

PA Semi -- a maker of low-power Power processors -- formed a tight relationship with Apple -- one meant to result in it delivering chips for Apple's notebook line and possibly desktops. The two companies shared software engineering work, trying to see how Apple's applications could be ported onto PA Semi's silicon. When word leaked out that Apple had signed on with Intel, it shocked the PA Semi staff, according to multiple sources.

"PA Semi was counting on that deal," said one source. "They had lots of guys walking around in a daze when Apple went to Intel. They had no idea that would actually happen."

For people working in marketing and sales in growing high-tech companies, this type of situation is incredibly frustrating -- particularly if the potential deal means more to them than it would to the customer. But I guess that is also why work in these companies can be so rewarding, as it's pretty satisfying when the big deals come through!

[/Cyberspace] permanent link

The 25 worst tech products of all time

PC World has published a cool list of the 25 worst tech products of all time.

(Via Slashdot)

[/Australia] permanent link

The Australian energy debate... and let's all drive nuclear-powered cars!

David has interesting posts on his site about the Australian debates over wind and nuclear power (you may need to scroll down a little). I had never realised until very recently how controversial wind power is!

Meanwhile, I read last weekend that Ford worked on a nuclear-powered concept car, the Nucleon, in the 1950s. Wikipedia has a photo of the mock-up vehicle, and it is good to see the passenger compartment separated from the reactor for safety reasons... but you would spill a lot more than oil on the road if you had a serious accident!