42233.nl

Hello! Some info here.

Although this website is not even completely filled, I am likely to move it soon to a new domain. This will either be www.emielsondag.com or www.emielsondag.nl. I’m not yet sure. Also, I haven’t filled in my ‘about’ page (or any other page for that matter) yet, I collected a few links here. I haven’t been really busy with this site lately, sorry about that. There are couple of blogs in the works tho. For now here are some urls:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/utopist
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/emielsondag
Twitter: www.twitter.com/utoopist
And for all services look here: www.eee.am/utopist.

Thanks for visiting!

I failed Project52

Well there we have it. I failed Project52! Project52 was a cool initiative that was started to generate more content and I get to get a stick behind the door of keeping up a blog.

I could come up with many excuses like; I was too busy working on my thesis, I was uninspired, I had writers block etc. And I think I just used these excuses. I’m still a bit saddened by the fact that I failed it, but it did teach me a good lesson. And that lesson was that it is possible to keep up a blog, and that it is actually pretty fun to write and not scary at all. However, not all content is great content and I think I will put more effort in writing and content next time. And if this takes me longer than a week or 2, than that’s just fine.

On a sidenote; I am still working on this website and hope to update it some more soon.

Cheers, your faithful, not very well disciplined at writing friend,

Emiel Sondag

Today, I killed off my Hyves account.

Killed it until it was dead. And it felt … like nothing special. And that might also be one of the reasons I left. Because it offers nothing special at this moment to me. But some of my friends lately also deleted theirs, might’ve also weighed in. (And hey, I’m a sucker for beer ;-) )

KIll Hyves for beer!

But if it doesn’t add anything why delete it? Good question. Maybe it is because I don’t want to be associated with Hyves anymore. Been there bought and wore the T-shirt, time for a nice shirt. Hyves always annoyed me for it’s lack of usability and functionality. Every time they copy a function from other social networking sites, they seem to do a very poor job at it. Since I’ve used Hyves, nothing that really mattered come from it. Oh, payments via Hyves? Big whoop. A feature that I would never use. The interesting thing to see is that more and more people are leaving this social network. Since I’ve stopped using Hyves, about a year ago, about 15% of the contacts I had deleted their account. That is pretty substantial. I wonder what their real numbers are since I can only speak from what I have seen.

Hyves used to be that thing where you just gotta be on. Now it’s Facebook. And I do prefer Facebook so much more. At least things work there, and they are being innovative. I have more control over what I want people to see (Say what? Yes. I have more control over my information on Facebook) and more importantly, My international contacts have Facebook. Not Hyves.

Okay, okay, they are planning to be the internet and the hub for.. well all your online activities. This does worry me a bit, but we also need to look at the future. And if that future at this moment is Geo Location Based Networking, I can’t blame Zuckerberg for wanting a piece of it.

Maybe the next big thing will be Diaspora. An initiative by couple of graduate students who raised $100.000 in matter of days to start a Privacy friendly Facebook alternative. (And I am looking forward to that, since I hate monopolized markets, they scare me). Maybe in 2 years I’ll go “Hey I killed my Facebook today! And it was a tedious process I must add!”

All in all I am glad I re-evaluated me being on Hyves. It’s not a big deal, just a trend. :)

UsaFAILity.

Part I: An open letter to PayPal.

Lately it seems everything needs to be overly complicated. This is quite the understatement, because some things, to me are just mind-blowingly broken to begin with. Why do we feel the need to design broken processes?

I use basically everything in English, I just prefer English. It’s not “BetaalVriend”, “eBaai” or “NederNet” but “PayPal”, “eBay” and “Internet”. English. It was in English to begin with and literal translations are root of all evil. It’s what wrong with all countries that dub everything. They have populations that generally speak poor English, if even. The other day I bought something off of eBay from a german seller. Subsequently I received all communication in German. This is just arrogant and ignorant. There.

Recently I tried contacting PayPal’s customer service. Impossible. I also use PayPal in English, but when I access the site, it always routes me to the Dutch version. IP check! But, service fail. Because what happens when I click “Help” in the top of my screen? This:

...Wait. What?!

Right? Allright, seems easy enough! … Or is it!?

I guess they are coitussing with me. (Bazinga)

Allright… That didn’t really get me further, maybe I should try contact?

“Help information isn’t available in English yet.”

Seriously!? Manually entering www.paypal.com/contact got me to a webform. Yes. In English. So I think I was all smart and all, but wait. Do I need to write English? Or Dutch? Better safe than sorry. English, PayPal is English. And behold! Within 24 hours I had a reply! And in that reply was all the information I already knew, I did not ask for, and copy pasted straight from the website. Optimistic as I was, I even closed the webform with “Thanks in advance for your time and patience reading this.” How ignorant of me. To think that anyone would even read my concerns and think I have no capabilities of my own to read the website. I guess they’re well aware of the website that doesn’t function. Either that, or they have complete disregard for their customers at PayPal. I think the latter, because when I replied, I gotten almost the same crappy copy paste mail as a (non-)answer to my concerns! An hour later they wanted me to fill in a survey about how their customer service. I had to laugh because they decided to communicate with me fully in Dutch.

“Beste Emiel Sondag, Op 05/04/2010 beantwoordde ik uw e-mail betreffende uw PayPal-rekening. Als onderdeel van PayPal’s belofte om uitstekende service te verlenen, wil ik graag weten of ik u zorgvuldig geholpen heb tijdens ons gesprek. Heeft u een paar minuten de tijd om de volgende vragen te beantwoorden en mij te laten weten hoe ik het heb gedaan?”

Seriously?! Seriously?! It’s not that I have high standards or anything but what is wrong with all of this!? All communication has been in English, I’ve never ever gone to the .nl site myself, have a PayPal account for years, and always gone to .com, and now this? *sigh* Filling in the survey. (Ooooh! Shiny text boxes!) If you can read Dutch, here is one of my 5 rants:

Such incompetence is hard to find

I guess they are fishing for compliments. Maybe they are under the impression that “it can’t be all that bad”. Yes PayPal. It is. And it’s probably worse. Because this isn’t all. I’m not done yet. I still have the same concerns and questions.

Your “Contact customer service” lacks everything but customers.

In the next UsaFAILity (Thanks to @miekd for title inspiration) eBay. And in part III DigiD.

- Emiel Sondag

Book review: Rules of Thumb – Alan M. Webber

Rules of thumb

Alan M. Webber wrote this book by 52 rules he collected over a long period of time and life. He learned the rules, which are basically lessons “how to succeed and not lose yourself in business” over the coarse of his life. He had 5″x3″ cards where he’d write up what he would’ve learn over any occasion. All of the 52 rules are connected to a story, an anecdote that has happened to him when he learned the rule. He then explains in a couple pages why the rule is important.

Because of the whitespace this book is a quicker read that one might suspect. It is written very clearly, although it is quite “American”. It could also be a (rather brilliant) marketing tool for a magazine he started, Fast Company (if not, it still worked out that way).

Some of the rules I’ve read are rules I already apply to life or professionally. Some are very interesting for me to remember, and some are less interesting. The good thing is you can apply and use every rule individually, read them however you want, in every order you want.

“Failure isn’t failing.
On rule I liked was Rule #45:
“Failure is failing to try.”

Where he tells the story about him leaving Harvard Business Review to start Fast Company. He was unhappy there, and people all had different opinions on him staying or leaving. The truth was that Fast Company Magazine was stirring in his head, and his reasoning was that it wasn’t a question of starting Fast Company was a good idea, or if it would even work. The question was wether or not he had the courage to try. He advises:

“Think about what you aspire to do. Do you want to make a difference? Have an impact with your work and your life? Leave some kind of imprint in business, community or with your family? What would you like to show for your time? -Answers to those questions don’t come to those who play it safe. Those who play it safe aren’t the people who ask themselves these questions.”

The book is full of this content, and I reckon for each single rule, you could write a book. The essence is nicely captured per rule, fifty two times. There is even room for a 53rd rule. Your own rule.

Buy the book on Amazon

I hate the new iPhone.

If you’ve been hiding behind a rock lately, a prototype of Apple’s new iPhone got into the hands of Gizmodo. The how is still unclear, but in a very poorly written article (ok, I know my ‘writing’ isn’t best, but at least I recognize an article as being poorly written when the author refers to beer as ‘”The golden liquid”) they don’t disclose how they got it, but published a colorful story about how the ‘original finder’ was in a bar and the actual Apple employee was drunk etc. The person who ‘found’ the device didn’t want to leave this precious device with an Apple store employee. Pictures also got into hand of Endgadget before Gizmodo. Several reports state that Gizmodo bought the device for $5000 or even $10000. A small price to pay for the scoop. So I reckon the ‘finder’ was out shopping for the highest bidder, knowing what he had in his possession was earth shattering.

And at first everyone was like “It’s fake.” Or, “this isn’t what it’s going to look like, dude.” but then a claim arrived at Gizmodo from Apple saying they want their precious piece of equipment back. This was it. This thing is real. And they didn’t even have the real scoop, because a teen found images 2 months earlier.

But then the sentiment changed. I’m not sure what the tipping point was, but Gizmodo received some of criticism for saying that John Gruber from the trusted DaringFireball confirmed Apple indeed ‘lost’ an iPhone 4G prototype. And by ‘lost’ he actually meant, ‘stolen’. The community gave Gizmodo some crap for this and they sprung into defense mode posting an article on how the iPhone was ‘actually’ lost. They have no idea who the person is they obtained it from (even though they paid this person a substantial amount of money) which is a bit strange in my eyes. And outing a person who ‘lost’ their device by name and surname, link to Twitter and Facebook profiles and with several pictures, is just … wrong.

Then the community realized that Gizmodo cost a poor bloke his career all for a scoop. All this in a very nasty, shady scheme. The community lost it’s excitement. The anticipation is gone. Nothing more to look forward to, or get excited about. People will have to go to an Apple event thinking “Oh right, this is the first time I’m going hear and see old stuff, such a formality.” Usually some blurry images turn up 1 or 2 days before the event, or some images of factory parts. This was cool and sourced a lot of speculation. Gizmodo took that away from us. If you read closely, what is actually happening is, we all want a scoop, but now we have it, and we realize this might not exactly what we wanted after all. I for one realized I take more pleasure out of the event, speculation, anticipation, 600 word blogs about the possible resolution of the screen. How interesting.

How much exposure did this cost Apple? The secrecy is a big part of their well oiled marketing machine. I for one just wish the phone never left the research lab in Cupertino. And just for the record (if it wasn’t obvious enough), I don’t hate the new iPhone, I love it, but I wish I hadn’t seen it.

Online identities, images and ego’s and how we work.

Lately I’ve been wondering how to sync online life with offline life. We all know the feeling of our image in different specific situations, but online is a bit different it seems. Worse, perhaps. With so many places where we can be located, all with different means. Professional inquiries usually happen through LinkedIn, and this more and more serves as an online résumé. Private social networking is done on Facebook, and if you want to know what I regard interesting, or read my brainfarts, there’s my twitter account. Want to know if we’re into the same kind of music? Sure thing on my last.fm profile. And then theres me blogging. What you’re reading right now.

Some time ago I registered this web address www.42233.nl because it is sync with my phone number and I thought it would be something different from the normal boring URL’s. But I also own www.emielsondag.com and www.emielsondag.nl. But which one will I use, and for what purpose?

Where do I want to keep the ‘me’ that is ‘me’? I know I’m not the only person struggling with this problem. I am leaning towards moving everything over to emielsondag.com. This has also got some benefits to findability, and somewhere, is more logical than a number (in all honesty) no one is able to remember. Ultimately it boils down to the fact that we want to be found, we want to have a certain image. And we seem to want all this information and all these ego’s in one place. But most don’t want our professional side be mixed with our private side. And how do we tackle this?

Then it struck me.

Lately I’ve been reading and hearing more and more about new ways to work and being professional. First in Trust Agents, an awesome book by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith then in a podcast with John Jantsch & 37 signals author Jason Fried, then in a video interview with Eric Ries by Robert Scoble (Part 1 & part 2 really worth your time), and then there are books like Jim Collins’ From Good to Great, Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, and Jason Fried’s Rework and the likes. It seems that the new generation of employees, or working people want different things compared to the older generation. We, the younger generation, seem to have different demands from an employer as opposed to the certainty we [people] used to demand. Jobhopping, entrepreneuring, freelancing people tend to look differently for an employer as well. Logically we look for an employer that allows us to work the way we want. In the knowledge society we live in today this seems to be accepted more and more as well. Working from a coffeeshop somewhere instead of the corporate offices had great effect on the productivity of Chris Brogan. And then there is social networking, instant messaging, e-mailing, Twitter and the likes. Every single one of these initiated an aggressive response from management, disallowing these platforms altogether. E-mail was restricted to the ‘C-suite’. And every couple of years or so the discussion steered away from the major issue that is was time consuming and people should do their jobs and sensitive information might leak, and eventually it was allowed, with boundaries. But this new generation also finds a job in a different way. We seem to actively be looking for companies that allow us this freedom. And by this, what we actually seem to look for is the freedom to work how we want and do a better job through it.

In the light of what this has to do with our different images, identities and places where we can be found, what we more seem to go at is one identity that is basically the same all over the place. Because this new employee does not need to differentiate at different environments, but needs to be himself everywhere, to anyone.

The purpose of a business card, is to have impact.

I’ve been thinking a long time about my business card. I knew I needed one because I needed a personal brand. Why? Because I communicate a lot, everywhere, I’ve almost finished my bachelors degree and the time had come to professionalize myself. Henceforth; a business card that would set the tone for personal branding.

I’ve been intrigued for a long time by business cards. Especially creative ones. Usually you see the plain, white “here’s my name, title, and phone number of the company I work for” cards. You can’t really get excited with these as they are plain, boring and fail to leave an impression. You can argue that the conversation that preceeds the business card exchange ritual is what makes a great introduction, but I’m willing to argue that a creative card has more impact. After all, when you get home with a stack of these, you go-Google, and add people to your LinkedIn network.

If you have a card that stands out, people will think of you faster when they need someone in a certain area of expertise. We see this all the time. Seth Godin talks about the purple cow. He gives the example of a soy milk product that doesn’t need to be refrigerated but tripled it gross because they moved it next to the milk in the refrigerator section. Why?

Milk, milk, milk, milk, milk, not milk

An other example comes from “Buyology; Why we buy”. This is the largest neurological customer research ever conducted, over 7 countries, cost 7 million dollars to conduct and researched the reasons we buy. To get an insight in costumer behavior or the black box. The interesting part of this is a semantic marker. Everyone know what he or she was doing on 9/11. This is called a negative semantic marker. When you have a good conversation and engage in the business card exchange ritual your card can function as a mini-positive semantic marker. Once you’ve seen it, you won’t forget it, and it is different.

I’ve been receiving more and more positive remarks on my card, and frankly, I love it more and more. Creative section, creative card is what I always say to people. Some then look and twist and turn the card for a minute, are intrigued. Some even go as far as saying “Hey, this card isn’t really good and readable!” They continue playing with the card, reading every aspect, and when I keep silent and just smile, usually they get it at that point.

We see Joseph Jaffe in a video below talk about the best business cards he received at SouthBy 2010. If you’re still not convinced, watch the video. Or, have a look at some links below, or just let me know!

Creativeness

Links:
The Coolest Business Cards – Beautiful & Unique Business Card Designs Part 6
Cool business card designs part 1
100 (Really) Creative Business Cards

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Who would have thought that it wouldn’t be the Big Brother who was watching us, but it would be ourselves, and even out of our own free will. People are more and more living on the grid, and it seems that the digital natives see a definite advantage to posting their whereabouts. They (and by ‘they’ I actually mean, ‘we’ since I am an avid Gowalla user) see no problem in telling the world what they are doing or where they are all the time.

I hear a lot of objectives from older generations. They see it as unnecessary, and privacy invading to share this kind of information. The point is not what a service does, but what a service means to the user, and why the user uses a platform should be the question.

In the user lies the main problem, but also solution. First of all, users to the service are well aware of what they are doing, (I’m sure we’ll see Cisco Fatty’s in the future due to the use of Geo/Location-Based Social Networks) and they can choose only to share certain information with certain people. As we have seen over and over, it is the userbase that defines the parameters and usages of a service. (An organization is best to listen to them and cater to their needs to be successful.)

Like I said, the user is the main problem, and also the solution. Already we have seen stories of using Foursquare that backfired. This supposedly happened at SouthBy, where a restaurant was phoned to ask if a person was there to tell that person a friend of his was in the hospital because of an accident. Subsequently the waiter went to the table and tell this person the horrible news. Now luckily that particular friend was actually at the table having dinner, but all of them checked in at the restaurant in foursquare. Another thing we see is the use of the term “Fauxsquare” referring to the service as being gamable or cheatable. I first heard that term on Mashable and if you Google the term now the first hit would be a podcast from Joseph Jaffe & Mitch Joel. (I was Guest 31, should you listen to it.) And this is a serious problem, to be able to cheat the system like you can on foursquare. This dates back to the previous service if I understood correctly. The founders of foursquare initially founded a different service that they sold off to Google named “Dodgeball”. (Raise hands if ye remember this!) Now, I guess the foursquare logo makes more sense, right? I reckon they sold off Dodgeball and decided to do it all again when Google decided to pull the plug. Text based checkins date from the era that mobile phones weren’t equipped with GPS. Cheating the system is a problem that lies with the users but it can have stretched consequences. Because what is the value of certain badges, or items? Not money wise, but the value to the user, be it bragging rights or something else. Or what if these will become so mainstream that they could be used in court? Or, automated checkins?

How the users can also be part of the solution? Well, dedicated users always have ideas to improve the system at the core, and some very interesting innovations come from users. (Thanks GetSatisfaction!) But to me things like Gowalla have a definite advantage because it wouldn’t be the first time I have met friends in a bar when they were near just to have a beer with them. But stretch that thought even further, and see more possibilities. Hoe about finding a virtual item in Gowalla, exchangeable for a real item at a certain location? Offer a discount for the most frequent visitor of a location (think a free pizza for instance) or other forms of direct advertising when the user is near. The possibilities of this are extended to say the least and my guess is we’ll see a lot of movement in this area.

And then, there are the users that find ways of enhancing the service, building it, expanding it, and like me, be passionate about it. I for one can’t wait to see what we will come up with, and how these kinds of services will find their way in mainstream ‘Social Media’..

And just for the record, please, Go Gowalla, and ignore that fugly Fauxsquare.. ;-)

Company wide health challenge!

At the office, we have a very extended lunch. Fresh buns, different kinds of bread, crackers, 8 different kinds of meat, 2 kinds of cheese, milk and fruit flavored milk, juice, and various other sweet things, like peanut butter, jam etc. Well now, this sounds very good, and it is, but maybe it is a bit too good. Everyday after lunch I felt like a pig (sorry pigs) for eating so much. And I wasn’t alone.

It turned out some people try to watch what they eat, but rarely. Furthermore, some did some running, and also happen to use Nike+. All pretty much like myself. During the winter I avoided running because of the snow. (Read: it was mighty cold out, and I was pretty lazy). All pretty much like everyone else.

So we started a challenge, born out of the idea that me and a colleague, Vincent, would go on a run together to motivate and get off our asses and do something. (About our slight overweight). We did go for a run eventually. But only after we started the “Nexwork and Van Zandbeek Health Challenge”. This was a challenge for the 3 Nexwork employees that use Nike+. And so it began. A bit of trash talking here and there and we got motivated to do something. But, as it turned out, the challenge also got some interest by some other co-workers. People that didn’t yet have Nike+ but maybe want to join. (the more the merrier, as long as they are in poor shape. Hey, at least I am honest about wanting to win!) We have an “e-magazine” every week that is sent out to every employee, throughout the company, and also in the other branches. This way we hope to raise awareness and maybe convince more people to join our cause. That would be … supercool.

Motivating, right?

With Corporate Social Responsibility in the back of our mind, I tried to poke around for some extra motivation. This could be something like a donation for every kilometer the winner ran, given to a benefit of choice of the winner in their name by the company. I have yet to receive a satisfying answer to this. But, I do think this is a very good idea! After all, a healthy employee is a happy employee, right?

For the time being I changed the company’s motto from “Interactiviteit die werkt” to “Sportiviteit die werkt”. (Or; from “Interactivity that works” to “Sportivity that works”, if you hadn’t guessed that already.)

In one moth I will share the results, but I am very optimistic. My personal goal is 60 kilometers this period, but I hope to do better than that. Any encouragement (Money preferred, kind words are also fine) is greatly appreciated. If you want to keep track of this all, you can: View the Nike+ challenge

With sportive regards,

Emiel Sondag