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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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It's Not a Rate Increase, It's a Reclassification
How To Think About A Presentation
Thursday, May 10, 2007
IBM Rumored to be Planning Unprecedented Offshoring Switch for 2007
I worked for IBM from 1995 to 1998. During that time I met some great people and had the privilege of working on more than one world-class project. As part of the benefits package I was allowed to buy IBM stock at a discount, and I did so. A few years ago I sold the stock off, as it had stagnated for a while and my general fondness for the company had dwindled. I still have friends there, many of them working for IBM Global Services. Now Robert Cringely reports that Big Blue is planning to axe more than 100,000 people from IGS, moving all the work offshore:
I, Cringely:The Pulpit - Lean and Mean
[...]
The IBM project I am writing about is called LEAN and the first manifestation of LEAN was this week's 1,300 layoffs at Global Services, which generated almost no press. Thirteen hundred layoffs from a company with more than 350,000 workers is nothing, so the yawning press reaction is not unexpected. But this week's "job action," as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.[...]
This cannot be good. As Cringely notes, offshoring of this scale creates massive communication and support problems - at least if the customer is in the US. My experience with BellSouth's lame, dysfunctional, globalized tech support has been a disaster. Dell, same story. In fact, if you have ever had a good experience with offshore tech support I'd like to hear about it. But more importantly, if Cringely is right IBM management is going to axe 100,000 jobs knowing full well that it may cripple the company. I don't care if the stock price rockets upward for some brief period. I'm glad I no longer have any financial stake in Big Blue.
Terry Frazier at 10:17 PM
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Monday, May 7, 2007
It's Not a Rate Increase, It's a Reclassification
The new AT&T - "We're back. And it's just like nothing has changed."According to the article, no one regulates phone card rates. Not the state of MO, not the FCC, nobody.AT&T now charges eight minutes for one of these one-minute calls in Missouri
Jo Ann Weitkamp knew something was wrong. The minutes on her prepaid telephone calling card were disappearing faster than she was talking.
Weitkamp, 72, lives in an apartment for seniors in Warrenton. Every few months, she visits a Sam's Club store and pays about $28 to add 1,000 minutes to her calling card. She's found that an inexpensive way to keep in touch with family members.
Until now.
Since February, AT&T has been charging Missouri customers eight minutes on their prepaid calling cards for each minute they talk to someone in Missouri.
The charge formerly was one minute for each minute called.
[...]
"We're following the law, and this is something we're required to do by the FCC," said Amanda Ray, a spokeswoman in Dallas for AT&T.
She says the change is not a rate increase.
"It's a reclassification," Ray said. [...]
The problem here isn't the rate, it's the deception. AT&T wants to be allowed to change rates without state permission. Fine. Do that. But don't lie about it. Don't throw in some bogus multiplication factor when you agreed to provide per-minute charges.
There are two industries that deserve to be uttelry destroyed - the music industry and the telcos. They are both saturated with an entitlement mentality that defies description, and are populated by lying rat-bastards of the highest order. Good riddance to them both.
Terry Frazier at 11:10 AM
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Wednesday, May 2, 2007
How To Think About A Presentation
My friend and colleague Sean Murphy, who is a great synthesizer and sensemaker, came up with an excellent presentation idea a while back. He’s done this a few times now and if you’re in the San Jose/Silicon Valley area and have a chance to see Sean’s “12 Books for the Busy CEO” you should do so. Links to his next session is below:
Crucial Marketing Concepts for Consultants @ PATCA May 10
I will be presenting a revised and improved version of the “12 Books for the Busy CEO” presentation on Thursday May 10 at 6pm at the PATCA monthly dinner at the Embassy Suites Santa Clara - Silicon Valley on 2885 Lakeside Drive in Santa Clara.I will cover a dozen books and offer a synthesis of the key marketing concepts (this is not a sequence of twelve book reports) that they offer. I will have an article on crucial marketing concepts that I will give out for attendees. There is good content here for entrepreneurs, whether they are starting out as consultants or embedding their expertise in software or a SaaS offering.
Spend an hour and leave with a summary of key marketing insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. You may even identify one or two books that you haven’t read that will be worth your time. I will cover a dozen books that form the basis for conventional wisdom on marketing in Silicon Valley. They provide the terms, the metaphors, the parables–in short the language–that successful high technology firms use to develop their plans and monitor their execution. Some of these books are old–most have stood the test of time, which in Valley years is a decade or more–but still provide succinct guidelines for new product introduction and sales.
I want to thank Mark Duncan for helping us turn a set of black and white PowerPoint slides that were primarily text bullets into a colorful and illustration rich article.
Terry Frazier at 9:53 AM
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