Thursday, September 20, 2007

Animal Lessons in Management

I got this by email recently:

Lesson One

An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing ?"

The eagle answered, "Sure, why not."
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle, and rested. Suddenly, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson ?
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
Lesson Two
A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree, " sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."

"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson ?
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.
Lesson Three
A little bird was flying South for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Management Lesson ?
1. Not everyone who craps on you is your enemy.
2. Not everyone who gets you out of crap is your friend.
3. And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!
This ends your management course.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

GeekRebel Launches

I've started a new site called GeekRebel!

I wanted to refocus Yeah!Fi on my personal experiences as an entrepreneur and have another space to discuss tech topics that are of interest to me. It's still early days, but I envision that GeekRebel will have a handful of contributors.

The focus will be mostly on technology, the people behind it and how it can change our world.

Head over to GeekRebel, grab the feed and watch it closely!

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Fool me Thrice, See you in Prison

For the 2nd time this year we've been a victim of a thief. This time a professional conman who appears to go from business to business running a somewhat elaborate scam.

We've been suffering a backlog of installations and customer call-outs, so when we received a response to a recent ad for a network engineer, we didn't do a proper background check before starting our new employee. (Let's call him 'Ant' for now).

Ant was working as a contractor to a company in Somerset West, where he was on 24 hour notice. He could start with us immediately. He needed a laptop computer for work, and told us that he could purchase the laptop he's been using from his previous employer. We offered to pay R3800 upfront, and he would pay back R3000 to us over 3 months.

He provided us with the account details and we transferred the money to a certain CJ Blignaut's Nedbank account on Tuesday, 28 August.

Having received the laptop, Ant started working with us on 29 August. (He warned that he might be a bit late, as he would first need to go to his previous employer. He showed up saying that they took a bit longer than he thought, as they first did a security search on the laptop he was taking to make sure there was no confidential information on it)

He jumped into the job with vigour! He took initiative and solved customers problems. He showed a very clear understanding of computer networks and was extremely patient and polite with customers. He didn't waste time but would quickly identify network problems, suggest solutions and execute them.

Within a few days he had seen more then 3 dozen clients and implemented strategies to improve customer service systems.

Tino, my partner, and I were thanking our lucky stars that we had found someone this good in a market where skills are scarce!

When he arrived last Monday, he told us that his apartment was robbed on the weekend. Apparently he had taken his grandmother to the Two Oceans aquarium, before having a picnic in the Company Gardens and then going to the Cape Town Museum. When they got back to his apartment, the place had been cleaned out. Including the food in his cupboards, his rent & car money which was in his wardrobe, and of course, the laptop that we had paid for the week prior.

We purchased a new laptop the same morning, this time for R5300, in order for Ant to continue doing his work.

Then on Monday afternoon, Ant sent me an email, saying that he was in a bit of a fix as he had to pay his rent and car repayments urgently. His mom would give him money, but as it was in the trust (his father passed away in January), it would take 2 weeks. He would borrow R4200 and pay it back to us within 2 weeks. I told him I would have to discuss it with my partners and let him know on Tuesday.

I felt uncomfortable with his request and discussed it with Tino, who was also not comfortable with it, especially as we haven't completed a full reference check. We discussed the possibility that he could be a fraudster, and both felt that things were fishy. Not because there were holes in his story, but because it all seemed so perfect!

We both felt guilty about suspecting him of foul play, but decided that we should contact his previous employers.

Early Tuesday morning I phoned his previous employer, who told me that he had nothing good to say about Ant, that Ant had left there on the 9th of August and took a laptop computer with him, that the employer had to go and retrieve from him on Friday night! (The same laptop that we paid for and was "stolen")

He also told me that Ant started working there on the 25th of July, and then simply didn't pitch on the 9th of August, claiming that he had to go to hospital to have a polyp removed. He carried on claiming that he was in hospital due to complications. However, before he left his previous employer, he also managed to "borrow" money using some elaborate story for needing it urgently and that he would pay it back as soon as the "trust" paid it out.

When Ant showed up for work Tuesday morning, Tino and I sat him down and informed him that we knew what was going on. We asked him to read, respond to, and sign a settlement in which he agreed to pay back the R3800 by 5pm. He had no response and signed the agreement.

However, 2 hours later he sent us an email saying that he felt it was unfair that he should pay back the full amount, as he had worked for us for 4 days already and that, in either case, he would have paid back the R3800 from his salary and that I should call him to discuss payment terms. (He probably doesn't care much for the fact that it costs thousands to recruit staff nor the days it's taken us to ensure the integrity of our customer information) He also carried on about us "umiliating" (sic) him in front of the other staff.

Earlier this year we were victims of theft by a partner company, and I spent thousands of Rands on a mediation process, believing that the culprit had made a naive mistake and that he would see the error of his ways and perhaps become an upright businessman. The mediation process turned out to be a time-buying exercise and the gent completely ignored the mediation agreement he had signed, claiming it was not legally binding!

Needless to say, I've had it with crooks, scamsters and liars. This time we went straight to the police and filed charges of 'Theft under False Pretense'.

Although I feel sorry for Ant, in that he is a seriously smart guy who could make a very successful (honest) living, I feel good about the fact that by putting him behind bars I'll be protecting other small businesses from becoming victims.

"Evil prevails when good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Friday, September 07, 2007

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Part 2

Nick Wenban-Smith, Senior Legal Counsel at Nominet UK from gave an enlightening talk about domain name disputes. He mentioned a few interesting cases. In one case, a cyber squatting company registered Harrods.com. Harrods, instead of going through a dispute process, decided to sue straight away. Judgment was made against the cyber squatters, with costs! Considering what Harrods lawyers must cost, this led to the cyber squatters having to liquidate.

In another case, a Brit innocently registered itunes.co.uk before Apple launched its iTunes service. Apple decided to strong arm the guy by sending threatening letters. He got highly peeved by this and tried to sell to Napster! Although I like the way he gave Apple the finger, the courts didn't. It could now be shown that itunes.co.uk was an 'abusive' registration, and not an 'innocent' registration.

The (in)famous Rudolph Muller presented some interesting findings from a recent Broadband Survey. Although it appears customers are happy with the service they are getting from ISPs, they are not happy with the service received from Telkom. He also raised the concern that ISPs might have become accustomed to the monopolistic Telkom landscape and built business models accordingly. I suspect this is a bit like a frog being slowly boiled: Jumping out of the pot might cause enough shock to kill it!

Beaunard Grobler from the SAPS Cybercrime Unit gave a talk about fighting cybercrime in South Africa. It appears they are making good progress battling child porn, Nigerian 419 scams and Phishing crimes. He did admit that they are short-staffed and have problems retaining staff. I think most cybercrime these days is related to industrial espionage and is causing millions of Rands worth of damage to companies, large & small. Let's hope the SAPS expands this division dramatically.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Geek Dinner Powerpoint Karaoke

I'm very stoked to see that the London Geek Dinner website is using my definition to answer the question: 'What is a Geek?'

A geek is NOT a computer nerd… A geek is not someone who wears 2 inch thick glasses and giggles at the sight of a woman.

A geek is someone who is curious, information hungry and on a constant quest for more knowledge. According to Wikipedia, a “geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination

Geeks use information, logic and their imagination to make decisions or come up with new ideas. You get different kinds of geeks. Of course you have computer geeks but you also have botany geeks, philosophy geeks, music geeks, design geeks and (gasp!) marketing geeks!

So why the popular association of ‘geek’ with ‘computer nerd’? Because almost all geeks use computers. Why? Because a computer is the greatest information tool around and all geeks are information addicts. Many geeks will become extremely adept at using this tool and take some extra time learning how to get the most out of it.


One of the things they started doing at the London Geek Dinner is Powerpoint Karaoke. 5 speakers present slides that they they've never seen before!



I'll definitely try to attend the next time I'm in London!

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Day 1 Presentations

Day One's presenters' slides are now available for download.

Blogging from ISPA iWeek - Day 1

I'm blogging from iWeek. Some excellent speakers so far and interesting chats with some of the thought leaders in the South African Internet space.

Njeri Rionge
, CEO of Ignite and founder of Wananchi, one of Kenya's largest ISPs, gave a talk about the face of the internet in Africa at the moment. Only 4% of Africa's population has access to the internet. She posed the question: "What do we as Africans want from Africa?"

Bill Manning gave a surprisingly interesting talk about IP version 6, and how Telcos are creating barriers to implementation. He made the strong statement that the 'internet is on its last legs' using the current IPv4 system.

Niall Murphy from TheCloud spoke about their very successful WiFi business with more than 10,000 hotspots in Europe. He spoke about the opportunities for service providers as long as they realise that the future is in mobile devices. I met Niall a bit more than a year ago when he was in South Africa. He gave me some good advice, but being young(er) and cocky(ier), and perhaps a tad too idealistic, I didn't listen to him. Needless to say, I learnt the lessons the hard way (or stupid way, depending how you look at it. In essence Niall put the point across that it's dangerous to build large public outdoor Wi-Fi networks, as the penetration into buildings is very low and Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices are not everywhere, yet.

Rael Lissoos from Magnolia Wireless gave a very entertaining presentation about how they've been delivering Triple Play (Voice, Data, Video) in the townships. They started by connecting schools to each other, which then progressed into a whole host of other services at much lower rates than our incumbent telcos are charging.

More after lunch!