Next week, I’ll provide the opening keynote for the US Department of Defense DoD Maintenance Symposium & Exhibition, being held in
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, hosted by the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Logisitcs and Material Readiness.) These are the folks who contribute and manage effective DoD maintenance operations; build and manage one of the most sophsiticated supply chains in the world; and who played a significant role in Iraq. In the face of great challenge, they’ve done a tremendous job — but it is always a challenge to continue to improve. They are being swept by new initiatives involving logistics and maintenance management — and hence are faced with a need for dramatic transformation. I’ll focus on the issues of change, innovation and mindset in a motivational keynote that will kick-off this conference, attended by 600+ representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Archives for October 2003
Apple’s sense of humor
Apple announced iTunes for Windows today (everyone knows that) but you might not have seen what they did with their home page. [ bigger image ]
A reference to the fact that many music industry executives, blinded to the demands of their customers, never thought they’d see legal downloading sites go mainstream, and that they’d always sell CD’s in plastic for $20+?
Apple innovates. The music industry is innovating a bit, but still not much. Hat’s off to Apple!
A keynote for the American Federation of Teachers
I’ll be keynoting the semi-annual American Federation of Teachers technology conference in Washington on Friday, December 5th in Washington. The theme of the conference is “Leaders: Energize to Organize & Mobilize–Let IT Empower YOU!” My keynote will focus on unionism in the digital age — how can unions empower themselves, reach out to the grass roots, mobilize members and the public — in effecting how to transform a union into a real-time, collaborative organization of the future!
Nomadic workers….
It’s Small Business Week. Here’s an interesting stat spotted in the New Zealand Herald-Tribune today:
“A recent survey undertaken by Home Business New Zealand, in association with Unitec’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, found 15 per cent of respondents were engaged in exporting to some degree, 5 per cent indicated over 90 per cent of their revenue came from outside New Zealand, and another 7 per cent said up to 30 per cent of their business was international.”
The lengths they’ll go to…..
Spammers and net-con-artists try to get more sophisticated all the time. I received this message today
:
From: “Richard Glicksman”
Date: Wed, 15, Oct 2003 09:06:44 -0700
To: jcarroll@jimcarroll.com
Subject: Information Request
MIME-Version: 1.0
Hello,I have a significant number of clients, some of who are looking for a motivational speaker online. My job is to direct these folds to a single web site that is relevant. Your site looks like it may fit the mold.
If you can help us, then please contact me. Thank you in advance. I can be reached at the number below.
Best Regards,
Richard Glicksman
714-639-2863 ext 243
Seems like a normal message, but my smell-test went off — it doesn’t seem quite right. And a simple search of the phone number on Google reveals all:
From: “Holly Smith”
To: cygwin at sources dot redhat dot com
Date: Wed, 27, Aug 2003 09:49:48 -0700
Subject: Information Request
———————————————————————-Hello,
I have a significant number of clients who are searching online for Boat Covers. I am looking to find for my clients a single source online for this information.
If you can help my clients, then please contact me by phone. I can be reached at the number below.Best Regards,
Holly Smith
714-639-2863 ext 228
www.netdirectwords.com
So I wrote back to my ‘pal Richard:
To: “Richard Glicksman”
Subject: Re: Information Request
Reply-to: jcarroll@jimcarroll.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:17:56 -0400Gee, Richard, it seems you folks also have a lot of people looking for boat covers online.
If you are going to spam people, you might at least try to change your phone number so we can’t so easily see through your requests…
Cheers!
jcp.s. Give my regards to Holly!
NetDirect is just one of those firms playing up an Internet keyword scam. They’re slime, and you would do well to steer clear of them.
Another broken music service
Much fanfare announcing Puretracks today, a Canadian service that offers tunes for sale. I won’t sign up. Why? You can only listen to tunes through Windows Media Player, which of course would render my TurtleBeach Audiotron or any other Ethrenet based jukebox device irrelevant. Plus, it only supports Windows — I’ve a bunch of Linux systems too……It also seems that I can only play a purchased tune on the computer that I downloaded it to — does that render the fact that my Mp3’s are stored on servers in my basement irrelevant, i.e. I can’t store tunes there? And there are 17 PC’s in my home — I can’t listen to it anywhere else? My sons can’t listen to a song that I bought on another computer?
Bottom line: I won’t buy any online music that features digital rights management and such onerous restrictions. I’m not a thief, but I don’t want the music industry to automatically treat me like one. Give me unlimited digital downloading of Mp3’s at $20 or $30 a month, and I’m there. Until then, I buy Cd’s, rip ’em, and put them on my music servers…
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