The Story of IBM’s Black Team

sophiaburnett — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 05:37:54 +0000

The computing world was different in the 1960′s. Computers were massive, expensive, and required full-time staff just to keep them running. Product cycles were scheduled in years not months. Tasks modern programming tools do in seconds took weeks. And whenever a new computer model was developed, the operating system and all applications had to be developed from scratch.

Perhaps the most significant difference, however, was that despite the tremendous complexity of building computer systems in this manner, customers insisted that these systems work correctly. Today, software vendors have conditioned us to believe that bugs are an inevitable part of software, but in the 1960′s a buggy operating system was properly considered to be a defective product. Customers do not pay for defective products. These software defects were costing IBM a great deal of money, and something had to be done. Management noticed that certain software testers were 10 to 20 percent better at finding defects than their peers. By putting these people on the same team, they reasoned, they could form a group that would be 10 or 20 percent more effective and then put the team to work testing the most critical system components.It didn’t turn out that way.

The individuals who made up the team were not exceptionally intelligent or talented, but they all enjoyed testing software and were better than average at it. When these like minded individuals were assembled, they they spent their working hours, lunches and sometimes free time collaborating on how to better find software defects.

Soon the members of team were twice and then dozens of times more effective than their peers, and they began to view their jobs not as testing software, but as breaking software. Team members took a well-deserved pride in their abilities and began to cultivate an image of villainous destroyers. As a group, they began coming to work dressed in black and took to calling themselves “The Black Team.”

Now, IBM in the 60s was not exactly known fostering creativity in the workplace. Corporate identity was bound up in dark-blue suits and starched white shirts. Management, however, not only tolerated what was happening, but loved it. Perhaps they felt some admiration for a group so passionate and dedicated, but the bottom line was that software quality was improving at a rapid rate.

Things soon began to get a little crazy. Team members began to affect loud maniacal laughter whenever they discovered software defects. Some individuals even grew long mustaches which they would twirl with melodramatic flair as they savaged a programmer’s code. And the things they did to software went beyond all bounds of rational use testing and were more akin to software torture. The crazier things got, the more effective the team became.

To be clear, the Black Team took all of this quite seriously, and there was nothing akin to camaraderie with the rest of the development team. Programmers had a certain amount of respect for the Black Team, but by and large, they feared them. A member of the Black Team was the last person a programmer wanted to see walking towards him, and more than one programmer was reduced to tears while having his code evaluated by the Black Team.

As much as the Black team was feared, engineers aspired to membership. When one member left, the team itself would select another to replace him, and so team stayed in existence and retained much of its character and effectiveness long after all of the original members had departed.

Readers not familiar with the software industry might not grasp the full significance of what the Black Team accomplished within IBM, but the real lesson to be learned from the story has nothing to do with software.A group of slightly above-average people assigned to do what many considered an unglamorous and thankless task not only achieved success beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, but undoubtedly had a great time doing it and wound up becoming legends in their field. As I read through the end-of-year lists of all the problems the computer industry and the world as a whole is facing, I just can’t seem to bring myself to view them with gravity the authors seem to intended. After all, even the worst of are problems seem solvable by a few like-minded people with a bit of dedication.

© Copyright 2002, Tim Romero, t3@t3.org
This article first appeared in the December 11, 2002 edition of The Japan Times.
Tangled Webs may be distributed freely provided this copyright notice is included.
The Tangled Webs Archive is located at http://www.t3.org/tangledwebs
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Besoin d’art?

sophiaburnett — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:05:17 +0000

L’histoire: Il y a quelques semaines, surement après un overdose de fichiers xl, j’ai tweeté “I need some art” et, grace à la magie de Twitter j’ai reçu un tweet d’un inconnu, @clohnart me disant “I’ve got some art you could have”.

Quelques jours plus tard je suis allée voir le site de cet artiste de Pittsburg ici: www.clohnart.com et je l’ai contacté car j’avais flashé sur un tableau. Le tableau en question étant déjà vendu, John m’a fait cadeau d’une pièce de sa ‘collection trash art’ que j’ai reçu avec bonheur la semaine dernière.

L’idée : Pour faire parler de lui mais aussi par sincère envie de partage artistique, John R Lee a développé un concept nommé ‘trash art’ où il peint sur du carton de récupération . Ces oeuvres ‘trash’ sont ensuite vendus pour des sommes symboliques. L’artiste s’amuse aussi a les déposer dans sa ville pour ‘adoption’ par ceux et celles qui ont ‘besoin’ d’art.
Personellement je trouve ses peintures très intéressantes, et son trash art aussi bien que ses toiles.
Mon trash art à moi va connaitre un destin noble puisque j’ai décidée de l’encadrer.

N’hésitez pas a faire un tour sur son site, et a regarder la galerie. Pour quelqu’un avec autant de talent, ce type ne se prend pas le chou, il a un humour plutôt sympa (cf titre de la vidéo ci dessous) et il aime viscéralement l’art. J’aime. Je ne suis pas expert en la matière, mais pour avoir assistée a pas mal de ventes a Paris et New York je vois dans son travail un investissement qui dépasse l’objectif pécuniaire, mais qui pourrait devenir lucratif avec le temps, la création d’un vrai réseau, et la magie du hasard…

Today’s App Idea

sophiaburnett — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:18:37 +0000

The story: Justin loves Evony so much he checks it when he gets in from school and when he gets up in the morning. The plus side is he’s got 50k prestige points and is revered by responsible adults, but the minus is he no longer does his guitar practice, forgets to help with chores and has an average of 3 out of 20 in history.
His mother wants to do something about it but she’s worried he might have a similar reaction to the kid in this video if she cancels his account…

The idea: An application that allows access to Evony (or Facebook, or any other MMORPG) only if a third party (physical or application) allows it. For example Justin comes in from school and logs onto FB, the gate asks for a certificate that he’s done his half hour guitar practice. Once he’s practiced, his mom simply sends the certificate via a simple button on the her mobile app. Same for homework. The app can be integrated to any other website, meaning for instance that Justin’s dad can ‘make’ him do half an hour of online history tests in order to obtain access to Facebook or whatever.

Danone sur Facebook; du laid pas frais

sophiaburnett — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:32:31 +0000

Ce matin j’ai vu passer un tweet passer dans les Top Tweets: Danone lance un concours “Imagine le manager de 2020″. Puisque la cible principale de mon startup est plutôt jeune, je suis allée voir.

En dehors d’un titre a faire pâlir Laurence Ferrari, il y a une facette hautement hypocrite de cette communication qui m’a franchement déplu.

Faites ce qu’on vous dit…”Soyez créatifs ”

Danone a choisi pour le lancement de ce concours, une page Facebook. Choix tout a fait logique en termes de facilitation de viralité certes, mais une page Facebook non personnnalisé, il n’y a rien de plus laid. Or, dans le tweet d’origine, les hashtags étaient #GenY #vidéo #créativité.

Si ce concours est base sur un désir reel de créativité et de rencontre avec ‘la jeune génération’ il me semble que cette page aurait fallu un apport artistique plus…non, juste un apport artistique en fait , un seul. A minima une signalétique visuelle dédiée au concours. Ensuite on peut imaginer sans trop forcer que les ‘jeunes’ aiment la musique et les images un peu funky. N’ont-ils pas un jeune justement qui s’y connait en HTML pour habiller (faire abstraction du lolcat olé olé svp) cette page affreusement austère ?

“(…) constituer des équipes qui s’affronteront à travers de courtes vidéos. Pas de contraintes ni d’impératifs, chaque équipe devra faire preuve d’inspiration et de créativité pour mettre en scène le manager de demain, celui que vous allez être amené à incarner et qui saura porter les valeurs de Danone.”

Au vu de la pauvreté de leurs propres vidéos présentées sur la page (plus corporate 1990 tu meurs, mal éclairé, son du micro de la caméra), la marque a sérieusement besoin de recevoir de la ‘creative content’ pour dynamiser (voire dynamiter) leur image. Maintenant en offrant des prix si peu attirants et se limitant “aux écoles et formations faisant partie du programme ambassadeur”, je serai surprise de voir leur compteur Like exploser.

Enfin, et surtout, je constate qu’une marque d’une telle envergure qui symbolise une certaine réussite française ne conçoit pas que leurs managers de 2020 puissent venir d’ailleurs que des écoles partenaires; un fonctionnement qui ne peut que réduire le nombre de managers potentiels pourvus de ladite inventivité et créativité qu’ils disent vouloir déceler…

Maj 17/2: Google/YouTube, eux aussi lancent un concours pour jeunes de 18-25 ans (EMEA) qui veulent changer leur monde…

IT’S THE REAL THING.

sophiaburnett — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:29:39 +0000

The Story: If the consumer’s brain can be compared to a whiteboard, then back in the 70′s, advertisers had relatively clean ones to doodle on, which can only have improved the impact of marketing campaigns. The Coca-Cola Hilltop campaign was produced at a time when it was still possible to lend very noble qualities to a mass consumer product without running the risk of seeming pedantic or worse, insincere. Not because people lived in a ‘rosier’ world; Vietnam was the first mediatized war and the US saw inflation rise 10% between ’72 and ’74. There was however a definite purity in the flow of communication from seller to buyer simply because, there were fewer messages, less recuperation, and buzz was just a noise that bees made.

The Idea: Rehabilitating utopic imagery.

Today, the ‘average’ consumer possesses a much deeper knowledge of marketing. The consumer knows that he is being manipulated, and often knows how. Even so, some ad campaigns still have a huge impact. This suggests that a) when the product is desirable, the ad has little effect, the consumer will buy it anyway, but also b) the consumer is sometimes willing to suspend disbelief when faced with a particularly attractive idea.

So why not strive to model society by altering the mirror in which it sees its reflexion?

Audiovisual media function as proactive mirrors of society. And like real mirrors, they are never completely objective. Advertising can choose to be positively subjective or negatively subjective. I believe that they have, to a certain extent, a responsibility to inspire, and that the positive subjectivity of advertising should be inversely proportional to the negativity of the media that vehicles it.

A lot of communicators today would have qualms about using an idea like the Hilltop, but if the media world refuses to use utopia as a creative reference from time to time, then we run the risk of falling into a quagmire of self-referring, second-degree irony.

Of course, it’s easier said than done as proved by Coca-Cola themselves when they tried to recreate the Hilltop success to boost sales of Diet-Coke with a remake that didn’t fly…

Which adds weight to my favourite quote of the moment, by the artist Mondrian:

“One mustn’t adapt, one must create.”

To read about the history of the Hilltop ad: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/colaadv.html

Happy Imagination 2011

sophiaburnett — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 19:09:41 +0000

The Story: Every year we start afresh, reboot our intentions and wish happiness, success and good health to those around us. The positive things that can happen to us are however often things of chance, that enter our lives arbitrarily – Deus ex machina – unless we are able to provoke them in some way.

The Idea: Imagining the best of our future.

“It is a poor memory that only works backwards.” Lewis Carroll

The beauty of imagination is that it’s a powerful tool. The more we imagine and visualize what we desire, the more our actions lead us there…

Imagine delivering an eloquent keynote.

Imagine leaving someone who hurts you.

Imagine getting a job.

Imagine kissing for ten minutes non-stop.

Imagine going back to college.

Imagine dancing all night long.

Imagine swimming with dolphins.

Imagine making your children laugh like drains.

Imagine growing old gracefully.

Imagine winning.

Imagine whatever makes you happy, and never stop imagining it.

So for 2011, I can think of nothing better to wish you than a wonderfully fertile imagination…

Le poids des mots, l’absence de photos.

sophiaburnett — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 07:40:39 +0000

l’histoire: (Je la fais courte) Dieu créa Adam et afin qu’il puisse être accompagné dans son voyage mortel, créa depuis une côte de l’homme, une femme. Suivront des millénaires de subjectivisation de la femme dans sa juxtaposition avec le masculin. Ensuite, il faut attendre la création de la Womens’ Social and Political Union en 1903 pour voir la modification de la loi électorale ainsi qu’un début de réflexion sur la parité hommes femmes…

Leurs armes : courage, féminité et langage soutenu.

Vient de se créer en France un site: http://viedemeuf.blogspot.com sur l’initiative de http://www.osezlefeminisme.fr

Bien que le fond soit louable, sa mise en forme est une catastrophe sémantique. Pour un site qui ambitionne de fédérer femmes de tous horizons dans l’amélioration de leurs statuts, je trouve que déjà le nom du site est des plus segmentant ! Vie de meuf…et tout de suite on imagine une trentenaire rondelette en salopette jean, la narine percée et les cheveux plus courts t’es chauve. Ca, ou un gars de banlieue qui énonce le mot ‘meuf’, et ‘Hop!’ nous revoilà dans les cités, là où visiblement les créateurs de toutes ces associations pensent que vivent la grande majorité des femmes sensibles au féminisme.

Vie de meuf, un raccourci aussi détestable que Mother I’d Like to Fuck.

D’abord parce qu’en voulant emprunter au succès de #viedemerde les créateurs du site développent dans l’esprit du lecteur des passerelles sémantiques indésirables. Meuf = Merde! #Viedemeuf arrive donc dans le paysage web avec une personnalité ‘déjà vu ’. En gros la vie d’une femme, c’est merdique, mais on va toutes poster nos complaintes afin de rigoler un peu avant de choper un cancer du sein.

Je n’aime pas.

Les mots sont importants, et ils le sont davantage lorsqu’on veut plaider une cause, fédérer les personnes. Le slogan d’une association de défense des droits doit être aussi fort que celui Nike ou de Contrex!

Autre exemple de balle dans le pied : L’association ‘Ni Putes ni Soumises’, rassemble les deux mots probablement les plus blessantes pour les femmes qui y adhèrent. À cause du titre de leur mouvement, elle-mêmes répètent et font perdurer ces mots qui ne devraient plus exister dans la bouche des gens et encore moins imprimés sur des T-shirts. Ces femmes font le don empoisonné de ces mots à leurs propres enfants.

L’Idée: Une communication faite par les hommes, pour les femmes. Le monde change, le féminisme se doit de s’adapter aussi. Pour citer Einstein (why not : un problème créé ne peut être résolu en réfléchissant de la même manière … Je ne sais pas qui a créé la Com ’ de Viedemeuf.fr, mais elle mérite une refonte; pourquoi pas commissionner une agence connue pour ses campagnes ‘misogynes’. Celle qui a fait Aubade par exemple ? S’inspirer de leurs belles leçons de séduction et en inventer de nouveaux?

Probablement le meilleur slogan féministe en France, par Aubade.

Il me semble nécessaire pour toutes ceux qui prétendent vouloir faire avancer la cause féministe de se réveiller au besoin d’être communicant et donc posséder un discours et un visuel attractif — car cela fonctionne aussi bien pour les groupes que les individus. L’absence totale d’image sur le site viedemeuf est terrible. Le contenu n’est pas franchement drôle, mais pas assez pédagogue non plus.

Si on part de l’idée que nous sommes tous des produits d’une société, ayons au moins l’envie d’être des produits de luxe.

Le poids des mots, l’absence des photos by Sophia Burnett est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.

Work in progress.

sophiaburnett — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:38:04 +0000

I recently started climbing a mountain called Mt. Entrepreneurship. It’s a funny old mountain because the higher one climbs, the further the top seems.

: Mt. Entrepreneurship

However I am surprised to note that despite the adversity of the task at hand, I am but more and more passionate about my project as the days pass. My frozen body might be found one day stuck to the side of the rock, but at least it’ll have a smile on its face.

What is it about my project that is capable of putting me in a maintained state of juvenile excitation? The answer I believe lies in in the very nature of the project at hand.

Mapenda is a web startup and web startups are more like dancing and less like screenplays. Let me explain.

I’ve already had two careers, in dancing and screenwriting. As a dancer, one is required to learn a choreography and execute that same choreography night after night. The finished show however is a living entity. Things can be tweaked. Dancers can make their battements higher with practise, costumes can be emroidered and even the music can be changed. The show remains essentially the same, but the audience always gets the best version of it.

With screenplays however, there comes a time in the production process, when the script is shot, the dialogue acted and the editing finished. The work is done, the process is finite. The customer will always get the same version.

Once a web application is launched one doesn’t send all the devs home and cross one’s fingers in the hope of getting the most hits before someone else releases their application with a bigger marketing budget. In this sense the web startup ressembles dance more than it does film; which is what excites me so.

Of course the plan is to release the best version possible to the public first-off, but I delight in the knowledge that the initial version will – can – should – only get better as time passes. As long as the business model holds its own, then Mapenda should be able to offer its customers improved versions, with new and creative solutions to purvey the best experience possible.

The show remains essentially the same, but the audience always gets the best version of it…

The Orgasmatron

sophiaburnett — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:50:11 +0000

The story: When Steve makes love to his girlfriend, she vocalises. A lot. At the beginning of their relationship, her cries of pleasure were appealing to Steve who found them rather exhilarating; but now, after three years of regular sex the sound of his girlfriend’s groans and squeals has become rather repetitive, nay, mundane.

The idea : An App! Yes, an iPhone (or Windows 7 … ) application that would translate vocalisations into a beautiful animated light show projected 180 onto the walls and ceiling and everything/one in between. An algorithm similar to the iTunes visualizer (as above) would be used to receive Steve’s girlfriend’s groans via the regular mic on the smartphone which then transmits to a small video projector unit with a smartphone dock. The App could also be synced to a TV screen, or sent directly as a video file to www.watchmyorgasm.com

Dragon Tips

sophiaburnett — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 09:35:07 +0000

The story: It’s deep winter, -7 C, and you’re walking along in your woolly hat, scarf and gloves when you get a call on your iPhone. You take the ‘phone out of your pocket and see it’s your boss/husband/daughter trying to get hold of you. You have to take the call, but you can’t unless you take your glove off because the phone has a capacitive tactile screen. Result your hand freezes and you can’t get the glove back on without much fuss and the risk of a) missing a fate-defining sentence b) dropping your expensive mobile.

The idea: Silicon injection moulded finger tips that you can stick onto any of your gloves on your index finger-tip with a butterfly-pin style system like earrings. Quite small, they’d contain conductive material. Available in fluorescent colors for teenagers or standard black, brown and transparent for more reserved adults.

I’d call them Dragon Tips and I’d sell them in packs of three on mobile phone accessory stands, Claire’s Accessories and Newsagents stores for €1.99

In a lonely market, Freehands.com sell their 'Power Stretch' glove €18.23.

The Com’: An ad that takes place on a teleski with a guy desperately trying to answer his potential girlfriend’s call whilst holding on to the bar, taking his glove off with his teeth and finally losing the ‘phone in the snow…The pay-off of course being his rival just infront of him who is equipped with dragon tips and who nonchalently takes the girls next call by swiping the screen, without having to take his gloves off.

If you own a silicon polymer injection moulding factory and you like this idea, please contact me

The worst thing that could happen.

sophiaburnett — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 06:01:57 +0000

As a web entrepreneur starting up in Paris, I’m currently meeting with numerous potential investors : business angels and VC’s alike.

The whole finance-seeking process is extremely interesting for an entrepreneur, for it is pedagogically rich; VC’s in particular have little time, so the questions they ask are pertinent and useful to analyse in-depth post-RDV.

An investor is the very first person who is going to buy your product.

If they are able to formulate their reticence and worries about your business, that is valuable information to glean. The meetings I have had so far have always left me more knowledgeable about my business plan and my product, thanks to precise queries about technical, financial or management issues.

One question that has become annoyingly repetitive however is : “Why do you not have a partner?”

The fact that I intend to start-up solo really, really bugs investors, and I only realised exactly why a week ago.

I don’t need a business associate as long as I have a well-chosen team around me to deliver the work I need doing. Also I am of an age where many of my friends are successful professionals who can offer me very sound advice, for free! Why on earth would I take the risk of hooking up with a business partner at this stage? Why would I take the risk of sharing the capital of my company with someone who might not pull their weight, or worse still throw their weight around? Someone who has no knowledge whatsoever of the genesis of the project, and who has little or no interest in me as a person?

Why would an investor want me to take that kind of risk now?

“What happens to the business if you suddenly die tomorrow?”

That was it. The unequivocal, debate ending line.

“If you die we lose our entire investment.”

Yes, but.

Dear investors. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to an entrepreneur.

Death is legally very straightforward, easy to place in hierarchy, and what’s more you can get heaps of insurance money in return for a corpse.

No, the question they should be asking is “What happens to the business if you fall in love?”

Now there’s a potential bomb; far worse than ceasing to exist. Love takes up brain-space, it renders you wildly optimistic, and clouds your capacity to analyse potentially conflictual situations. The first throes of love are passionate and all consuming – time spent drooling over the complete RSS feed of the loved one’s tweets is time not spent drooling over the company’s 3 year forecast…

So, dear investors, fear not Death, fear Love.

Are you sure they won't miss me at the product launch?

Le Poing de la Grande Ourse

sophiaburnett — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:40:29 +0000

L’année dernière, j’ai publié un billet qui parlait d’ Éric Jomarien, et de notre rencontre a l’Association des Script Doctors Bénévoles.

Après beaucoup d’hésitation, je souhaite partager son texte avec vous.

Hokuto No Ken est un Manga Japonais écrit par Buronson et illustré par Tetsuo Hara. C’est un manga culte dont la violence des scènes d’action inspirera Éric, lui qui avait la mobilité excessivement réduite, mais qui comprenait le verbe ‘se battre’. S’inspirant du manga, il a écrit un long-métrage en trois actes que vous pouvez lire ici:

View this document on Scribd

Il y a désormais un groupe Facebook pour l’Association des Script Doctors Bénévoles.

Si vous êtes soit un professionnel de l’écriture audiovisuel, soit personne à mobilité réduite qui aimerait un coup de main sur un projet d’écriture, n’hésitez pas à rejoindre le groupe afin de trouver un binôme.

I+E = McMerit

sophiaburnett — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:04:11 +0000

Back Story: Shana is 14 years old. Like lots of girls her age, Shana dislikes revising for schoolwork.

Also like lots of girls her age, she likes to meet her friends at McDonalds.

Shana will gladly wait in a queue for at least ten minutes to be served. And she’s receptive to marketing ops that allow her to get a free small drink, an ice-cream, or a reduction on a meal.

However if Shana doesn’t get good grades then most likely she’ll be working at McDonalds – as a cleaner- the cashier jobs are for university graduates…

The Idea : A Young style ‘soft’ meritocracy by MacDonalds that rewards Intelligence and Effort.

As Shana enters, she pulls a ticket that has a question on it relating to the junior high syllabus. Below the question are three scratch-card type boxes.

If Shana answers the general knowledge question correctly she can use the card to get immediate discount on her order.

If she gets it wrong, she can still win a discount, provided she goes to the McDonalds brand new McSmart page on their website, to find out what the correct reply is…

"I told you 1 isn't a prime number. You owe me a McFlurry"

Why the French Y Generation has a chance (despite being alarmingly pessimistic).

sophiaburnett — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:23:40 +0000

They speak English.

Long gone are the days when any French person would look at you blankly and mutter “eet eez er problemme pour moi speek ze english”. The French Y Gen are digital natives. They don’t remember the linguistic monopoly of videotapes; DVD unleashed a great learning potential and YouTube gave them the real accents of their favourite celebrities. Now they’re learning Chinese.

They travel (outside of France).

For years the French would repeat proudly that France is such a beautiful (true) and varied (also true) country that there really is no need to search beyond its frontiers to have a fulfilling holiday.

Online booking, and shorter working weeks changed that; and the wealth of practical information via internet has taken the fear factor out of leaving french soil. It’s also enabled young graduates to envisage leaving the nest for even farther fields.

They’ve embraced geekiness.

The current Wikio #1 Marketing blog in France is called le Publigeekaire. It’s run by @MathieuFlex on Twitter who defines himself as a member of the Y generation in his bio.

There’s one thing the French Y gen loves more than tech, gadgets and marketing, and that’s talking about tech, gadgets and marketing. On Facebook, on Twitter, on blogs. In barcamps, demo evenings, forums, seed dating, aperitweets, and the list goes on. From an entrepreneur’s point of view (currently mine), Paris is positively buzzing.

They know exercise won’t kill their intellect.

They still smoke, but a lot less, and no longer in restaurants. They go to the gym. They play indoor football. They adore yoga. They do african dance. They jog. Seriously.

They’re the first generation in decades that doesn’t fantasize about being born in the US.

They consider the US far more pragmatically than their elders, they approach it like they would someone on a 10th date . The desire is still there, but the fantasy is dampened. What the French Y gen want from the States is professional credibility, experience, and the opportunity to offer their wares to a vast market that remains, for the moment, more accessible to them than China.

They want a better future.

And I’m sure they can make one…

Mobile App pour Liber-t

sophiaburnett — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:19:30 +0000

L’histoire : Chaque année en période de vacances, les autoroutes de France deviennent des entonnoirs diaboliques, que les automobilistes (et leurs familles/amis) sont contraints et forcés d’emprunter. Le service de péage automatisé Liber-T est très efficace, mais nombreux sont ceux qui pensent à s’y abonner que lorsqu’ils sont coincés dans la file CB.

Le “Free Flow” déjà en place aux US arrive en Europe, en commençant par l’Ireland. Cependant, la législation française ne permet pas le paiement de la taxe d’autoroute par identification de la plaque d’immatriculation du véhicule…

L’idée : En attendant que la législation évolue, et comme il y a un App pour tout, il devrait y avoir une app Liber-T. Pour le coup, ce sera vraiment utile. L’application sera pour smartphones et iPod touch et donc pourrait s’obtenir en une minute via l’Apps Store, comparé à 72h par courrier pour la version matérialisée. Ce sera une App ‘badge’ qui fonctionnera de la même manière que le badge matérialisé (ondes par télétransmission), et qui sera lisible sur le smartphone placé sur le tableau de bord.

Les appareils 3G ayant la géolocalisation pourraient en plus permettre une tarification véritablement ‘sur mesure ’ en fonction de trajet réel parcouru.

La Com’: Une femme au foyer (exceptionnellement sortie de son biotope naturel) fait une présentation d’utilisation sous forme de chanson à son mari, le conducteur stressé, tout en veillant à ce que ses enfants à l’arrière aient bien terminé leur Tupperware de purée Mousseline.

En attendant l’App, le Free Flow ou d’autres deus pour conducteurs, le site pour vous abonner au télépéage Liber-t c’est ici:

www.sapn-libert.fr.

Mobile App pour Liber-t by Sophia Burnett est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité – Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale – Pas de Modification 3.0 Unported.
Basé(e) sur une oeuvre à www.sophiaburnett.com

A FRIENDLY WAVE

sophiaburnett — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:44:41 +0000

The story : Paul has Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and MySpace accounts and every day he receives lots of music posts from his friends and acquaintances. Paul however simply does not have the time to recover each track, and even less to listen to them at work. How frustrating it is for Paul to make the hour’s drive home from work with the poor choice between Boring FM and NoMusicalTaste FM knowing fully well that his various networks contain plenty of wonderful, handpicked tunes. If only he could listen to the musical links like a veritable ‘made to measure’ radio station…

The idea : A mobile App that would not only centralise all the music posted to Paul, but also manage a radio style broadcast programmation by streaming the tracks randomly. An automotised voice of one’s choice (ex.Yoda) would introduce each track like a radio DJ, and say who it was dedicated by.

” And now, Instant Karma by John Lennon offered to you by @FredFarid is”

And of course, the possibility to also read your radio stream like a regular playlist.
There’d be a free version with targeted commercials, and a paying version without.

ONDES D’AMIS by Sophia Burnett est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité – Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale – Pas de Modification 3.0 Unported.
Basé(e) sur une oeuvre à sophiaburnett.com.

Êtes vous sûr de n’avoir rien oublié ?

sophiaburnett — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:07:15 +0000

L’histoire : Vous la connaissez. C’est une terrible histoire qui pourrait arriver à n’importe quel parent. Pour x raisons, un bébé est oublié dans une voiture en plein soleil. La suite tragique se déroule très vite.

L’idée : Social advertising, des petits rappels aux papas et mamans. Une photo qui peut être affichée un peu partout, centres commerciaux, bureaux, au dos de Post-It…Ou relayé en version digitale en avatar, par mail, Facebook, Twitter, alerte smartphone.

Meilleure com’ : Son affichage sur les distributeurs de café, sur les gobelets, ou dans les WC des entreprises.

Etes vous sûr de n’avoir rien oublié by Sophia Burnett est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité – Pas de Modification 3.0 Unported.
Basé(e) sur une oeuvre à sophiaburnett.com

ONDES D’AMIS

sophiaburnett — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:44:43 +0000

L’histoire : Paul a un compte Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, et MySpace et il reçoit beaucoup de musiques qui lui sont destinées plus ou moins exclusivement. Paul cependant n’a tout simplement pas assez d’heures dans la journée pour aller récupérer chaque morceau, encore moins de les écouter sur son ordi au bureau. Quel frustration pour Paul de rentrer le soir en voiture et de devoir choisir entre Pub FM et Ringard FM alors qu’il a entraperçu tous les bons titres postés par son network durant la journée. Si seulement il pouvait écouter les liens musicaux comme une véritable station de radio faite sur mesure…

L’idée : Une application genre twt.fm (bien) améliore qui regrouperait l’ensemble des morceaux ‘offerts’ à Paul et qui s’occuperait de la programmation en faisant un streaming des morceaux diffusés de façon aléatoire vers un Appli ios ou Android. Une voix automatisée ferait les intros personnalisables ;

” Et maintenant, Poker Face de Lady Gaga vous est proposé par @joelapompe”, par exemple

Et évidemment toujours la possibilité de l’écouter comme un playlist.
Il y aura la version gratuite avec des coupures pub ou la version Appli payante, sans.

THANK-YOU

sophiaburnett — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:31:33 +0000

The Story : Once upon a time a woman called June had a little girl. As in many parent/child relationships, as the years passed, the occasions for bonding decreased and inversely, misunderstandings increased. Each telephone conversation had potential for discord and this tension made both mother and daughter want to forget communication entirely and recreate the Stone-Age.

The Idea : Communicating essentially by e-mail, and obligatorily starting each e-mail with a “thank-you” paragraph relating to something specific from shared history. I had this idea six months ago and it helped June and I remember some of the gems of our past. I’m so glad I did, because she passed away unexpectedly in May.

I thank her once more, posthumously, for all her love and devotion.

GLOBALEMENT GÉNIAL

sophiaburnett — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:35:45 +0000

L’histoire: Les réseaux sociaux ont révolutionné nos interactions. Mais peuvent-ils augmenter notre conscience des problèmes de santé les plus importants du 21e siècle, et y apporter une réponse économique ? L’idée : MASSIVEGOOD, idée de génie d’ UNITAID (entre autres), fait les deux, en créant une communauté mondiale basée sur le microphilanthropie. MASSIVEGOOD permet de faire une micro contribution de $2 pour combattre notamment la malaria, la … Read More

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