leo.fm

Hiring again

Just finished an afternoon with three interviews for someone special to join our Quodis team. So much I can tell: all of them are great people and together make the best set of talent I ever had to choose from.

All of them share a great passion to visit new places and learn new techniques (sort of the same thing, isn’t it?), and they are all extremely autodidact and multidisciplinary. Plus, they all share the same passion for music - not sure if that’s a coincidence. Seems like I hit the jackpot: from the over 40 applications I got, at least the three I chose for an interview are great matches.

Another big plus: two of them actually applied to Quodis (and exclusively to Quodis) because of our reputation as a place to get some great work done while maintaining a unique team with a super working and experimentation environment. That makes me extra happy and increases the challenge to keep it that way.

If I could, I’d probably hire at least two of them.

End of a chapter: The Star Tracker

I’ve received some questions about the recent announcement that The Star Tracker’s new IT platform will be developed by our friends over at log consulting, instead of my company Quodis that did the original development (in sweet old ASP 3.0).

We never knew TST would grow to have this kind of attention, and when it did, Quodis transfered its share of TST to the newly founded company Ixion, where I was a co-founder. As time went by and things at Quodis changed (focus on clients, SaaS, new partner, new mindset) it became clear that rewriting TST in a new language (be it RoR or PHP or or or) was a challenge that would completely take our time and focus in a direction we do not want our teams’ focus to be set.

In the meanwhile a new purpose and context for TST emerged in the hands of Tiago Forjaz: Fundação Talento, a project to promote portuguese talent around the world. At this point I decided to commit all my focus and resources to Quodis, donating my share of TST to Fundação Talento and leaving Ixion behind, and convincing everyone that we needed a new IT partner to keep developing TST.

I was closely involved in the process of choosing this new IT company, and still maintain an active role in IT advisory for TST. Quodis currently still does The Star Tracker’s hosting and maintenance, and we will work hard to help the guys at log prepare a smooth transition to the new platform. From there one, I will once and for all have no practical ties to TST, other than the obviously great memories and experience I gathered throughout these 2 years, together with a Mashable Open Web Award and 30.000 users from over 140 countries.

Plataforma “Camões” para controlar os alunos com Magalhães

O @jneves twittou sobre este artigo no Expresso, em que algumas pessoas defendem que “Se cada criança tiver um Magalhães na sala de aula”, explica esse responsável, “são 20 computadores que ali estão de costas para o professor, sem ele saber o que é que os alunos estão a fazer”.

E que portanto não ter o “Camões” instalado em todos os Magalhães torna-os inúteis e em ferramentas lúdicas (leia-se perigosas) nas salas de aula. Não conhecendo bem nem o Camões nem o Magalhães, eis o que sinto: em vez de os professores perderem tempo a controlar 20 alunos em simultâneo e a tirar-lhes toda e qualquer privacidade, que tal focarem-se em darem tarefas que não deixam sequer espaço para fugirem à matéria durante as aulas?

Se um aluno acabar o exercício mais cedo, porque não deixá-lo navegar livremente e com toda a privacidade na web, ou jogar os seus jogos preferidos? Afinal qual é o nosso objectivo: que estejam uma hora a estudar, ou que estudem aquilo que tem a estudar? Resultado ou aparência?

Não sendo sendo nem pouco mais ou menos especialista em pedagogia, sei que irei sempre premiar resultados e eficácia, e não apenas os que “marcam o ponto” ficando uma hora a fazer um exercício (ou a fazer nada) sem pensarem em maneiras criativas de o resolver mais rápido e com menos esforço.

Se os alunos tem a aula inteira para utilizar o Magalhães como ferramenta lúdica, das duas uma: ou não estão a cumprir as tarefas que lhes foram pedidas e sofrem as consequências na hora da avaliação, ou então o professor não lhes está a dar suficiente que fazer porque está mais preocupado em garantir que fiquem uma hora sem utilizar o Magalhães para outras coisas.

Bom, e depois disto decidi fazer uma pesquisa sobre a empresa que está a desenvolver e vender (bem caro… 40/aluno/mês, por confirmar) o Camões, a Microfil. E fiquei ainda mais assustado com a ideia. Alguém pode confirmar algumas das acusações abaixo ou contextualizar melhor? No transparencia-pt.org apenas encontro duas referências inofensivas.

• 7 medidas para o Magalhães de Ouro?
  Microfil - As Tecnologias de Desinformação
• Tecnológica-fantasma da SLN chegou a deter a portuguesa Microfil
  Jornal de Negócios
• Judiciária investiga António Nunes
  Novabase

ideia fórum with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Biz Stone in Lisbon

I was lucky to be invited to the conference promoted by the portuguese i newspaper at the Museu do Oriente in Lisbon on June 24th, in the context of their idea promotion. Lucky because otherwise I most certainly would have not paid ~700 Eur to get a ticket - regardless of the event’s quality, which, I must say, was very good. Probably that’s why there was only a half-full room.

The conference was split into 2 x 2 hours, the first being dedicated to Nassim Nicholas Taleb (yeah I know, nice website - but read the last sentence), challenged by four major portuguese entrepreneurs, including from two national banks, and moderated by the newspapers director, Martim Avillez Figueiredo.

It was a very interesting debate, starting with the black swan theory and ending with practical ideas of how to prevent big corporations - specifically banks - from failing and having catastrophic consequences for the society. In a nutshell, everyone agreed that greed, lack of ethics and lack of effective regulation is responsible for the current situation and part of the solution.

“Sort of a no-brainer”, you’ll think - and I agree, but the interesting part was actually observing the tensions of these heavy-weights on the stage and watching their expressions and body language when defending themselves or attacking someone else.

Taleb also insisted on the idea that “if you want to take a risk, don’t play risks with banks”, since that is something like a critical service for our system. Two sentences I remember: “You can more easily fool one with billions than with thousands”, and “You can more easily fool a group of people than one single individual”.

The second 2 hours were dedicated to Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone, moderated by the newspapers co-director André Macedo and challenged by Elvira Fortunato, António Câmara and Paulo Querido. Biz Stone sure has a superstar status but delivered not more than the predictable. He is clearly in neutrality mode, and although you could take some lessons of what was said, it was more of a fact-check and than an inspiration or any other mind-blowing experience.

There was only little time for intervention by Biz’s challengers - most of it was spent explaining what twitter is (starting with the basic “why 140 characters?” question) and its evolution. Which makes sense in an audience where only a hand-full of people knew what South by Southwest is, and not many more actually use twitter on a daily basis. The usage of the #ideiaforum tag on twitter was at least disappointing.

Elvira Fortunato had little time to intervene (and she did admit not having a twitter account), António Câmara made a point by explaining how - even tough being harder - you can build an IT-based startup in Portugal and how twitter is a great marketing tool, and Paulo Querido brought in some numbers about twitters (supposedly lack) of growth in Portugal that were sort of useless to the debate, and rather felt like a necessity of giving some answer to the moderators question of “what might be twitters biggest weakness”. Yeah.. I can see mashable’s headline already, “Twitter’s growth in Portugal stopped… shuts down worldwide operations”.

Contrarily to the first 2 hours, this time there was some nice time for Q&A, and I did get a chance to ask about the necessity of not focusing on revenue long enough to achieve a critical mass of usage that, only then, allows you to discover previously unimagined revenue models. It was a sort of “yes, I agree, and it depends” question to him, but I still got an interesting 5-minute answer.

Thanks i for the excellent organization and setup. There was also a free live stream on their website (you can also watch the whole conference on video here) which is very rare for our standards - again thanks. Only negative points are some cast choices that could have been better (not sure Joe Berardo was relevant, and clearly there’s a lack of good Web-oriented entrepreneurs and journalists to take stage), and the tickets were way to pricey.

Democracy again - let’s do this!

Ok.. I’ve been as good as dead in the last few months - if you measure my hearbeat by my blog activity. But my brain is going bananas with, you guessed it, web-democracy.

So here’s the deal: after years of thinking about this topic I yesterday stumbled upon O’Reilly’s strong efforts on this topic, mostly concentrated on Septembers Gov 2.0 Expo and Summit, which - if I get the money for it - I will really love to attend. And I saw a bunch of institutions and platforms going in this direction - mainly in the US.

Some of you heard about my ideas during this Spring’s BarCamp in Coimbra, Portugal, and having regional elections in Portugal at the end of this year, but not only because of that, I think the time has come to put my money (my time, that is) where my mouth is.

So, dear summer: you won’t be about holidays, but about trying as hard as I can to bring to life this weird project I just can’t get out of my head. And heck, I’ll even give it a try on Ruby on Rails, which I started to learn last week (so far so good, ‘though it’s a huge jump coming from ASP 3.0).

It’ll be something that promotes a closer relation between citizens and deciders. That focuses on democratic decisions, and not about its’ discussion (for which we have tons of other platforms). That promotes transparency and accountability, and rewards intelligence and seriousness. And that is not focused on politics, but rather on decisions. But then again, “Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions.” (wikipedia of course), so I guess yeah - it’s about true politics.

And if it does just that, I’ll live happy for another year. Will keep you posted on this, wish me luck!

Payment day!

Don’t know if this is just a Portuguese cultural issue, but if you run a business on this beautiful peace of land by the Atlantic, you probably have been through the same problem: clients tend to delay payments.

By delay I mean paying in three instead of one month, or worse. So there we have it, the whole system is setup to punish (cash-flow-wise) those who pay when due, and enrich those who have the most aggressive and nasty techniques to delay payments to keep cash (without interests) on their side.

Had I known in advance how bad payers some of my clients are, I wouldn’t have done business with them. I’d rather have good payments done on time, tough slightly smaller values, than bigger ones coming late.

Why the system doesn’t auto-regulate, in the sense of bad payers = bad reputation = bad business? a) Because everyone is an accomplice in the crime, it’s a loop, b) Because there’s not enough transparency for it to become a reputation issue for a company.

So I’ve made clear I know how to complain. Now let me try to be part of the solution (besides trying, as good as possible, to pay everything on its due date in my own company)

Plan A

You know those “ISO” company quality certifications? How about one of those, but with a clearer and better brand, for all those who pay on time? This symbol could then be proudly displayed by good companies, and bad payers would implicitly be denounced. Build an online catalog/search to see who has the badge and who doesn’t, and voilá.

Plan B

Knowing that plan A needs a lot of logistics, money and good will, why not just build up a website for corporate reviews. Every company has a profile, and you just share your experience doing business with them, and how fast they do or do not pay. Sure, we would have to make sure there is no abuse, and that reviews are only worth for themselves. But that could be up and running in a week, and potentially build momentum to push for plan A.

Anyone?

Microinformation

Most of you web-addicts might be going through the same process as I am: suddenly days, sometimes weeks, go by without me checking back to my google reader. Paying regular attention to twitts from the right people, keeping an eye on facebook and having regular conversations at your geek-filled workplace will do the trick.

Those are our social filters to make sure we only end up reading the titles (I’m not even talking about their body anymore, google reader was great at allowing me to just browse all the blog’s titles) of the posts that might be relevant to us.

Main reasons are the bigger and bigger flow of information and the speed at which we can read information. I can’t remember the last time I read a long article online, and barely the last time I read something longer than a page on paper.

That’s also because everything is real-time. It’s becoming rare that an event occurs during a few days, we don’t know about it, and then have one article from one source compiling all the events necessary information in the way we like it, giving relevance to the aspects we care about.

Now we read about the event (be it a conference, a war or an election) in real-time, from multiple sources, that already act as filters to make sure we are only informed about the aspects we care about, leaving out all the paragraphs we would skip in a longer article.

Which helps killing bad journalism with crappy reports, but also sort of kills the role of a journalist that only reports on facts, completely unbiased. There’s real-time reporting from our social network for that! Long texts only make sense if they add something new to the facts: opinion. Which is great, as long as it isn’t hidden as “factual reporting”.

Unless there are opinions in a text, it is just an outdated way of transmitting information.

Direct Democracy, Socially Responsible Web

Shouldn’t the web help us to better execute our role as citizens? It barely does… don’t get me wrong, I love all the reactive twitts to what’s wrong and right. We all love to complain and debate, twitt and blog.

But what tools are there to actually get things decided and done in your community, city or country? Last time I got involved into something it was using the now-mostly-disregarded online petitions.

It’s amazing how egocentric we all get (and rightly so), expecting that for every opinion we shout, somebody else will listen and act upon it. This will never happen, so at least we should be able to make a point by getting together with like-minded people. The more you are on the same side, the bigger the chance to make a difference.

We understood that the web is not just about reading, but more about sharing information. Now, what about deciding, organizing and actually doing things we all should be doing as citizens? I currently can’t see the web offering enough tools (or maybe it’s users don’t offer enough will?) to go this way.

Notes

1. This post being just another one about the thoughts that lead me to thinking about ways to build a collaborative decision-making platform, where, based on direct democracy and proxy voting, you get to actually make a difference as a citizen.
2. Thanks “asd@asd.com” for your comment on my previous post on this row. You are right about the concerns of power abuse - I think the solution is to be absolutely transparent, as in “all votes are public no matter what”. Or at least close to that. Because corruption != transparency

About Hiring

Some bullet-point-love on what I’ve retained both from my experience and my casual readings on the topic. All of them apply (at least) for a small, young and creative startup without intentions to grow too much.

• You’ll want to attract talent, not run after it
• Until you don’t have the team-spirit, scale and identity to do that, some out-of-the-box ads are the way to get the out-of-the-box talent’s attention
• An Interview is a two-way communication. You have to sell the opportunity and see if the person falls in love with what you have to offer (I’m not talking money here). If not, it’s not worth forcing the motivation
• An Interview is not about the CV. Actually, I don’t even look at CV’s anymore. With designers, a quick glimpse at the portfolio will do it, with developers, it’s about feeling the passion and ideas.
• Hire those who you imagine as potentially becoming your friends
• Hire those who you respect and admire
• Hire those who will bring a challenge to your company - if they don’t, than it’s because they will bring nothing new
• Usually half of the people you hire are failures and will have to leave - accept that
• And the obvious: answer to all applications, and make every interview an opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge. It’s a small world!