#smartercrowds

[tribeqa]

Embed The Love

RLE. Curacao, September 17, 2013. My first day back in Curacao. First thing  I did was to pay a traffic fine. There were 7 people standing (no chairs) in  a small waiting room of 1.5 m2. The message of that tiny room was: Curacao don’t give a fuck about you. The day before 400 people were waiting in the entrance hall of HATO (the airport). Lined up before customs we waited and waited to enter Curacao and spend our money on the Island. The message was clear: Curacao don’t give a fuck about you.

I am all in favor of clear messages. You never know; a global marketing campaign ” Curacao don’t give a fuck about you” might actually work. Hard-working people (touch of populism) might actually be masochistic and excited by the dominant master – Curacao.  Hey, I do not put my money on it, but who knows – life is a surprise.

SVPLLY.com (https://svpply.com) is a growing community of taste makers.  The members use them to keep track of the things they want to buy later. SVPLLY allows me to embed my personal SVPLLY page in my own website through a very handy embed code. The message is: WE CARE. They care because they know that the members are crucial. They (the members!!) are building the SVPLLY brand and web platform. The more products they assemble, the more attractive it gets. In return for my work (for them) they offer me – the member – a nice way to extend my own website at the same time. Now by selecting new products I not only enhance the SVPPLY website (http://bit.ly/19bhlHI), but also my own website (http://bit.ly/19bhomI).

That is pure love. SVPPLY thinks about me; they care; they want to make my life easier.  I love them back and I will contribute more and more. Embed the Love because I am not really a masochist. Sorry.

from http://bit.ly/153ZqS6

[tribeqa]

The Chained Details of Life

  RLE – Amsterdam, August 7, 2013. I crashed my website two days by being stupid. I deserve punishment and I am carrying as a man (whatever that means). The solution was to find a Joomla expert – preferable one with affordable rates. where do you find those guys. oDesk.com is a platform for knowledge workers to offer their expertise and clients seeking their expertise. Great website. Impressed. Remember it.

I described what happen and what I needed. Within 30 minutes I had 20 offers from all over the world. From China, Korea, Russia to Kenya. I chose a guy called Kunule Imbayi from Kenya. He is gonna solve my problem.

But … there is always a But. And here begins the train-of-misery. We live in a chained society; I don’t refer to some spiritual slavery to consuming too much or so, but all things knotted together in a chain. You start with solving one thing, but you need something else to work also; otherwise no progress, but utter frustration.

Remember, dear audience (of 1) I am always a happy person – even if I yell at the computer screen that I want to be transferred to a pre-christian time in the south of Uganda, where I care for my crops and live a life lived in the same way for centuries.

I want my new friend Kunule to repair my website, but the website (in development) is located on my hard-disk and I cannot give access to a stranger to my hard-disk (although I am not sure why not; I trust people easily). So i need to transfer the site to his server. How do I do that? Downloaded one thing,m but that wants to back-up the whole computer or the C-drive in total. I downloaded 7-Zip, but somehow it seems to work, but when I transfer the files (through FileZila) only parts (10%) seems to be transferred for real. Screaming for a time-machine.

Hours later I still have no answer. Volunteering my head for Guillotine, I decided to change my attention to another problem that needs to be solved for oDesk – the payment method. Easy does it.

I seem to have three (3) Paypal accounts and that is not handy. I call Paypal and after 10 minutes I get somebody who only helps US clients and I get transferred to another person who cannot hear me well. After 20 minutes I have only one Paypal account left. Good. Although 30 minutes after I have not yet received the closing confirmations. so who knows, maybe I still have 3. Anyway, I solved one thing. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFu… Not really. oDesk only accepts verified Paypal accounts and mine is not verified. To verify I need to open my bank account online; get the transactions statement and copy the last 4 digits and go to Paypal and input the 4 digits somewhere and my account will be verified.

The morale of today is that there are only details; details that are chained together in multiple ways. We can talk vision and strategy, but the great companies (people) have a handle on all those ‘chained details’ that ultimately take care of a positive consumer experience. And that’s what it is all about.

So today I made progress, because I am again aware of the details and the chaining that goes on between those details. And hell, who wants to wait for months on rain to save the crop of this year’s harvest. Maybe not me.

from http://bit.ly/17xqYj1

[tribeqa]

Total F*#@cking Crash Joomla Site

RLE – Amsterdam, August 5, 2013. Started this morning happy that I was going to upload the new version of Social-Mavericks. I have been working many hours on it this week, cleaning up the site, refocusing it and making it simpler.

Yeahhh, so happy. Clicked on the wrong button and my eye catches “Joomla 2.5.8″. I realize that I still work with an older version with the 2.5 Joomla range (2.5.11 is the latest). But – very irritating  - the Joomla update feature indicates that 2.5.8 is the latest. I google the perceived error (done it already many times), but now I get a link to a solution. Purge the cache of the Joomla Update extensions in Extension Manager.

A solution dawns like an image of a smiling young woman winking you to come in. I purge the cache and …. yeah it works again. The Joomla Update works and reports that there is a new stable update (3.1.5).

I update the K2 extensions with one click and in a mood of total ‘irrational exuberance’ I click to update Joomla to 3.1.5. One click to total happiness. As I click the button, at a lower level of my brains something is screaming “make a backup first”. Horny like 16-year old boy I completely ignore the rubber and jump right in to the misery.

CRASH

All my work of the last week probably down the drain. The best thing to do is to get depressed and become a dog-sitter. I am a total fuck-up. OMG, this is the last thing I need.

Backups, backups, backups. Why do I not make backups daily? I have been here before. The morality of this story is …. make backups and don’t be like me. Pffffffffffff, nice start of the week.

from http://bit.ly/17teYiL

[tribeqa]

The Culture-of-Success Part I

Liu Xiang is the Olympic Gold medalist 100 meter Hurdles of Beijing. Aries Merritt (USA) won the last Olympic edition in London. Xiang crashed to the ground with a severe injury. Both men come from way different cultures of the world. But what fascinates me is their preparation for the London Games. Did they follow much different training methods? Did they approach the challenges of being a medal candidate in totally different ways? And if so, are the differences explained from their different cultural backgrounds or just a coach with a different point-of-view? Could they easily swap coaches and still be a contender?

Is their a culture-of-success? If we see culture as simply the way people live; it is simple an average of all the habits of individual people. If we try to explain culture, do we explain the life of an average, non-existent, statistical person? So if you – like Liu and Aries – want to achieve something unique and extraordinary, your lifestyle need to conform to a totally different set of rules. You need to have different habits towards discipline, towards dealing with physical pain, different habits to resting, to food, to time spent with friends, to mental stress, to ….. and the list goes on.

That life has nothing to do with the average man’s life. The life of Churandy Marina obeys the laws of the culture-of-success. To portray him as a happy-go-lucky guy who always is laughing diminishes the perception of his true character. His ability to discipline himself and to go the extra mile. To not give up when in pain; to keep listening to his coach when exhausted and not to have that beer with friends but to take the necessary rest obeying a ruthless schedule-of living. You cannot do that without having Character with a Capital C. That is why I admire Churandy, Aries and Liu. Three totally different guys from seemingly totally different countries. In fact, they live in the same State-of-Mind; they are inhabitants of the Culture-of-Success. Everything in that place rejects the average. Average does not win gold medals. Average does not take you any final anywhere in the world anytime. Success demands you to find the point where you start to fail. Where the pain becomes just too much; where you actually give up. Still, the moment where you do not give up and find the force to do extra, just because you can, is a thrill of its own kind. To be continued.

      from http://bit.ly/XYLTZp

[tribeqa]

Django & Tula

I am not a big fan Quentin Tarantino. I think he is overrated. Yes, Pulp Fiction was top-of-the-bill, but violence bores me. Blood splashing everywhere makes me sleepy. Bullets penetrating bodies in slow-motion, who cares. It is too simple. You know that is coming; close your eyes and wait for the next snappy dialogue.  I fast-forward car chases, the shoot-outs, explosions and so.

But not to shove the movie totally in the gutter,  I thought the actors were great. Fox, Landa, DiCaprio and Jackson were exquisite; a joy to watch the brilliance of each those actors.  The rotten teeth on DiCaprio was a sensational move.  I secretly hope DiCaprio came with the idea himself.

The safest thing one could say about “Django Unchained” is that it finds Quentin Tarantino hurtling over the top yet again by juxtaposing the horrors of slavery with an absurdist, horse-opera buffa plot that quotes from all sorts of movies, including his own, with special emphasis on spaghetti westerns. […}  Yet this seriously crazed comedy is also a crazily serious disquisition on enslavement, and how it has been portrayed over the years and decades by slaves to Hollywood. (Joe Morgenstein WSJ)

Django like Unglorious Bastards like Kill Bill just masturbates from blood to more blood. Slavery or Nazi Germany are just foto-opps for the violence. An emotionless parade of supposedly highly-charged themes with no real food for discussions. It is all too absurdly cartoonesque.

DiCaprio at the dinner table starts the discussions of White Supremacy by referring to cranial research showing white man superiority against the backdrop of  a white population of total morons.  That’s funny, but in the Cinema nobody laughed. DiCaprio’s character build his case for White Supremacy by framing the black man (although he uses the nigger word) as submissively accepting slavery. Yet the whole movie we see whipped slaves walking for punished for insubordination. But is Django really the train-of-thoughts that inspires us to really think about the dynamics of slavery. Not really, before you can think your next word, the screen splashes blood like a gang-bang porn movie where 40 guys shoot their cum at the same time. By the way, the Civil War was won because more than 200.00 slaves crossed over to fight for the Union tipping the balance decisively in favor of the North. Hence, the birth of the USA. what do you mean submissive?

Just as Nazi Germany, slavery is a telling period in history because it shows the perverted nature of mankind; not necessarily white mankind. I believe the relevance of slavery or Nazi Germany is not the human horrors and the individual heroism or sadism that is depicted in many movies, but the collective belief that one group (race) feels superior to another. The Jew as the Untenmensch or the African as a naked, wild beast are memes engraved in our collective memory, whether we want it or not. Psychology shows the pervasiveness of these images in our unconsciousness decision-making, pervertedly not only in the white man.

How absurd to see Europeans (the Western World) claiming moral superiority of a higher civilization with Slavery, Apartheid and Nazi Germany as living proof of immoral Beastness.  Just as any other people in history those civilized man used terror as a tactical (strategic) weapon to dominate their conquered enemies. Whipping slaves, raping women, separating families is a tactic used by the old Kentucky  plantation holders  just as Assad is doing now in Syria or Koni in Oeganda. Racist ideology was (is?) a great tactical weapon to unite poor whites behind the white elite who looked down on them almost as much as they did on the African. But in the racist theories the white ‘moron’ class could at least pretend that they were more than they actually were (cheap labor for the elite and expendable soldiers for the kill). It was a immoral, but smart move and it still is an immoral, smart move: racism as a cheap recruiting tool for poor people to side with the elite against other poor people.

It is comic to see how White Trash tries to keep the pretense of superior white race, while being despised and ridiculed by other White Man. Still, we need to wait for other movies who have the guts to penetrate these sensitive issues and show us the deeper insight that there was Method-To-The-Madness. Terror and racism are tactical weapons of mass destruction to break the mind of the people. It is inhuman, but effective. It works until the hate gives in; no society can expand based on terror, hate and exclusion. Lincoln saw that; Mandela and Martin Luther King understood that. Assadistas, Talibanistas, Iransistas, BinLadenistas and their spiteful followers do not; they have no future just like the Plantation Holders or their Afikaner Counterparts; they will end up to be gutted in gutter.

The question for the day: Will Tula the Movie dive deeper into the murky psychology of slavery or will it try to score on the superficial sentimentalism  of the bad white bosses and their sadistic soldiers and the poor, tortured black masses? The latter we have already seen in a better version by Steven Spielberg.

  from http://bit.ly/URR4JU

[smartercrowds-blog]

IFTTT revisited

  Curacao, January 2  2013

About a year ago I started using IFTTT (pronounce ift like in gift) and I liked it but somehow it did not really stick. It makes life easier. It solves a pain. Tom (as in Tom Samph from Grovo Blog), what do you think about IFTTT?

Tom: IFTTT  [...] lets users build “recipes” from popular “channels” in an If This Then That formula. In other words, it allows users to construct automated tasks by linking popular online services. On the surface, it’s like programming for dummies.

Well, that is my level: programming for dummies!

As I made a solemn promise to be what I am and what I am is a blogger. The blogs are written in WordPress. But how to distribute it to the other platforms I am also active on like FB, Linkedin, Tumblr and so on. Well, use IFTTT. More reach; less work. IFTTT works a bit like macros in Excel for all you nerds out there. I loved the Excel macros.

So, Tip of The Day: IFFT.com

Ciao,

Robert

from http://bit.ly/VYpojM

[smartercrowds-blog]

The Not-Reborn Comeback-Kid Blogger Entrepreneur

Curacao, January 1 2012

I am a blogger. I know it. The blog knows it, but ‘things’ always get in the way. In 2013 things will no longer keep me from being who I am for real: a blogger. I stand before thee and solemnly swear to be who I am and always will be for better and for worse.  You could say that I am a ‘ reborn blogger’, but somehow that does not feel right. I resent ‘reborns’. Why? I think it is hypocritical to label yourself like that. It is like I fucked up bad, but I am reborn so I am not responsible for the life before.

Would it help if I called myself a reborn entrepreneur? Will investors not ask me what I have done the past years? No, because I am a reborn entrepreneur. Pffffff, wish. Well, a name I like is Come-Back Kid. I see myself as a Comeback Kid. I am the quarterback (totally in the NFL nowadays) trailing 21 points with 8.45 on the clock and completely confident to overcome the four-possession deficit.

So that makes me the not-reborn comeback-kid blogger entrepreneur.

Robert

from http://bit.ly/U4VdNQ

[smartercrowds-blog]

I Got Milk

RLE, Curacao, February 10, 2012. Yesterday I went to the beach – Mambo Beach. At around five o’clock when people start to go hotel and the water empties I do my three laps. I start at the far end of the Cabana Beach Resort all the way up to the Lions Dive Beach Resort. I actually have no idea how far it is – a mile or so, maybe less. I have no idea how fast I swim. I do not particularly like swimming. Yet I do it almost four times a week. Yesterday I had a very fast second lap. I know that even without timing it. I won. You know I am in a competition with myself. Everyday I want to get better a little bit. I actually never compare myself to others; only with me yesterday. Probably a very pathological streak in my curious personality, but – hey – C’est moi.

Many people struggle with social media. Because others do it, they do it. They open a LinkedIn page, a facebook page, a Twitter account and the very disciplined a Google+, Tumblr or even an Pinterest account. The truth is they do not understand it. When you talk to somebody for five seconds, you know whether they get it or not. Most don’t get it. I get it.  ….. (most people – even good friends do not realize that this a joke; it is the way I humor myself). It is not that I think that I don’t get it. I get it. But it doesn’t mean anything that I get it ..or not. Am I a better person because I get it and they don’t? Does it make me happier that I am better than them? To me it is senseless. It is like being right that you came from the right-hand side and the bus not (Hi Petrus…).

I am searching like a blood-drunken vampire for people who know more than me. Who are smarter than me? Who know more. I want to suck their know-how from their surprisingly tasty necks. A scene described by many as vicious. I do not care for I want to be smarter tomorrow than what I am today. I think I can beat death by growing every day a little bit more. And I will believe this even after I die.

Social Media is an attitude. Your personality allows you to be open, trustworthy and you like to share. On a deeper level you observe, listen and accept the frailties of the ones you connect with. Also you are hard and keen enough to cut off a connection if it does not lead to business. Social media is about a win-win situation for both. It is about business. It is about selling. It is about supporting the other to benefit yourself (not always in monetary sense).  It takes being smart to find the mutual benefits of collaboration.

Many in my age-group (50-100) not only do not get it; they simply do not have the personality or attitude for it. Of course, there is no way for me to prove it. And a big chance even that it is complete bullocks. If confronted with it – I do my republican party move – I adopt the opposite argument and deny ever to have said it. It is that simple and Romney is getting away with it (now does he?)

Social media is about being interesting enough for people to want to read you the next time; to listen to your next explanation; your next uploaded picture, story and so on. It is about emotion and about real and authentic (or allothentic). Customers do not want to see your pancaked, photoshopped face, your 10.000 times rewritten hyped profile of yourself.  They want the truth. they want to know whether your products are any good and that when something happens that you will be there for them. And not just run away with the money. (Who is that laughing all the way to the bank?). Customers want to limit their risks and buy what they think they are buying.  And if they do; they will tell the world about.

You (the one selling) can use that to sell more. Or if the consumer review is not that great; you can use their feedback to improve your company. You do not need McKinsey to show you how to run your shop; you need customers to give you feedback. You do not need a $10.000 add in the paper, you need happy customers to increase revenues.

Social media is about losing control. Let it flow. Just like in sports; you need to find a way to relax when performing under stress. Lose control, share, collaborate, be interesting, observe, listen, articulate well your opinions, be sensible controversial, stand out, don’t take it personal, be personal, act on feedback, don’t be defensive, be clear to people you do not like (and disconnect), show your real face, be surprised, be curious, love, do not be middle-of-the road, act on feedback, know what type of relationships you are capable of, know your limits, use logical arguments, search for facts, be a curator, do something crazy once a day, connect with robert eikelboom, kiss a stranger …..

Of course, I get it. The question is do I get it more today than I ever got it yesterday. Or am I so afraid of myself that avoiding the mirror become my life goal. Well, If that is the case, than just go out and blame others for whatever you can or cannot blame them for. You know that is why I Got Milk. I look in the mirror when swimming from one resort hotel to another. Dreaming to be Mark Spitz (age group 50-100), while knowing I am not bad as a 50+ loser doing my daily Mambo crawl.

My question is I Got Milk; how do I get people to know it too. Tomorrow I have a better answer.

***

from http://bit.ly/xSEtLn