It took some time for me to pick this up but Heiko’s post about the Tropical Islands near Berlin could be the perfect blogger meeting point. I mean you can go swim, sit on the beach, or have a beach party. And on top of that you have free Wi-Fi!!! The only problem is that there are no hotels in the place, which means you have to leave the place. With this drawback the idea doesn’t sound so wonderful anymore, even though good weather would be certain. So people to The Tropical Island, please put a hotel in the place 
Source: Tropical Islands Brand by Heiko Hebig.
Monthly Archives: December 2004
Perfect Blogger Meeting?
Six Apart Moving
Six Apart is moving to new offices in San Francisco from San Mateo to hire more talent and get the space they need. As of this article they plan to add 60 more people in the next year and a half. As this year ends I will try to think out loud a bit about a company that truely interests me.
They pulled in some $2 million in 2004 and might make some thing like $5 million next year as of the article. I presume those numbers to be off a little bit though especially as Berkowitz says they are close to break even. In one of my
Cheap, Fast, Good… Choose Two
I read this ages ago, I think via one of Cal Evans’ articles. I highly suggest reading Nerd Herding by the way. Now Markus Breuer pointed me to a very nice graphical representation of the idea.
Source: CreativeBits: Lessons Clients Need to Learn
This one is really true to a very good degree. It’s interesting to think about this in the light of outsourcing though, moving parts of your company somewhere else, focusing on what you really do well. If you move software development to India for example, it would likely be cheaper than in germany, and possibly even faster due to more people coding. The above image would then say that it will be worse quality. What about outsourcing your development to some eastern countries, at least to a big part. Many seem to be doing really well with it.
Of course you can agrue that I am turning different knobs here as I am changing the price for the same thing, but this is what you might have to think about. If you want it as fast as you get it now, at the same quality, then you will need to change the price you get it at or it will become more expensive. Sounds contractictory when first thinking about it, but the idea is that instead of hireing 10 more people internally, you hire them somewhere where the same quality is cheaper. You have transaction costs associated with this though which means it only works for larger projects.
Book Review: Das Herz aller Religionen ist eins
This is one of the books that has been on my shelf for a long time now, unfinished, as I just do not have the head free enough to read it. I do love the book though. What I love most about it is the introduction by Laurence Freeman OSB, a Benedictine monk and Spiritual guide of the World Community for Christian Meditation. His words are amazing and he gave me a new viewpoint on relgion. This is not to downplay the real part of the book but these 60 pages are wonderful to read and amazingly insightful.
The rest is really a Bible reading of the Dalai Lama, his comments as well as some questions and answers sessions. As I mentioned above, I have not finished reading it yet, mainly because you can’t just read this. It makes you think, it makes your mind move to interesting places and you tend to get caught up in it. This is not a book to take lightly and you need to give it the time it deserves. I didn’t and still don’t have that time at this moment.
If you are interested in religion, especially christianity, thinking about other religions, than this is something for you. It will show how very similar the different religions really are. The german version I have is entitled Dalai Lama: Das Herz aller Religionen ist eins. Die Lehre Jesu aus buddhistischer Sicht.
Book Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I am not sure how I got this book anymore, and it sure was fitting a bit to the style of writing I like. The problem is that the story was too weird and actually too little. You didn’t want to read it to know what would happen next, but more or less only because you wanted it to end. It has some good twists and some wonderful character plays but the twists just don’t make you go “WOW”. If you are into Gods this should be interesting, but if you are not you might miss some of the deeper meaning behind what some of the characters do. This is likely also why I didn’t get too much out of this one. Oh, so he is Odin. Ok, he has 20 other names. Ok. Let’s go on please.
In short, a special book, with much insight, little story and a very good writing style. Keep an eye on the author.
Kite Surfing Videos
Loic posted some very nice, and scary, kite surfing videos. You have family man! Watch out! I actually have been to Cabarete several times when I was younger (oh the times 
) during the surfing world cup. Great times, not that I surf.
A 6th Sense
I hope you all had a wonderful christmas and enjoyed some time with your loved ones. I for one did and am now back home, with a few more days off. As you might have noticed, I didn’t really blog but the things to talk about are plenty.
I wanted to get back to blogging with a good message and this came to me via a story that is asking where all the dead animales at Yala National Park are. This park in Sri Lanka was washed by the floodwaters up to 3 km deep but there are no dead animals to be found.
Talk to all of you soon.
9kg ducks for the 25th
Another 3kg are in another bag.
the special illustrated version
Very cool!
