The Burble

Bali

I write this coming to the end of my second visit to Bali – a part of Indonesia that never fails to impress me with its drive and development all wrapped up in a tenacious desire not to let go of the past. What has got the Balinese to this point they seem to be saying, is what will continue to drive us into the future.

It is not at all unusual to find offerings to the spirits or gods sitting on the pavement outside shops and offices in the towns nor to find staff in businesses lighting incense in the afternoon before returning to work. Its a practical link between the past and the future and is perhaps more prevalent here than in many places I have been around the Asia region. Or maybe being on vacation I have simply stopped and noticed.

Tags Bali, Experience, Travel

Buildings and Places Uncategorized

Hanoi. Growing up quickly

Post author By The Burble....
Post date February 17, 2016
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It’s loud it’s busy it’s a messy energetic city of hope. I love it. Like I love a large amount of South East Asia but Hanoi has a special place in my heart as this was the first city we travelled to outside the expat homeland of Hong Kong.

Only an hours flying time from the glitzy, shopping centre that Hong Kong has become the contrast couldn’t be much bigger. Hong Kong is brash, bright and, in its own mind wonderfully successful while Hanoi is the little brother that it desperately hopes won’t mess up the sandwiches. Which of courseHanoi sets out to do, and does, very effectively. To the extent that it even has its own sandwich.

But it is the energy of the place that astounded me when I first arrived. Hong Kong is brash and bright and everyone wants to make money – end of the discussion. But in hanoi everyone wants to do everything, live, learn, make money, eat, teach, and shout. And mostly while riding a moped. If anyone has seen the Top Gear special that they did in Vietnam and wondered if it was really as busy as the pictures showed (surely they cut it to look busy?) well I can assure you that it is a lot worse than you see on the film. I think it was James May that compared his scooter to a US tank with the line that the scooter has freed more people than the tank ever did and in Hanoi, as a microcosm of the cities in Vietnam he was exactly right.

Mopeds are everywhere, occasionally on the tight side of the road going in the right direction but mainly coming at you from in front behind and ay other direction possible. I have yet to see one fly but its only a matter of time. Some video will give you the idea.

Crossing the road in Hanoi is an experience. Locals helpfully give you the rather distracting advice just to ‘step out and keep going straight the bikes will swerve round you’ or that is what I think they are saying as my local language skills aren’t too strong. But the advice does seem to work (testament as I am writing this after two trips to Hanoi) and the bike riders do seem to realise that killing pedestrians isn’t a good idea; especially if you are riding with Grandma, your husband, your children and your dog all on the same moped.

Cars however are another thing. 3 years ago when I went to Hanoi there were a handful of cars on the road, mainly taxis, and they had adopted the riders ideas and tended to swerve round you. Which is no mean feat in Hanoi where many of the roads are only wide enough for a couple of bikes. But I have to report that Vietnam in its headlong rush to develop has seen a rapid rise in the number of cars and the new car drives, probably never having ridden a motorbike, have not worked out that you can go round pedestrians. And so they don’t. Which makes crossing the road a far less exciting experience than wading trough mopeds doing their best to avoid you.

Hanoi sites on the Red River about 85 miles in land from the South China Sea. Hanoi is the national capital although it lost this title to Hue after 1945 following a successful take over by Ho Chi Minh. It only regained the title in 1954 after the French, who used Hanoi as their regional center for Indochina, were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. At the end of the Vietnam war in 1976 Hanoi was once again declared the capital of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Visiting any Asian city is always an experience and you long to write about the scents of perfumed streets, the quality restaurants and the calm of a city going about its business. And if you do you’ve never been to a developing Asian city. The noise is all mopeds and horns, the smells are two stroke fumes combined with outdoor cooking smells and the city is anything but calming. It’s noisy, smelly and exciting and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tags Customers, Google, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Travel

Uncategorized

Autonomous Update

As you’ll know if you’ve read any of this blog I am fascinated by self driving cars and how quickly they are developing. The car has long been a staple of the American Dream amongst other things, as well as a hugely aspirational target for many people around the world.

And self driving vehicles will change that, when combined with different ways of owning and sharing the vehicles people will have to thin differently about transport and what cars actually mean. I am not yet sure that everyone has thought this through but the change will be profound.

Anyhow I promised to keep up to date with Google who regularly publish a newsletter about their cars and the testing they’re doing. And here is the January 2016 version

Enjoy it

Communication Customers Uncategorized

Told you I don’t understand marketing

Post author By The Burble....
Post date January 3, 2016
No Comments on Told you I don’t understand marketing

Just went into a store to buy my wife a new all electric super whizzy toothbrush. As with most shops in Hong Kong they didn’t actually have what I wanted but they did in the warehouse.

Now in most countries something in the warehouse means it’s in Lithuania and if you order it now it should be with you for the next millennium.

Not In Hong Kong. No warehouse is more than 1 minute from the shop and they always have what you want. Always.

And so one minute later I was paying for the toothbrush and readying myself to face the nightmare of Sunday afternoon food shopping. But this being Hong Kong you get free stuff with your purchase.

A set of sore brushes and some toothpaste. Great. And Dettol. A bleach for cleaning toilets and floors.

Now I really know I don’t understand marketing.

Tags Business, Communication, Experience, Hong Kong

Buildings and Places Communication Customers People

Come Fly with me…

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You know you have been flying too much when you know your way around airport without knowing which country you’re actually in; unless its Heathrow which is the exception that proves the rule.

You’ve been in the air too much when you begin to recognise aircrew and can actually tell before you take off whether they are going to look after you well. But the real indication is when you get an invite from your favourite airline to a weekend launch of something.

Tags Business, Communication, Experience, Hong Kong

Change Communication

24/7 Leadership and the Burning Platforms Index

Post author By The Burble....
Post date October 24, 2015
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illustration of fire extinguisher — Use in case of burning platform – turn this on the leader

Leaders don’t set things on fire.

I am struggling. I have been looking at so much research about leadership and leaders and so much news and information about the topic that I find it remarkable that there still doesn’t seem to be a definition of leadership or what a leader actually is.

What I do know is that there is a fervour amongst leadership devotees that their particular brand of leadership is the best (for which read) the only one. And anyone who has an alternative view of leadership is simply wrong. I have seen friendlier debates between the US and Iran.

Tags Business, change, Communication, Leader, Leadership, organisation, People

Self Driving Cars

Students – I might have guessed

Post author By The Burble....
Post date October 21, 2015
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In all the noise and excitement (not least for this blogger) around self driving vehicles one thing that is pretty clear is that how people have fun (for which read the increasing chance of a seriously spectacular crash) in cars is going to change. At the very least we will have to find ways of e enjoying ourselves that don’t involve simply driving them.

And of course students have managed to find the way. From Stanford comes this great article about a new fun thing to do with self driving cars. Although what else you can do in this car while its in action is going to require some thinking through.

Tags Business, car, change, Communication, driverless car, Risk, United States

Self Driving Cars

Can sheep drive?

Can sheep drive better than people?

I guess we will find out soon; when we get the hang of leaving the driving to the technology. When cars and lorries start driving themselves I guess we will be able to answer the question.

Is car even going to be the right word for it?

Legislators are struggling to keep up with the pace of change around cars that drive themselves and while I will take a bit more of a look at this aspect in later blogs I thought for this one I’d try and address what might at first appear to be a relatively simple concern. What happens when someone needs to take over the control of the car from the machinery.

In most of the cars being tested currently you need a steering wheel and a qualified driver waiting to take over from the electronics should the car ‘decide’ that there is something it doesn’t like or understand.

So that’s OK then.

Unless of course you’ve been doing the crossword and aren’t actually paying attention at all. Grabbing the wheel as your car decides it no longer wants to drive is going to really tax your reflexes, situational awareness (whatever that is), nerves etc. And of course that assumes you have actually learned to drive. What happens if the driver is new to the roads and on their first trip out? Or if you’re happily debating with your partner about the direction taking as obviously, being a man, you still know better than the technology.

Perhaps as your mind is wandering through the menu of the restaurant that you’re heading to the car will bong and simply say ‘over to you, I’m out.’ Your reply is like to be something along the lines of ‘Oh ####’ or some such at just about the same time as you disappear off the road and into the tree happy in the knowledge that the IT engineers will donwload the data and make sure that this type of crash can’t happen again.

Do you want a 17 year old with all their youthfull exuberance hoping that the car will hand them control? How will you persude the software that on no account is it to allow the car to be driven manually. Even if it has to commit the equivalent of electronic suicide.

What happens if you or the 17 year old have had a drink. If you breathe heavily inside your car after a night out could there be an argument that your car is intoxicated?

There is of course a huge argument in favour of cars that drive themselves. Not the least is the reduction in accidents and injuries that occur every year. According to the august sounding body the ‘Association for Safe International Road Travel’ 1.3 million people are killed in road accidents every year and somewhere between 20 and 50 million are injured, so the benefits of cars driven by computers that don’t sleep, play on their phones or simply forget to stop at traffic lights is huge.

But there is still a huge amount to learn about how these cars, and perhaps a lot more importantly, how humans will actually work with them; and what happens when the technology does simply have an off day.

Some of you will recall the made up, but strangely prescient, discussion between Bill Gates the then CEO of Microsoft and General Motors. In 2005 Bill supposedly compared car companies to dinosaurs while GM alledgly responded along the lines of software designed cars needing to be rebooted every couple of hours for no apparent reason. It seems to me that, where we are today it is the drivers who may need rebooting while the car quietly gets on with keeping you safe.

Until it decides not to.

Tags auto, automobile, autonomous, Business, car, change, driverless car, driving, future

Self Driving Cars

It did what? 12 secrets about Autonomous vehicles

Post author By The Burble....
Post date October 1, 2015
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Ok that might have been a little naughty of me – just trying to grab some attention. It gets lonely out here.

Autonomous vehicles really are the flavour of the month and the pace of change is simply amazing. Every week there is a new announcement about an advance in the technology. And despite this the one announcement that we are waiting for, despite what I am pretty sure was an agreed ‘leak’ is the one from Apple confirming their entry into this market.

While on the subject of Apple (and if you’ll allow me a little diversion here {did you see what I just did}) I can confidently predict that in Hong Kong at least the new iPhone 6S will be a huge hit. And how do I know this? If you take a walk past the Apple store in Causeway Bay you’ll know why. The legion of resellers who stand outside the store selling the iPhone that they have just bought is the clue. So you can go into the store and buy a phone or pay presumably more to buy one from a street seller not 5 paces from the door to the store. The last time this happened was with the launch of the iPhone 5 and Apple themselves went on to mention that demand was extremely strong in Hong Kong. You heard it here first.

As I understand it Apple usually makes major product announcements once or twice a year so we may just have to wait for news. But if the length of lines and the resellers are anything to go by for a phone I confidently predict (here I go again) that should they develop something it will probably sell extremely well in Asia.

So Apple start here first – please….

Tags Apple, automobile, Business, car, driving, Risk, self

Change People Risk Service

Why should you be talking about Driverless Cars?

Post author By The Burble....
Post date September 19, 2015
No Comments on Why should you be talking about Driverless Cars?

Back to a theme of mine that I have blogged about before – Self Driving Cars. I am fascinated by the fact that people can see a time when you won’t need a steering wheel in a car and you’ll be able to get into a car and sit back and do anything you want. I can see a revolution coming in how people get around, work and interact with each other. With society relying so much on the car any change in how it works is going to have a profound affect.

In a small way Hanoi represents the future of the car. Last weekend found me and my family in a taxi trying to get from the airport to the hotel in the French Quarter of Hanoi. My son cheerfully described Hanoi as like Milton Keynes until we got into the center of the town which he then described as mayhem. In two years Hanoi has gone from a city that is all motorbikes to one that is being overrun with cars. And unlike bikes cars in Hanoi don’t swerve around you. And the point here is that cars being driven by computer, or robot depending on your view point, are much more likely to stop or steer round you than crash making towns and cities a much better place in the future.

Autonomous cars are coming and while there will be a long period of time before they come into their own there is one question we need to ask. Will they work?

Tags auto, autonomous, Business, car, change, Daimler, driverless car, future, Google, Google Maps, Hanoi, society, Tesla, vehicles