Welcome to jfeclercq.com. Use the menu on the left to navigate. I use del.icio.us to publish this "what's up" page. Use the tags liston the right pane for specialized news. For example IBM for news around IBM, jfdeclercq for news about me,...Have a nice day.
457 | Comment | 2008-08-29 16:12:14 | 979 chars to see -
How to seduce people so they vote for you : address their concerns.
Obama addresses several key concerns of 2008 :
"I do want three things," "I want to end the war. I want to get everybody a health care system that is sensible and common sense and saves money. And the energy policy. But, if I had to just choose one thing, that would be it."
And I believe indeed Americans are concerned by those
war
health
energy
If you add that he wants to decrease taxes for the middle class, I believe you have enough broad subjects that can gather many votes.
So to be successful, just address your client's pain points. A well known sales technique applied at a large scale.
455 | Comment | 2008-08-26 18:41:42 | 320 chars to see -
If you blog often I recommend you to have a look at ScribeFire. It's an excellent FireFox Plugin which helps to write or edit your posts. It allows to include Videos, Links, images in a easy way. It also supports multi-blogs.
452 | Comment | 2008-08-23 10:08:48 | 1720 chars to see -
Lately I have hesitated to buy a new kind of device : an Internet Radio. It connects on your WiFi router and plays thousands of radios streams that you can catch on the web.
Today I just plug my portable PC into my HiFi system using a mini-jack, but I find the quality is not so good. Therefore I have been looking for better options. Here are some products I find interesting :
I have visited several shops (Padeg, TDH... ) in Brussels, LLN and Overijse to try to see those products in real but they have not yet arrived in the shops. So for now, the only option seems to be to buy online. We probably need to wait until Christmass.
450 | Comment | 2008-08-20 16:12:09 | 839 chars to see -
I don't know if you have ever had a look at my long CV but it's quiet a long one. I have read in a article (in Bizz I believe) that a good CV should be at the most 3 pages. Therefore I have tried to rewrite my CV in a much shorter format . I have organized it along 5 aspects of my work that I like and that I want to continue to develop during my career:
Strategic Thinking
Leadership
Management & Team Work
Creative Solution Design
Marketing & Sales
The result is here : Quick CV and I have published in PDF and MS Word formats also here
443 | Comment | 2008-07-24 11:00:24 | 2036 chars to see -
I have successfully passed my ITIL V3 Foundations Certification !
ITIL is a framework which allows IT Managers to standardize the IT processes which aim at satisfying the demand of their system's customers and/or end-users.
In order to meet customer's needs, ITIL organises the lifecycle of IT Services which are delivered by IT.
The IT department can supply several types of "services", for instance :
Applications (SAP, CRM, Document Management)
Purchasing of IT material (PCs, printers...)
Help Desk, Call Center
Internet Services (Home Banking system for a bank for instance)
Hardware Installation
Printing
...
ITIL gives guidelines on how to organize the professional delivery of those "IT services".
ITIL V3' service life cycle defines 5 "steps":
Service Strategy : it defines which services the IT department should provide
Service Design : it defines what the delivered services are and how they are realized
Service Transition : it determines how a designed service is put into production
Service Operation : it describes how services have to be run in production (according to their specifications and their Service Level Agreements)
Continual Improvement : a set of processes to improve the life cycle realization
441 | Comment | 2008-07-16 13:41:13 | 1466 chars to see -
Last Weekend we did quiet some cycling in Flanders.
On saturday we did the "Limburgse Rivierenland" tour in Halen. It was supposed to be 52 Km. We did 63 and we even did a shortcut at the end.
On sunday we went to Herentals and we followed what is called the "EcoCyclo". There the KM were correct and it was 46 Km. We started from Herenthout and we used the following "KnoopPunten " :
Herenthout - 45 - 46 - 47 - 9 - 10 - 8 - 15 (Let op: we rijden niet volledig tot aan 15. Neem een kijkje aan de watermolen. Het is een waardevol monument. Daarna keer je terug naar 8.) - 19 - 18 - 14 - Hidrodoe - Van Hidrodoe rijd je terug naar de knooppuntenroute. Sla echter niet af naar links richting knooppunt 14, maar blijf rechtdoor rijden. Volg de pijltjes richting Centrum. - 12 - 60 - 62 - 65 - 66 - 43 - 44 - 45
438 | Comment | 2008-07-11 17:38:19 | 1045 chars to see -
Le site Internet pour Paul Leroy se trouve sous mon nom de domaine. Nous y travaillons de temps en temps en buvant un bonne bire. Nous l'avons mis jour cette semaine:
Il y a un nouveau menu pour faciliter la navigation.
Paul a galement mis des nouveaux tableaux en ligne sur PicasaWeb.
435 | Comment | 2008-07-07 21:09:25 | 485 chars to see -
Moi j'aimais bien skynet pour la mto facile a trouver et facile a lire pour les prvisions dix jours. Il y avait une colonne bleue gauche avec toutes les possibilits skynet dont la mto. C'tait facile et efficace.
Evidement il y a quelqu'un qui a trouv que c'tait mieux de changer. Essayez maintenant d'aller sur http://www.skynet.be/ et trouvez-moi la mto. Bonne chance !
Comme dirait l'autre : "Si je connaissais le con qu'a fait sauter le pont..."
434 | Comment | 2008-07-07 12:01:26 | 874 chars to see -
Merriam Webster's dictionary defines rainmaker as "a person (such as a partner in a law firm) who brings in new business or whose influence can initiate progress or ensure success." In short, a rainmaker is someone that makes things happen, someone who initiates action that ultimately brings in new business and revenue.
Rainmakers take a 'big picture' view of their customers business. Rather than focus on specific IT projects, they look at the overall state of the client's industry, company and LOB. Some characteristics of a rainmaker include the following: pro-active, results-oriented, patient, driven, conscientious, good listener, active listener, empathetic, sympathetic, curious, knowledgeable, engaged, confident, incisive, inquiring, flexible, visionary, creative, positive, optimistic, and collaborative.
418 | Comment | 2008-06-15 07:46:49 | 338 chars to see -
Maybe it can sound weird to you but it has been a long time I have been searching for that information and now I eventually find it : a good list of existing mountain bike routes in Belgium.
I think it's just great. If you add that you can use the Iliad as a Notepad (you can write also!), that you can upload PDF documents like reports, Presentations... It makes of it a great business tool.
412 | Comment | 2008-06-12 10:46:29 | 594 chars to see -
According to an IBM survey SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is still in the radar of the majority of customers:
73 percent of customers indicated their CEO understands the business value of SOA; more than half say their IT staff is meeting once per month or more with business managers they support.
45 percent of customers indicated they spent between 10 percent and 29 percent of their 2007 IT budgets on SOA.
411 | Comment | 2008-06-11 23:09:43 | 2128 chars to see -
Hier je suis tomb sur le blog de Christophe Lefevre. Il s'y trouve un article sur le mtier de blogueur. Mon regard s'est port sur la colonne de droite (toujours la colonne de droite) et j'y ai trouv un badge qui m'tait inconnu. C'est un badge de vibstars.
Vibstars
Vibstars se dfinit comme une plateforme de SocialBuzzing. Ma perception est que Vibstars prend le meilleur du social bookmarking, du buzz la Digg ou Scoopeo et du micro-blogging la Twitter. Intressant mme si je ne vois pas encore comment l'utiliser concrtement. Je pense qu'il me faudrait plus d'amis dans mon rseau. C'est plus intressant que Twitter car on peut lancer des conversations autours de sujets qui pointent clairement sur un URL. On peut aussi voter, cela fait merger les dicussions les plus populaires.
Continuant ma dcouverte des dveloppements de Bleebot, j'ai galement dcouvert Blogasty. Blogasty est un digg-like ddi aux blogs. Cela permet de re-poster un article de votre blog vers la communeaut Blogasty. Les autres membres peuvent voter pour votre billet et si celui-ci est populaire il arrive en Home Page. Voir A propos de Blogasty. Du Web2.0 belge
Blogasty et Vibstars sont deux plateformes Web2.0 dans le plus pur style et par ce billet je voudrais fliciter leurs createurs. Et en plus, c'est du Belge...
But wait a minute, if I search for anything in Google, it seems to know what I mean : "Did you mean ?" But apparently not in the case of an hazardeous Google Maps URL on their own site...
They could maybe reroute the 404 page to "I'm feeling lucky" with the url as parameter ?
409 | Comment | 2008-06-11 22:16:20 | 599 chars to see -
Hemingway a ?it ?Dos Passos :
Au nom du ciel, n'essayes pas de faire le bien. Continue ?montrer les choses telles qu'elles sont. Si tu r?sis ?les montrer telles qu'elles sont r?lement, tu feras le bien. Si tu essayes de faire du bien, tu ne feras pas le moindre bien, pas plus que tu ne montreras ce qui est bien.
Extrait de Odeur du temps - Jean d'Ormesson.
A m?ter pour les experts comme moi... Ou se trouve notre valeur ajout?en terme de conseils aux clients ?
405 | Comment | 2008-06-09 23:27:28 | 1652 chars to see -
I have been involved in several activities with professionals from the Netherlands those last 3 months.
I was recently working with a great IBM colleague - a IBM Websphere Portlet Factory specialist- in a POC. And I have worked with other excellent Dutch during my carreer. Dutch colleagues tend to ask a lot of annoying questions but if you are honnest, you know they are the right questions.
The majority of my IT Architect Master Programme courses (Operational Modeling, Philips Design, Personal Improvement, Business Architecture, Creative Thinking...) were given by Ducth professors and thanks to them I have gained a lot of respect for their country. I can feel there is some leadership and vision on business questions.
One of the technologies I'm watching is ePaper. The best eReader is Ducth : the Iliad has been developed by a spin-off of Philips : iRex Technologies.
I also know that the Ducth Economy is a very strong one : At this moment the Netherlands is the 16th largest economy of the world (See Wikipedia).
And finally if I add today's EURO2008's match against against Italy (3-0) ! I'm very close to dress in Orange. But not yet, don't worry.
404 | Comment | 2008-06-09 15:13:01 | 581 chars to see -
I was doing my daily blog reading when I landed on Slideshare. On the right column there is a list on the most downloaded slide sets. I was attracted by a presentation on Critical Thinking. This is the conclusion :
Why bother with Critical Thinking ?
"We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet"
402 | Comment | 2008-06-08 21:50:27 | 458 chars to see -
The website of Carmelo Zaccone gave me the idea of making a list of all the sites I use on the web. I ordered them by preference in three categories : Social Networks, Blogs & sites and Instant Messaging.
My list counts more than 20 addresses. I use the top 10 on a very regular basis. You can see the result here : Social Neworks.
401 | Comment | 2008-06-06 14:01:06 | 459 chars to see -
Yesterday night we had a drink at Euroferia 2008. A very pleasant Andalusian atmosphere that I recommend you if you don't know what to do this weekend.
400 | Comment | 2008-06-05 16:46:24 | 5191 chars to see -
After a course I followed given by MoTiv (http://www.motiv.tudelft.nl/) by Ton Meijknecht and Hans van Drongelen for IBM, I would like to share some concepts and reflexions on Creativity.
The creative class The work of Richard Florida and his book 'The rise of the creative class' (note I haven't read it yet) aimed at demonstrating that a new class has emerged in today's society. "The creative class is a group of people that social scientist Dr. Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, believes are a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial cities in the USA." (See Wikipedia) The people of the creative class have special demands against their work environment : soft control, more independence, personal growth and development, freedom to shape the content of their own work, control of their schedules (flexibility), expression of their identities through work, able to trade job security for own autonomy. The creative class is also looking for another kind of lifestyle : individuality, self-statement, acceptance of difference, desire for rich multi-dimensional experience, pack every second - at work or leisure- full of creative stimuli and a morphing conception of time - (mixture of work and play). The creative class asks questions about what really matters in life.
The thesis of Mr Florida is that the creative class is the main driver of economic growth.
Do I belong to the creative class ? I have the feeling I belong to the creative class : I think I have the above characteristics. Another argument that makes me think I'm a member of the creative class is that I feel the tension that would exist between members of the creative class and the corporations. A tension starts to emerge between large corporation and the creative class. Their motivations are not compatible anymore. However the corporations need the creative class for their innovations. The result is a war for talent and a lot of talent retention programmes. But it doesn't prevent that creative people step out of the companies and create a new startup or even make management buy-outs. In one of my previous posts (Allergic to Superficiality ), I was criticized by some anonymous comment and today I understand why. The person who criticized me is certainly not someone of the Creative class. It's someone who is a Coporation's soldier and who has a lot of respect for the traditional way large companies can sometimes operate. He is attracted by the dark side of the organization's power game and has respect for people who are able to climb the matrix to the top by stepping on the other's dead bodies.
Who is creative ? Everybody can be creative. Being creative requires however some conditions : you need some talent and this talent needs to be put in the right context. Talent has three different levels : skills, mastering and tolerance. We are used to identify our skills and define how well we master them (beginner, advanced, expert, master...).
How to be even more creative ? By knowing why. In addition to skills and mastering, tolerance is required for the most creative ones. Firstly, If you are not able to make use of the diversity of our world by being more tolerant, you will be less creative. Secondly, tolerance also means compassion and the possibility to solve problems for others. This tolerance aspect also touches the deepest motivations of our creativity. Why do we want to be creative ? What drives us to create solutions ? Why did Einstein want to find out new rules like the relativity rule ?
Creativity and Spirituality It seems that a fundamental drive (some beliefs, some spirituality) is a necessary condition for superior creativity and innovation, meaning that you will be most creative if you align your entrepreneurship with your own spirituality. I can link this to one of my previous posts around Happiness defined by Axel Khan : All creatures on this earth will be happy if they can express their true nature. "Connais-toi toi mme"... You can only be a superior creator in the fields that match your true nature.
Being creative, just as being happy requires freedom. Freedom allows to move in order to be the right man at the right place at the right moment. This is why creative people want to be independent and travel the world : they don't want to be blocked in their vision of how they can improve what matters to them. They don't want to miss the chance to maximize the impact of their creativity.
397 | Comment | 2008-06-02 11:55:23 | 760 chars to see -
I had been a while since I had visited my MyBlogLog account. I'm quiet impressed by the improvements : you can now link all your web accounts into MyBlogLog and it makes a kind of summary. Excellent.
It continues to be a question for me: why maintain a website while all of the programming that I do (php, mySQL, Wiki...) is now available for free (Yahoo! Pipes, Mashing up my content in Netvibes or MyBlogLog...) ?
389 | Comment | 2008-05-28 14:21:20 | 1640 chars to see -
Google faces a lot of attacks from publishers to pay money for their supposedly non-authorized reuse of information.
There is a intellectual honesty that needs to be re-established around this "copyright" question.
When a company publishes something, it's means to give (or sell) it to the public. Can the public reuse that information once they access it ? Yes : they can at least talk about it. Now : what's the difference if Google takes it and talks about it on the web by indexing it and making it searchable ? If this information is not meant to be reused for free than why is it published and exposed without any serious protection ?
This makes me think about the fishermen's crisis in France. The fishermen's real problem is not the oil price : it's the fact that their real cost of fish is not reflected in their prices. They sell at loss.
Similarly if publishers have to claim money to Google it's because they just dumped their content on the web instead of finding ways to get something out of it from the start.
Claiming money to Google shows the weakness of those companies' business models which are outdated.
387 | Comment | 2008-05-28 13:52:55 | 1103 chars to see -
Alors l, Coup de chapeau a Yannick Noah qui n'a mme pas essay d'tre politiquement correct sur RTL alors qu'il tait interrog sur l'arrestation de son fils...
Yannick Noah n?en veut pas Joakim Ragissant sur RTL l?arrestation en Floride (Etats-Unis) de son fils Joakim, qui possdait de la drogue et buvait sur la voie publique, Yannick Noah a racont comment il a rassur son fils. Je lui ai dit que ce n?tait pas grave, a indiqu l?ancien champion de tennis. De ne rien changer. Juste d?essayer ne pas se faire choper la prochaine fois. Je lui ai dit, regarde moi chri : a fait vingt ans que je fais le con mais je reste populaire parce que les gens pensent que je suis un mec bien. Essaie de faire la mme chose. (Mercredi 28 Mai - 11:40)
Bon, je ne dirais pas la mme chose mon fils, mais au moins il n'a pas cach ce qu'il pense. J'adore. Chapeau Bas.
Netlog is special to me because it has been created in Belgium (Gent). This make me want to use it. My first impression is really good. It could be a good alternative to Facebook if Microsoft buys it because they now support the Open Social standards.
