Happy New Year, Happy Freebie, and Happy Giveaway!

Happy New Year, bloggy friends!  Not sure what your 2012 was like, but mine was full of surprises.  Some fantastic ones, some rough ones, some interesting ones, and some incredibly fun ones!   More than anything, I find myself THANKFUL and BLESSED for my family, friends, faith, job, health, and surprises...it keeps life interesting. 

Happy Freebie!  Here's a New Year's Resolution FREEBIE for your students!  Teach them what a resolution is, challenge them to set a goal for 2013 and think about what steps it will take to get there, as well as celebrate their successes for 2012!  Click the image to download.  


Happy Giveaway!  I'm so excited to start 2013 off with 600+ followers on my blog.  What a better way to celebrate than to give a few things away?!  If you're like me, shopping on TpT is one of my favorite hobbies!  Maybe the $30.00 will help you grab some great products for the New Year!  In addition to that I'm throwing in 6 items of your choice from my TpT or TN store...anything goes!  :-)   There are LOTS of ways to enter and lots of chances to win!  Good luck!




a Rafflecopter giveawayBananas for New Year's Fun,

Coffee is bad

What does Ramamritham have against coffee ? I would have thought the caricature of Ramaritham included a cup of coffee and The Hindu. Yet here's this venerable gentleman having an angst against coffee . Why ?

I am referring to IKEA's application to open retail stores across India. You may recall that the move to allow foreign owned retailers to set up shop in India is a recent one (Didi notwithstanding).  IKEA has been one of the first to submit their proposal, willing to bring it no less than Rs 10,000 crores of investment. You would have thought that they would be welcomed with open arms  - it is difficult to see boxed furniture being a threat to national sovereignty. But what they got was not a red carpet - instead they were treated with the full attention of Ramamritham. (in the guise of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board - FIPB)

I am no fan of IKEA stores. If you've been to one, they are all predictably the same format. You are forced to walk along one km of winding corridors that entirely destroy your sense of direction. You have to gaze at their full force of merchandise even if you want to buy a safety pin. After all those wanderings you are dying to sit down and rest your aching legs. Dutifully at the end of the trail you can buy a cup of coffee. Their format world over is the same.

Its the cup of coffee that has aroused Ramamritham's ire. Believe it or not, Ramamritham has turned down IKEA's application saying that they could not have a coffee shop - it appears that would become multi brand retail as the coffee is not IKEA branded coffee and hence would fall foul of the rules. Never mind the Rs 10,000 crores investment. FIPB is disallowing the proposal objecting to the coffee shop.

Finally the Commerce Minister had to intervene and suggest to Ramamritham that this is utterly nonsensical. He has asked IKEA to submit their proposal again and has promised them that he is partial to coffee.

Long long ago, when P Chidambaram was still a starry eyed reformer , he summoned a character called the Controller of Imports and Exports ( a terror those days) and asked him what he did. The worthy launched an impassioned plea as to how important and onerous his role was. PC's riposte was that he could perhaps understand that he had a role to play regarding imports, but pray, what was he doing trying to control exports ?? Within a few months he simply abolished the post.

I suggest he does a similar hatchet job on the FIPB. They perform no useful role. Open up investment in every sector barring maybe defence (even there there are arguments to  opening up for investment). Remember opening up for foreign investment does not mean that they can violate the law of the land. That provides the country ample protection against misbehaviour.

The only way to deal with nonsensical behaviour of objecting to the coffee shop is to abolish Ramamritham entirely.  Can Anand Sharma, the Commerce Minister, take a leaf out of his old predecessor and abolish the FIPB ?

PS :Newcomers to this blog who may not have been introduced to Ramamritham may get acquainted here.

Bye Bye New York Stock Exchange

OK - the title is pure hyperbole. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is going nowhere. But the company that owns NYSE is just being bought over. The curious part of the story is that the acquirer does not really want the NYSE, but it comes as part of the package- so he has to take it !

Here's the deal. NYSE is part of a conglomerate called NYSE Euronext. The conglomerate consists of NYSE itself, Euronext, which is a combination of three European stock exchanges and Liffe which is a London based derivatives exchange. NYSE and Euronext are ugly spinsters nobody wants. The beauty amongst the beasts is Liffe. For it is the sexy new hottie - a derivatives exchange.

And therein lies the story. In the modern day casino , that is finance , equity exchanges like NYSE are worthless as businesses. Margins are supposedly low. Stock exchanges are the places where almost all companies that require capital list and that's where investors channel their savings into productive investment. One would have thought that  the raison d'être for financial markets was to fulfill that objective, but obviously I am an old foggie.

In today's world, the money is all in running commodities exchanges,  derivatives markets etc - not boring old equity. The acquirer is a company called ICE that did not exist before 2000 (for the record NYSE was founded in 1817). ICE purely handles derivatives trading. The career of Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of ICE says it all. He started his career building power plants.  But he realised that there was more money (in facts tons more money) playing on financial contracts relating to power than in generating power itself. So he started ICE , obscurely in Atlanta, in 2000. See where he has got to in 12 years.

We've now come to a stage where even the NYSE is an unattractive prize - in fact positively repellant. Given a choice Mr Sprecher would probably spin off NYSE, or sell it off somewhere or simply forget about it. Unfortunately that is politically simply unthinkable. So he has to live with it and make pious noises of how important it is.

Its a symptom of where the world is going.  This post is one sided and biased (whoever said that a blog has to be objective !). Derivatives markets are not all evil and equity markets are not all saints. Both serve useful economic purposes. But you can see where this is headed. Esoteric, ununderstandable financial structures are getting to be more important than the underlying asset itself. That's why, a wise old fox from Omaha, back then in 2003, called derivatives a weapon of mass destruction.

Many years ago, when the world was a simpler place and when this blogger was a young man (!), he went to 11 Wall Street, entered the visitors gallery of NYSE and gazed at the trading floor in awe.  Little did he know that not in the too distant future, this lovely lady was going to be thrown out into the street as an ugly old crone.

Business Jazz - 21st December 2012 - Customers and Community

If we learned anything from Instagram's misstep in the past week it's that businesses struggle to understand the concept of community - even those who are in the social media space.

Making yourself attractive in business is about being able to respect the community you serve.

Chris Brogan talks about the difference between customers and community in his latest podcast and newsletter. He discusses why not all of the people who come to your shop have to buy. The fact that they are bringing their communities into contact with you is already enough. Treat them well and rewards will follow.

Paul and Roger discuss what this approach means in the real world of business. Can the concierge experience be used to improve the sales process?

To serve them well, you need information about your clients and customers. Yet blatant interrogation can be off putting. How do you elicit information and still remain attractive to the customer?

You can listen to this week's podcast using the player at the top of the post or download it directly here: Business Jazz - 21st December 2012.

We're also in iTunes. We'd love it if you subscribed.

You can be part of Chris' community


If you'd like to subscribe to Chris' emails yourself (the ones we discuss here), you'll find a place to sign up on his website. 
They'll come straight to your smart device - or your laptop/desktop, if that's where you are comfortable.

If you're interested in The Impact Equation, the book he recently published with Julien Smith, you can find it on Amazon US and Amazon UK. 


Business Jazz Players

This podcast is a collaboration of people dotted around the world. Most of us have never met each other. It's quite a story and it's still evolving. 
If you'd like to read what's happened so far, you'll find it here: Our Story


PS 

Would you like to hear more? Immediately after each recording of the podcast proper, Paul gets out his iPhone and we record an Audioboo with additional thoughts.

Here is this week's:

listen to ‘Review of BusinessJazz Podcast with @rogeroverall’ on Audioboo

The Business December 19th 2012, The "Life Is Excellent" Edition

 

We will, we will rock you. Rock you.

Well, more specifically, we are more than happy to welcome Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggets to rock you!!

Bobby Joe Ebola and The Children MacNuggits began in 1995, in a trash-strewn fast-food parking lot in Pinole, CA. Guitarist Dan Abbott and singer Corbett Redford rose from humble circumstances as a satiric folk rock band that played for friends to their current majestic heights with hilarious and sometimes frightening acoustic performances. The MacNuggits have gathered loyal legions of fans with their infamous combination of searing social satire, soaring harmonies, outlandish and shocking truths, and poop jokes. The songs draw upon a variety of pop culture, of global crises, of interpersonal labyrinths, of nightmares and daydreams, skewering them on a rusty spit for the world to see. With a nod to social satirists like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, and musical influences ranging from Slick Rick to They Might Be Giants, Bobby Joe Ebola is the vaudeville routine for your personal apocalypse.

Bobby Joe Ebola will be CELEBRATING the release of their brand new new CD/LP, TRAINWRECK TO NARNIA on Rooftop Comedy Productions & Dirt Cult Records! Come pick up a copy!

 

We are also pleased to have Kevin Hawkins joining us. The internet says: “Kevin Hawkins has worked as a teacher, principal, school head, and social worker in the UK, Africa, and Europe. He brings to education a holistic understanding of children and young people from his lifelong work with adolescents, and he strives to support the development of young minds through enhancing students’ self-awareness and emotional intelligence. “ but I’m pretty sure that’s a different Kevin Hawkins, and our guest this week is just a cool funny dude up from LA.

Your regulars will be there “Alex Reflux” Koll, Bucky “SARSnister”, Caitlin “Rhinovirus” Gill, Sean “Croup” Keane, and Mike “Diphtheria” Drucker.

The show is just $5! If you want to bring a friend, bring em for free!!  Print out you your 2-for-1 coupon from above!!!

BYOBurritonuggets.

Round the world for one day

How would you like to chuck it all and travel around the world ? Tempting isn't it ?? Well that's exactly what two wonderful persons I know are doing right now. They blog about it here - follow it if you are interested in traveling ; its a gripping account of far away lands. If you fancy yourself on the road from Rangoon to Mandalay or on the Silk Road between Bukhara and Samarkand, then this is the travelogue for you.

I happened to be in Spain and voila, discovered that they were in Spain too  - Ah the wonders of the internet. I was in Madrid and they were in Granada, so emailed them to meet at Seville which is where I spent a magical day today with them.

No doubt they'll get to updating their blog on this day in Seville. Their blog is still in Turkey, whilst they have physically moved on to Greece and onwards to Spain. They'll write about the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede (Seville Cathedral), an imposing and awesome structure where we stood reverentially in front of the bones of Christopher Columbus interred there. And about the Reales Alcázares de Sevilla (Alcazar) - the palace where you could feel the legend of 100 virgins a year demanded by the Moors from the Christians.  Or the bullring, the oldest in Spain - this being off season, thankfully there were no bullfights. There was the rain in Spain, but it was the gentle variety that added to the charm and mystique of the place.

Its their call to write on the place. Mine to write on the experience with them. Wanderlust is always an instinct of man; and those who wander have a treasure trove of experience. Travel broadens the mind and travelers make wonderful company. If they are as nice as M and V, the time with them transcends words. It was only a day, but to me it seemed that I had somehow partaken of their entire adventure. I had walked with them, had shared the sights, had felt the tug of the journeyers. It was a very special day. As we sat in the station sipping a cup of coffee waiting for the train to take me back, I couldn't but think a wee bit of chucking it all and following in their trail ! Gracias M & V for the magic.

While I come back home to India, they go onwards to Morocco, to Mauritania and wherever else the road beckons. Good luck M &V. May you have many more wonderful experiences and the joys of visiting many a land. 

For me, I am thankful, that for a day, just a day, I trod the path with you. Round the world, at least for one day.

Business Jazz - 14th December 2012 - Introducing The Flapp

It's an oft-quoted trend: smartphone and tablet sales are outstripping those of laptop and desktop computers.

There is another way of reading that: our social media experience is becoming mobile.

Or how about this interpretation? The window to our online experience is getting smaller. That is: the screens we use are getting smaller.

All that has an impact on our online experience, says Chris Brogan.

Most companies tailor their online presence towards viewers with a large screen. That doesn't provide a great experience for those of us reaching out to them from mobile devices.

Paul and Roger take this to the extreme. Will websites make way for apps produced by individuals, companies and collectives?

What does that mean for Google's powerhouse search engine? Will your app store become your search engine instead?

What about apps themselves? Let us introduce you to the Fluid App (Flapp). Perhaps, we'll all be flapping in the future. You heard it hear first.

You can listen to this week's podcast using the player at the top of the post or download it directly here: Business Jazz - 14th December 2012.

We're also in iTunes. We'd love it if you subscribed.

Connect by Mobile with Chris every week


If you'd like to subscribe to Chris' emails yourself (the ones we discuss here), you'll find a place to sign up on his website. 
They'll come straight to your smart device - or your laptop/desktop, if that's where you are comfortable.

If you're interested in The Impact Equation, the book he recently published with Julien Smith, you can find it on Amazon US and Amazon UK. 


Business Jazz Players

This podcast is a collaboration of people dotted around the world. Most of us have never met each other. It's quite a story and it's still evolving. 
If you'd like to read what's happened so far, you'll find it here: Our Story


PS 

Would you like to hear more? Immediately after each recording of the podcast proper, Paul gets out his iPhone and we record an Audioboo with additional thoughts.

There is one for this week, but the production elf who recorded it is out of the country right now and hasn't published it on Audioboo yet.

Instead, here's a brief chat about an idea to produce a rolling list of the people mentioned in the podcast.

listen to ‘BusinessJazz List.ly List @listlychat ’ on Audioboo