Expedient MEANS

Woody Allen has officially expanded beyond New York City. With a sun-drenched Spain, primarily Barcelona, as his setting, Mr. Allen provides us with another treatise in his exploration of love, relationships and human chemistry.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johanson) are friends, but polar opposites. Vicky is practical, and as such, is engaged to marry an upper crust east coast steady. Cristina is more adventurous and is on a constant search for romance with thrills. Pic opens as they arrive in Barcelona to stay the summer at one of Vicky’s parents friends who now live there. The friends are very well off and socially connected, which gets the young women in on the Barcelona scene.

Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson

While having a late night dinner the women are approached by a local artist, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who they saw at a gallery opening earlier that day. He is famous for having had an extremely messy divorce, which included his wife trying to kill him. He offers to whisk the women off to a small village for the weekend, where they will all make love. His boldness intrigues Cristina, but Vicky is of course uninterested.

We are guided by a narrator throughout the film who keeps the talk simple, but insightful, telling only what’s necessary. Mr. Allen packs a lot into this relatively short film, with sharp dialog and comedic touches as only he can. It’s a short leap of the imagination to hear Woody’s voice in the narration.

We discover that Juan’s ex wife is Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) and she re-enters his life through an attempted suicide. By this time Juan is living with Cristina and so the three of them occupy Juan’s house. Juan and Maria are made for each other. They make wonderful love, inspire each other’s artistic endeavors, but they always end up in a huge blow out. Since Christina has entered their lives they are getting on famously. Perhaps she was the missing ingredient.

Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena

This is the theme of the film. Finding the glue that holds your relationships together during the trying times. Some things work, others don’t mesh when you are in a relationship. Most people accept the misses and focus on the hits, but Vicky, Cristina, Juan and Maria want it all. They know what doesn’t work and what they don’t want, but can’t quite piece it all together.

Javier Bardem with Rebecca Hall

The acting is excellent all around. Penelope Cruz nails the hot tempered artistic type who is insane and keeps the film from falling into table (or bed) talk. Javier Bardem, fresh from his Oscar winning performance in No Country for Old Men, plays it completely different. He is very effective as the smooth artist, borderline womanizer, who has great comedic timing. Rebecca Hall’s performance as Vicky, was the biggest surprise for me. She played the straight and narrow with perfect pitch, but when it’s her turn to be the linchpin, she does it exceedingly well. Ms. Johansson plays Cristina smart but with a touch of vulnerability. She ends up doubting her ability to live on Juan’s level and her decision late in the film is the catalyst for the stories’ climax.

Regardless of what you think about Woody Allen, I would highly recommend this film for it’s interesting treatment of love and life, without taking itself too seriously. Visit the official Vicky Cristina Barcelona web site here.

I was traveling back from a family Jersey Shore vacation today. It was just me, as the rest of my family stayed behind for a couple of more days. We had to juggle blackout dates and availability in exchange for redeeming our American Advantage miles. I needed to get something to eat so I stopped at the closest vendor to gate 33 in terminal A of Newark International; Dick Clark’s American Bandstand restaurant. The neon sign promised me food, spirits and fun.

I purchased my to go sandwich and a drink and started to make my way to the gate waiting area. As I walked I noticed their full service seating area was nearly deserted, so I decided to sit in the tall chairs. Before I could even approach the seat the woman who sold me the sandwich, Christin (that’s her at left in the photo), immediately shooed me away. She said that area was separate and for full service patrons only. I reminded her that I bought food from her, but that didn’t matter. It was the RULE.

Now if they were crowded or had a waiting line, I would never have considered trying to wrangle a seat. But there was plenty of seating and it was only me. Why was I meant to feel like an inferior customer? What would they be losing if I had sat in an empty chair for 10 minutes? Nothing of course. But they certainly lost something in exchange for following the rules; me as a customer. A man sitting at a table looked up in disbelief that I was being removed from the premises.

I expressed my displeasure and point of view in a calm way to Christin, but apparently a rule is a rule. Never mind allowing employees the leeway to exercise good judgment to keep customers happy. In between serving customers and enforcing the laws, Christin was chatting up some airport employee who was sitting in one of those tall chairs but had nothing on the table in front of him. The sandwich was pretty good, but there are plenty of places to get food and have a pleasant customer experience.

Many firms are giving Agile Development a go, and it’s easy to understand the corporate motivation. Get to market faster with the highest value projects. In our company we’re in the 2009 planning cycle and struggling with the prioritization process and a crushing number of initiatives. All projects are scored for value to the firm and a level of effort is assigned by the IT department. As you would expect the highest value projects take the longest. And there are many more on the spreadsheet than we have resource for. So the direction from the top was to go back and see if the highest value/large projects can be scaled back to a small or medium and preserve most of the value. That way we deliver more to the company sooner. Makes total sense

The challenge is getting everyone on board to go back, open up the proposals and do the hard work to throw requirements overboard. Oh yeah, only throw out the appropriate requirements. We aren’t as skilled as we need to be to pull this one off. It seems what the top guy needs is agile development.

The Waterfall Process

We all know the waterfall project development process can’t live in our fast paced world and doesn’t perform in practice because most of the players don’t spend the necessary time thinking and planning. The idea that you can completely polish off one stage and enter the next without going back is unrealistic. The result. It takes too long and no one is really happy with the outcome, especially IT who now has to maintain it.

Agile allows the various disciplines to focus and control their areas of expertise, while interfacing with everyone else. Coding begins immediately and is delivered to the team for review many times during the project. Small changes are made quickly vs. the entire code base having to be scrapped. In the waterfall world you have no choice but to ship it. That means you’re the proud owner of home built on a sacred burial ground; forever doomed. In agile you only toss out small bits of code and keep the project moving. You are never forced to ship the first pass.

In the Cooper Journal email I received today, Alan Cooper, a brilliant programmer and user experience guru, bills his firm as providing Product Design for a Digital World. We’ve used them for persona creation and their work is top drawer. In the email there was a link to Mr. Cooper’s keynote address recently given at the Agile 2008 Conference. It was a fascinating and thought provoking perspective on agile development, how it should be done, and how it differs from the waterfall process. This one slide really caught my eye as a thinking tool.

Approaching Agile Development

He continues to deconstruct AG, laying out the various states of mind and stages (agile and fragile). But he goes far beyond technology and process, delving deep into human psychology to explain the various roles necessary to make agile successful and why. It’s the people, their emotions, motivations and desires that drives success out of AG. Overlapping those skills in a rapid cycle environment makes a difference.

I could never refactor his keynote, so I won’t even try. See for yourself, view the keynote slides and Mr. Cooper’s speaker notes here. He has entitled the address The Wisdom of Experience. It truly is. Enjoy.

Neuro Productions, the company that created this application seems to be one person, Hris Timmerman. He lives in Antwerp (Belgium) and is a self-proclaimed Adobe flash addict, and apparently a good one. He created the Twitter network browser application. It allows you to enter a Twitter name and see their network blossom in your browser window right before your eyes. The results show the avatar of the Twitterite, their last update and all their connections with their avatars and last updates.

You can then click on other Twitterers as well and drag the images around on the page to get a better look at who’s in the various networks. It keeps expanding each time you click. There’s also a full screen mode. So what is it good for? Well it’s hard to say. More than anything it’s just a fun way to see the Twitter networks come alive, and maybe find someone you’d like to follow. Does everything really need a reason?

Give it a spin here.

Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations combines the revolution of social networking with real world, real people examples. Throughout the book, Mr. Shirky takes what could have easily ended up as classic case studies (boring) and brings them to life with characters and a sense of drama. This technique draws the reader in and gets them to care about what’s happening to these people, then adroitly connects the story line to the world of social networking.

His examples span the globe and cover both commonplace happenings (someone loses their cell phone) to lightning rod subjects (the Catholic church scandals). He effortlessly weaves psychology, sociology, anthropology and business into a compelling story that explains the world of social media as not something mysterious, but commonplace, even routine. Perhaps not so yet, but it’s definitely moving in that direction and quickly.

Mr. Shirky believes someone’s age has a big impact on social tool adoption. The idea that older people have to unlearn old things in order to embrace and adopt the new things. He says:

…young people are taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we [older people] do but because they know fewer useless things than we do… Meanwhile my students, many of them fifteen years younger than I am, don’t have to unlearn those things, because they never had to learn them in the first place.

Doesn’t that mean that young people today are learning more things now, that will be useless much sooner than what we learned?

This evoked for me the concept of the disappearing internet. As so many things now ship connected to the web and access to it is becoming ubiquitous. So much so that the concept of the internet recedes into the background. This has energized the development of new devices that can access the web and replace older form factors.

George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research wrote a post on his blog entitled The Digital Vanishing Act. He has crafted a list of devices or platforms and what they have replaced. “Wikipedia made my Britannica go away, E-Z pass vaporized the friendly toll taker” and so forth.

It’s a bit of a wake up call to execs that continue to rely on their experience and track record as a rationalization against the growing disappearance of all things familiar. If they don’t unlearn that lesson, they won’t learn the new one, and it won’t end well for them.

Bottom line, the need for human to human connection is as strong as ever. People will instinctively organize to accomplish their goals and gain power, and the convergence of devices/platforms and the web is accelerating the process. Social networking cannot be stopped. It’s like life, it will find a way.

Here Comes Everybody is a bit long, but thoughtful and accessible. Well worth the time. You can find Clay Shirky’s Internet Writings here.

It seems all the marketing world is abuzz over social media. Everyone wants to do it, but there is no best practices approach to follow. That is until now. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, two high powererd analysts at Forrester Research published a book this spring containing their recipe for starting and nurturing social community.

It’s part blueprint, part self-help book and part research report. I found it to be comprehensive and exhaustive, at least as much as any study can be at this early stage of a new wave. The book can help brands of all sizes and from all verticals, but is tilted towards the bigger firms.

In typical Forrester style they have done their homework. Consumers, brands, software firms, you name it and they looked at it. The style is straightforward and easy to read, oftentimes playing back actual conversations they’ve had with clients. Case studies of course, and even some that didn’t work out.

My company is just beginning to explore this new way to market our brand and content and I found this book incredibly helpful. I’ve given 5 copies out to senior executives at work, and making it highly recommended reading for my staff. It starts with listening to your customers and ends with embracing them to help you make better products. But there is a whole lot of things to do, and not do, in between. It’s all mapped out.

The authors are realistic and clearly outline potential pitfalls, constantly reminding us to be patient, go slowly and get buy in at the highest levels.

Near the end they challenge the more sophisticated thinkers to imagine how working in the groundswell will actually transform their companies over time. How they market, conduct service, carry out PR and launch new products. I’ve been on a hunt for more sources of value for my company, and I believe this could be a viable one.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants to come up the curve quickly on social media and community. A must read for all marketers, even if you’re not looking to launch into community at this time.

To get a taste of the book and the Forrester style of analyses, visit the Groundswell blog here. Or you could just buy the book here.

P.S. Charlene Li has recently left Forrester. I have relied on her advice and work for several years and I will miss that. On her “Why I’m leaving Forrester” blog I wrote a three word description of Charlene Li; a rare person. Hopefully our paths will cross again some day as we navigate through our professional lives. Best of luck to her!

I’ve got a first day (June 30, 2007) iPhone. The beauty of the iPhone is how seamlessly everything is knitted together. Email, text, contacts, calendar, phone, camera, photo gallery, music library, maps, the Internet. I can get to just about anything I might need to know as long as I have it with me and it’s charged. Not one problem so far.

The concept has always been based on operating system instead of a handset, which has been elevated to a new level with the release of V2.0. Apple combined the iPhone 3G launch with the software release (maybe not such a good idea in retrospect) as well as the applications store. I’m not really tempted to get the 3G model. I just don’t need it. But the apps are delightful. Here are my favorite iPhone applications, so far.

• WordPress – Keep up on your blog stats and post on the go.
• Twitterrific – I’m finding Twitter to be a great source of information for my professional as well as personal life. The app delivers the big browser experience vs. a string of text conversations you would normally see on your phone screen.

Twitter on the iPhone

• Facebook – Gotta have it if you are on Facebook for the same reasons you need Twitterrific.
• WineSnob – An unfortunate name. I love wine, but am not at all snobbish about it. It’s a nice companion whether at a dinner party, a fine restaurant, or shopping to stock up. But know that it simply re-purposes the Wikipedia wine entries. Not a bad thing, but a kind of a killjoy. Hugh Johnson, where are you?
• WeatherBug – A meteorologist in your pocket at all times. Since we are now focused on climate change, this could turn out to be the most useful app of all. You can also view live web cams.
• Labyrinth LE – The classic maze game brought to life on your iPhone screen. You hold the phone like the box and work your way up the levels of difficulty. It’s missing that wonderful ball bearing rolling across wood sound. Maybe that’s part of the pay version.

Labyrinth LE

• myLite – Kind of cheesy, but has come in handy while on the way to my son’s room in the middle of the night so I don’t trip over a plane, train or car. Also used the concert lighter feature last weekend at a friend’s band performance.
• Pandora – Your favorite internet stations carry over to your iPhone. Keep the music coming.
• NYTimes – Shows up everyday in my driveway (that’s right, the real paper). I don’t always get to it the same day, but I never recycle them without reading, no matter how old they are. The app keeps me up to date on breaking news. Used it today in a meeting. Read an Op-Ed article to the social media team. I read it in the paper while at a stoplight on the way to work. Makes you look sooooo smart.
• PangeaVR – View stunning panorama photos from all over the world by accessing their database, or enter a web site URL. Great for photographers. Kind of like sightseeing with your phone. Pangea means entire world.
• Nearby – My Platial maps are always close at hand with this app. I can add a new place while I’m right there, or surf the popular tab and explore what’s around me. I’m very impressed at how advanced the current political campaigns are with social media. They’re all over Platial.

I only paid for one of these apps and it was less than $3. Entertain yourself or your kids, stay more tightly connected, be more productive, or just escape. The iPhone application store has it all and it’s dead simple to use.

Companies today tend to give their newest customers the best deals, leaving the ones who have been supporting them over time to fend for themselves. The phone and cable companies have been the most egregious offenders of this in my view. I’ve been a customer of Cingular and now AT&T since 1994 (that’s 14 years!) and can’t say I ever received anything of value from them. They continue to send me free phone offers, but they know I’ve had an iPhone since day 1 (there’s a picture of it right on the home page of their account servicing site next to my name), Do they really think I would ever switch from a phone I paid $600 for?

Well, I’m happy to report that Sonos sent me an email to today that actually rewarded me. Sonos has been a great product, allowing me to listen to my iTunes music collection all over the house, even outside. They have successfully combined a simple interface and wireless connectivity, and its performed like a trooper for over 2 years.

The communication informed me that a new software version was now available and all I had to do was download it to my Sonos system and they would give me free music, worth $200.

The download process was a bit more cumbersome than I wanted, as I ended up resetting my hand held controller to the factory defaults, which erased all my internet radio favorites and the controller playlists I built over the last two years. A little annoying.

Once that was accomplished, I clicked on the email link to see the details. Of the three offers, two of them pre-selected the music, some of which I had, other selections I didn’t care to have. The third service required a credit card and enrollment in their trial package, but the trade off was you could choose from anything in the catalog. I only took them up on one of the three offers, but that’s not the point. The fact that they demonstrated that my time was valuable, acknowledged that fact and offered me something in return.

It wasn’t a huge benefit, but neither was the amount of time. I found their support of loyal customers to be refreshing, and solidified my link to the brand.

Lots of controversy over China hosting the games. Political, environmental and human rights are at the forefront of the discussion. As a Westerner it requires more effort to understand the Chinese culture vs. European for example. But the games are the games and the athletes have trained just as hard for this opportunity as any other. I’m actually more concerned for their safety and ability to perform at the highest levels, considering the pollution in the atmosphere vs. the political censorship.

By definition the games must move around the globe. We find ourselves here in China this time. We need to use this opportunity to call out the injustices that exist in this country, but do it on page two, allowing the athletes to take center stage, compete, and experience this rare moment in time for the entire world. The press can’t be controlled. The real stories will get out.

Is a communist state that is growing at a pace exceeding the free world a bad thing? A Threat? A potential ally? The scale is certainly impressive, but the methods used are questionable.

The Bird Cage surrounded in smog

The Olympic games have a special place in my life. I remember watching them with my father as a young boy, and returning the favor with my oldest son. Now I have a chance to relive that experience again with my 4 year old. To talk about this storied ritual and how the games are the protagonist in the drama on the world stage. Wouldn’t miss it. Will you be watching?

Tell No One introduces us to Alex Beck almost from the very first frame. He has a life one could envy. Fresh from medical school and ready to start his career as a pediatrician. He married his childhood love, enjoys a warm friendship circle, and seems genuinely happy. What could go wrong? Well apparently quite a bit.

The film is taken from the bestselling novel of the same name by Harlan Coben. Mr. Coben is crime writer extraordinaire and has accomplished the equivalent of the writer’s hat trick by winning the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony awards for his work. Mr. Coben is American and lives in New Jersey, but the film was shot by Guillaume Canet, a French filmmaker, and screened with English subtitles. It was a bit of a gamble, because the crime genre is so familiar to movie audiences in America. Seeing how Mr. Canet would interpret the material through his native culture and backdrop made for a thought-provoking experience.

Pic opens with a slow reveal of information that leads one to the conclusions described in this review’s opening paragraph. We get it all very quickly. As the perfect couple, Alex (Francois cluzet) and bride Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) take a nostalgia trip to a childhood swimming hole. After a long day of sun and swim they have a disagreement about Alex’s sister. Margot swims back across the lake in a moment of protest. The next thing we hear is her screaming. Alex follows in panic and once dockside, is clubbed in the stomach and head, and sent back into the water.

Fast forward several years into the future. We are re-introduced to Alex. This time in a life without Margot. He has fallen into a robotic, lifeless existence that is almost unrecognizable. We learn that Margot was killed that night and Alex was considered a suspect. One day he receives an e-mail that appears to be from his presumably dead wife. She sets a rendezvous date and time at a local park, and warns Alex to, “Tell no one.” It’s a little bit of a stretch but you are willing to go with it. What follows is one twist after another.

Both a thriller and a love story, Francois Cluzet as Alex Beck, does a fine job at playing this dual role as well as the before and after Margot character. Once he reads the e-mail message he is filled with a hope not felt since that fateful night. The police intercept his messages and are still looking to pin the murder on him. Alex turns out to be a formidable challenge for the police. The cops have lost effectiveness because of the tension between the clean ones and the ones on the take. The acting requires high physical demands and Mr. Cluzet is up to the challenge. He enlists the street smarts of a gang member whose son he treated and protected.

Francois Cluzet as Alex Beck

Alex is able to hire a high powered attorney, Maître Elysabeth Feldman (Nathalie Bayne) thanks to his sister’s wealthy restaurateur lover Hélène Perkins played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who speaks French and looks as radiant as ever. Like so many others in this film, Ms. Perkins constantly smokes. This picture should come with a surgeon’s general warning about the dangers of second hand smoke.

Nathalie Bayne, Marina Hands and Kristin Scott Thomas

The story is perhaps a little too tricky for its own good. The audience is definitely intellectually challenged, and director Guillaume Canet is up to the exciting chase scenes. But it seems over-staged. Mr. Canet goes back over the footage several times to ensure his audience keeps up. An effective enough technique, but somewhat overused. They are shooting for Hitchcock, but fall short.

This picture has a lot of strengths. We see a wonderful mix of French countryside and city locations. The pace is quick without causing whiplash, and you find yourself being invested in several of the characters. Matthieu Chedid’s score uses only one or two instruments at a time, which brings a darkness to the film that is only fully revealed in the final scenes.

If subtitles don’t bother you, and why should they, all of you can read, I would highly recommend this film to anyone looking for something off the Hollywood well worn path. It will stimulate your mind for days on end.

All photos courtesy of Revolver Entertainment. Visit the Tell No One official web site here.