Happy Black Friday!

When I hear the words Black Friday I think about black cats crossing paths, breaking mirrors and walking under ladders... I think Friday the 13th.

However, when I heard about Black Friday in America... I was opened up to a whole new world. There is no bad luck, black cats or even avoiding anything in USA - it's all about shopping till you drop!

Here's video compilation that shows the utter Frenzy!

How cool is that! For someone who likes shopping the idea of getting cash during thanksgiving and going and spending it on Black Friday is pretty awesome and it goes down to capture what I think is the awesome consumer culture in the USA.

Black Friday is a multi billion dollar affair in the US and can make or break the results of a company. In 2010 most firms saw a modest increase on prior year - let's see what will happen this year.

However, to my American Buddies - forget the results - HAPPY THANKSGIVING and enjoy the shopping you lucky buggers!


What's Up Jono

London Bakery gets a Hot Cross Bun thanks to Groupon

Groupon. The company that floated a few weeks ago to critical acclaim has slipped and fallen right on its muffin top. Stock is down over 16% from the float price.

However, Groupon has long been on my pet hate list. Not so much because the people are unfriendly or anything. Actually the opposite is true. I had a brief chat to Groupon UK CEO Chris Muhr at Kings College London after his speech earlier in the year and he was brilliant and open with his communication.

No, my beef with Groupon is that it makes money by destroying value - both brand value and true value for the people that are its customers. Case in point. If you have a widget to sell with Groupon, you need to put it on sale at a discount of at least 50% to attract a deal. So you would be left with $50 out of $100. Of that remaining $50, groupon takes $25 more as a spotters fee. This leaves the vendor with $25 out of $100 original dollars.

Here's the thing... that's $25 in REVENUE. not profit. So in a business like...oh... a cake shop where you can expect operating margins of around 10% and therefore a cost of $90 for every $100.. you'd be losing about $65 dollars... or 65% of your business!

This isn't a joke... it happened in real life where this London Bakery baked 102,000 cakes at a loss thanks to Groupon.

Groupon... makes it to my pet hate list! One daily email at a time!

What's Up Jono? 

My Favourite Places: The Island Bar: Sydney

I've discovered a new favourite place in Sydney. The only issue is, it's pretty close-knit and I'm not sure I can ever go back there!

Enter the glory of the Island Bar in Sydney where I went with a few friends yesterday in the glorious Saturday sunshine. Marketed as "the most exclusive and premium event space" in Australia one has to take a water ferry about 10 minutes from Rose Bay to a floating house just off the waters of Vaucluse in Sydney. 

The white summer shack is basically a a bar with daybeds with a view to die for and many beautiful people who are very beautiful to look at but not to talk to. Pretentiousness at its best, we all agreed that the people were probably reading the Tommy Hilfiger Spring Collection blog. The most insane moment was when a muscle man with pink short-shorts and no shirt on started parading around the place. 

Oh actually , not quite. The more insane moment was when we were asked to vacate our daybeds so that a VIP area could be made for Leonardo DiCaprio ... who never turned up - but we did instead see Mel B's husband... who... I had a strange feeling should have been looking after the children instead of being on the island. 

People aside, the space was absolutely amazing - and it's a wonderful place to take your friends, grab a quiet corner and just relax for the entire day before you're sick of the view... but you never get sick of the view! 

Pizzas were a whopping $15 each, but were very tasty - and drinks were around what you'd pay in any club and set back about $10 for most items.

Overall given the fact that I do have friends and I'm also pretty good at ignoring pretentiousness and getting on with my life and friends, this was probably one of the best places I've been in Sydney. 

Thus the Island makes it to my favourite places list! 

View looking down the seated space.

View looking back towards Sydney Harbour.

What's Up Jono | The Full Download

Inside the Artist's Mind : Flashmobs

Charlie Todd moved to New York city as an artist looking to make it big in early 2002. With no place to do his artistic work he decided to make art around the city of New York.

With a few friends they create an entirely new an innovative idea: the FlashMob . Absurd, funny ... the idea is that everyone shares the experience together.

Watch the artist talk through a number of his projects here:

Jono

What's up Jono

Balls of Steel

All the boys in the room know that we have a very special set of gonads. However, did you know that there are some people  that have been committed ('crazy') enough to train to make sure they are defended from any such attach? This brings the ballet the Nutcracker Suite to a whole new level.

My new favourite youtube viewing, TV series "Sports Science" featured a series where they showed two karate black-belts that were experts in 'combat ki'. This enabled them to protect against any attach that other people would usually die with. 

The best part of the episode was where they brought a massive 6ft 8 character from the American Gladiator series to kick the sensei in the nuts. The question posed "will his avocado's be made into guacamole?" was the best call ever! 

Watch the clips below to see what happened. Guys, aren't we glad we didn't do Karate after all?

Jono

What's Up Jono | Two Cents at a Time

Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 Review

Those of you who know me know that I like shopping! It's usually the next techy product or something food related, but nevertheless it's shopping.

I have my fair share of bad service experiences and make my way through many a caramel slice, coffee and restaurant, but I wanted to write about my new Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000. (see here for specs).

My use case: Clumsy and heavy duty user.
The first time I bought a wireless mouse I lost the dongle that plugged into the computer within 2 days. I needed to buy a new one. That one I lost the actual mouse at work. I then turned to ebay where I bought some fancy schmancy but non-branded ones - and they literally smoked and burnt as I used them. Finally I bought another logitech but was disappointed with the 2 month battery life.

Ever since that time (almost 8 years ago) I have happily used my wired mice - favouring the classic windows ergonomic mouse.

That all changed today. I finally bought myself a mobile mouse. A mobile mouse is one which is meant for people who are mobile... the dongle is so small that it can be kept in the USB slot so you'll never lose it!

I'm really really REALLY happy with this mouse. (CNET likes it too) It has an amazing feel - especially when scrolling and clicking and it really makes my browsing experience feel a million dollars! Who would have thought shelling out another $40 for a better mouse would change my experience so much. Best of all, the batteries last 10 months (according to this) so here starts the count!

What mouse do you use? Comment below!

Jono

What's Up Jono | Virtual Coffee Chats

Power to the people! Opinionaided.com

Thanks to my friend Lex from LA I was introduced to 'Opinionaided.com' which is a really neat little app / website that allows you to ask a question to everyone on the network and they can flash-vote on it.

All you need to do are put in questions, add a photo and almost instantaneously there is a vote result. Like... AMAZING. This is like a real-time pulse survey to the public.

I quickly fired off many questions but the one that I wanted to poll most was 'Do you read Blogs?'. I've posted that at the same time as today's post and will have the results for you tomorrow.

This brings about the questions as to whether surveys are useful tools. I know we covered off in my MBA classes that they weren't that useful unless the survey was targeted to a market segment. That seems sensible. The way crowd sourcing gets around this is that it asks you to categorise your question into buckets or categories.

The genius of the application comes as it is inherently social. People with common questions and answers can start a conversation based on the content - and it's a great way to interact with people on a meaningful level.

With facebook and twitter linkages it is an absolutely necessary tool in any entrepreneur's bag of tricks!

Thanks Lex for the tip! Now you all know too ;-)

Jono

What's Up Jono | Virtual Coffee Chats

Julie and Julia

I was watching the movie Julie and Julia last night and was inspired to write more blog posts!

The movie (trailer here) is a true story about Julie Powell - who was a secretary in a dead-end job who decided to try out Julia Child's recipe book one recipe at a time for a year.

For those of you who don't know Julia Child - she is the mother of American French cooking who wrote a cookbook whilst following her husband (a US Ambassador) throughout France and Europe.

The story was quaint because it paralleled the projects that both Julie and Julia went through decades apart. I found it particularly inspiring because it showed how important it was to back yourself and stick to your ideas!

At a time where the world is in so much turmoil we can all remember that the projects we choose on the side can sometimes give us meaning in life and save us from the sheer monotony of boredom.

What project are you working on at the moment? Dare you to share it!

Jonathan.

What's Up Jono?

Is it ok to beat your kids?

I was surfing around on my iPad the other night and saw the following clip about a Texas judge who was belting his young child (who happened to have cerebral palsy) and it prompted me to think about this issue.

(WARNING VIDEO IS GRAPHIC)



Is it OK to beat your child? What is acceptable discipline and what is unacceptable? What impacts can physical abuse lead to children? How about emotional abuse - is this worse and more hidden?

When I watched the video I couldn't put my ipad down. I was in absolute shock at the severity of the punishment and the absolutely white-rage attitude the man took. I still feel pretty annoyed when I see this video on a number of levels.

First level is that it's a disgrace to humanity that this could happen. The only thing that separates us from animals is our ability to judge ourselves and control our instincts rather than let the instincts control us. This was absolutely beastly.

Second is that he's a esteemed members of society and a Judge. The fact that this would be seen as anywhere near normal and influencing our society in the future is just scary.

Third is the impact that one person can have on others. He had abused his wife and daughter to the point where they didn't believe that anything was wrong - or were too afraid to do anything about it.

Forth is the believe that no man is greater than another unless earned. What entitles him to be more powerful than the other person in this situation - he certainly hasn't earned his way to this position.

Fifth and perhaps the worst for me was the intent. I think the intent was malicious and obviously un-relentless.

Thinking about the ways that this made me really annoyed revealed a few lessons for me . Firstly was the way I rolled and what I placed importance on. But it also challenged me to be a bit more understanding of people.

The girl who posted the video apparantly had a twitter account that said her father needed help not hate. Is that actually possible? Should it be done?

Broader still, what am I doing for humanity? What are my lessons?

These would seem to be better ways of dealing with the emotional response than 'annoyance' - so I challenge us to react but then to do something about it within our control.

Feel free to comment below.

Jono

What's up Jono

Welcome to my mind.

On Company Culture

I was thinking today about the idea of culture and in particular company culture.

Culture is a funny thing. On a worldwide level it is used commonly to describe a subset of people who are alike in some way - whether that is by geography, ethnicity, school. It is also used to describe the 'educatedness' of a person with society.

Dicionary.com refers to 4 definitions of culture which all include a form of social normality.

Following on from this is the question as to whether culture is able to be defined or whether it is presents itself. After all, a group of people in a crowd appear to have no culture. However, a group of people in a crowd in a football match all chanting the same tune - would indeed have a culture.

My reflection is that culture is a series of 'states of being' rather than set in stone. In other words it is a constant 'clique' mentality which shapes and is shaped by the culture's participants. In order for a culture to succeed it must be relevant to the people it is leading but at the same time evolves slowly over time.

On a company level we are able to identify culture quite distinctively in some instances. No better an example of company culture is Johnson and Johnson - where I'm doing an internship at the moment and a place I'd classify as a great culture organisation.

Culture-led organisations like J&J have extensive history and examples that embed what people should do as a respresentative of the organisation. In J&J's case this is framed as their Credo. The organisation is a shining example of how inspiration and culture can be embedded and a spearhead for an organisation to act.

Previously when I was in Undergrad and a lot more results-focused I constantly discarded culture as something that was unimportant to running and succeeding in business. However, the more that I have observed about culture the more central I think it is to the sustainably ongoing organisation.

Cultures are like personalities and brand extensions that today's employees buy into. In fact as the idea of brand identity is so closely linked to company culture - it would seem that some brands are changed consistently through company culture. A great example of this is Abercrombie and Fitch which has all employees in their concept store in London as either models or aspirational and trendy teenagers creating a hip and preppy environment that interacts seemlessly with the brand on entry.

How do we look at culture in our organisations? How do we fit in with the cultures of our firm?

Don't underestimate the power of fitting in and finding your niche.

Jono

http://www.whatsupjono.com/ | A Journey into Reading Jono's Mind

Setting off the alarm bells

We all talk about setting off the alarm bells as an 'early warning sign' in your head. However, how often do we really recognise these warning signs - and what kind of triggers do most people have that actually make sense?

I had a real life manifestation of 'alarm bells' tonight when I re-entered my office after hours from a side door only to find that it was armed and ready to trigger. I stepped in, hesitated, decided to step out, then rethought the move and walked through the building to the reception desk to get a security number. However, no one was reachable at security and I ended up calling about 5 numbers before someone answered. I also realised that my car would have been locked in - and was running worst case scenarios through my head at the time in a panic whilst thinking about how dead I was going to be with my boss the next morning.

Apart from the obvious silly move to come back to the office at such a late hour, I had also made a series of decisions that in hindsight sprouted from a case of convoluted logic - where I was trying to save hassle and money and being very inconvenient about the way I did things. However, there is also a separate issue at play - which is how an alarm system would allow people to enter after hours. Were there building measures that would have been better able to avoid the whole schamozzle?

I distilled a few key messages from the incident above. Some personal and some system related and thought I'd share them with you as food for thought.

1) Lifestyle is more important than hassle.
For the cost of $5 dollars tonight I would have been able to drive to the city , not sit in a stinky train from work and back and be able to get home. The flexibility premium should always be considered for lifestyle options.

2) Controls should be preventative rather than 'alarms'.
Alarms that are set to 'voice' themselves as exceptions are less efficient that alarms which are warning signs. Which alarms are you paying attention to?

3) When you make choices or give your employees choices - always allow for an easy scot-free exit. 
I would have killed to have gotten out of that carpark tonight without a big showcase. It was both embarrassing and a huge inconvenience. Are we doing this inadvertently in our workplaces and lives? Give people room to manoeuvre and exit with grace.


What do you think? Have your say in the comments area down below.

Jonathan.

www.whatsupjono.com
interesting thoughts to ponder.