HumaneTech

Emotional human beings and their use of technology

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Buying votes in elections – why not?

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: General, People

Tags: elections

Comments: No Comments

Published on: October 25, 2012

There are Parliamentary elections currently going on in Lithuania and there have been several, if not to say many, cases reported when someone has been buying votes. There are protests going on, in a single region results even had been cancelled. Read more information and facts on The Economist.

And here is me questioning “Why buying votes in elections should be illegal or not acceptable?” Really – why?

We all agree that each citizen has a right to vote under democratic regime to elect her representatives to lead the country. Smart people (different analysts or experts) often have a clear understanding which political parties are planning to work hard and improve the conditions for a country and which are only willing to get into the power for their own reasons, i.e., relatively easy work plus extra pension later on or just immunity, from their crimes…

If a person votes for a party promising that every citizen will get a hen laying golden eggs, society agrees that it is acceptable. Even though everyone with 3 grade education should understand that hen don’t lay golden eggs.

In reality we assume that voters are trying to vote for the party that would provide them with benefits in the future – better healthcare, more advanced educational system, good security, more financial benefits to people etc.

So why we can’t accept someone giving their vote for real short-term benefits like 50 EUR or an excursion or anything else. Why we don’t allow people to make that choice? It sounds perfectly legitimate to me. I would suggest; however, to publicly inform which party pays for votes; so other voters would know and could make a better decision.

What is not acceptable is faking votes, for example if a prison director fakes inmates votes for a particular party; but giving each inmate a pack of cigarette for particular vote should be totally acceptable!

External management consultants

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: Business, People

Tags: Consultants, Organization, Workshop

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 19, 2012

I wish to describe my first experience with any external business consultants, in particular, OVC Consulting and their director Dr. Virginijus Lepeška. They organized a teamwork workshop for our leadership team last month. Let me start with the conclusion that most of the participants were rather skeptical upon arrival; however, most of them admitted having gained value as individuals and a team as they left.

Background. We have a matrix organization, hence people in the local leadership team (mostly various unit managers) are direct subordinates to different managers around corporate organization. This sometimes leads to unaligned targets, issues in co-operation and lack of single movement as a legal company.

Workshop. The main aim was to set up common goals among different units and managers, to agree on type of company everyone wants to see our company as well as to agree on some practical steps to go forward. Virginijus was moderating the discussions that started from individual goals, went over strong and weak sides of the company, later to goal alignment. During the process we also looked into personalities of all leadership team members (it was rather exciting as most of us have a different personality based on Myers-Briggs test).

Results. We have defined that we want to create a “cool” company that is financially stable and brings real value added solutions to its customers who value it, plus works with modern and exciting methods for its employees to love it. We have improved couple of practical issues within the company (like type of meetings or agenda). We also have created more common goals.

Conclusions. If a team is not selected by a single entrepreneur or leader then bringing in external consultants is a must. People tend to react different to external moderator – they tend to involve more and seek for a result. If team is picked by a single hand I believe it should be able to achieve the same result with internal moderator; however, at least trying external consultants once could still pay off.

Next steps. We are implementing several improvements internally now. I believe we will invite Virginijus to work with us a little bit more as time goes on as he did a really good job!

Matrix – organisation and people within

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: Business, General, People

Tags: Matrix, Organizational structure

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 28, 2012

I am currently working in a rather distant and smallish location for a relatively huge multinational corporation that has implemented matrix organization – basically separating in three dimensions (sales, delivery and support functions). Me and a recently hired mid manager had a conversation couple of nights ago… These are my notes.

People skills and capabilities. In a matrix, especially one that is constantly altering, many people don’t really pick their subordinates, they just appear based on a reorganization. Nevertheless many higher rank managers accept their lower rank managers or employees as “good managers”, as “motivated employees”, as “experts” without questioning their abilities to manage, make decision or even to think! Thus for employees it’s all about luck – did you get lucky and your co-worker or manager is cool because the only thing that might change something is the next reorganization.

Distance to the decision point. Of course, to make sure no one screws up there are a lot of rules matrix has to follow like in what situations one can take a decision, in what situations one has to report or escalate, what are the basic ratios one has to achieve etc. I see this as a basic set of “rules for dummy managers and employees”. So if an exception or a situation appears that is not covered by the rules, the only real people who can make a decision to do something different are too far away to actually dig into the problem, think, analyse and make a best decision. Instead they just simply say “no”!

Managerial style and philosophy. In a matrix everyone believes that several people with different targets (!) will come together and make a single best decision.. Forget it! I believe it allows too much independence to separate lines or parts of the organization. I believe that there should be an effective (close to an issue, commonly motivated or one man) mechanism that solves conflicts and makes decisions when two people (especially managers) can’t reach a consensus. For instance if sales & delivery can’t agree if to do a particular project there should be someone who can decide for them (just sales or just delivery guy, main guy in the country, main guy for particular business area or customer), it can’t be solely left for two managers with different motivators (huge revenue from new deals vs safe projects and as little hustle as possible).

My colleague on the other side says that I’m too entrepreneurial. He approaches the situation differently. ”I am a hired manager,” he says, “shareholders of this company believe that matrix organization will bring them the best results. So my job is not to think if it’s good or bad but to implement it. And that’s what I do!” He also suggested me to be less emotional about working issues and see that some things (like a matrix organization) are just given.

I think I will always choose the red pill over the blue one, so bring it on Mr. Anderson!

Siri sucks

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: iPhone, Mobile applications, People, Review

Tags: Siri, The Big Bang Theory

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 24, 2012

Another day I had a phone conversation while driving a car. We agreed to have a meeting the next day, so I wanted to make a calendar entry. I almost crashed while using Siri to do it…

For now Siri doesn’t seem to understand me. Another day she thought I’m asking for an anal (I don’t remember what I actually said but having intimacy with my phone should have been the last idea on my mind. For instance, if I say “Calendar”; Siri’s options I have noticed are – Calenda, Belinda, Call Linda..

But the point is that Siri sucks even if it understands you:

I want a personal assistant that understands me from the first time! Always! If I have to repeat my thoughts 3-4 times to Siri, it’s easier and faster for me to actually do the thing myself, for example, open calendar and quickly make an appointment.
I want a personal assistant that looks great but Siri doesn’t. Her interface is plain stupid – you get a list of chat messages to and from Siri. You get a list of all appointments, messages, contacts etc. It is not comfortable! Again the native applications provide way better interface to reach my goals, for example, finding a person and making a call.
I want a personal assistant that is proactive and reminds me of stuff I might have not noticed or forget. Returning calls, buying flowers for someones birthday, making it to a meeting.. I want Siri to think!

When someone (sorry, Mr. Jobs!) promises that I will have a personal assistant I expect to have a smart and sexy looking tool that covers for my shortages, thinks a step in front of me and is easy and nice to communicate to like depicted in The Big Bang Theory earlier this year. Siri is good start and a funny toy but she is far from being a personal assistant!

iCloud & the real world

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: iPhone, Location based, Mobile applications, People, Review

Tags: Find My Phone, iCloud, Review, Vilnius

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: January 7, 2012

I lost my phone approximately a month ago. It was an iPhone. I didn’t pull myself together to write this post but it’s official – iCloud’s Find My Phone generally sucks!

I tried to find my phone using Find My Phone feature; however, it wasn’t successful – I got to the place it was indicated, searched it (me and couple of friends), even did this twice. But no luck of finding my old pal..

I don’t have a screenshot from that time but there is a picture how iCloud was indicating my phone’s location:

The green dot was the place iCloud indicated my phone at. Light red buildings are ones that had either offices or shops on the first floor and flats on the rest of them (~4-5 floors), dark red – simple residential houses (up to 3 floors), yellow – parking lots, blue – abandoned two-floor building full with crap (including human crap). As it can be seen there is almost no way to find a phone in such environment (too many locked doors, even if the place was 100% precise!). Of course, one could call police but then I had to lie that the phone got stolen (police doesn’t look for lost items!), plus police in Lithuania would never go around these buildings to find my phone

Today I wanted to check how Find My Phone actually works in similar environment (the same city, several houses, some parking lots etc.), so I tried to find it while I was at home, here are the results:

As you can see the green dot (location indicated by iCloud) is not the same as the red dot (the real location). Openly speaking even Google Maps on my iPhone is indicating somewhere between green and red dot, closer to the green one). Now it’s quite obvious that if iPhone is lost, there is no way to even understand which house it is in…

Basically Find My Phone helps only if you have left it in a known place (at your friends, in a club or similar) as then seeing approximate location it’s possible to understand the exact location by human brain power.

Don’t lose your phone or find a better solution how to find it!

Creativity around us

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: General, People

Tags: Creativity, Healthcare

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: December 28, 2011

I have always been fascinated by people who come up with great ideas; be it fuel shitting bacteria from LS9, table eating mice from Auger & Loizeau or more regular one – cows sprayed with QR codes from Gildas Le Behoc. Even if these seem to be 100% irrelevant for our everyday life or work, there is still a lot we can learn!

The main lesson is that truly great ideas are born when smaller, possibly unconventional ideas with different backgrounds mix together. Say popular game console Wii was created when Nintendo’s leading game developer discussed work issues with engineer from automotive industry working with car crash sensors. We need to meet different people, need to show interest about other realms than ours, need to put us in unusual situations.

But how to find and maintain creativity in everyday life? We are so busy that we have no time for listening to that new TED talk or reading the newest issue of the Economist or the hottest tech news on Mashable. I believe I have a suggestion, maybe a weird one but still

For last three weeks I can’t normally move around after I injured my leg (read more on me meeting Lithuanian healthcare system in my previous post) that leads to my suggestion that will keep your creativity on its toes:

Limit your regular capabilities so you will be forced to come up with new and creative approaches for everyday situations!

I mean really – don’t use a car, don’t use a mobile phone, forget your wallet at home, tie your legs together, use crutches, blindfold yourself! Be extreme!

Here is an insight in the evolution of my creativity regarding a simple issue – I have to use crutches to move around so my hands are busy but I want to carry around various items (including my mobile phone, fruits, drinks, pillow and laptop). How to do it?

Day 1: carry a single item in your teeth (a bottle is the toughest one)
Day 2: try squeezing an item in a palm + use crutches for faster and more convenient movement (I had to get used to crutches a bit before trying this one and I still believe it’s a bad idea as endangers the movement)

Day 2: get a plastic bag, put multiple items and carry them in your teeth (carrying on crutch or in hand doesn’t work as it hits crutches and endangers the movement).

Day 5: wear trousers with pockets and carry few small item there (yes, I didn’t think of wearing trousers with pockets earlier!)

Day 10: get a backpack and put a lot of stuff in it and carry for the whole day! (hurrah! Finally I could move my laptop to another room)

Day 13: prepare a meal, put it on a plate or in a bowl and slide around the apartment (finally I was able to not pack my laptop all the time but actually eat normal meal while watching sports or writing this blog)

So it took me nearly 2 weeks to figure out how to fully do the simple action “carry stuff” we are regularly used to do using our hands.

I still can’t figure out how to use vacuum cleaner – any ideas?

SOPA – should I care?

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: General, People

Tags: Censorship, Copyright, Internet, PIPA, SOPA, Trademark, USA

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: December 26, 2011

Yes, you should! Keep reading to get initial insight on why you should!

For couple of months now two bills have circulated huge attention in USA – Protect IP Act (PIPA) & Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) but generally they both are referred to together under a shortened name “SOPA”. Even though these are internal USA bills, I believe every Internet loving person should care about the progress on this matter and should generally be against approval of these acts in their current versions. For starters these companies are already against – AOL, eBAY, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, Zinga, Kaspersky (Eugene Kaspersky’s viewpoint on SOPA).

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Let’s storm an ATM

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: General, People, Social network

Tags: ATM, Education, Swedbank, Twitter

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 13, 2011

A funny thing happened on Sunday night – people in Latvia decided to storm ATMs of one of major banks, Swedbank; due to rumors of possible bankruptcy. It looked something like this (taken from spoki.lv):

Altogether during Saturday night ~24M Latvian lats (equal to 34M Euro or 45M$) were withdrawn from Swedbank, SEB and other banks’ ATMs that is ridiculously huge amount of money. Swedbank informed it’s 7 times more than on a regular weekend.

Popular claim (also used by Swedbank) is that the mass psychosis started on social networks, in particular – Twitter. Indeed on Sunday night checking hashtag #swedbank or #seb one could find tweets in line with “I’m glad that I woke my friends during the night, maybe at least someone got to withdraw something” or “gossip: Swedbank branches in Sweden are closed. ATMs in Riga are empty. Warn your parents. (gossip)”. (more examples of tweets in Latvian at db.lv)

However, if one would have looked more carefully in these trustworthy informants then one would have noticed that their other tweets are about German language homework, great party with vodka and how much fun it is to stay up late before school. Moreover, one was not able to find any tweet in Swedish, Estonian, Lithuanian or any other language for that matter under #swedbank or #seb hashtags dated during the whole weekend during any troubles with the bank (and trust me if it was closed in Sweden or Estonia at least one weirdo would have thought of tweeting it).

None the less many people were waiting in queues to withdraw their money. Could it be that actually kids pushed their parents to act this weird? Possibly parents are not so familiar with Internet, Google, Twitter etc. might get really scared if their kid tells that everyone on the Internet is talking about this huge crisis. Should we invest more to educate our society both to use modern technologies as well as to have at least some critical thinking skills?

What I also noticed on Twitter that night was a sad situation when possibly more intellectual (or maybe just more brave) part of Latvian society laughed about the other part of it. Urban legend goes that the meanest tweet was: “people waiting at ATMs should be provided with free condoms to make sure they can’t reproduce…”

Social platforms

by Mārtiņš Liberts

Categories: General, People, Social network

Tags: Chime.in, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: December 9, 2011

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Chime.in, Yammer, LinkedIn and more… I think there is a limit to all these social platforms and how much a single person can use. That brings us a problem!

I love sharing my thoughts, ideas and fresh information on various topics (say, my home country Latvia, technology, mobile applications, my current living place Lithuania, interesting scientific breakthroughs, debates, maybe few more). But why do I do it? Because I hope that it will be useful for other people as well as that someone will respond and a greater idea will evolve or at least a new personal connection will be made.

So if I tweet something and automatically post it also to Facebook, I like to have further conversation on Twitter as well as I check out Facebook, so if anything interesting happens there – I can involve. But if I have to post my idea or thought on all kinds of different social platforms separately I would go crazy!

The problem: why no one has created a single application / web service from which a person could post, or even involve in a discussion on any of the above mentioned social platforms?

Should I create such an application?!?! The guys over at Social Media Guide are talking about the same problem but I’m not so sure that they have a truly practical solution, rather than articles and advises (btw, I took the illustration from their page).

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