What's up, Jono?

"God Particle" discovery

2011-12-13T21:52:00.001+11:00

Humanity is closer to understanding itself now that the "God Particle" has been discovered. This particle is created when two other particles collide and may be the secret into explaining the idea of dark matter.

Full article here

Jono.

My Pet Hate Series: Mockery

2011-12-09T19:14:00.001+11:00

You're going hard at it and doing your best and all of a sudden you hit a panel of arrogant judges with zero empathy. What do you do?

Well this guy handled it pretty well - I'm not so sure that I would have though. This is show business at its worst!

A man is singing a song to a backtrack on his mobile phone but then ... someone calls. The judges basically bully the guy into answering his phone and it becomes clear that it is one of the judges who was calling on his mobile phone.

They all then proceed to basically humiliate the guy.

This is how you handle a lack lustre performance - the English way!

I think we could all take a lesson out of that... and laugh about it... after we get the ringing out of our ears!

Lastly,

Here is a great video I watched that shows the other side of the show - in Korea and how a guy overcame harder times to be on the show.

Jono

www.whatsupjono.com

When in doubt sound it out???

2011-12-08T01:36:00.001+11:00

Well luckily here in Australia I didn't need to spell or do spelling bees when I grew up. However, looking at these performances I'm kind of sad I didn't get a chance.

This is a hilarious clip about a boy who is trying to spell Negus which sounds pretty darn racist during the spelling bee. Wait till you see his face when he gets it right. Priceless! Good on him!

Also here is another hilarious one.... Num Nut??? Spelling Bees are awesome.

And one more for good measure.... perhaps the funniest.

Jono
What's Up Jono

Crazy Chinese Olympics

2011-12-06T23:01:00.001+11:00

Two posts in a day - but this needed posting right away.

If you want something like Shaolin meets the Olympics this is the town for you!

Meanwhile, for the rest of us there is football, basketball and the internet!

Jono

What's Up Jono?

Supercar Pile Up in Japan

2011-12-06T22:53:00.001+11:00

The most expensive car crash in history?

So you're driving down a windy wet road with your buddies at 100km/hr with 14 of your best buddies all driving the decked out Ferraris ... and then... you slip up and crash causing them ALL to crash.

Luckily one of your friends only has a Prius. Hilarious.

What's Up Jono?

Nice Guys DO Finish Last

2011-12-05T20:22:00.001+11:00

Wired Magazine Article which proves why nice guys finish last... interesting.

I'd usually write more for a post - but that will be all. (Gotta stop being a nice guy)

Jono

What's Up Jono?

The Domino Project - Interesting...

2011-12-05T11:43:00.001+11:00

From one of our greatest thinkers Malcolm Gladwell comes this new project called The Domino Project (Powered by Amazon).

The project presents a new take on the future of 'e-books' where people who are 'idea sneezers' are able to share this with their friends. Kind of like connectors in Gladwell's book 'Tipping Point'.

In addition to this Gladwell and his team see the product shifting to encompass multi-packs and sharing with friends to create viral ideas and get quality thoughts out to the world.

It's an interesting way to think about books. Who would have thought that we would all go and buy 'thought leadership' for our friends in the future. However, it's like a combination of a book club and a meeting of the minds. Then there's the Malcolm Gladwell effect - surely he is from the future and this will come true.

There's a myriad of other online publishing based ideas on the domino project as well which is an interesting and thought provoking resource.

Thanks to my mate Can for telling me about this!

Jono

What's Up Jono?

My Favourite Things: Seal Team 6

2011-12-04T00:32:00.001+11:00

I led a secret life the last few weeks. I was working away by day but secretly reading about being a Seal Team 6 operative by night. It was so exciting that it has made my favourite things list.

Seal Team 6 is the elitest of the elite forces that the US Navy has and they go through an amazingly brutal selection process and are put on counter terrorism missions. Although this is every guy's secret dream, it was extremely interesting to have a first-hand account of a Howard Wasdin as he progressed through the ranks on his way to his peak and ultimately through to life after SEAL work.

I don't usually read these kind of books - but I couldn't put this down - and I don't think you will either - so grab a copy if you like this counter-strike like stuff.

(click to get to the amazon store)

For those who want a flavour of what the book is like - here are three clips from the Discovery Channel into this interesting profession.

Warning The Videos are interesting... so you'll need about 45 minutes in total once you click one below!

(part 1)

(part 2)

(part 3)

Enjoy!

Jono.

What's Up Jono?

Happy Black Friday!

2011-11-25T11:28:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-23T20:57:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-20T17:51:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-18T12:32:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-13T00:18:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-12T18:19:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-11T17:12:00.001+11:00

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

2011-11-06T22:07:00.001+11:00

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?

2011-11-04T16:01:00.004+11:00

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

2011-11-02T16:13:00.002+11:00

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

2011-11-01T00:06:00.000+11:00

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.

The Boy and the Discus

2011-10-30T00:03:00.000+11:00

As I was going for my run in the park today, I chanced upon a boy who was training throwing a discus. The first thought that came to my head was... wow I've never seen a discus in real life...only in statue format.

Here's a photo to jog your memory.

Right. Anyway after thinking that I noticed that the boy was training quite hard and obviously wanted to throw the discus as far as possible. However, as I continued to run I realised that there were some limitations to the consistency of his throws.

I hypothesised that the furthest discus throw would be one which was really at 45 degrees (I think we learnt that in highschool - but i'm not sure), that the discus needed to be released properly (direction) and travelling as fast as possible. I also knew that the child would not be able to see this himself, but luckily his mother was there watching him and coaching him where possible.

As I thought of this analogy I couldn't help put this into philosophical use for life and perhaps business as well. How do we as the boy with the discus with our goals which are to achieve the best yield on our future often fall down and have inconsistent results?

Following the analogy - it could be because of the following points which I reflect on.

Angle / Perpsective:
The trajectory and intention should be aligned. In other words we need to know where we are actually aiming in order to look for the projected outcome. Coming from a forecasting background I was always surprised when I learnt some people didn't plan to the minute! However, we all know that this is a difficult thing to do. I suppose the idea is just to check that there is alignment between the intention of your goal and the actual goal so as not to have a nasty surprise at the end.

Speed / Momentum:
The better throws are always the ones that are fully committed to and where there is a lot of weight behind. This is quite similar in basketball where the phenomenon of 'driving' to the basket uses the shift in momentum to create a momentary opportunity. How committed are you to your course of action and how much effort and momentum do you have? Conversely if you've got momentum what are you doing with it!

Release/ Letting Go:
Watching the boy I was surprised to see that a few of his throws totally lollipopped or wobbled high up into the air or didn't really go anywhere because he released the discus too too late. All that wasted energy! What are we doing that hold us back from letting ourselves fly? What makes us hesitate? How can we remove these barriers!

Coaching / Second Eyes:
Finally, there were lots of things that the boy couldn't see that his mother was able to pick up on. She was obviously not an expert but was able to give him some feedback. Therefore there are two learning points here. Firstly, choose your coaches wisely and make sure they're going to be able to help. Secondly, any feedback is better than none. How open is your organisation to the feedback process? How open are you to criticism or correction and is this holding you back from flying?

Finally, as I came to the end of my run (special thanks to Eliza for being my inspiration from a far) I realised how much good exercising really does for your body and the mind! May have to take up discus throwing next!

Jono

P.S. If you do want to read about discus dynamics, click HERE

www.whatsupjono.com

I have returned!

2011-10-29T14:42:00.000+11:00

After a long break from the blogging world I have returned re-energised and will be continuing to use this blog as an open space for my thoughts and things that are happening in life. For those who have been here from the start this blog actually started as a blog that was supposed to keep people up to date with my travels as I embarked across the world for an MBA. However, it quickly became an opinion based blog focused on finance.

Late last year I looked at changing the format and focus of the blog and it now reflects what is more relevant to my life (which is less finance!) but still very interesting and topical information.

I have always wanted this blog to be a personal take on the events in the world and a place to share interesting thoughts and I intend to keep writing about the things that really interest me and spark my opinions.

Hopefully this strikes a chord with you and you will be compelled to write comments and make the blog richer with your thoughts as well!

Here we go again!

Jonathan.

Can you create value by disrupting value?

2011-04-13T22:07:00.000+10:00

Disrupt value to create value?

Believe it or not, this was something that one of the speakers upcoming speakers at London Business School may advocate. Prophet speaker Andy Stefanovich thinks that generally challenging the status quo is key to creating value as you need to entertain the impossible in order to consider the full set of possibilities.

There are some interesting parallels in history which prove true and are linked to technology. Who would have imagined that we would be

~ Flying across countries
~ Calling each other via Mobile Phones
~ Using the Internet to instantly communicate and find information

TEDx London Business School is a thought leadership conference that is organised by London Business School.

The event will take place on 6th May. All student tickets are sold out, but currently we are accepting corporate tickets.

Website: Click here .
Buy your ticket NOW here

Go Japan!

2011-03-19T07:40:00.000+11:00

The Japanese markets saw a massive 20% decline this week on fears that the country would not hold out after the devastating impacts of the Japan Earthquake.

Japan showed us how resilient it was, with the markets making an awesome rebound this week, overcoming speculation.

Stay Strong, Japan.

Jono.

What's Up Jono?

MIT Profs Amazing Home Videos

2011-03-16T09:07:00.000+11:00

Watching my TED talk - which is now almost a nightly occurrence - I stumbled upon this talk by Deb Roy who is an MIT Professor who studied how language learning in a child is linked closely to the environment that surrounds it.

He then proceeds to turn his house into an amazing 3D database - and doesn't stop there.

Watch this for an amazing display of where our top research labs are today.

Jono

What's Up Jono?

What's up, Jono?

2011-03-16T07:52:00.000+11:00

Having looked back at this blog and realised that there have indeed been no posts for a while (since January) I found it important to compare my blog to my facebook page and correlate the two items.

I found to my chagrin that the two items are in fact not correlated and this brought about the original philosophy of why I started What'supJono - which was to keep my friends updated on what was up with my life.

With this in mind, I've decided to dramatically shift the content in the blog to be very candid with what I'm thinking... so get ready for the ride and welcome to the new and much more personal What'supJono.

Jono

What's up Jono?