Connecting the dots ...
SAP’s Craig Cmehil is excited to come to Atlanta as part of the Bloggers’ Corner at SAP’s annual mega-event, SAPPHIRE. He even included the map of the Congress Center area. Nice … but Craig, you should look at another map – the one that tells you how to get there. Pay special attention to step# 35. I hope you start training soon.
SAPPHIRE07, SAPPHIRE2007, SAP, Enterprise irregulars, ERP, Google Maps, Humor
I don’t typically broadcast job searches, but I’m breaking that tradition now for a few reasons.
1: Cool cartoon 
2: Atlassian is a great company, that I wrote about quite a few times. Being “great” means not only $ucce$$ful, fast-growing, but also a good team to be part of.
3: Transparency. I just wrote about this recently, and Atlassian President Jeffrey Walker proves it again, by sharing his thoughts on the hiring process. I agree with almost all his points, except #8, the backup plan: Executive Recruiters. I think Atlassian is still at a size where they are better off finding the right candidate through their personal network – or they may face situations like this.
So while it looks like they are well on their way finding the right person, if you, or somebody you know are the candidate they’ve been waiting for, contact Jeffrey NOW. Somehow I think the beer-test might be relaxed this time.
But be warned: great company as it is, it’s also a dangerous bunch!
That’s a line stolen from Atlassian’s CEO:
“When you’re selling virtual goods, having something concrete to tie it to is a good idea. That’s why we ship t-shirts all around the planet on a monthly basis. If you buy any top-tier Atlassian product, we ship a t-shirt to your desk.
…
If you’re going to make a corporate t-shirt, make it fun like Tangosol’s “Coherence – Don’t get fluster clucked”, our “JIRA – Because You’ve Got Issues” etc. If it’s boring, people are that much less likely to wear it.”
Atlassian just issued T-shirt 2.0, and indeed, they are fun
(see all of them here.)
P.S. They won yet another award – but hey, that’s not even news anymore
SAP held major internal announcements and demos of its A1S product, tailored for the mid-market, the future growth sector now that the top end of the ERP market is saturated.
The demos were top-secret, attendees had to sign an NDA – and since I am not one of them, I’m left wondering whether they’ve seen the original flavor or the Zesty one 
I’ve just checked out of my hotel at SAPPHIRE 06 and am shocked looking at the bill:
You can click to view the original Zoho Sheet.
Since I am still in a “software state of mind” (and btw, will return to SAPPHIRE posts soon), I can’t help but draw the analogy to the software industry: Support and Maintenance charges in the Enterprise Software business are in the 20-25% range. There is an ongoing debate about the viability of Open Source as a business model but several companies are experimenting with giving away the product and focus on additional revenue sources, i.e. support, maintenance, training ..etc.
Since the hotel industry is up to 18% in surcharges, why not make a dramatic move, “opensource” the rooms and make their numbers on all these other (bogus) fees? (OK, before I get ripped apart, yes, I do realize running hotel rooms has actual material costs vs. downloading software, and that the Open Source model is a bit more complex … in other word, my analogy is far from perfect, but hey, it’s Friday afternoon, I am waiting for my plane and can have a little fun, can’t I?)
I see a lot more potential surcharges (on top of the free rooms), like: clean hotel fee, airconditioning surcharge, towel fees at the pool, hot water fee in the bathroom, warm water fee at the pool, low-noise airconditioning surcharge, no-cigarette-smell fee in the nonsmoking rooms, Broadband fee (yes, I know they already have it, but this would be extra for connection that actually works vs. trickles), private room fee (that is when you don’t get the keys to a room already occupied like it happened to me), fast or medium service surcharges at the restaurant..etc. Of course when you can’t sleep at night because the damn airconditioning is so noisy, or when your nonsmoking room smells.. .etc, you don’t have to pay. This could become the feedback / QA mechanism for the hotel industry, a’la the Open Source community support / QA in software.
The opportunities are tremendous, and we should not stop at the hotel industry. Open Source the World!
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Danish offer a recipe for open source beer |
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Recipe for beer by Vores Ol |
“Now … when you here the words “open source” most people think of computer software programs like Linux …It’s a model where the original “source code” can be modified and improved at no cost…and it’s shared among users for free. Well now … thanks to Rasmus Nielsen, beer is free too. Atleast the recipe is … in an industry where ingredients and processes are typically kept under strict trademark.
Rasmus Nielsen is one of the creators of the Vores OI beer recipe. We reached him at his home in Copenhagen, Denmark.” Thanks to Randy for discovering this gem Recipe here. |
Update (6/9/08): Jevon talks about free beer. Some more serious stuff, too, but, hey.. BEER!
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