Test your intuitions...

I belong!

Belonging to a group is a great need of human beings. I have discovered that I am in a minority group and that I am not alone. That is the group of non-Obama-fans.

The reasons for that is the same as that of Karen Hancock. She explained her reasoning in a recent blog post called In Whom Do You Trust?.

So, yes I am pleased to at last belong, even if it is to a very small minority group.

10 years in the Netherlands

It was a misty morning, the 8th of September 1998, when I set foot on the low lands for the first time. What impressed me was just how green everything was. The contrast between the open dry savannah areas of South Africa with the lush green fields of The Netherlands is something that still impresses me to this day.

Why did I come to the Netherlands? Well the plan was simple... Work here for a while. Get international experience. Acquire a descent amount of money. Go back to Africa. Marry the woman God has given to me.

Then I fell in love with the Netherlands. Squeeze 16 million people into a area small area and see how intense it is. Just to give you a idea of how "squeezed" we are, the Netherlands is smaller than the Kruger National Park of South Africa. Exactly that intense lifestyle is what attracts me to the Netherlands.

Engrave character onto your childrens hearts

How do you really build Christian character into the lives of children?
Until now, I tried to spend quality time with my daughter. I used to say that it is not the quantity time that counts, but the quality time. Now however I have to discovered that this is not true. If you really want success with your children, then there are no substitute for quantity time.

This was the conclusion of a study done by The Barna Group that was documented Revolutionary Parenting by George Barna. The best thing about this book is that is actually a empirical study of the differences between parents who raised spiritual champions and the rest.

I love the spiritual champions in the book, that were able to life in a way that are noticeably different from what was conceived as normal. They also seem to have a running start as they left their homes.

The last advice I will leave you with is to start revolutionary parenting while your children is young. Do not waste one more day...

Social Technology Innovation

I am so fortunate to be standing on the brink of what I will remember as the Social Technology Innovation era. What is this social innovation? To me it means that research and development of technology is going socially global.

Before I get into the detail of what I mean let me look back and reflect at how we got here. Research and development was for the most part done in high end research centres. If we look at the research centres like the legendary PARC (originally Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre), we will see that they had a great impact on our technological landscape of today. The PARC was responsible for technologies like the graphical user interface , the mouse, the WYSIWIG interface. Like most research facilities they struggled to bring this to market and that is where the development factor comes in. It was companies like Apple, Oracle and Microsoft that brought those technologies to the market.

You had a small number researchers bring technology to a small number of developers that in turn brought it to the market. This is how it traditionally was, until today...
Now you have a huge number of researchers bringing technology to a even more numerous number of developers that will bring it to the market.

Why will this happen now. It is a combination of various factors. Let us look at some of the most important factors:

• Communication cost has dropped to virtually zero. I say zero, since mobile companies still charge way too much for data transfers around the world. This means it is cheaper to push or pull knowledge and information to the fringes of society. This means that with less barriers it will also happen.
  
• With the advent of the social internet a new way of thinking and collaborating has become the norm. This will facilitate a new way or doing research and development. For a example see how many development activities takes place on the iPhone by normal people (even while holding another day job).
• With the advent of Cloud computing you are seeing that research and development environments are being pushed outside the traditional boundaries of those centers. You can get the same processing power of a huge company without buying one piece of hardware and without paying more than $100 per month. This means that the setup cost of a research and development center has drastically dropped.
  
• With the advent of standard research and development platforms like Google App Engine you will see a explosion of research and development being done on those standard platforms. These development environments are a huge hit, since you are able to research without paying anything and your development can start generate money while you focus on your core activities.
• The internet is sucking in appliances and technology at a increasing intensity, which provides more and more opportunities. Huge companies are unable to tak advantage of these fast moving opportunities. A huge number of small teams or people will be the ones to take advantage of these opportunities.
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My last departing though is "Help, social innovation is trampling me!"