First Do Something

[red1]

I first hear of Al Ries and Jack Trout from some TV slot many years ago and got blown away by their presentation style of using hard facts but cleverly crafted analysis. I say 'cleverly crafted' because statistics do lie. They are like chess players who might lose to Bobby Fisher ruthless tactics which the world really is about - ruthless. And so no amount of idealism and theories backed even by statistics can help you. But that is what I am - idealistic. I believe that there is a big untapped blue ocean market up there in the SAP dominated clouds that no one here is even thinking of. Except me, who has been publishing articles and blogs about that untapped space.

Here, I try to "First Do Something". I am the first that did a forum outside Compiere that Compiere should have done in 1999. I am the first that wrote something that Compiere should have wrote in 2003. I did this in 2004 and that lead to the formation of ADempiere in 2006 right here in this forum.

But i do not stop there. I am the first to resign (not my focus and that role is not really played in conventional sense ). I am the first to have physically met and discussed important issues with all the top members of this community. I am the first Compierean to have traveled throughout Asia right through to the Americas. (Now i am writing this to you from the home of Carlos Ruiz in Bogota, Colombia, and will be continuing my journey next week to the most beautiful women of Latin America in Medellin (so said some community members here - haha, let me be the judge of that!), and then to Quito in Ecuador and then to Sao Paulo in Brazil).

I am also the first to have brought back some important members to the project - latest is Andre Legendre who first coded Manufacturing ideas for Compiere but backed out when he claimed Libero stole his ideas. He now tells me that was wrong to have let Libero dominated ADempiere space and is now back in the iDempiere project. He has the smartest simplest ideas on Manufacturing as he coded for 3 important factories in France namely Peugeot, Citroen and Renault which some run on his system till today. (And he is the first to setup a company for me in Paris located at the most famous street in the world, Champs-Élysées, which together with the most famous French brands such as Luis Vuitton, has a direct view of the Eiffel Tower.)

But i cannot stop there. I want to be the first to kill SAP. Using a simple weapon. Software. Which is alternative ERP, that can have the most killer possible installation process that detects your geo-location to determine your localisation and language and seamlessly adopts all your email contacts for Business Partners, customers and vendors, and keywords to detect your products and prices. And integrates back to your mail box as your single window of business operations without the need to launch the ERP app. And it can go to your mobile phone - from the mailbox there you hyperlink to the GoogleMaps to locate where your shipment routes are and how your product deliveries are taking shape en route to your customers or users. And best of all i want to make it free and open. That's right, let the free and open viral web change everything, and ERP space is one base I will first do it in.

This may take many years, but definitely is the shape of the future. Some smart ass may even market this idea as a proprietary product but let's see how far he can go against the virus. Someone may even beat me to it exactly as a virus (the last bastion of going viral is to make it free). But then, I may be the first one who penned it here. In fact, I already wrote this some years ago in my book.)
I will give more links of my selection of Al Ries and Jack Trout or any other marketing guru that I find very important for your vision and passion towards positioning a killer idea and make it matters - becoming a global brand and make money. <-- I know you like the sound of this word. .. you can do something first or just 'Do Nothing' and you know what that means.

First presentation of ADempiere Bazaar concept at Linux Tag, Berlin, 2007, in a talk slot organised by Metas, Bonn, a top ADempiere implementer in Germany.

Red1LinuxTag.jpg (25.83 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

First to present ADempiere at an international conference in Phuket Thailand, also to first represent Malaysian state for FOSS ERP concept adoption for Halal Food Logistics Proposal.

MOUred1phuket.png (412.27 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

I went Down Under in July 2011, to meet Paul Bowden (left), Steven Sackett (beside me) and Tony Snook (sitting) in ADAXA's office, Melbourne that has borne much contribution including good subject matter on Manufacturing and Accounting.

AdaxaPhoto.jpg (59.35 KiB) Viewed 8298 times

First to get endorsement from a 45-company strong conglomerate in the Philippines to systematically adopt ADempiere ERP within a sustainable eco-system. Letter is supposed to be dated September 23, 2011.

TaoLetter.jpg (79.71 KiB) Viewed 8298 times

Big picture after presenting about career opportunities in FOSS ERP at Xavier University, Northern Mindanao, the Philippines.

xu001.jpg (177.69 KiB) Viewed 8311 times

Taking a break at a pub in Praque, Czech Republic, with Dietmar Berlinger, an ADempiere supporter from Austria.

Czech.jpg (84.6 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

After dinner at a Moroccan restaurant in Paris with contributors from Francophone that includes North Africa and Arabic localisation. Andre Legendre is sitting beside me.

ParisMoroccan.jpg (53.33 KiB) Viewed 8354 times

Concluding important issues with local Colombian community in La Casalera, high above Bogota. Carlos Ruiz, the crucial stable version maintainer of ADempiere sitting beside me.

lacalera3.jpg (94.24 KiB) Viewed 8298 times

[red1]

OK, now that I am doing something, how do I translate what I been doing to something strategically competitive? I am trying hard to answer the lady's questions here:



First question: What am I best at? Hm... is it coding or writing? Nope too general, and also I am lousy at coding. Is it humorous writing even though I am lousy at coding? Hmm.. doesn't sound right but I am getting somewhere. I think it is 'Giving painless documentation on complex FOSS ERP'.

OK, now second question: 'Why are your clients paying you?' Gee, pity? Nope, they are not in charity. Hm.. because i showed them in a very friendly and adapted way? Hm... that is why someone pay me this ticket to Bogota plus some expenses? Thus, if i want to get more, i have to make more adaptable material. Now that leads to one other question. How do i scale up? How do i own a business that runs on its own without me been there?

One thing good about the web and publishing online is that i can just write once and it scales on its own. Users do not bother me and download my works virally and a small percentage of them only contact me and usually they are already educated enough to pay me upstream works and know me well enough to bother me with informality or formalities such as POC or do first, pay later questions. To get more deals I publish more and thus one important principle i have is to always give out whatever i find out as free open documentation. This seems to go against the grain and common wisdom. Exactly.

More on this question to come. Stay tuned while I Google further.

[red1]

Before we go further, you need to know the first few things that I did in the early days that was absolutely right. First get your name right, or get a right name. I chose 'red1' as it is short, meaningfully playing around with singular nouns, and mystical - great ingredients to attract innocent victims. How then can I explain my sudden rise to fame? But that is not enough. You got to stamp the name in your readers' minds:

[red1]

As you probably know by now, I never completed any college degree and but was not at a disadvantage because one day I became a Webmaster at a big bank working alongside another consultant from IBM who taught me the power of certain key words:


However the true meaning of words come into play when you get to use it in real life. I began to master more powerful 3-letter words. That is how you can tell a fake from a bona fide consultant or sales pitch. Once I asked back with key 3 letter words, such as "Do you have a DRC? (Disaster Recovery Centre)? How is your SLA (Service Level Agreement) thresh-hold?". I used that successfully to stop an ISP (Internet Service Provider) from pushing their deal across to my CEO when I was CTO.

But when I get to present to higher levels of users, such as the business owner or the government, I have to relearn again new 3 letter words - ROI (Return on Investment) and GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

After many, many years of deep, deep and wide, wide experience in the battlefield of sales and marketing, you will drop all those cliche words that makes you sound as if you are just fresh out from MBA school. You are now a real pro. You began to formulate your own voice, tone and phrases. My favorite are, "What is your pain-list?", or "What is your wish-list?" That's right. Keep it short and simple.

[red1]

And this is where it leads to my favorite twin of Al Ries, which is Jack Trout, who says it best about keeping it simple. Even with story-telling, he keeps it short and sweet.



And there is this important role that people in business - leaders, managers and sales must focus on, not about doing things right, but doing the right things. It is so, so true even for open source projects. Listen to what he has to say:



So that is it, amigos and amigas. What is it that we do best? And is it the right thing? Have we done it? Are we into publishing content and innovating code? Or are we just copy/paste others work and not adding value but just blaming away our wives for getting our soups too hot? Or have you forgotten one small guy here some time ago who says?:

Information is Free, You have to Know;
People are Not, You have to Pay;
Contributors are Priceless, You have to Be.

To this allow me to add:

If You Have to Know, First Do Something.

Greetings from Bogota, Colombia.

ruizes.jpg (97.6 KiB) Viewed 8251 times

~ THE END ~