…initially put on hold: too much resistance to the bill

Even if it is often told that you should regularly read newspaper and watch news, you probably got wind of this matter while surfing through the web. It concerns the controversial US draft law SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which was submitted some time ago by the Republican Lamar S. Smith.
This law would potentially allow the American legal system to delete or disable websites that fiddles with copyright law content in any way. This sounds positive for the industry in the first case. But you wouldn’t be able to post any video that contains protected music, even if it’s in the background, for example on Youtube. Because of the strong restriction of freedom of the user in the web and because of the unduly claim to judge foreign websites, several online firms, Bloggers and so on make a stand against this bill.

What happened?

On Wednesday, the 18th of January, Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Greenpeace and many more protested against SOPA and “Blacked-Out” their sites as well as they started petitions. Because they fear the American draft law could reach Europe, Germans and other Europeans were participating in the protest.
Many American Internet users were probably highly surprised when they tried to research Wikipedia for some random facts. Instead of millions of articles they could just see the catchy phrase “Imaging a World Without Free Knowledge” on a darkened site.

Freedom in danger?

It was the biggest possible protestation that Wikipedia could have done. The English speaking online encyclopedia was shut down for about 24 hours. To obtain the freedom of information, Wikipedia removed all that content from the web.

Other reactions

According to www.marketingland.com, many prominent founders of huge tech companies, for example Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, PayPal founder Elon Musk and several others, posted an Open Letter To Washington expressing their concerns about the legislation. From the letter:

“These two pieces of legislation threaten to:

• Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;

• Deny website owners the right to due process of law;

• Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and

• Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of    the Internet.”

What is this all about?

The US House Of Representatives is currently negotiating about a two new draft laws called SOPA and PIPA. These laws would intervene deeply into online events.
The record industry as well as movie industry claimed an implementation of tight measures against websites that allow access to licensed media. Therefore, the US Parliament responded to that request with the release of the draft law “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) submitted by Lamar S. Smith.

Potentially arbitrariness?

To stop the unlicensed and therefore unpaid distribution of digital content, the bill intends to lock websites. Providers should be forced to deny the access of their customers to visit certain pages.

If a website gets classified as as illegal, no one will be able to do business with the company concerned: payment providers, advertising services or even search engines. Whoever comes to close to websites, branded as illegal, could be hold accountable.

More information about SOPA:

• Big List Of SOPA Links
• Wikipedia’s SOPA entry

Heavy advertising pages will be punished

Internet giant Google improves its search engine algorithm. For the first time the design of a website takes part in the search results. Homepages that show a lot of ads will be rated worse in the future.

According to Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer of Google, the newly implemented change to the algorithm shouldn’t affect more than one percent of all searches. Still, this modification is probably not as important as the previous Freshness– and Panda-Update. The Panda-Change had an impact of six to nine percent while the Freshness-Update even affected up to 35 percent of all searches.

The change is primary directed at domains that are heavily advertising in the upper area. Sites using Pop-Ups or overlay ads are not affected this.

“As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change.” – Cutts

With the implementation of the layout of websites to the algorithm Google has made a huge step forward.

Cutts recommends to hide the ads or to edit the design in an appropriate way. The new algorithm would detect the changes in the next run of the crawler and change the ranking immediately.

“On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.” –  Cutts

All that glitters is not gold

In my Opinion Google’s approach is completely right. “Ad-banner-garbage-dumps” which are ranked on top of the search results annoy me very often.

Critics will probably accuse Google to have double standards. Google sins against its own requirement quite obvious. Depending on the browser resolution there is a large part of visible advertisements on Google’s search result page.

The example above is pretty extreme since we can see the maximum of three ads that Google will ever show “above-the-fold”.

(low resolution netbook)

Solar Ovens in Africa – A Shining Business

Africa, a Continent of Superlatives

With an increasing population of about 1 billion which equals 15% of the world population and an area of 30.3 million km², Africa is a highly important and big part of our earth. The “poor continent” copes with huge difficulties and is basically depending on our help. More than 10% of its population suffer from malnutrition and only 0,8% receive food aid.

Money Can’t Solve all Problems

Facts like these, urged countries/organizations/companies and citizens to donate money for Africa. Who doesn’t know the signs and advertisments that call on us to grasp the nettle and donate money for Africa, money that often does everything but help. Money, that is abused by certain groups and people, that supports corruption and that is used desultorily. And even if the donations are used appropriately, there is still one thing they bring in their wake: NOTHING!

Because most donations are unsustainable, they might help a regional group of people to have something to eat, but it’s all temporary. They don’t decrease government expenses and in fact lead to a dependency and a decline in autonomy. Africa needs Sustainability, Tyler Suiters believed and went on a trip to South Africa where a new, sustainable form of help has been introduced : Solar Ovens

A Lack of Alternatives

Solar Ovens…to inhabitants of a developed country, it sounds like another green, hippie-like project that some might buy in order to ease their conscience. To the people in Africa, the meaning is totally different because their lacking in alternatives. In a place without any accessability to electricity but 320 days of sun per year, people, mostly farmers in rural areas, need to find another way to cook their daily meals. Sibbuseso Mkhize, a local farmer in Umbumbulu, South Africa, explains :”I use too much the wood, I cut it from all my area.“

What’s the goal?

The goals and targets are clearly defined. Provide poor people in remoted, electrically isolated  villages, with a way to cook food tapping an abundant source of energy. By introducing solar ovens to the population you can not only reduce emissions but also give people a sustainable and reliable solution, which is easy to operate and does not take any deeper technological knowledge.

On the first day, the womean walk to the nearest place where wood can be gathered. On the second das, they search for firewood. The third day is spent carrying the wood on their backs home to the village – from Chad, Africa

Solar Cookers International East Africa Office - Number of Ovens per Organization in East Africa 2005-2010

Helping is not easy

It all started out of problems. It’s no wonder that every human needs food to survive. In order to cook you need energy. If you have no accessability to electricity or whatsoever, you use chopped wood to inflame a fire. The demand for wood in areas with a high population density is enormously high, which leads to a continuously progressing deforestation that results in a desertification. Another problem is the financing. In order to supply the regions with ovens, it takes money. We’re not talking about a few thousand affected people but many millions, some might be able to pay a small price but the majority is too poor.

How to Solve these Problems

To encounter the deforestation as well as the desertification and to create a more efficient way of cooking(which does not only include the actual cooking but also the acquisition of needed resources, such as wood and stones), scientists tried to find a sustainable solution and eventually ended up with the solar oven. The ovens only need sun which will safe time and resources, that can now be spent on equally essential activities/work. The non-profit organizations undoubtably depend on donations, government support or fundraising in order to finance the ovens.

Ways to Finance Sustainability

Hope reposes on the manufacturing costs which are comparatively low. “The solar cooker can be made for a cost of about $17“, David Chandler writes and reveals that it surely doesn’t take much to achieve something big. In addition, the Solar Cookers International organization has established a so called marketplace where people can purchase a solar oven and by that help financing projects. Emily Heskey adds that everyone is welcome to help financing solar oven projects. He also mentiones something that truly helps non-profit organizations. It’s the fact that it’s nowadays inevitable to implement environmental activities and sustainable thinking in a company’s corporate culture. Emile writes:

Many companies are keen to show their environmental credentials, which will mean that financing a project such as yours will be an attractive option.

Success or Failure?

So far the distribution of the solar ovens has been quite successful. According to Radha Muthiah, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, there has been between 2.5 and 3 million households, all over the world, that have adopted solar cookers. She discloses the desirable numbers for the future “We’ve set a goal of a hundred million households adopting clean cooking solutions by the year 2020.” Mrs. Muthiah knows that it’s still a long way to go but it’s a start.

What a great Invention!

I mean, seriously, it’s such a plain idea, you just take a little bit of metal, have it face the sun and guess what, there is fire to cook. Though I think the distribution and expansion of solar cookers could have already been started way earlier, it’s great to see that it finally picks up pace. I think the more these approaches succeed, the more publicity and attention they’ll get. A lot of aspects currently fit in the concept as “thinking green” is more important than ever before and these cheap tools unquestionably prove themselves. Especially since Africa is probably the sunniest continent on earth, it’s highly effective and sustainable. What we should keep in mind though is that invention such as these cookers don’t solve the actual problem of getting food aid. It’s absolutely senseless to have an oven but nothing to cook.

At this point I would like to again reference donations. Obviously, as I’ve mentioned before, there is no way around donations. Now that I’ve dug deeper into the topic I would like to correct my statement. Donations are important and effective but donators should always question the flow of money. Supporting organizations that use the donated money to establish sustainable tools and machines, is a great way to help creating a brighter future for other people.

To end my post I would like to quote the Audubon Magazine that once wrote:

“The world can choose sunlight or further deforestation,
solar cooking or widespread starvation.” 

United States of Piracy – Part III

In this part I will state my own opinion and thought of this whole debate.

At my search for information’s and opinions I found Rob Holmes blog. As you know I found something “good” but his whole blog gave me also some good laughs. One of my favorite was as he refers to himself and the other supports of the SOPA as “We were regular working joes“.

Excuse me? Regular working joes?

The bill is supported by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). And no one can tell me that these kind of organizations and the other supporters are “regular working joes”. These are global players, not average small companies or organizations.

For Tony Bradley from PC World
“These organizations are like crotchety old men yelling at the neighbor kids to get off their lawn. But, in this case their “lawn” is the Internet, and instead of “yelling” they’re threatening to fill it with landmines that effectively make it useless.”

And there is the thread of losing jobs….. Again

The general-purpose tool for all situations.
You want to ban something? Jobs are in DANGER!
There could be a possible law against your business? Jobs are in DANGER!
There is something forbidden? Jobs are in DANGER!

Dawn it, come up with a new punch line, this is getting old.

There are already good alternatives, to save jobs, like I stated in > An additional view on Piracy <.

Silence in the news

Also fascinating is the silence in the news media about SOPA.

And seriously this bill is big thread against the freedom of speech and the freedom itself. It would be way to easy to ban websites. If somebody wants your website down and finds nothings illegal, he can just place piracy stuff on our side and now he can put you out of business. There is a reason for the separation of powers in the democratic system.

Of course the United States Chamber of Commerce said “That sort of draconian measure is not where the bills are aimed.”
That might be true, but the Law would give the opportunity, the possibility to do so.
And son or later somebody will use it. For sure!

United States of Piracy – Part II

The Stop Online Piracy Act is good?

For Tony Bradley it is exactly the opposite, for him this Law “…threatens the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens”

And he is not alone.

The guy´s from “The Tom’s Hardware Team” wrote in their blog a briefly summary of the effects that the law would have and gave an example how it would affect their work.

• Assign liability to site owners for everything users post, without consideration for whether or not the user posted without permission. Site owners could face jail time or heavy fines, and DNS blacklisting.
• It would require web services like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to monitor and aggressively filter everything all users upload.
•  It would deny site owners due process of law, by initiating a DNS blacklisting based solely on a good faith assertion by an individual copyright or intellectual property owner.

“As an example, imagine a user posts a video clip to the Tom’s Community of a step-by-step guide on how to set up water cooling on an overclocked i7 CPU. Playing in the background behind the voiceover is “Derezzed” by Daft Punk. The studio representing Daft Punk could issue a complaint, without being required to notify us or request a take-down. Tom’s Hardware would be liable and prosecuted solely on a good faith assertion of the copyright owner, without notification, with the site operators subject to possible jail time for not preventing the video from being posted. In short order, the http://www.tomshardware.com/ domain in the United States would no longer resolve to our servers and visitors attempting to come to Tom’s Hardware would be redirected to a “This site under review for piracy/copyright violations” page.”

To prevent that the Team would have to review and approve every single new post (every new thread, every new response etc.), before it can get published. And even then, there is the possibility of not caught violations of copyright, like a paragraph of a book for example.

For them the SOPA, with this massive restrictions on user-generated contend, is a fundamentally change the way information is presented online. They also say that “would give the U.S. government the power to selectively censor the web using techniques similar to those used in China, Malaysia and Iran.”

And people like Sergey Brin, Google co-founder agrees to such kind of statement.
Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, Twitter co-founders, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman even take the extra step and say that law would give improper “power to censor the Web.”

These companies are already taking steps against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Nuclear option

And there are thinking about what Declan McCullagh called a “political equivalent of a nuclear option.”
A total blackout of their pages for one day.

Stay tuned for Part III

Becoming an Effective Project Manager – Natural Talent or Hard Work?

About two weeks ago, a friend and I talked about my blog topic Project Management. I remember I told him what I write about and how it really starts intriguing me the deeper I dig into it. The enthusiasm for PM did not seem to be mutual and it in fact didn’t take too long until he made a comment to the effect that he wouldn’t believe it took a lot to become a Project Manager, someone who organizes a little bit here and there. His comment has actually incentivized me to write this post about the required qualities of Project Managers to successfully manage a project.

What is a Project Manager?

It doesn’t take a lot to set up create a plain definition of a Project Manager: A Project Manager is supposed to manage projects. Sounds simple doesn’t it? It, indeed, requires a more sophisticated definition to eventually address and include all needed features, but it’s undoubtably a good platform to build up on. David Litten, accredited Project Management Trainer, encapsulates the important distinction to be made between a PM and others.

“Project managers need general management skills, along with a knack for problem solving. Project managers are there to plan and manage the work – NOT to do it! “

He mentiones the first, vitally important characteristic that indubitably distinguishes a PM from , for instance a specialist. Project Managers’ task is to plan, manage and organize the work, while a specialist creates the deliverables. PMs therefore need what David calls “management skills“, skills that are to some extend inherent or can be acquired in school/seminars etc.

Am I the Chosen One?

Especially a lot of young people that start dealing with the question “What will I be when I grow up?“, wonder if they have what it takes to be in a responsible, high position, in charge of many people, simply able to run a company. It’s a question you can’t answer unless you know what it DOES take to be in that position. Do you? When you ask this question to people they most likely nod their head but then come up with little, doubtful answers. I’ve therefore collected answers from PM experts that absolutely know what they’re talking about when they answer such a question.

What Qualities Do I Need?

Timothy R. Barry, president of InnerChange Learning Systems LLC thinks that an effective PM has a vision of where to go and the ability to articulate it.

“Visionaries thrive on change and being able to draw new boundaries. It was once said that a leader is someone who “lifts us up, gives us a reason for being and gives the vision and spirit to change.”

In order to properly articulate convey his vision, he needs to be a good commuicator and enthusiastically fulfil tasks. Leadership competence plays another big role in Timothy’s assumptions of a good PM. Being qualified and having experience are inevitable factors that not only contribute to a well structured and faster process but also arouse trust among employees. Timothy also mentiones, that a good PM has to be able to draw quick decisions and solve problems. He adds :

“In a perfect world, projects would be delivered on time, under budget and with no major problems or obstacles to overcome. But we don’t live in a perfect world – projects have problems.”

What kind of problems are likely to occur?

David Litten calls a spade a spade, as he distinguishes between 7 major sources that possibly result in problems/obstacles and whatsoever.

• Interpersonal problems
• Internal sources
• External sources
• Technical sources
• Management sources
• Communication
• Opinions or perceptions

Managers need to get down to the root of the trouble and find ways to identify, solve and prevent problems from happening.

How Can I Prepare Myself for the Real Life?

If you are new to PM, a great way to preparedly become a manager is to follow Josh Nankivel’s advices which he presents on his webpage. Josh suggests to go with real-life experience if you have to choose between a formal PM education or real-world experience.

“The optimal in my humble opinion is if you can be in a position where your projects are small enough that you have the flexibility to try out new concepts you are learning in real time.”

His advices remind me of the learning-by-doing concept because he proposes a PM-mentor to future Project Managers and encourages them to exactly pay attention when working with a PM expert. To not neglet the educational aspect, Josh motivates all those interested in PM to listen to podcasts, read books and blogs as well as to know the tools on market and to try to join a PM organization.

Wanna Get in Touch with a Star?

If there are any particular questions that aren’t answered explicitly, you can easily contact almost every PM expert via email or his/her website!

Notice, wheter the called qualities go for you or not, there is always a way to train and/or adopt any of them. You’ll find lots of seminars, books, training courses, and individual help online. Good luck and know that nothing is impossible!

Should your company Twitter?

Regarding to my last post Developing Business with Social Media Marketing, in this context means with Twitter, as I got a feedback from Mr.Spear to look out the link Twitter for Business on Pistachio by Laura Fitton and I think its a good research to continue my last post.

Pistachio Consulting helps companies, brands, agencies and high profile individuals make smart business use of microsharing tools like Twitter. They provide briefings, consulting, strategy, training and full microsharing programs that create value, engage customers, learn more about their customers and better engage with their market. They also offer professional services and research to support microsharing inside the enterprise. They add an article Twitter for Business blog post, Chris Brogan which really good to look out, and here’s the article.

Twitter for Business blog post

Chris Brogan wrote a very concise and useful post on how to use Twitter for business. In it, you will find ideas on creating an account, topics to consider for the medium, a check on Twittetiquette, and an assessment of both the minuses and the pluses of having a Twitter presence.

The conversation at Chris’ blog got into a lot of different tactics, with many useful comments. As for business value on the strategic side, and these are some of tips :

• When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
• Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community
• Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.

Twitter Problem

There is also problem on Twitter at least until I found the article that has been wrote by Brandon De Hoyos as I was looking for my research about Twitter on Google, there is problem that interesting to discuss with.

While many corporations and even mom and pop companies have rushed to join the flood of businesses on Twitter, many are figuring out the hard way that their Twitter-based marketing just doesn’t pay out.

The problem, according to Twitter users, is a flood of one-dimensional tweets marketing wares without any real connection between a business and its followers.

“People aren’t on Twitter to be advertised to,” said Nathan Mathews, social networking consultant for Kuru Footwear, an active footwear company in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“They joined Twitter to become part of a bigger conversation that crosses borders, ethnicity, cultures, and religions.”

by Rusdi, Rusdi

United States of Piracy Part I

Unlike the Swiss Government, Members of the United States House of Representatives believe there is a big threat from online piracy for the entertainment sector and even for the safety of the United States of America. To counter this urgent threat Lamar S. Smith and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors files the bill called the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).

Why the people of the USA are threatened?

“Forty-seven per cent of America’s gross national product now comes from Intellectual Property”, says Rob Holmes Founder & CEO of IPCybercrime, a firm providing investigations for brand owners and their attorneys. And this property is in danger by faceless villains.

The Creative America Group supports like many other companies the Stop Online Piracy Act and state some facts why

• Content theft threatens more than 2 million jobs supported by the film and television industry
• over 500,000 movies are illegally distributed each day worldwide
• Spongebob Squarepants has been watched illegally 1.6 billion times since 2008.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates a loss of $135 billion in revenues each year from piracy and counterfeiting. Rob Holmes also stated about the internet
“The Internet is not just a bunch of wires and tubes, but the sidewalks, highways and railroads of our nation.”
And these sidewalks, highways and railroads need to be watched and controlled because
“The Internet is a real place with real people, and real businesses need real laws.”

SOPA

“Fundamentally, this is about jobs,” said Michael O’Leary of the Motion Picture Association of America, one of the major supports of the SOPA.
The Stop Online Piracy Act is there to protect the intellectual property, the entertainment industry and their jobs and revenue. This protection is even given in the United Nation Article 27 Section (2) “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

Piracy is not romantic 

“Our mistake was allowing this romantic word — piracy — to take hold,” said Tom Rothman, the co-chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment in an interview. He also added “It’s really robbery — it’s theft — and that theft is being combined with consumer fraud. “
Rob Holmes calls the SOPA bill even a “border security”. Because it also protects the American consumer against dangerously flawed pharmaceuticals, faulty brake pads and defective smoke alarms. Tom Rothman added “…sending their credit card information to these anonymous offshore companies, and they’re receiving defective goods.”

Stop Online Piracy Act would give every author a good and fast way to stop the robbery of his property. And it would protect the citizens of the United States and their Jobs.

The SOPA is good.

Stay tuned for Part II

Apple assaulting TV

Apple works on a gesture-controlled TV.

Apple develops a new product line. The so called iTelevision, mounted with the iOS operating system, should process together with iPhone, iPad and MacBook via Apples application AirPlay. If the iTV will be released in 2012 or 2013, or whether if the device will be controlled with a touchscreen, gestures or voice recognition is still speculated in professional circles.

According to Business Insider, the voice recognition technology Siri shall provide the basis for the Bluetooth communication with the TV. A special feature that Siri offers is a surprisingly accurate way to search answers to almost every topic. The Information stored in the iCloud could be accessed via iPhone and then transferred on the iTV device the view certain thematic programs. A drawback could be the short battery life of the iPhone.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple who died in the late 2011, was talking about the prototype in his biography. The TV should be very easy to use:

“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use.”

He continues:

“It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.” No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs has been criticizing television as user-unfriendly as well as cumbersome. Due to different paths of transmission such as cable or satellite with different technologies the development and innovations would be more difficult. Jobs has claimed repeatedly that media companies did not have a standardized digital strategy. Even Apple TV, Apples streaming service on iTunes, was abandoned after a very short period. The Wall Street Journal still supposes Apple to work on a new technology in order to transfer movies on television.

The Wall Street Journal reports, that Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President, and others from Apple have met with media executives from several large companies to describe that vision.

Apple analyst Gene Munster speculates that all you’ll have to do is screw in your cable or satellite’s coax cable in the back and the TV will do the rest. No more boxes.

We should still keep in mind that there is a lot of speculation and no real information given out by Apple yet. But it is very possible that we will see this device in the next couple of years.

I’ll keep track of it.

Project Management – May I Help You Master Your Challenges?

Last week I wrote about the biggest challenges in PM. I collected answers of 10 of the top PM experts in order to comprehend what project managers have to be aware of to successfully run a project. I thought it’d been an informatory and adventurous experience and it, in fact, urged me to get once more in touch with the same experts, on a quest to find their holy answers to the challenges.

There is Always Good and Bad

David Blumhorst, Vice President at Daptiv, calls hitting the business target, PM’s biggest challenge. He holds Project Management liable for meeting business targets and believes that a good Project Manager differs from others due to his quality to make decisions about if the project is really on track to meet the business targets.

Get Trained to Triumph

Josh Nankivel criticises bad-defined scopes as they cause schedule and cost overruns. He encourages Project Managers to take their time so as to create a clear and concise definition of the deliverables. Work-breakdown structures are vitally important and need to be well-prepared. He believes that it’s something you can learn and adopt to as he initiated a training program for Project Managers where they learn how to get rid of the lack of their work-breakdown structures.

Stay up to Date with Updates! 

Education and qualification are aspects where Jason Westland and Elizabeth Harrin spot defects. They are convinced that PM needs to be a “full discipline“, something that requires a lot of study and training. Due to the quickly changing world, Project Managers should ensure to constantly update their knowledge in order to have a sophisticated view on the different aspects PM includes.

Don’t Forget you are a Human, not a Robot

To Ron Holohan and Mark Horstmann, communication is the biggest challenge PM faces today. According to them, Project Managers should try to implement a well-balanced use of technological and human resources in their projects. A steady interaction and communication with your team members is inevitable and something that can not be replaced by technology. PM-software offers great features that accelerate and often simplify processes and the right use of these features possibly results in an advantage for the whole team. Always be aware though, that Software can also lead to misunderstandings and result in a complication of circumstances. In this context I would like to quote Soma Bhattacharia once more. She says:”no matter what tools we got […] at the end of the day you have to work with your team”, and suggests to know who you work with and what you can do to create a pleasant atmosphere.

A Compliment a Day Keeps the Notice of Termination Away

Ressources Management, as mentioned before, is a big challenge. Margaret Meloni critices the continued push to get everyone to do more with less. To avoid a self-contained and awful atmosphere she advises to take time for employees as well as for yourself. Managers should interact with their team members and show them, that they are appreciated to increase their self esteem.

Pass On Responsibility!

In my last post I furthermore mentioned Tom Mochal’s opinion on the biggest challenge which is a lack of functional reports. He assumes that, in order to prevent this from happening, managers should have assigned people validate the enddate and buy into the enddate. That way they are obligated to tell you if they can’t make it, as soon as they know. Tom additionally entrusts Managers to assure to have reliable, responsible and passionate reporters around them.

How Do you Create Passion Though?

The last challenge I wrote about was Mark Perry’s maintenance of passion. He presents 10 great tips that, in the long run, help you master the challenge!

1. integrate passion to your work

2. eliminate irritating tasks

3. reacquaint yourself with your career

4. be grateful to all those who helped you

5. surround yourself with passionate and motivated people

6. recognize your passion

7. expect and encounter negativism

8. “a book a week keeps passion from getting weak”

9. spread the word

10. have faith in your passion

All of these essential advices can help Project Managers to overcome challenges and obstacles. Eventually there is a wide range of supervisors and tons of software that aims to solve these challenges in collaboration with Project Managers. But what I have discovered, and what we can also gather from the experts’ answers, is that it only takes a little bit of humanity to master the majority of the problems.