Frédéric Bastiat, un grand homme qui n'avait pas la langue dans sa poche.

J’ai fini 4ième! J’attendais les résultats du site unmondelibre.org avant de diffuser le texte sur mon blog, le voici donc dans son intégralité.

Les états utiles

Nous avons réussi

Bastiat a eu un franc succès. Nous avons compris son message. Certains croyaient y voir un sarcasme dénonçant l’état et ses effets néfastes. Quelle erreur, mes amis ! Nous avons créé la solution ultime en appliquant les enseignements de nos éminents intellectuels humanistes et désintéressés. L’État, cet outil prodigieux nous permet l’impossible. Nos usines à chandelles fonctionnent à pleine capacité ! (more…)

The Facebook API allows great interactions with other websites, such as this blog!

Great plugin from Tsaiberspace, wich allow to automaticaly write on your facebook wall the content of your blog.

Only problem i found with it was related to image caption. Wordpress use brackets to manage it, so the content of the brackets would appear in the excerpt, something we don’t want. I modified the code to add a function to delete content in brackets. Problem with that is that if you want something in brackets to appear on your wall, it won’t. But i don’t think it’s really a problem.

I added a line to the function that gets the post content and make a excerpt out of it. Not the cleanest way possible, but it does the job.

function wordbook_post_excerpt($content, $maxlength) {
    $excerpt = strip_tags(apply_filters('the_excerpt', $content));
    $excerpt = preg_replace('`\[[^\]]*\]`','',$excerpt);
    if (strlen($excerpt) > $maxlength) {
        $excerpt = substr($excerpt, 0, $maxlength - 3) . '...';
    }
    return $excerpt;
}

Experience needs relationships. Reading about it is not enough.

Mentoring is a great concept. Experience flowing down from veterans to recruits can be a satisfying relation for everyone implied. But as any other successful relation, doing it the right way and with the right expectations is a lot better in the long run.

The explicit goal is learning. The mentor’s job is to promote the deliberate creation of knowledge. It needs to be a relation with results; else it’s a waste of time, or some other kind of relation.

Success, failure, who cares? Well, probably you. But for your mentor it’s a non-issue. His goal is to make you learn something, and both situations can be useful for that. It’s all about context. Why? How? Who? It’s also a great opportunity to share past experiences, we all have failures. Getting back on track is important, but while you’re down, try to get something being there.

Mentors know a lot, did a lot, and have a lot to share. A good mentor is able to tell the good story at the right moment, talking about their past experience, an anecdote of some similar situation they went trough.  By contextualizing lessons, they become “learning leaders”.

Mentoring is a continuous process, it takes time. It is the synthesis of ongoing events, experiences, observation, studies and thoughtful analyses. Don’t try to rush it, if will fail.

Learning is a shared responsibility. Both members of the duo must do their part. Regardless of the subject, timing and all others variables, it’s about commitment. You respect your business contracts? I hope so, because this is one of them.

Pitching an idea is like pitching a ball, it is all about technique.

Yesterday i had the chance to see a presentation about the elevator pitch with investors from Vincent Guyaux. How to say “That’s my company, that’s who we deal with, and that’s how me make money” in two minutes or less. When we’re used to write and read 45+ pages of text to answer these questions, it seems like running a marathon in the same time.

But as for a marathon, you don’t start with the race, you need to get a lot done before that. Training and technique are keys. The elevator pitch is a summary of a summary of a summary, a distilled version of the 45 pages document. As the process goes, you need to cut the crap without cutting the essential.

And like any other process, it can be made better by the use of the right method. A lot has been written on the subject, and many “best ways” exist. Still, they all have the same core message: Telling why your idea can be a successful venture. It’s not about explaining your awesome logistic chain or the science behind your new technology. It’s about seeing a problem, offering a solution and a way to make money out of the situation.

Investors want to quickly know that the cash they inject in your organization will lead them to more of it. Your product is like a black box to them, they want to know how this box interact with the market a lot more than what’s in it. Learning about the product will come in its time, when the possibility for grow and success seem worthy.

La confrontation est inévitable. Vaut mieux bien choisir ses partenaires.

Le globaliste aime ce qu’il fait. C’est la personne qui va prendre le temps de conseiller les autres ou de travailler sur un projet dans lequel il n’a pas d’intérêt financier. C’est le genre qui va avoir, qu’il le veule ou non, une réputation d’expert car il finit toujours par être connu. Son nom revient dans plein de projets, on le voit à des conférences donner de l’information utile et inédite au lieu de réciter son cv, il prend les devants pour voir sa passion grandir. Cette personne construit sa réputation bien avant d’en avoir besoin. Le type de travailleur qui présente un parcours inusité et qui a su prouvé qu’il peut constamment et efficacement innover. C’est l’éclectique qui a un sourire quand il parle de son travail.

Le protectionniste aime ce qu’il fait en autant que personne d’autre ne le fait. C’est celui qui ne dira pas une idée s’il ne peut pas en garder l’entièreté des bénéfices. C’est celui qui a peur de partager son savoir, en pensant qu’il n’aura plus jamais d’autres bonnes idées ou que s’il les expose à la planète, elles perdront toutes leurs valeurs. Il n’aime pas voir ses idées performer dans les projets d’autrui même si cela n’affecte en rien sa propre carrière. Il aura toujours une bonne raison : il ne veut pas voir n’importe qui se servir de sa connaissance, il veut éviter que son concurrent l’apprenne, il a peur que ce soit mal vu de la part des autres. Cette personne passera sa vie à tenter de comprendre pourquoi les « big shot » qui n’en savent pas plus que lui sont vus comme des sommités. Il accusera la vie d’être injuste et retournera à son travail auquel il doit s’accrocher car il peut être remplacé par n’importe quel autre travailleur qui ne se démarque pas. Le protectionniste, c’est lui qui préfère être le roi d’une île déserte qu’un milliardaire sur le continent car sa position est assurée.

Il est très difficile de concilier ces deux visions. Le globaliste sera frustré par l’entêtement du protectionniste à ne constamment rien révéler tandis que le protectionniste ne comprendra jamais comment le globaliste arrive à avoir du succès en donnant son expertise. Malheureusement, le type protectionniste représente la majorité des gens dans bien des domaines.

Lequel des deux a le plus de succès et de plaisir à travailler vous pensez?

Le Katana, une façon très 1317 de blesser son ennemi.

« Université du Crime » a été un mot clé de la dernière élection au Québec. Duceppes le répétant à tous les 3 phrases en parlant des projets de lois sur les jeunes contrevenants. C’est un brillant coup de communication, quand on contrôle les termes on contrôle le débat.

« Université du crime » colporte beaucoup plus de signification, d’idées et d’implication que « Lieu facilitant l’échange entre criminels ». On sort de la description pour entrer dans le jugement et l’intention. Une fois que c’est fait, il est pratiquement impossible d’en ressortir avec une autre position que celui qui arrive à dicter les termes. C’est démagogue, c’est crasse, et ça marche.

Je n’ai aucune idée comment les conservateurs auraient pus sortir de ce cul de sac, mais le Bloc a réussi à dominer la question en incluant sa conception des faits à même le matériel de discussion. En faisant cela, ils gagnent. Une prison est autant une université que de passer du temps avec un tireur de joint pour apprendre le métier est une université. Au mieux le terme « école » aurait été plus près de la situation réelle, mais l’expression a beaucoup moins de punch. Les faits ne sont pas l’important dans un tel contexte. C’est une question largement sentimentale qui se gagne ou se perd en fonction de l’émotion des gens. La réalité concrète n’a rien à voir avec le processus politique de prise de décisions.

Bien que je sois tout à fait d’accord avec la position bloquiste, ce genre de langage démagogique me laisse un goût amer. À quel point doit-on accepter le spin, même lorsque celui-ci sert à défendre la liberté?

An artist who knew a lot about business reality.

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
– The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975

Try that in a agrarian society.

Winter is my country.

I’ve just completed a 4-men-army (well, for the election part) job of presenting a candidate in a conservative riding for the NPD in the last canadian election (kinda like going democrat in texas). I’m a libertarian so it was not because i’m a believer, i’ve done this for friends, it was quite a ride.

What i will remember of this adventure is how much good organization can make or break almost anything. Here’s a list of things i think are important from my experience.

For big politic parties:

• Get your main office straight. It took 3 shots and 3 weeks to be able to cash in the campaign money. Checks with wrong name, then good name but send at a wrong address, etc. Election is all about speed, this felt like 1952.

• Internal communication, we had some journalists who contacted main office and we never even received the memo. So our candidate looked like she does not answer media’s questions. Is it that hard to at least transfer emails?

• Everyone knew we had 0% chance of winning. But something you don’t do is tell everyone “Hey come work at X place far away because there’s more chance to win there”. Believers are not like machines, you don’t move them around at your will and expect the same results.

• Why during elections we see 10 349 512 345 ads of everyone bitching everyone, but after the vote, not a single ad to say thank you to voters? Politics is about long term and building trust and commitment. Voters are not something to throw away once they are “used”.

For local ridings:

• Local organization is the key. You got to have them a long time before the moment you really need them. And for that, you have to trust them, give them the previews, make them fell part of something. Those who feel like a number in a big machine leave really fast. Those that feel like a part of something will stick around like glue. They are the one that stays at the post-vote night even if you lose. Have a team of these guys, and you can beat the crap out of any big organization who does not have that commitment.

• Be there before the election, and be there after. You have to be someone BEFORE the race, and you have to still be someone after, ever if this time it fails. Meet people, give speeches, don’t wait for the election, build trust long before that.

• I don’t know in other countries, but here you must have a list of 100 voters signatures of the riding to be a valid candidate. There’s two usual ways to do it. For big parties, they take 100 members and make them sign, for the small parties they go around in a mall and get 100 persons to sign. Instead, why not use this opportunity to go around important leaders of the community and ask them to sign? Totally useless from a logistic point of view, but you show that you care and that you value those persons. Then watch them run around telling everyone about that party that came to personally ask them to sign and enjoy.