A while ago I saw that my old university (Erasmus University Rotterdam) has launched an online database (click here to access the database), where interested parties such as future employers can check whether the future employee has really graduated from the Erasmus University. All you need is a combination of personal information, which is available on a CV. The purpose of this online database is to prevent diploma fraud, since it has become easier to buy your diploma online. And no my diploma is not bought online, I’m in the database

Every day I learn some new terms, take last weekend for example when I came across an interesting interview with Heleen Mees (click here for the interview). She actually mentions that the lack of women in the workforce is due to the traditional roles, which are tough to break. Even though a lot of women are considering themselves to be feminist when they are only working part-time (Part-Time Feminism), there’s still not enough rolemodels.

My female friends and I were discussing the whole glass ceiling concept the other day and came to the conclusion that it might indeed be difficult to break through the glass ceiling within some companies, but that’s the whole point! That someone breaks through it first and creates a path for the rest to follow.

Op 26 april 2007 heeft de Nationaal Coordinator Terrorismebestrijding een oefening gedaan met het Alerteringssysteem Terrorisme bestrijding (ATb).

Het ATb is bedoeld voor overheidsdiensten en bedrijfssectoren. Het stelt de autoriteiten in staat de situatie te controleren en maakt duidelijk welke mate van alertheid geboden is en welke maatregelen daarbij nodig zijn.  Het alerteringssysteem kent een aantal niveaus: hoe groter de dreiging, hoe verder er wordt opgeschaald

Het betrof een situatie van “matige dreiging” (geen concrete maar wel serieuze aanwijzigingen) waarbij de besluitvormingsprocessen, informatie-uitwisseling tussen de NCTb, operationele diensten en de sector en de wijze van communicatie met het publiek zijn geoefend. Aan de oefening namen ondermeer het ministerie van Financiën, De Nederlandsche Bank, en een aantal andere banken deel.

Opmerkelijk is dat de maatregelen binnen de keten wel zijn besproken maar dat er geen daadwerkelijke oefeningen plaats gevonden hebben. Zou dit een “matige oefening” (wel serieus, niet concreet) genoemd kunnen worden? Vraag blijft natuurlijk  of een papieren oefening tegemoet komt aan de complexiteit van een werkelijke dreigingssituatie

Yesterday, I gave a presentation about RFID at our office in Amsterdam. The audience consisted of colleagues from Accenture and Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft.

The evening was split in two parts: I first presented a general introduction on what RFID is, what you can do with it, and what Accenture is doing with RFID. The second part was a demonstration of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (Beta), with a focus on Microsoft RFID Infrastructure.

lees verder…

Long time ago (well in ICT terms, that is), RFID was introduced to replace the bar code. The major benefits being that you can read the tag without being able to see it, and that you can identify all items on an individual level, as a tag can contain much more information than a bar code.

Simple as that.

But nowadays, we use RFID for much more than just replacing bar codes.

lees verder…

According to Bernard Hammelburg, the  wars in Iraq and Afghanistan show the failing of the military strategy after the cold war.  He rightly states that during the cold war the strategic premise was that the western allies should be able to fight two big wars at the same time. The focus of the post cold war was on regional wars, we see that these regional conflicts have been very much underestimated and our military is unable to deal with them. It’s a serious question for the military right now how to deal with this development.

As for the developments in the 21^st century; the rise of multi polar world… its unclear how the emerging regional dichotomies will play out. Where business is have to adapt to the new realities, so must military organizations change their strategies accordingly. Note that business strives in stability, security and freedom which in a way the military is partly a saveguard of….

As promised in my easter entry I would post the result from our baking activity with all the free packages of margarine. So last week my roommate, Tatiana, and I decided to do some baking based on the German recipes that we’re handed out in the same brown paper bag as the margarine were in. And guess what? It wasn’t that bad.

Here’s the result that we’ve shared with the rest of our team. And in case you were wondering… no, no one got food poisoning from it

Peach & Pear Crumble Cake

RFID technology is already being used in many applications and circumstances, such as logistics, public transport, contactless payments, National ID, baggage tracking at airports and access to buildings. But according to a research of RNCOS, RFID has yet so much of unused potential.

IATA’ RFID Manager, Andrew Price stated in Enterprise Networks & Servers: “In the next few years the air industry will be tagging an ever higher proportion of its 2 billion bags annually and it will use RFID in other new applications as well.”

Many people dare to make predictions for RFID trends and new applications. However this doesn’t always turn out to be correct as can be seen by our own analysis on this blog. But at least it is fun to think creatively about new areas where RFID can bring improvements. And maybe you even discover a really unique, profitable opportunity!

What are your ideas of innovative use of RFID? Share with us your creativity!

The High Performance marketing conference yesterday was a big success. A great turnout, many inspiring speakers and hot topics.

Marc Lammers, coach of the Dutch national ladies hockey team, closed the event with his take on High Performance. Amazing how many similarities there are in leading teams within the corporate world and on the hockey field. I taped about half the session to give you an idea. Hopefully we’ll see you (again) next year!

A week or 2 ago I’ve received an article from a colleague on “building the civilized workplace” – by Robert Sutton - and it showed that the nasty people or bullies (this is the censored version, I won’t repeat the word that is actually used in the article) are actually a serious and costly threat to corporate success and employee health. The article actually uses the term Total Cost of “nasty people” to measure it. 

I was quite surprised by the article, not only by the term, which I thought is quite funny and creative, but also by the fact that it has such a big impact. Some companies even weave the “no nasty people” – rule into their hiring and firing policy and some even apply the rule to their customers. Click here for Robert Sutton’s Blog.