Flexibiliteit van menskracht maakt het mogelijk adequaat in te spelen op pieken en dalen in de werkvoorraad. Het strategisch belang van flexibiliteit is dan ook groot. Kijk naar een organisatie als TPG Post die er met vaste medewerkers niet in slaagt adequaat in te spelen op het opengaan van de markt.
Nederland leunt van oudsher sterk op de inhuur van menskracht, maar een trendbreuk tekent zich af. lees verder…

Are you going to Lowlands this year? Did you manage to get ticktets? Well, using RFID you can create your own movie during the festival.

Sponsor of this event, Grolsch beer brewery, will distribute 2000 RFID bracelets. You can apply for one by registering. You wear your bracelet during the festival, and when you’re near on the 5 camara teams or 2 fixed cameras, you will be filmed. All these snapshots will be put together into a short film, that you can see on your Llowlog.

Hurry up, as you have to register before August 8th! 

[See the press release, a PDF file in Dutch, for more information]

Yesterday the conservative party launched its report An Unquiet World, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House. It concludes that in present circumstances Britain is ill-equipped to meet mounting security concerns. Its an interesting report which starts with a set of shifts in the way the world works and governments/businesses and individuals interact. It also puts forward the idea that Britain should create a dedicated homeland security force run by a permanent command headquarters that is separate from, but works in conjunction with, civil authorities. You can read the transcript of this meeting here. 

I am following these reports with great care, the debate in Britain seems to have matured over the past 6 months and the analysis coming from Britain is overall very high, my feeling is that the ideas developing there will form the blueprint for Europe’s future…any thoughts? 

The summer is near and in the Netherlands we refer to this season as komkommertijd (a term describing that not that much is going on, so here is something I found on youtube that might make you laugh:

Last week Ronan Clinton, managing director of Heavey RF published an article called ‘RFID.Bomb’. First a bit about Heavey RF: Heavey RF is a division of Heavey Technology focusing on rugged mobile solutions using Radio Frequency technology. Then a bit about the article - a quote: “History is littered with large technical blunders; RFID in the supply chain is potentially one of the biggest”.

Why would a company that’s selling RFID products publish such an article?

lees verder…

Its important to know your terminology, here a short overview of often used terms in the biometrics and security scene. Its always nice to use when impressing family members at dinners with trivial facts:   lees verder…

If you travel as often as I do (almost every week), then you will become much more efficient with your time than before. Like at the airport while waiting for my flight I would catch up on some offline work, reading documents, sorting out my emails and sending them when I’m online again. After boarding I would fall asleep almost immediately and wake up when I’ve landed… The extra hour of sleep is really needed especially when you wake up at 5 and then have a whole working day ahead.

This friday I happen to be woken up by the turbulence, so I got the chance to make this picture of the beautiful view.  

Somewhere between Germany and The Netherlands

Na een paar maanden stilte op mijn weblog, zal ik hier vanaf nu weer op reguliere basis een post plaatsen over ervaringen, trends en discussiestukken op het gebied van Applicatie – en IT Outsourcing.

Vooral binnen AO gaan de ontwikkelingen erg hard. Hierbij heeft offshore een steeds groter aandeel. Accenture heeft intussen al tien delivery centers in India, maar Bangalore is daarvan veruit het grootste. lees verder…

This week the famous ‘Vierdaagse’ takes place. Yesterday, around 37500 people started with the first day out of four days of hiking 30, 40 or 50 km per day around the city of Nijmegen (you can see the routes on Google Earth via this ZIP-file).

This year 70 people volunteer to participate in a scientific research by the Academic Hospital St Radboud (Universitair Medisch Centrum St Radboud). They have swallowed a chip that registers the body temperature.

According to the information on the Hospital’s website (about the research, and the press release), the chips will be read every 5 kilometers. You can see a video on the web site of RTL Nieuws (you can see the chip from 03:33-04:59).

[All links above point to Dutch web sites, see Medical News Today for more information in English]

This interesting article sheds light on the implications for our understanding of security. We often forget that the human brain is an evolutionary complex system, apparently we have two risk assessment sectors in our brain; the one more rational (Neocortex) than the other (Amygdala), and this impacts the way we deal with fear and assessment or risk and security. Stated sharply: “Security costs money, but it also costs in time, convenience, capabilities, liberties, and so on. Whether it’s trading some additional home security against the inconvenience of having to carry a key around in your pocket and stick it into a door every time you want to get into your house, or trading additional security from a particular kind of airplane terrorism against the time and expense of searching every passenger, all security is a trade-off.“ This tradeoff is made difficult as we see that human behavior is not completely rational. The article makes clear that looking at a number of experiments in economics (brain heuristics) that our perception of risk is a complex interplay of the mind and surroundings. Some examples: 

• People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks. 
• People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation. Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks. 
• People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can’t control. 
• Last, people overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.