The Next Organization

Profiling Europe’s bloggers

Forrester Research recommends that firms get active bloggers on their side. Jaap Favier, research director at Forrester, states: “Active bloggers can make or break a brand in less than a day. Firms shouldn't fake a relationship with them or they will experience a backlash. To get bloggers on their side, firms should gain bloggers’ trust by establishing an honest and transparent relation with bloggers first. They should get to know them and give them the tools to connect easily with their peers and pass along messages.”

Forrester's survey shows that European bloggers are southern European. The population of bloggers is highest in southern Europe. France, Italy, and Spain make up 57 percent of the blogosphere while Germany lags behind with only 13 percent. Today, France is still the European blogging leader with almost one million active bloggers.

Vietnamese teacher's day and people made me who I am

  It's Vietnamese teacher's day I sat down and thought about people who made me who I am today. I dedicate this note to them, in addition to the mails that I have just sent, hoping to show my appreciation for what they have done to me.

• Thank you, grandpa. You taught me how to read and write since I was 4. It not only helped me so much in my later school day, but more importantly, helped me to create a reading habit, which is the most critical way to improve myself now.
• Thank you, Mr. Trinh The Vinh, my late math teacher. You taught me a happy life was more than fame, career, but also patience and love.
• Thank you, Dr. Son Nguyen, who opened the world for me. You showed me that we can give and don't have to care about take. You taught me with your example one can change the world around him with what he does, today.
• Thank you, Dr. Viet Nguyen. You gave me the confidence to be myself, and the passion to help people to become who they can be.
• Thank you, Monica Worline. Though I was only a TA in your classes, I learned so much from your guidance and our conversations. You helped me see a new dimension in me and the world around.
• Thank you, Kembrel, the dean of my GBS program. You gave me the inspiration and passion. You showed if I believe that I can do the extraordinary, I can; and that if I live and act like a leader, I am.
• Thank you, Thuy Duong, Tuan Linh, Tuong and others of the Vong Tay Be Ban. You helped me to realize that the best way to fight the bad is to plant and nurture the seed of the good.
• Thank you my friend, Vu Thanh Tu Anh. You have said what I came to know that it's the mission of mine as well, or maybe it's the mission of our generation. We'll be the bridge stones, laying ourselves down as the foundation for the next generation. I will.

Business model for media-related social networking sites

Does being acquired with tens billion dollars prove a new business model for media-related social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube? Not quite. The recent legal suit against MySpace   for copyright infringement by Universal Music Group (UMG), UMG’s licensing agreement   with You Tube, and YouTube’s deal with Warner Music Group to distribute the latter’s music video catalog emphasize the importance of copyright to those sites. Even for acquiring company like News Corp. and Google, finding out a way to solve this issue is quite a challenge. Law suits have once brought down Napster is the threat if they fail to do so. Technology to keep track of the video and audio contents is not at all easy and such an investment requires a good return. In theory, the companies can use these sites to provide ads and its own or contracted copyrighted contents. However, reduction of number of users, and problem of collecting money from its users are big headaches. More importantly, if this cannot be resolved, it can loom the ever-high enthusiasm for similar ideas in the future.

Did your people turn bad, or you have an organizational problem?

At work, there are many problems that normally are attributed to people while they actually originate from organization. Examples are employee’s burnout due to lack of organizational respect as pointed out in “More than Job Demands or Personality, Lack of Organizational Respect Fuels Employee Burnout”, and low management effectiveness as well as coordination issues in growing company as described in “Growing pains”.

In the first example, because the common sense is to “conceptualize burnout as stemming from the job or the individual, rather than the organization, "the 'problem' from a managerial perspective is the person." The article also points out that this issue will spread as “when team members see someone else on the team being treated unfairly, they alter their own perceptions of the fairness of the team.”