“Finding Your Next PM Job without a Resume” –from PDUs2go Webinar

I have been joining Webinars to earn continuing education credits related to my PMP credentials. This one caught my eye, in light of the current state of our economy. God has blessed me with W2 job situation. However, most of us know the status quo is never the same, over a period of time. I thought of writing salient notes from this webinar—most from the MS Powerpoint slides.

The following are common Job Hunting Mistakes:

1.       One resume for every job application.

2.       A cover letter that does not offer your benefits.

3.       Looking at anything and everything.

4.       Searching job boards. Most jobs have been filled before the job is posted on the web.

5.       Negativity.

6.       Not creating opportunities.

7.       Wait and see approach. A passive attitude towards a job search. Get busy living or get busy “dying.”

8.       Using your resume.

Jobs are closer than you think. You have 6 degrees of separation from your next job.

Alternative view of job search:

1.       Top of the stool—relationships

2.       Leg one—awareness. Being aware of people around me, along with people being aware of my “brand.”

a.       Treat your search similar to marketers, i.e., “what would Google do?”

b.      You are in the relationship business

c.       You are a brand. Brand illustrates value. What is your value? Think of yourself as a brand. Target the location where you want to work. Inventory your assets when targeting where you’d like or love to work.

3.       Leg two—activity. Create activities that place you in front of others. If you lost a significant amount of money, what would you do?

a.       Referrals—ask for it.

b.      3^rd party endorsements—6 degrees of separation, everyone is on the average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on earth.

c.       Networking events—join those events.

d.      Volunteer in the community. In church, in the community.

e.      Research companies that say to you, “that would be a great company to work for!” Find out more about the company and the people who work there.

f.        Think about your background, what could you write, speak, develop and offer to those that might be interested.

g.       Be active in Organizations—not a wall flower.

4.       Leg three—community.  Current examples are:

a.       Apple

b.      Facebook

c.       Pinterest

d.      You—What value do you have that others know about? How often do you seek out new opportunities? Are you looked at as a thought leader in the PM industry (if you are looking for a job as a project manager)?

Best practices:

·         Think like the legs of a stool

·         You must be actively engaged

·         Seek counsel and ask advice,

·         Listen to what you attract

·         Do not waste time on principles that do not work. Be active in your job search.

March Madness

I am not one to join a pool for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, nor predict who will win the national championship. You probably are wondering what March Madness has to do with Project Management. It is this: the process of predicting who will make it to Final Four and win the national championship is about as much science (and art) as predicting Risks and coming up with a Risk Management Plan in Project Management.

I don’t exactly know what input variables predictors use, but I would imagine the following (with how little I know about basketball):

1.       Schedule strength, who the team’s opponents are in the bracket, as they move on from one round to another,

2.       Production per player and as a team statistics, e.g., Field Goal percentage, Free Throw percentage, blocks per game, turnovers per game, assists per game, points off turnovers, etc.

3.       Compare team production and statistics versus the opponent,

4.       Regular season AP or some other analyst or analysts ranking.

I am confident there are other key statistics that pundits will consider, but these primarily come to my mind. Similar to predicting who’ll be in the Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and ultimately who’ll win the national Championship—there is as much science as predicting varied risks to a project or program. There is a lot that goes on to identify Risks:

1.       Briainstorming

2.       Delphi technique

3.       Checklist technique via historical information and prior knowledge base

4.       Assumption Analysis

5.       Diagramming techniques such as Cause and Effect Diagrams, System or Process flow charts, Influence Diagrams

6.       SWOT analysis

7.       Expert Judgment.

At the conclusion of Risk Register, this information is a basis for a Probability and Impact matrix—as the risks impact scope or quality, time and schedule, i.e., perform a Qualitative Risk Analysis along with a Quantitative Risk Analysis. Quantitative Risk Analysis can be complex, as laid out in PmBOK (4^th Edition):

1.       Data Gathering and Presentation Techniques

a.       Interviewing

b.      Probability Distributions (beta or triangular distribution)

2.       Quantitative Risk Analysis and Modeling techniques

a.       Sensitivity Analysis

b.      Expected monetary value analysis (EVM)

c.       Modeling and Simulation

3.       Expert Judgment

I won’t discuss the outputs from the Qualitative and Quantitative Risks Analysis. Suffice to say that there is a lot of science and statistics that can be applied to predict the impact of Risks, along with predicting the NCAA 2012 champion. There are however (pardon the cliché in sports) intangibles that may surprise the batter, as a curve ball is pitched. In sports:

1.       We do not know what goes on at a half-time break, or what the coach says.

2.       What the team captain says to the team,

3.       What personally motivates each player, during substitutions,

4.       What coaching occurs during time outs, and finally

5.       What fires up a team when they are 20 points behind at the half time break.

Within a project, a lot of unknowns are taken into account, or at least attempted to be accounted for. However, it is impossible to predict and account for all key project inputs—along with external parameters that can potentially impact the project or program, e.g.,

1.       Gas price or jet fuel price,

2.       Local or Governmental policies,

3.       Inclement weather,

4.       Weather-related disaster,

5.       Downturn in domestic economy,

6.       Downturn in the European  Union economies, and

7.       Consumers being spooked by a failing European economy.

In project management, Risk Analysis and Risk Management is a must to mitigate scope, time and financial impact. In the NCAA Championship prediction, the same analytical approach can be utilized. Experts who do this continually can sharpen their prediction skills, and predict with more accuracy. However, there are still intangibles that can come from a blind corner. However, this should not preclude anyone from following a certain process or analysis.

Project Status Reporting, A Lesson We Can Learn from Costa Concordia Report

As more information unravels from the tragedy (today 1/19/2012), I am very surprised and appalled that Captain Schettino was not the one communicating with the Italian Coast Guard but a member of the crew reporting that the ship had a “black out.” As the Italian Coast Guard presses for more information, the crew member repeated that a “black out” occurred, and that they “are checking conditions.”

As a Project and Program Manager, it is incumbent upon the project manager not to sugar coat nor hide any project issues (or information) to the Project Sponsor, nor to any stakeholders for that matter. It is human nature to fear repercussions when an issue or issues surface. Hiding any issue or information, big or small, or have the potential to be a huge issue—has no place in any program or project. As project managers, it will do us well to remember this reality.

Photo Credit: Vincenzo Pinto / AFP - Getty Images

Lessons from Kodak's downfall

I heard about the declaration of bankruptcy by Kodak today. Saddening to learn about such an iconic American company that invented the camera and printing of photographs—that capture specific points or way points in our lives. I did not even know that Kodak invented the digital camera. For the executives to not have pursued the digital camera wave, for fear of cannibalizing the film portion of their business—was short sighted. This reminds me of other technology innovators in my lifetime, e.g., Palm (brought us the Palm Pilot PDAs or even the Apple Newton), tapes replaced by CDs and now MP3s, AOL (ISP regardless that it was 56K, at its peak bought by Time Warner), Wang, Compaq (now owned by HP), well, you get the idea.
It is difficult to compare Kodak’s predicament to a movie franchise’ (1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd sequel such as Star Wars), or a successful TV series’ demise (such as “Friends” or “Seinfield”). Most if not all (well, maybe with the exception of “the Oprah Show”) TV shows or sequel movies “jump the shark.” The story line or the characters (I would guess due to scriptwriters attempt to extend the show’s success) becomes unexciting, inane, does not make sense, feels old, lame, or plain boring. Sometimes, the actors or actresses depart from the show, asking for astronomic pay raise. Sometimes, for just unforeseen or inexplicable reason, the viewership dwindles and falls irreversibly.
To me, Kodak’s downfall is due to failure to innovate regardless that the marketplace was changing. There is a lesson to be learned here. Technology and product lines now change in weeks and months, not a year or 2. From a career perspective, our personal “brand” has to change with the needs of the marketplace as well. To continue to rest on past successes would be foolish on anybody’s part.

Costa Concordia Disaster—Short Notes and Analysis

As of today, 5 people have been identified as fatalities, 29 missing among the 4,000 passengers and crew. 1. No training at muster station for passengers, to provide training on proper use of life boats and full awareness of life boats’ locations. From a project management perspective, training is sorely needed during the implementation process for users and stakeholders. 2. Disinformation by the captain, saying it was only an “electrical problem.” When in fact power had gone out due to engine room taking water. There is no room for disinformation at any time line during a project or program. 3. Lack of training and help by the crew—based on survivors account. See #1. 4. Not following protocol regarding safety and charted route—by captain. It is very clear that all processes and procedures, including protocols be pre identified during the project. Corollary to the latter, all stakeholders are expected not to deviate and not follow protocols. 5. Very late command to abandon ship—by captain. From a project management perspective, any issue that has potential of being a bigger problem or issue, it is incumbent upon the project manager or program manager to sound the alarm. 6. Human pride (for lack of a better definition), to “show off” cruise ship to local island residents—precipitating the accident and caused by the captain. From a project management perspective, it is clear all stakeholders follow pre define protocols. 7. Lack of care at the island for survivors—no cruise ship company’s response to care for survivors at the island. A risk management and risk/emergency response plan would be appropriate in this case. 8. Lack of leadership by the crew, no help from the crew, assessment by the survivor contrary to Carnival’s statement. This is a huge PR damage that Carnival will need to address. This is a very unfortunate event that did not need to happen, or a very preventable accident. I do not envy the captain’s position right now. My prayer is that Carnival will completely review all failure points, and address them completely. Hopefully, sooner than later.

PMI knowledge sharing group notes

1. How is change management undertaken when the project is underway?
A. What systems are used to manage change within the project?
*Document time,
*cost impact
*Document scope creep
*Provide change management process to stakeholders
*Set expectations early on
* Have periodic meetings to anticipate changes
*Communicate scope often to stakeholders

2. How best to communicate changes
*Simplify, red for urgent, yellow for semi urgent, green for non issues.

3. Resolving conflicts and resolution tips
*Set roles and responsibilities
*Find out expectations from other stakeholders, lay it out

4. How does one address someone who is uncooperative?
*How does one gain cooperation? Communicate well. Bring input from all team members, to make them realize how critical their input is. Team evolves around unity of purpose- this is the reason why communication is important. Be candid and straight forward.

5. What's the most common format for project plan? A real project plan is a compilation of different plans. See gantthead.com for templates. "Just enough project management," great reference on level of detail to be provided re: project management plan.

6. Enterprise project management, what is the optimal # of enterprise level projects per PM?
*Wait for resources, acquire more resources, or reallocate resources?
7. Reasons for project failure? Missing project plan.

8. Best practices IT project? Understand the technology.

9. Lessons learned? At start of new one, at end of a project.
10. Project accountability in a weak matrix organization: figure who's running the organization.
11. PM value *Show value in PM processes to encourage buy in. 1 concept at a time.

12. What key PM value are employers looking for? Innovation and collaboration/ alignment with business group.

Spring 2011 PMI Chicago event

************************************************
Spring 2011 Special Mentoring Session - Register Today - only limited seats

The Project Management Institute (PMI®) Chicagoland Chapter mentoring group is planning to have two 
special events this year to deliver face-to-face seminar for PMI members. This is to understand how project management 
techniques are used in a specific vertical industry than one most of the PMs are very familiar with(eg:brewing, 
food production, utility, trade show or hospitality). 

In Spring 2011 event we are focusing on the industry which conducts big trade shows 
and corporate events. This helps exhibitors make technology decisions in the most efficient and timely manner, providing 
full solution support throughout the event; Pre-Show, On-Site, Post-Show, Exhibit Theater, main event and allied services. 
The seminar will include 1) a presentation from one or more industry subject matter experts and 2) a walkthrough of 
a typical project site. You can expect a fun filled two hours of experience which can help you to shine in your current 
job or more job opportunity.You will learn about A/V, earn 2 PDUs, and network with your peers and industry experts for just $25

Come and see behind the scenes of the Audio / Visual world at an industry trade show  
See what goes into planning and executing the A/V for a convention, PM role in event hosting and become a star 


Where:  Sheraton Gateway Suites O'hare.6501 N. Mannheim Road
Rosemont, IL 60018. (847) 699-6300
Date:  May 17, 2011
Time:  5:30 - 9:00 pm
Registration Required:http://guest.cvent.com/d/cdqy2h/4W 

Stained glass window at Naperville Settlement Church

Nothing to do with project management- but I certainly admire the workmanship and history related to this church window. I can imagine the detail, the hours invested, the architectural drawing (I imagine it existed) from which the artisan or artist based his or her work on.

In our microwave and disposable society, most things are not made to last anymore. The things that last typically have the following characteristics: timeless beauty, painstaking hard work invested, quality materials, superior quality control and quality management.

For anything to last, the cost may be initially higher. But the cost of ownership will certainly be a lot less. Something to remember and think about.

Naperville settlement church

My wife and I just attended a church wedding at this church building now located in Naperville historic settlement. This tourist attraction is a collection of varied historic buildings originally built in or around Du Page county Illinois.

Although this church is small in comparison to old churches in Europe- I do wonder what project management tools did the builders employ? Who was the business sponsor? Was the town financing the cost of the building? Did they have to submit an environmental impact study? What permitting process did they employ? Was there a building inspection process by a governing body?

If they had a simpler building permit process, is it possible for us to revert to such process?

Finally, did they have a project manager then? Or was it just a construction manager?

Day after Thanksgiving 2010

As we walked and window-shopped at Oakbrook center mall, it was interesting to see how people actually purchased items. Based on initial network news reports, this year seems to be a better year- a lot more shoppers are out and making purchases. It remains to be seen what the actual numbers are, coming from Shoppertrak (a data mining company in Chicago, which counts retail customers' traffic) or Experian.

It is a catch 22. 2/3 of the US economy is driven by consumer or domestic consumption. If the US consumer puts away their credit cards, there is a domino effect on US businesses, employment, utilities consumption, etc. However, this over consumption and overspending by the US consumer really is untenable. The unabated home equity loans to finance a new car and vacations to Mexico is no longer possible.

Will 2011 be better than 2010 for the US consumer? Is saving actually better for the US economy or is it better for the US consumer? Should there be a balance? Where is the balance?

Black Friday Shopping Strategies

Most of you are probably done with your shopping, and most of these strategies are probably well-known and no longer a secret--but I will write down my thoughts nonetheless:

1. Make a list,
2. Set a budget,
3. Pay with cash,
4. Use the latest tools to get the possible pricing, i.e., do your due-diligence,
5. Map out your route, get in and get out.

Call this a stretch but these tips do have a corollary Project Management principles:

1. Making a list is akin to having a project plan, and a WBS (work breakdown structure). Making a list helps one not to be dissuaded or side tracked by impulse purchases.
2. Setting a budget helps one to set a cap on how much one can spend, i.e., a project budget. This means the shopping spree is not an open checkbook deal. It will certainly help not getting depressed in January, not having to pay for the bills that come due in January (if one overspent using credit cards).
3. Paying with cash makes one feel the "pain" of the purchases. Business owner or sponsor, writing out the checks or payments to project vendors certainly keeps everyone in line to make sure project is within budget.
4. Using the latest tools such as RedLaser and pic2shop (allowing a consumer to scan the UPC code on a merchandise via an Iphone and comparison shop) are just one of the few apps that an informed consumer can use. There are a lot of tools (software such as MS Project or Earned Value) in the project management space. There are freeware as well that mimic MS Project.
5. Map out a route--there are apps that show mall maps, deals and coupons available for download on the Apple App store (am confident the Android store has the same or comparable apps as well) that can aid in mapping a shopper's route. This is actually an extension of #4, but the goal is to spend less time on the tasks and get home quicker, i.e., spend more quality time with family.
Which is what Thanksgiving holiday is about.

Learning Curve

It has been weeks since I met with a former co worker. We discussed an important issue that seemed to hit me. Learning curve. In light of today's economic environment, these questions seem to beg answers (more so for project managers seeking employment):
1. Is your PMO willing to invest time and money to train a project manager, i.e., needed for more complex projects that require a more technical PM role ,
2. If yes, how much time is your company or PMO willing to invest time wise,
3. If no, why not?
4. How does one measure ROI in training a PM or a functional manager?
5. What is a reasonable amount of time to train a PM or any employee for that manner?

I remember a media article that companies nowadays are sitting on a pile of cash; that managers and executives are still wary of ramping up hiring to meet increase in business volume.

Having been in this role as well, I was leery of hiring someone not trained nor had the experience in my industry, nor someone who had done project management in the past. It becomes a catch 22 for most seeking employment. They won't get hired if hiring companies are loathe to invest in worker training nor see the value in hiring someone from another industry (and thus will not invest in worker training either for a new technology nor application). Further, I doubt companies nowadays still provide the benefit of tuition reimbursement (for employees working on a college degree or master's program).

Am looking, or most are looking forward to normalcy whereby employers see the benefit of worker's training, education, and employee retention. There's more at stake here but I will address them for later, e.g., business continuity, CRM, customer satisfaction, and plain workers sense of happiness at their jobs.

Or is this the new normal whereby no one sees the ROI on workers training and education?

Disaster Preparedness and Risk Management

This is the latest news regarding the disaster unfolding in Louisiana. Excerpted from Foxnews.com. "British Petroleum downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at an offshore rig that exploded, causing the worst U.S. spill in decades along the Gulf coast and endangering shoreline habitat.

In its 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well, BP suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill and serious damage to beaches, fish, mammals and fisheries.

BP's plan filed with the federal Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, says repeatedly that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."

And while the company conceded that a spill would impact beaches, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, it argued that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."

There will be more questions about risk projection, risk assessment, risk assessment, risk analysis, and finally--the person who signed off on the Risk Assessment Report. I am not surprised there wasn't a disaster preparedness plan. There wasn't any probability of a disaster occurring in the first place.

Oil Spill from offshore rig off Louisiana

This week, the news on explosion, sinking of an oil rig off the cost of Louisiana, loss of lives, an unfolding environmental disaster--has been at the forefront of network news. MSNBC reported on 4/29th: "The oil leak triggered by a deadly rig blast off the coast of Louisiana has the potential to cause more environmental damage than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, one of the largest ecological disasters ever recorded, some observers say." Beyond the ecological impact, the total economic impact needs to be considered as well. "Experts said the spill could also destroy the livelihood of commercial fishermen and shrimp catchers and impact recreational fishermen. According to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the state’s fishing industry is worth $265 billion at dockside and has a total economic impact of $2.3 trillion."

BP was operating the Deepwater Horizon, which was drilling in 5,000 feet of water about 40 miles offshore when it exploded last week. Eleven crew members are missing and presumed dead, and the government says 5,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing from the well underneath it. Right now, the focus has been on capping the oil head, prevention of oil slick or oil from reaching shoreline--the blame game has not begun. I can just imagine what is going through BP's Risk Managers' mind, as they conduct meetings and come up with quick resolutions on how to mitigate this unfolding disasters. It is easy to pose the following questions, 1) how did this happen? 2) was this human error or was this equipment failure? 3) where in the mitigation plan did we fail? 4) how many back up or redundant systems do we currently have, both human and automated processes? 5) at the government policy level, does this change our policy to continue and open offshore drilling within US territory, knowing the risks to wildlife and ecology, at what cost? 6) to the BP Risk Managers and US COO, can we statistically predict offshore drilling disasters given past historical data? Beyond these questions, what do you tell the surviving family members for BP employees and contractors who lost loved ones.

Easy questions to pose. Harder to answer these questions.

project milestone tracking

So for the past two months, I have been involved with larger scale, longer duration projects. I have been wrestling with our current project reporting and status reporting from the field. I have seen varied customer types. Some want detailed reporting on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Some want just the end-result in a master database or spreadsheet. Some want daily detailed reporting. If the project reviewer is higher up the "food-chain" or "chain of command", typically the level of detail is looser or lost to some degree. The more complex the project (no, we have not been using Microsoft Project which complicates my situation even more), the more quantity of projects one is juggling at a given time, the lesser project monitoring is done.

This is just a function of capacity and human bandwidth. The dilemma then becomes, do you monitor a project status quantitatively or qualitatively. Being a melancholy by nature, I prefer the quantitative measurement of milestones hit and achieved. Instead of a descriptive text-type reporting of project status, issues log, project reporting, I have come up with a template (simple Microsoft Excel template) for the field engineer or field technician to populate. It is a simple yes or no, for specific milestones completed/not completed. This will be a weekly report to be submitted to the PMO. As a project manager for a different industry, what is your preference? What industry are you in, and what type of reporting do you prefer?

Ketsana's aftermath

Hopefully  by now you have read all the news and video footages of the recent flooding in metropolitan Manila and norther Luzon provinces. For comparison, the rainfall amount in 12 hours was a lot more (measured in mm and not in inches) than what we experienced with Katrina. I have not kept up with the death toll, and scores of people missing. The financial costs of this calamity is still to be determined. We do have to count our blessings in light of the recent earthquake, more lives lost in the recent massive earthquake in Sumatra (that just occurred this week, and flooding in American Samoa).

The easy part is finger pointing and doing the blame game. The following questions do need to be answered:

1. What happened to the study done by Urban Planner Palafox regarding the risks of flooding (I will get the reference page on this study, this was done years ago)?
2. How much of the damaged settlements, e.g., parts of Marikina Valley, or population actually built and settled in 20, 50, or 100-year floodplains?
3. Where was the Disaster Relief and Emergency Response System? Why is there no FEMA-like agency?
4. Why haven't local government units organized even volunteer or non government associations to organize Disaster Preparedness and Local Emergency Response Teams?
5. How much of the flooding caused, or indirectly caused by garbage-choke rivers and estuaries?
6. Are any of the private developments, or buildings insured when these are built on flood plains? Where did they purchase insurance, or were these properties insured, who insured them?

All of these questions are classic PMBOK questions and key project management input variables, or process groups:

• Risk management,
• Proper project planning,
• Risk mitigation,
• Project implementation,
• Budgeting,
• Disaster preparedness, and 
• Disaster response and recovery.

What project are you working on? What are the potential risks? What are the payoffs? Are you prepared for a major catastrophe? What are your risk mitigation plans, and disaster response systems? Easy to ask, very difficult to implement.

Fishing and being seasick

Today being my birthday, I was inundated with greetings (both on the Wall and personal messages via e-mail) on Facebook. (Thanks to the calendar reminder on Facebook, even your 2nd grade classmate remembered to greet me on my birthday.) The common (courteous) question I was asked apart from the greeting, "what kind of fun stuff did you do today?" And I tell the entire story.

This was a trip that had long been planned by my Sales Director, won from a fund raising auction at World Relief back in spring of this year. Due to schedule conflicts and marine forecast, the fishing trip had to be re scheduled a couple of times. Then the day finally came. We are going fishing at 7 am from Winthrop Harbor North Point Marina, on a Saturday. Woke up at 4 am, got out at past 5 am and made the trek from Warrenville to Winthrop Harbor, Illinois. While waiting for someone else, my Sales Director asked me, "so, Bobby, do you ever have problems with sea sickness?" "Bill, I grew up in the Philippines, of course not!" I have been paddling on canoes on mild rivers, rode in canoes with outriggers in Mindanao Sea, have taken a passenger (overnight) cruise ship from Manila back to Butuan, a ferry from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel--of course I have never had problems with sea sickness. (I did remember Captain mention that the waves farther out would be far better than the waves' height further inland.) So I thought I hope we catch Salmon and Trout today, lots and lots of them.

One and half hour after venturing out, and having half eaten a bagel with lox and cream cheese, I started feeling sick. Not wanting to ruin the trip for everyone, I did my best not to lose my breakfast. And the three and a half foot waves felt like ten foot (or more waves, like the Perfect Storm, or it felt like it for me), and this went on for four hours. When the captain finally saw me puking three times, he said "let's head back in" and started to pull the poles. A ruined trip and no Salmon caught. Disappointing, and I felt bad for both Bill and Paul. And the captain has to clean the sides of his boat.

Not sure if it was over confidence or oversight on my part about the risks involved with this trip, the Dramamine might have help prevent nausea and motion sickness. I took two tablets after attempting to reel in the line (thinking we had caught something about two hours into the trip). Pretty obvious it was too late. Lesson learned: what possible risks could come up with a trip or a project. Identify it, take steps to mitigate it, or plain avoid it. With the marine forecast of 3.5 and less than 5 foot waves, it was safe to venture out and go fishing. But it is not for the faint of stomach.

shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at Jenny's Fruit Stand

My wife and I spent last weekend or Labor Day weekend in Sawyer Michigan. Although I have lived here in the states for almost 20 years now, I cannot help but notice the differences between how "production" (collective term) works between here and the Philippines. (I wanted to post photos of my wife shopping at the fruit stand but I lost those digital photos. That is a whole different story.)

This fruit stand was not manned, sat in a corner of a street, in a private property. It had a wooden cash box (i.e., cash and check payment only), chained to the structure. It had three security cameras (more than likely with motion detector), one of which had a short antenna (I can only imagine it works off 802.11 protocol). I noticed that the power adaptors were plugged to an outlet and did not seem secure (someone can just unplug them, if someone really intended to abscond the fruits, vegetables, organic honey, and the cash box). On a white board, the following works were scribed: "Smile, you are on candid camera. Thou shall not steal."

Where is this all leading to? What I can conclude are the following. Any production business process that can be automated or outsourced, whereby there is significant cost savings to labor cost--such solution needs to be examined and implemented. A lot of our economic "transaction" is based on honesty. (A fudged resume can be discovered. A dishonest time sheet will be caught. A dishonest tax return will be audited. A substandard part replacement discovered. This is very true in the US. Sadly, I cannot speak the same about the Philippines. It may be different now.) Thus, such automation and BPO (business process outsourcing) ought not to be ruled out when trying to cut production cost. Then again, this might be stating what is now too obvious.

US/Boeing versus Airbus/European Union

There is not much news happening (not earth shaking at least) that I wanted to blog on but the following article prior to the long Labor Day weekend caught my eye. (Well, the forest fires in Los Angeles is being contained, and it is being investigated both as an arson and as a homicide in light of two firefighters' death.) Ever since Boeing moved their corporate office to Chicago, news related to Boeing hits the Chicago Trib and becomes easier to follow. In light of the economic meltdown, large drop in corporate travel (airlines reportedly losing billions in 1st half of 09), the competition on new plane orders becomes more heated between Airbus and Boeing (along with Canadian, Brazilian, Chinese and Russian plane manufacturers intent on breaking up the monopoly by the Big 2).

The following is the recent development on this on-going battle. Excerpted from the Chicago Tribune article today:

"The United States and Chicago-based Boeing Co. scored the first victory in a lengthy trade conflict Friday when the World Trade Organization found that the European Union had provided illegal aircraft subsidies to Airbus SAS.

But the extent of their win, like much else in this clash, was disputed. The only certainty is that the 5-year-old imbroglio, already one of the longest and costliest on record, is far from over, trade experts cautioned."

I had taken the Micro Economics class at VA TECH years ago, and I still do remember the following "ideal." Government subsidies are bad, since it interferes with free market forces. It does not level the playing field for all players. It tips the playing field in favor of another. I will not debate the merits of the European Union's subsidies, which part is legal or not (70 % has been ruled by the World Trade Organization as not illegal).

What I have come to the conclusion are the following. I find it interesting that the US is taking this issue with Airbus at WTO, siding with Boeing. This makes me ask the following questions, what about the farm subsidies to US farmers? What about TARP? What about the billions in Stimulus money to state and local governments? Is this tinkering with market economics? Where is the consistency in government policy related to government subsidies, primarily to US farmers. One may argue these are very different times, and call for very different solutions to different problems. Is the US government right in taking Boeing's case to WTO? In this case, I think so.

Chicago's bid for 2016 Olympics

An interesting development just transpired in Chicago's bid for 2016 Olympics. Mayor Daley had been reluctant to sign the contract with IOC. This provisioned that the host city will have full ownership of financial cost of sponsoring the summer Olympics. China had spent 13 bllion Yuan or close to $2B to finance the recent 08 Beijing Olympics.

AON is willing to underwrite the insurance to cover $500 million in the event the city's cost exceeds revenues accrued from hosting the games. Mayor Daley's was reluctant to stick the cost of the games to Chicago taxpayers. I am wondering however what is the premium or cost of this insurance policy? AON's policy will not be pro bono, it will come at a cost. However, this is a win/win situation for the city and 2016 bid team. The caveat is, how much policy is enough. The statisticians, demographers, consultants and forecasters better be accurate on their pessimistic, most likely, and optimistic forecasts, i.e., to ensure some semblance of accuracy on their sufficiency of insurance amount.

Not foreign to performance bonds and other insurance policies for vendors and contractors, this definitely is a development in the right direction for the city to move forward with the bid. Now if they can now convice all Chicago Aldermen, that the city taxpayers will not pay $1 in case the 2016 Olympics bleeds red ink, it is "all good."