AirVenture 2007 – Oshkosh, WI
I didn’t post anything last week, because I attended the world’s largest aviation event in Oshkosh Wisconsin, EAA’s AirVenture annual event. It attracts 700,000 visitors during the week, 10,000 planes are on display and/or flying and camp Scholler is home to 40,000 people during the week. It’s an amazing event even if you are not into aviation.The following video will give you a taste for the action:
South African vs US terms – every day words
Recently I blogged regarding the difference between US and South African business terms. In this post I will give you some every day words that are different. For instance, in South Africa you walk on the sidewalk and drive with your manual car on the pavement and stop when the robot is red… Btw, have you ever thought why in America we park in our “drive ways” and drive on “park ways”?Enjoy!
Integration with SAP
Well, even with NetWeaver and XI it seems that it is still not easy to integrate 3rd party systems with SAP. I did some research and found the following interesting products. The first one that seems very interesting (based on their website, I’m signed up for a demo next week) is the an Integration Appliance for SAP by Cast Iron. A friend of mine indicated that his company is considering Cast Iron as a way to integrate their Salesforce.com system with SAP. Here is an interesting blog entry on Cast Iron and the following wikipedia entry lists more integration appliances. This is an example of Cast Iron’s mapping editor.
The appliance allows full environment management, i.e., you can set up a dev, test and production environment. Cast Iron has three appliances for SAP, an entry level model for one application integration, a flag ship model for enterprise level application integration and also a high availability (HA) appliance.WinShuttle is another popular way to upload and download information from SAP. This product seems less flashy than Cast Iron’s appliance, however it seems to deliver the goods for many customers.Gregor Hohpe wrote a book on patterns and best practices for enterprise integration, called, Enterprise Integration Patterns
Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (ESOA) for the rest of us
Venderprisey linked to an excellent presentation on ESOA. I post it here for your convenience. It’s also an example of an excellent presentation.Do you agree?
South African vs US business terms
This post is a continuation of the guest lecture I gave at GSU. A group of MBA students are planning to visit South Africa to meet with South African companies. I gave them this introduction to business terms used in South Africa.
- In South Africa revenue or sales is called turnover. I’ve been in a number of business meetings where South African businesspeople proudly mentioned their company’s high turnover. (Turnover in America typically refers to employee attrition).
- In South Africa the CEO is referred to as the Managing Director or MD. CEO is used more frequently in South Africa these days.
- A director in America is typically a level below a VP, however in South Africa a director usually refers to a board member, i.e., a very senior position.
- In America a loan is typically referred to as a note.
- In South Africa the word scheme doesn’t have the same negative connotation as it has in America. Share plans are frequently called Share schemes.
- In South Africa employees are retrenched rather than laid off.
- In South Africa people will check their diary instead of their calendar to schedule a meeting.
During the next installment I’ll give you a few fun general terms that are used differently in South Africa.Do you have an interesting story to tell when you used a word that people in a different country didn’t understand or misunderstood?
Online Sales Tools comparison
11/1/2007: SalesTeamTools.com updated their comparison.SalesTeamTools.com does a good job of comparing online CRM tools. I use ZohoCRM and sofar I’m satisfied with the application. It’s free for less than 3 users. Also check out other open source alternatives including: SugarCRM and vTiger.What do you use?
Interesting Human Capital Management (HCM) blogs
Here are a few interesting HCM/HR blogs that I read frequently. Let me know what you think of these? Btw, will you be attending the HR Tech conference in Chicago in October. Why are you going? I’m not sure if I want to attend so I’m asking for some feedback.HCM Blogs:
Another one a stumbled across today: ERP Blog on HCM research.All for now. You’re comments please.[Added July 5, 2007: Here is another excellent blog on HCM technology. It’s by one of my former colleagues, Leendert van der Bijl. Read it, he is a deep thinker and has some excellent insights.]
Jack Welch / Lars Dalgaard Keynote video
I really enjoyed the keynote QA of Jack Welch and Lars Dalgaard during the Successfactors User conference earlier in June. You may view it here, after entering some contact info. You will need Windows Media player or Real player to view it.Enjoy!
South Africa by Numbers
This post includes a part of the presentation I gave at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business on June 13, 2007.South Africa by Numbers:
- 6: The number of time zones during day light savings that South Africa is ahead of ET. 7 time zones during the winter.
- 11: The number of official languages in South Africa: Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu
- 45m: The South African population. 26th most populous country in the world.
- 9: Number of states or provinces in South Africa.
- +27: South African dial code.
- 20%: 20% of the world’s gold is mined in South Africa.
- $570bn: South Africa’s GDP (PPP). 18th in the world. Ahead of countries like Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden.
- 5.3m: The number of South Africans infected by HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, number one in the world. This is almost 12% of the population.
- 2010: In 2010 South Africa will host the Soccer World Cup.
You may find more information on South Africa on these sites: South Africa Info, Wikipedia, and CIA Worldbook.
Guest lecture @ GSU Robinson College of Business
I’m giving a guest lecture to MBA students at the Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University in Atlanta on June 13, 2007. The topic will be the difference between doing business in South Africa and America. I will add an outline of the presentation to this blog in the next couple of weeks.If you have any comments, suggestions and ideas please leave a comment.
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