Kurtis's Blog

So, I have decided to follow the trend and start a blog. I am not really sure what I will use it for yet, perhaps to write short snippets on daily events in life, society and espeically around the Internet and the IT industry.

So, I thought I should post something to start this blog off a bit more. I had thought I would start much earlier but I needed to fix some things on my server before that - and as usual it took me a lot longer to get around to doing that than I had expected.

Anyway, I will try and post to this blog daily. Topics will be Internet, Internet politics, technology, observations in real life etc. Basically what you by now expect from any blog...

If you want to find out more about me, please see http://www.kurtis.pp.se.
If you DO happen to read this blog and you DO find it interesting or worthwhile. Please comment or send me email....

I went to the norht for the traditonal midsumer celebration. Skiing in Riksgränsen on Friday, I did dance (or rather ski) around the midsummer pole. When the rain became to heavy we decided to take one of the slopes down. Turned out 'a bit' exciting, but also the best snow of the day. Spent the night in Narvik partying. On Saturday I went to the Polar Zoom 30 minutes north of Narvik. That was fantastic. I stood with a bear 10 cm away from me and just a fence in between. The lynx was of course the best animals! IT was really nice! Spent the night in Riksgränsen as we had planned to join the end-of-the-season-hike up to Nordalsfjäll. Woke up to the sound of rain and decided that was the end of the season for me. Instead went and bought a Sven Hörnell picture of the Kebnekaise range. It's taken from the Nort towards the south. You see both peaks and the start of the Sarek range. Then went to Abisko for lunch and a walk in the wildliffe exhibit.

Overall a different and good midsummer weekend. Would have liked to end it with that hike tough....

Ok, so I have been really bad a writing here so far. Unfortunately my day job has taken a significant amount of time lately. Not that it should't, after all I am the managing director. It's just that we lately have

- Done our first customer meeting in four years
- We are conducting one of the first customer surveys as well as a marketing research...
- We have some challening financial times ahead of us.. But I think that is worth a blog analysis of it's own
- I have been brought some interesting ideas of how to broaden our base
- We are trying to intensify our marketing efforts in order to attrackt more customers
- In my spare time (whatever that is) I also have two projects I am working on that have taken some time.

Is that enough of excuses? Guess so

Spent last weekend in Verbier making Gentianne (local Bagnes alcohol) and celebrating my fathers 70th birthday. Finnihsed the birht day off in Stockholm with a (as always) fantastic dinner at Brasseri Godot.

Started out early in the morning to go up to San Francisco. Bijal had never been there so Gaurab, me and Swmike went up to do some sightseeing. We started at Fisherman's Warf (as you must), saw the WWII submarine museum, walked thrugh Chinatown and then went shopping. I had to be dragged out of the North Face store or I would have bought a windstopper....

Now feel really proud over my self! :-)

We then went to Paolo Alto for dinner with Peter L, and then went to his place to have coffee and me and Peter worked on a problem we had at Netnod.

Then drove Gaurab to the Bart in Freemont, then down to San Jose, got stuck in the bar and stayed up waaay to late...

I had some issues with the previous blog software I was using and trying to fix that I managed to loose all previous entries when playing with the SQL back-end. :-( So much for beeing a supposed geek. Luckily Google had cached a few of the entries so I will add them here just to get a start...

Anyway, I hope I am back up and that I can post with some regularity...

- kurtis -

I have, or rather had, a Finnish drivers license. I was stopped in a police check-point entering Verbier a few days ago and when trying to put the old one into my wallet again, it broke. Now, that might not be the end of the world except for two things.

1) It was an old Finnish drivers license, that expired when I turned 70 in 2044. I thought that was handy...

2) I don't live in Finland anymore.

So I called up the Swedish government entity that is handling replacement of foreign driver licenses, as you need to replace it to the country where you live. After being passed around for a while as this is one of the tasks not described on their web-site, I was told that all I needed to do was to take a photocopy of the broken license and that would be valid for driving (duh. More exciting will be to rent a car on it in a week - but I guess I will get back to that), and then send it in with a personal registration certificate. Now, these certificates you can order on the web, or just go to the tax office and get. As I work close to the tax office, I decided for the later to speed things up a bit.

So I show up at the tax-office, ask for my certificate, get it - and walk away. Now that is service isn't it!!!??? It probably would be, if it was not for the fact that she never asked for an id. And that with these certificates you can change persons records.

We often look at digital privacy, and personal integrity, but in our paper based governments we forget how much depends on just your social security number, without any form of verification. I wonder if we actually would not gain more transparency and accountability with more digital processing and cross verification of government registers.

I read in the Swedish business daily Dagens Industri that SAS will move routes away from Copenhagen and Denmark to Oslo and Stockholm. This is a result after the last unlawful strike by the SAS Cabin union in Denmark.

As a frequent SAS customer I can only welcome this as hopefully I will again get direct routes from Stockholm to European destinations instead of the current silliness where the majority of SAS customers are flown to the smallest population area to get to their destinations. Also, I have had enough of delays due to strikes in Denmark...

Sigh. It looks like the Swedish cabin staff will go on strike on SAS on Friday. I am supposed to fly to London for the weekend with some friends from Verbier. Let's see if I make it there. I read in the news that Elektrolux is threatening to leave SAS. I can't blame them.

First SAS moved their flights to Copenhagen as a hub, although most of their travellers, including me, starts their travel in Stockholm. Then the illegal strikes of the Danish cabin crews and now the strikes of the Swedish cabin crews. I have no idea what the SAS unions think they are achieving except more people leaving SAS leading to less revenue and more staff-cuts. The SAS unions seems to be living in the same past times as the SAS pricing and route structure.

I find myself more and more using Lufthansa through Munich for European flights, where I get cheap tickets, food, good service and reliable flights. I have also tended to either use Lufthansa or one of the other Start Alliance partners from London for American flights. It didn't use to be that way. SAS have asked for it - or rather the SAS unions refusing to realise they are under competition.

My hope is that SAS is acquired Lufthansa and that Frankfurt and Munich are turned into real hubs.

Today, all Swedish newspapers have been full of articles relating to the fact that a 'reporter' for a production team working on a Swedish version of some sort of humour program in the UK called "Balls of Steel", soaked the Swedish primeminister in water.

Personally I have a really hard time seeing the fun in this in the first place, but if we leave that - what surprises me, no, what shocks me is that someone described in the press as known-party-girl-from-hip-night-club-want-to-become-famous-on-tv can walk up to the PM with a microphone labelled "Swedish TV" and soak-him using the fake microphone.

Last time I checked, the Swedish PM is surrounded with 4-6 bodyguards. Now, if one of the two political reporters of Swedish national TV walked up to him, like KG Bergström who was political reporter when the PM was still in school - I would understand if the bodyguards lowered their guard. But a blond-I-want-to-become-famous?

The Swedish police's personal protection unit doesn't exactly have the best track-record by now. If we don't count one dead PM and one dead foreign minister as their wasn't even there then - they also have let one PM get a food basket in the head as they where having coffee, the finance minister getting a cake in his face while surrounded by half of Stockholm's active police force.

Oh well.....

This was supposed to have been posted from the SAS lounge in Gardemoen. It isn't. First, when I left the plane in Oslo, I went through the usual security charade as in any airport, I then went on to try and find the lounge.

Now, I was there three months ago so I know there is one. The question is where. After a "small" walk I found a sign in the roof saying "lounges". I vaguely remembered this so I walked up and then found a sign to the SAS lounge. Once at the lounge I pointed out to the staff that it's pretty hard to find when you come from International transit. The staff smiled as said "yeah, we know there are no signs".

Excuse me? They know? Then why the h-ll aren't they doing something!!! But it was good to recognise the old SAS again and get rid of all positiveness I had got from them rebooking my tickets.

Oh, and none of the wireless networks in the lounge worked.

But it's ok SAS, I apologies for the troubles I have caused due to trying to fly with you. My next trips are with United and Lufthansa. In fact, I so far have no more flights scheduled with you....

PS. I won't mention the silliness of having a single mens toilet in the lounge and 4 desks for PC power...nor how disgustingly unclean the toilet actually was.

This mornings news reported that SAS and the unions had agreed last night and that SAS will fly tomorrow again.

Around 11.00 CET I also got an SMS from SAS informing me of this, which I thought wsa quite good.

Based on the news reports of the deal, I really wonder what the unions think they gained from this strike, except upset passengers. But what do I know...

Personally I had to buy a ticket with BA myself to London this afternoon to start my flight to Boston and the IAB retreat. SAS/United insisted that I would take flight this morning - which I couldn't due to the Swedish Operator Forum meeting this morning. Go figure.

Since yesterday I am in Rhodes to attend the 2007 Island Games. I haven't been to the games since 1999 in Gotland and then just for a day. The last time I participated in the full games was as Badminton team-leader in Gibraltar in 1995.

The reason for my new found interest is that in 2009 Åland will be the host, and I have been convinced in helping organize the Badminton tournament. This is a great honer and great fun! I am really looking forward to seeing all the friends I made over the years in the games. Unfortunately there is no Badminton competition in Rhodes, but I have made contact with several of my friends from the past.

I will try and post some impressions here during the week.

My friend Paf on his blog has made a map of which countries he has visited. So of course I had to do the same with the myworld66 tool.

Maybe I should travel less....

Ok, my favourite topic.

I am currently on a plane from CPH to GVA. I had checked in on-line and received seat 5C. First row in economy class. When I get to ARN to print a boarding pass ( I know, I am old fashioned), I realise that the available 4C seat is now the first in economy. So I take that.

I get to boarding time in CPH (after the 45 min delay) and I get a seat of 25C printed for me. I complain. I am told by gate staff that they have changed the configuration of the plane. I complain more and I am told that 11C is the best they can do now. I board the plane. And discovers that the first row of economy is 4 and that they have just given 4C to someone else.

Idiots.

I have sent mail to SAS Eurobonus. I am sure I will get the usual "you have just misunderstood the situation " letter. Just as I did when SAS gate staff in CPH upgraded their friends instead of following the upgrade list. It occurs to me that I get more benefits, more interesting offers (that I admittedly never use), and better service out of the status on my department store card than I believe I ever got out of SAS. And I spend probably 100 times more money with SAS every year.

Thanks SAS! If you ever want to get out of the ever looming bankruptcy, starting to take care of your, few, remaining customers might be a good start.

And actually here is an interesting observation. I once worked in the travel industry in various customer facing positions for a ferry/cruise company called Viking Line. The then second in command, Boris Ekman, held a short briefing for all the newbies the first week I started. I still remember a few of the points. First he stressed, that a tiny hick-up in any part of the travel would destroy the image for the customer, and therefor destroy value for the customer and therefor for us. It could be a problem at booking, check-in, problem with the cleaning of the cabin, the bar - anything. Even if the travel itself was not the end goal of the customer (i.e a cruise). In many if not most, other customer/supplier relationships the transaction is short and consists of few steps. Not so in the travel industry. During the by now quite a lot of travel I have done, this always amazes me. People don't understand this. They will assign blame to someone else, or blame the system. Or rules (always a favourite with airline staff). Instead, they should realise that their job is to mitigate an already lost value. And provide feedback into the system. And the system needs to be tailored to handle this feedback. New industries are growing up that have similar customer relationships. Broadband providers happen to be one of them. To most extent they still have this lesson to learn. Why? How can customer support and customer care taking be so hard? To some extent I fear/believe that this is historical. Both telecommunications and airline travel in Europe come out of a government/staterun world and mindset, mixed up with a highly unionised environment. This was clearly demonstrated by the cargo loading strike in Sweden a year or two ago. Union members demanded that their earlier benefit of free travel for close relatives(!) should be upheld by the almost bankrupt airline. So instead SAS staff provided stranded customers with an excellent reason to change airline (which they had to do anyway...). This loss of customer confidence together with the monetary loss of compensating stranded customers hurt SAS. As did the several following strikes in recent years. SAS still claims they have low strike rate compared to other airlines. Maybe so, but that doesn't make it situation any better. The same is more or less true for the telecommunications market. While we are not seeing much of strikes in the European telecommunication market, we are seeing similar customer drawbacks. We are seeing in-fighting between telco's and obstructions by ex-PTTs to hinder a free market and competition. Incumbents decide to fight declining market shares with legal processes and court appeals of deregulation instead of with investments and innovation. An incumbent can never grow their market share - it can only shrink. At least in existing markets. But instead of realising this simple fact and defend their share prices with creating and redefining markets and values - they are stuck. Stuck in believing that value is created by high margins on commodity (i.e phone calls and broadband subscriptions). They even go as far as investing billions in it through the NGN madness.

The second point Boris made that June day 17 years ago was that we must excel in providing customers what they want to the price they are willing to pay. This simple rule that, just like the comment above, seems obvious, is also interesting to look at in the telecommunications market. I have said this before, and it deserves to be said again - more or less no services have been created by the telco's in the last 30 years. Take SMS for example. Originally it was almost fought by the telcos. People weren't supposed to send text messages. There where supposed to call eachother at high minute tariffs - just like in the old days. Problem was just that wasn't what the customers wanted to do...so the telco's decided to reinvent themselves and go with the flow and gave the people MMS. Pictures. Problem was that handsets that had a camera was prohibitly expensive, not to mention the cost of sending the MMS. And not to mention that I still have a 50% failure rate at sending photos to subscribers in other networks. The airline carriers are learning this lesson fast. Low cost airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair, showed them that giving people what they wanted to a price they could afford was a much more sustainable business model than over-priced, arrogant and poor service. Lufthansa is the only major European carrier to adopt. They are profitable, have a good route network, often the lowest prices - and they still serve food (as opposed to often more expensive SAS that charges for food). We have yet to a similar challenger in the telco market. Mainly as poor deregulation has created high-barrier to entry investment costs. This in combination with that most of Europe's infrastructure runs on assets that where bought dirt-cheap after 2001 bankruptcies has created an artificial security for current incumbents. But the cheap assets are being filled up and soon incumbents and network owners will be forced onto the capital markets to look for money to invest in upgrades. This opens two opportunities. First off all - I would be surprised if we in three years have not seen a new KPNQwest/GTS/Ebone like provider funded. I.e an independent infrastructure provider. Second, people like Hi3G/3 are starting to provide affordable, mobile, access. I.e the 3G based mobile broadband devices. These have the advantage that they work anywhere (but have slower access speeds) as opposed to WiFi based solutions. When you don't roam they also have the advantage that they are mostly cheaper than the expensive roaming solutions provided by (often incumbent run) hotspot operators. Incumbents also operate 3G networks, but will have a much harder time meeting this competition. Not because they can't, or it wouldn't make economic sense. But because it cannibalises existing revenue streams and products. And the telco with a product management team that would put the overall companies best, before their own product performance doesn't exist. Again, that's how you made a career in the 0's, so that is what you will do today. Instead the incumbents are fighting with customer lock-in, walled gardens, NGNs etc. showing they still haven't learnt the lesson. Just give the customers what they want, not what you want them to believe they want.

So how did the flight end? The purser put me in row two before landing. And gave me few bottles of Champagne as compensation. Perhaps there is some hope for SAS after all....

This is mostly a test for myself, but the servers should now all be up and running in my new apartment!

This week is turning out quite busy - but that is life :) Hopefully it will lead to some interesting posts here as well. On Thursday morning I am participating in a hearing for two parliamentary sub-committees, the one on traffic and infrastructure and the one on defence. The hearing will be about IT security, but as a very broad and generalised topic. The hearing will be in Swedish, but will be webcasted.

On Thursday afternoon I will visit Acreo and discuss future interaction between industry players regarding the development of the Internet.

Hopefully this will give me loads to write about here...

So coming back from Dublin I am passing through the new Terminal 5 at LHR. Despite all the scare I have heard it's actually a pretty amazing terminal. check in queues was non-existant and security was really fast (but this was at 11.00)! I had heard some rumours that there wouldn't be any wireless here but that seems to have been fixed. I get wireless more or less everywhere.

What does dissappoints me is - power. How can you build a brand new terminal and no power-sockets. The Starbucks on lower grounds does have power though! Phew.

I'll also make the observation that I am not sure how they where thinking when they built a grand new terminal but only have 5 toilet stands per toilet...

So, as some have already noted, I spent Saturday last weekend doing the Stockholm marathon. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't harder and given that it was 27 degrees, I think I have to be quite happy with my result!

Ok, so I haven't posted to frequently here so I thought I have to pick up writing again. So here goes a completely off-topic posting to start of a few posting that will come today. I have now had I am from Barcelona songs in my head for almost two weeks.

Today I am reached by the happy news that Monty Python has decided to launch the Monty Python channel on YouTube...

Now I just need to find time to do some work between all the clips....

Local news media here in India has had some press coverage of the IGF. At the opening presentations of under-secretary general, state and union ministers, the photographers where hard at work. But the photo that made it into the local news paper was something else...

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