Alexander Chalkidis

Author: alexanderchalkidis

  • I miss those old IBM laptops

    The keyboard was magic.    You didn’t realize quite how good it was until you fumbled around with anything else.  I can touch type in the dark almost unconsciously on one of those IBM keyboards.   Then again I didn’t have to because they had that cool little light built in the top which would light up your keyboard for just enough light to see in a dark airplane cabin or children’s bedroom.   IBM laptops were always under the specifications of other laptops in their price range.   They looked boring.   You didn’t ask for one so much as find it on your desk as the company IT guy seemed to love them for some boring IT reason…

    Yet somehow they performed better.   And they always lasted longer. You wished they would fall apart so you could get something with a new CPU that looked better but they plod on.   In fact they hardly ever die!   That hidden partition for system recovery they have makes sure you can always bounce back and get a brand new system in an hour or so.

    Maybe some other manufacturer has similar quality and attention to detail nowadays.   I haven’t bumped into it.   Macs are cool but not a work-horse like those IBM laptops, so much as a style or fun pony.  HP top end models are impressive in specs sometimes but the component quality varies enormously from model to model.   IBM laptops consistently included features which came out of serious research.   Sure, they often got their marketing wrong and some models were just plain silly.   But I very much doubt anyone, ever regretted the money they spent on any laptop IBM made.

    This is not to say that quality is dead or to lament ages bygone as tech dinosaurs often do.   But for people like me that will always have at least one dual disk, RAID, SSD, as-many-core-processors-as-possible, massive graphic card and all the bells and whistles type laptop, it seems like there is a bit of a gap in the market.   Laptops are commodities which is great since they cost less but not so great when they don’t help us produce more.

    So I watch my kids play on old IBM laptops and sing their praise retrospectively.  Machines ten and fifteen years old running amazingly well.   (I think we have to give some credit to Microsoft for the fact that Windows XP is still so widely supported.)   I love technology and enjoy trying out the latest and greatest.   I just miss those seriously scientific IBM engineers that gave us these gems and hope to find more of their spirit somewhere down the line.

  • www.eshop.gr – The Greek version of an internet bubble

    While the rest of the world ponders if this spurt of activity is a tech bubble or not, in Greece one of the oldest ones is about to pop.   Now you could say that a company that has been around for 13 years doesn’t really qualify.   In fact in the tech industry, they should perhaps get a medal for surviving that long!   But I have been one of those annoying cleverclogs who publicly stated objections from their beginning.   So it is my pleasure to be finally vindicated by recent developments.

    Sort of.

    www.e-direct.gr was a clear cut case of a scam.   And a well executed one at that.   But Eshop.gr is much more complicated.   In internet economy terms you could almost say it was a perfect example.   It had growing turnover, even physical stores.  And – as traditional distribution crumbled from vanishing margins and credit differential – they even took genuine market share.   But they never made sense.

    At first it was their approach to business which worried me.   They had made a parallel import of Pinnacle TV tuners back then and I visited to discover what was on their mind.   Nothing it seemed.   I had never seen a sales director less in touch with the actual products he was selling.   Tech support?   Non existent.   Infrastructure?   Let’s say “problematic” to be polite!  Then I started monitoring their media spend.   Ridiculous.   They were regularly spending as much as Plaisio, even though their revenues were but a small fragment of the market leader’s.

    So it looked like a perfect example of a company grooming itself to be sold.   As long as everybody thinks they are the No1 Eshop in Greece, sooner or later someone will buy them.  Some Greek businessman who suddenly gets itchy and worried that his empire doesn’t have an e-something.   Rumours flew around about Panos Germanos (owner of such permanent money losing machines as Multirama and Public).   But here remained the problem:   nobody really knew.

    I tried to explain this all to one of Eshop’s founder, the wonderful Apostolos, back in 2007.   It was a dinner during Retail Vision at Paris and we ended up talking about our common passion of fast cars…  In 2008 I wrote a blog post urging them to sell.  “Last chance is now…”   It may be that in Silicon Valley having a failure is considered a medal for venture capitalists, but only for quick mistakes in genuinely new business ventures.   Eshop was drawing out, parallel concepts were emerging, even the founders started up other things, again in extreme secrecy.

    The Greek business scene is in fact highly political.   ie too many companies are in fact not related to the business of making profits.   Private TV channels  have been like that from their beginning, supported by some business man (personally even!) in order to influence politics.   So the occasional press release of Eshop.gr breaking this or the other record in sales was a red flag to me in communication terms.   My verdict:  guilty by omission.   Extremely selective presentation of subsets of data, it takes one to know one!

    It doesn’t really matter whether or not they survive this crisis.   In a way it gives them great cover to lay off people, close their pointless retail locations and make any other cuts necessary.   Blame it all on the economic crisis.   But without more transparency in financial and strategy matters nothing will change in the long term.

  • Πλήρες κιτ μετατροπής σε ηλεκτρικό ποδήλατο από την Shimano: Αλλά πού’ν’το;

    Όλα τα εξαρτήματα του κιτ μετατροπής της Shimano

    Ακούμε από το καλοκαίρι για το εκπληκτικό πλήρες πακέτο μετατροπής ποδήλατου σε ηλεκτρικό της διάσημης εταιρείας.   Η φωτογραφίες είναι δελεαστικές, το marketing καλό.    Είναι ένα μόνο μοντέλο, όχι ιδιαίτερα δυνατή μηχανή, αλλά για τις περισσότερες εφαρμογές επαρκέστατο.

    Με την σωστή τιμή, η κίνηση θα είναι ίσως καθοριστική για όλη την αγορά.   Η Shimano έχει ήδη μονοπωλιακή θέση στα περισσότερα εξαρτήματα και διανομή παντού στον κόσμο.   Το όνομα είναι γνώριμο.   Θα φέρει ίσως την σταθερότητα που λείπει από την αγορά στο θέμα των κιτ μετατροπής.

    Επιπλέον θα μπορεί να εγγυηθεί για την συμβατότητα με άλλα υποσυστήματα του ποδηλάτου όπως τα δισκόφρενα.

    Η καθυστέρηση όμως είναι ύποπτη.  Ίσως να έγινε κίνηση από τους κατασκευαστές ποδηλάτων να σταματήσουν την Shimano για να μην τους μείνουν όλα τα δικά τους μοντέλα στις αποθήκες!

  • Why a modern Greek should feel like Achilles at sea

    While everyone gets used to what most of us saw (and wrote) all along and the Greek debt sooner or later gets restructured, the road ahead is pretty clear: we have to actually produce something!   While the media and most of the population rolls over slowly, fat and lazy from so many years of a bloated public sector, someone has to go to Troy to fight.   Much like the Greeks back then though:

    1. We are naturally skeptical. When I first saw the press release about a Greek company in the Innovation Parc I automatically assumed it is yet another scam.   So many years of seeing pseudo-business ventures makes a genuinely world standard effort hard to believe.

    2. Most just don’t want to fight, quite happy in their own villages.    Trying to talk a Greek brand name like Loumidis to turn himself into something with a proven success record like http://www.thegreekdeli.com/ is a task for …Ulysses’ cunning!

    3. We get emotional and miss the point.   Helen was probably not very happy in Sparta anyway.   Who cares if Paris loved her?    Business is business.   I see this now while monitoring worldwide media regarding ouzo, one of those products that is considered so Greek it hurts.  Like feta cheese, some people get too caught up in history to face the real enemy; anyone selling our history better than us!

    Much like Achilles, modern Greeks have a decision to make:   They can stay home and die poor and unknown, or they can venture forth to try and conquer the world like their ship faring ancestors have always done in the past.   It is written that Achilles beat the main force and landed with his handful of faithful warriors to take on the entire Trojan defenses before anyone else.   They could hardly keep him in the ship as it approached the well defended shore.   His enthusiasm for battle and immortality was impossible to hold back.

    Hand me that spear.

  • Scanning opportunities and inroads to social networking

    Old photos fade away.   Literally!   No matter what paper they are printed on, even in good storage conditions.   So as I started to scan a few from my vast – pre digital – collection I couldn’t help but feel there is a better way.   Not even an automated scanner would save me.   I want to cart off the whole thing.   It seems self evident that there is a market.   Why hasn’t it taken off?

    Well it is not organised.   Can you name a company that will handle the entire process?   Pick up boxes and return organised DVDs of the pictures, images cleaned up and available in high and low res.   While they are at it why not have them somewhere online for me to pick from.   It would be a great way for any company to get a leg up in social networking.   “Give us your pictures and we will start off your impressive photo blog!”   After all, your friends, coworkers and relatives are all in some picture somewhere.   Tag them and we email them to join!

    For anyone with more than an amateur interest in photography it is also a possible revenue source.   (Or so they think; which means they will pay more for it!)  If you have a collection of slides from travels around the world or whatever your pet interest was, they are possibly useful.   If only someone would scan and process them all…  Again it would be a great Trojan horse for someone to get your hosting business. 

    A final word of advice:  if you do scan old pictures there will inevitably be some of old girlfriends.   Give the job to a professional agency or else your wife will give you serious grief!

  • Master Chef’s “insanely delicious” ouzo sauce

    Master Chef material!

    “Insanely delicious scallops&shrimp on eggy noodles w creamy ouzo sauce @my FAVE Manhatt greek resto #Pylos. Their tarama DE-stroys all others.”  If you are not from the U.S. you may not know Kelly Choi who Wikipedia says “is the former host of Bravo TV‘s Top Chef spin-off, Top Chef Masters, which premiered on June 10, 2009.[1] Choi is also an Emmy-award winning Korean–American television personality on NYC TV, one of the broadcast stations of NYC Media Group, the television and media network owned by the City of New York.”

    In any case, she needs to improve her photography skills or get a better phone because this surely doesn’t look very appealing!

  • Don’t get drunk: drink real A grade Greek ouzo

    Following Twitter references to ouzo and #ouzo there is a very specific group of people with old bad memories of ugly hangovers associated to ouzo drinking.   This is commonly the result of improvised cocktails or slammer abuse but more commonly I would guess due to low grade pseudo (non distilled) ouzo or non A brand ouzo.

    Here are some things to look out for:

    1. Properly distilled ouzo is absolutely clear, you can’t really tell it isn’t water.

    2. It also goes milky white  in a balanced way when you add water.

    It says "ouzo" but what is in it?

    3. The aroma is mild, it shouldn’t blow your nose away!

    4. A whiff of aniseed, phinocio, gum, cinamon, kakoule and even chamomile are possible ideas as you bring it to your nose .

    5. If you know your wines, good ouzo is semi dry.

    6. The after taste on a good ouzo is smooth.

    The two brands used as a reference point for most experts are Plomari as indicative of a common (No1 brand worldwide) ouzo and Adolo which is the ultimate in ouzo experience, by triple distillation in very limited production runs.

    All this doesn’t mean that a local ouzo might not be great, just that it is difficult to be sure what is actually in it.   And how you will wake up the next day.   As emphasized in ouzo etiquette guidelines, this is generally a social drink enjoyed with company and food.

  • How GrecoGerman family businesses will rule the world

    It is fashionable (and easy) to target family run businesses as the source of a country’s problems.  Whether it is the Economist’s view of a region or the complaints of a middle manager who “just couldn’t get a promotion in there”.   I have studied family businesses as clients, as numbers and statistics.   I have lived and breathed one for most of my life.   And after enough years away from it now I can finally see the upside more clearly.

    The term “family business” is completely useless.   The realization came crashing down on me as I got more comfortable with “Hidden Champions” (Simon Kucher) .    Even the Economist will take note.   After admiring the mid sized companies that are driving Germany’s worldwide export leadership, it takes some getting used to.    66% of these dynamic world leaders are family run.   Sure that is down 10% from what it was ten years ago.  Which is my point.  Not even a German family remains unchanged.

    Not all families are the same.   So family businesses will also be pretty different. Kucher identifies factors unique to these winners like the drive to be No1, heavy investment in R&D, hard competition with neighbors and closeness to customers.   The fact that more people in these companies talk to customers has important implications for the use of social media too.   Nepotism may be rife in the Mediterranean but is not a given.

    Pdf summary of the presentation on Hidden Champions is here –  FamilyBusinessPotentialInGreece.   Read it and then try to picture a German family business like those described in it next to a Greek one…maybe after enough Germans have bought land and moved to sunny Greece a new type of GrecoGermanic mid sized company will conquer the world!

  • Ich trink Ouzo, was trinkst du so? – I drink ouzo, what do you drink?

    It has been called “The book on the crisis” and “A love letter to Greece”.   The journalist Stella Bettermann has written a real “feel good” book.   Even the longer stories leave a nice taste in your mouth as the author describes her childhood summers with parents and brother every year in  Greece. The magic, the exotic and the violent collide in this unusual holiday she describes in “I drink ouzo, what do you drink? “. The result is a love letter to Greece, the Greek people, to the warmth of her grandmother and an impressive and unusual family that the reader will not quickly forget.

    With a fine sense of humor Stella Bettermann tells of the adventurous three-day drive from Munich to Piraeus, dust and heat and the great reception that the lost daughter and her family receives annually on arrival.

    The author evokes the scent of anise and cinnamon, the greeting kisses of aunts, uncles, cousins, the joy of his grandfather and the soft hands of the grandmother, the smell of basil.Grandmother and grandfather –  Yiayia and  Pappous – and her  cousin Anna are the most important people in the holiday world of the girl from Germany. The almost blind Yiayia Stella goes every day to the market to buy fruit and vegetables. With Pappous they visit the playground and learn that Greek girls are not allowed to get dirty and are always perfectly presentable. With cousin Anna Stella she has a real adventure, expedition, like those the hear of in the coffee house, the traditional domain of the males.

    Stella BettermannAt this point an important warning: Do not read this book on an empty stomach, for the enjoyable and detailed description of the mountains of delicious food, prepared every night by the grandmother will have you reeling. Even Stella’s better ouzo warning will be forgotten by the next summer vacation in Greece: While you drink it, you don’t feel anything, but when you try to get up, your legs give in…

    Sensitively and with great humor, the author also deals with the cultural differences between Greeks and Germans, which shape their everyday life and can lead to entertaining misunderstandings.  Greeks  overprotect their children well into their adulthood.  And the Germans? Who let their dogs make piles everywhere, even on the playground. And they do not wash dishes by hand but rinse them with a cloth – how unhygienic!  But they are neat and industrious, the Germans, and what a beautifully green country they have.    Stella’s uncle said Michalis impressive, what is his view typical Greek: “The Greeks have to say just nothing, not even the boss. Where there is no matter whether one is wealthy or influential. That makes no impression on them. The only think: Who are you on, you have me do nothing to command. That’s the problem with Greece – that every little clerk, the instructions of his boss in question. They say, however, Yes, Sir! ” and bow too. And the Germans say, I won ‘work hard and when the chief asked. That is why they have become rich countries. ”

    www.luebbe.de ISBN 978-3-404-61666-4 / Publisher: BASTION LÜBBE

    Click here for the song from the musical.

  • Is the ouzo industry too small to survive?

    One of the problems facing ouzo is that it is generally produced by companies too small to help properly promote it.  It is indicative that at the recent ProWein international spirits trade show, there were only two companies with ouzo to show!   And of those, only ouzo Plomari the market leader in Greece, actually showed something new, the premium, triple distilled, “Adolo” brand of ouzo and a new brandy, (or whatever they are allowed to call it!), Pantheo.

    As Andreas Mathidis, president of the Greek spirits association said, it is important that a major Greek brand represents the positive side of Greece, despite the bad publicity due to the economic climate.

    Hey, just drink more ouzo and everything will seem great!