Dmitry Linkov

First read the post here - http://simplicityitk.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-bad-manners-now-norm-in-buisness.html

And now my answer - Trevor you are absolutely right. Now let’s think why. I got a few ideas:
1. Being rude and demonstrate bad manners leads you to acquiring bad reputation. What’s about it, you will say. Well sure - the world is big, and if you do something wrong in England, nobody will know about it in Germany. But here we comes to the point 2:
2. You never know when and where the reaction on your today’s action will be. Everything is connected (check the butterfly effect) in our world, and acting bad today can result in getting negative feedback 10 years. Moreover with Internet info of your reputation spreads quite fast today.

I’m not even saying here, that demonstrating bad manners is bad by definition.

Yesterday watched The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer. Highly recommended - old school classic movie. And it’s really frightening sometimes).
Why do you like movie of 80th?

• The Hitcher @ imdb

It’s seems like - less I wrote, more subscribers I get. Paradox?)

The weekends passed - again very quickly. They were full of events, I’ll tell you about some of them.

Friday evening we passed relaxing at home. Olga prepared super salad + fried chicken. I was a barmen and prepared some very nice "gluhende Wein". That was a good evening for sure.
Saturday was full of movement - we’ve visited tour company. This NY we will pass in Tallin with our friends. We will take 3 film cameras and shoot everything on our way =). Either VS cafe or Cafe Stereo will be ours NY party place. We are very excited about this 4 day trip. In the evening we met my co-alumni.

The weather is very bad - about +1 -1 degrees (Celcium) and it’s snowy-rainy. Moscow is extremely gray these days and it’s very easy to be depressed - just take a look at the window. Also elections are very close and political pr is everywhere - I’m so tied of it.

I have an idea of post series to this blog. It’s called "Fantastic Statistics". I will collect some interesting statistics information on all themes from Russian media. So stay tuned.

Today I need to make a short audio clip for promotion of new book Funky Business Forever. I’ve downloaded some music software I haven’t used for months.
It’s been a year when I quit making music. So now it was a real experience to remember all the things I did before. I realized how cool it is to compose something - to create! The clip seems to be ok, but we are still deciding will we publish it or not.

Checked up the new episode of Heroes. There is one thing, that is much better in Heroes than in LOST. Producers give you answers, not only questions - contrary to LOST. In LOST we have a bunch of questions and this bunch is growing day by day. Only a few answers are given in the last season.

http://www.empatika.com/blog/vibor-logotipa - check out this post on our Empatika project blog. It’s in Russian - but anyway, please, visit the page. I need you help in choosing the logo for the project - just click which one (1st or 2nd) you like more.

Tags: tv series, modplug tracker, creativity, empatika, logotype

I’m a big fan of Heroes TV series. I also like Lost and Jericho, but Heroes is very different.

In the center of the film are people with extraordinary abilities. It is shown how difficult for them to live in our society, how they adapt, how they find their own ways in life. This is more than just another aka-X-men. This is about how to be different. And what I think, it’s very common to some of us. There are a lot of people all around - that form the gray mass. They can be good, they can be bad - they can be just normal. But sometimes you find unique ones. I hope I’m one of those - but I can’t say for sure.

These unique ones are different in a lot of things, but primarily in their independence, in their own view, in their manner to think and to act. And, of course, in their dreams. What I matters me last days - are my dreams. Do I really do everything to fulfill them? It seems to me - a lot of work have to be done, before I can answer positively on this question.

What about you? Do you feel different? Do you want to be different?

Tags: being different, thoughts about life

I’m finally lost. As you see I update my blog very little these days. I really want to update it - but from the very beginning I tried to write about business issues. And one day I realized that:

• It’s hard to write only about business;
• I don’t want to write about business only.

It’s hard to change - but this is the only thing I’m left with. Otherwise I will not be able to continue force myself to write here. Maybe you have any ideas on how I can continue? What interests you in my blog? What would you want me to write about?

Also I have problems with all these social networks and web 2.0. Currently I’m registered in:
1. LinkedIn
2. Facebook
3-4. Two more Russia facebook-like sites (actually there are even 3 of these)
5. Livejournal
6. This blog
+ I write in corporate blog and Empatika blog (system thinking project of ours).

It seems like I need to make a choice, but it’s so hard to make…
Guys - please comment! I really want to know your opinion about all this stuff.

Tags: lost in web, blogs, social-networking, need help

Dear friends. It seem like I haven’t updated the site quite a long time. So I’ve decided to rework all the info here.
First of all - About me page is updated.
Second - reworked all the links. I don’t read some of blogs I’ve previously read, but there are new sources for you to check:

1. Presentation Zen - this one is very popular today, but if you haven’t seen it - give it a try. Fantastic material on visual presentation of information.
2. Daniel Pink - blog of Daniel Pink, author of "New agent nation" and "A whole new mind".
3. Survival of the Sickest - blog about one fantastic idea, that humanity needed illnesses in the past to survive. Author of the blog (and the book) Dr. Sharon Moalem.
4. Too much imagination - blog of Ben Mattes, guy from gaming industry. Just a nice blog of interesting person.

Check the links section on the right side of the page. More changes to come.

Tags: site update, links, Dmitry Linkov

I have a recipe for HP, Sony, Toshiba etc on how to conquer Apple. Let’s take a closer look at Apple Mac’s:
1. They have a consistency in their philosophy and it’s implementation.
2. They got fantastic design (Sony have good design too, so it’s only a matter of resources)
3. They got their own operating system that rocks.

The first one is idea - that’s a great work, but it’s done for most of the companies. You just have to reveal it and use it. The second thing is design that is achievable, and that has to reflect your idea. The third point is difficult - because it will take you time and enormous forces to do an OS. But what you can do is take Linux or even Windows and rework it. Make it significantly better - make your own design, make a pack of working tools for all essential tasks that usually computers are used for. Be unique, listen to the customers - it’s achievable. This is the only way to conquer.

I adore Steve Jobs presentations because when he tells "it was difficult to make a movie on 30 minutes, so we dramatically improved the application" there is an idea that sparks in my mind

HOW DID HE KNEW ABOUT MY PROBLEMS?
He is just listening to the customers..

Here you can read good lessons from Trevor. Check it out!

Tags: leadership

Company that I work in does some fantastic practices. I’ll give you one example.

We are publishing house, and our final clients are readers. Where do readers get our books? Of course in the book-stores! So every month we go to the book store (the biggest one in Moscow) and work there for 2-3 hours as a book consultants. We talk to customers, recommend them books. But understand me correctly - of course we recommend our books a bit more (because we are sure of their quality), but also we recommend ALL good business books even if they are published by our competitors.
This process involves all the people from the company, even our directors take part in it.

And what do you do to stay close to you client?

I like Harry Potter books. In Moscow sales of English version of the last book started simultaneously with all the world (it was 3:00 am). I thought there will be enough books at the store so I was not in a hurry.

The next day we came to the store and began searching – without any success. After a few minutes We’ve met a sales guy (his name is Roman) I knew and we chatted for a few minutes. He said that at night it was a fantastic show and all the books were sold in three hours! It really disappointed us but we just continued our talk. After we were sure that there are no books left he suddenly disappeared for a moment and came back with the last example of the book giving it to us!!!

He kept this book until somebody cool and cute – and this was us! It’s hard to explain what we felt that moment. He sold us much more than a book.

I do like Esquire magazine. The material is very interesting and relaxing and the same time. What I don’t like - is the amount of advertising in there. I think that it occupies more than 50% of the pages. And I don’t think anyone likes it in such amount.

But there is a decision - dear Esquire - get rid of your office. Organize your business processes so that you will not need your office, work with freelancers and pay them good money. You will get even better magazine and will not be so dependent of the advertising. At "Mann, Ivanov & Ferber" we work without office - and the result is, we are one of the leaders.

Tags: work without office, no office, new structure, business process optimization, mann ivanov & ferber

I was already asked by a my international friends about my new job. I promised to write about it - and here I go. It’s 3 weeks since I am brand manager (editor) in publishing house Mann, Ivanov & Ferber. I’m proud to be manager of the "Stockholm School of Economics" book series, where Tom Peters, Jim Collins, Jesper Kunde, Jonas Riderrstrale and Kjell Nordstrem were published.

You will ask me a question - why I quit with free-agent? The answer is - I didn’t. Our publishing house isn’t a common type of company as you may think. First of all - we don’t have office. Being one of leading publishers in Russia - we don’t have office. As Michael Ivanov said to me "we are a pack of free agents, working together on one project".
We got a fantastic team - very productive, clever and simply good people. And finally books were always my passion - so working in this kind of publishing house is really great.

Tags: mann, ivanov, ferber, publishing, new job

1. Seth Godin recently wrote about a company that books tables in restaurants all over the USA for $1. Do the same in your country.
2. Guy Kawasaki used Logoworks for making a logo for his new site. Use a logoworks model to do the same company in your country.

And finally - make your business even better - only than it will be "fabulous".