Dmitry Linkov

My blog about my world

Just want to say Hello!

April 26th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

It’s been a while I’ve installed Google Dynamics on my site. Today, checking up the geo statistics I was amazed of the amount of countries!
Just want to say Hi to all my readers – and please don’t hesitate to write your comments and your thoughts! You can also contact me directly on any ideas or just to chat ;) .

Shouts go to:
USA (especially California – 9 visits "It’s been HUGE" ;) )
Saudi Arabia – nice to see you here!
Malaysia – hello guys)
Bulgaria – трябва до черпишь ;)
France – Bonjour cheres amis!
Germany – welcome guys!
And all other lonely readers from all over the world – Lithuania, Italy, Macedonia, Slovenia, England, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, Canada and anyone I missed – you are very very welcome!

Best regards, Dmitry.

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indexed style graph

April 24th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

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Fabulous wordpress theme

April 18th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

This concerns all Wordpress users and apple fans – iTheme.
Theme is made by N-design studio – the one who made current theme of this blog. Enjoy it!

P.S.: now Wordpress is looking like Mac – what’s next?

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MBWA

April 17th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Maybe it’s not pure MBWA (management by walking around) examples but I think that it is very close to it. I’m happy to announce – I’m currently working as an editor of non-fiction literature in publishing house. The publishing house is a part of Respublika book/lifestyle shops and here is the history how it worked out.

The Respublika chain opened a bit more than a year ago. One of their first movements was making a livejournal community (which is very popular in Russia). They made a cafe on the second floor of the shop and if you wanted to meet administrator of the blog – you could find him there. For about 4 months I was just visiting the shop, meeting new people, employees, administrator himself. That was cool, that was fun and interesting.

After certain period of time, I talked to the administrator guy (his name is Eugene and he was a PR person at that time) about the business shelves and proposed a project – reorganization of the categories and nomenclature. I get the project and I worked for about 2 months on it – visited the shop a few days a week, met all the personnel. This wasn’t simple but wasn’t very hard also. Today I’m finishing the presentation but that’s not the point.
Being always near, always around gives you great opportunities. After the start of project – I again talked with Eugene – and he described me the project of publishing house. I started to work on it too – organized a few meetings, prepared a list of preferable books. I got no money for this – but this was interesting and I feel that my work is not in vain. Finally was the Friday meeting, where I presented and described my part of work. The result is my position.

This example shows, that personal connections and your personal investments (time and work) will give you a feedback. Of course it depends a lot of the people you work with – I’m absolutely sure of Eugene and all the team. If you feel not comfortable with the people you work just drop it.

Another small example is about my friend. He was very fond of one club-cafe. He passed there almost every evening. He got known with the barmen, than administrator and all the personnel. A year passed. He was organizing his parties in the place, played as a DJ. What seemed to be just a hobby turned out an to be an opportunity. And even now, when the place is closed for reconstruction, his connections allowed him to be a DJ in a very popular Moscow cafe.

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Buzzmarketing

March 30th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Dear friends. Can you please help me? If anyone read Buzzmarketing – I need your opinion about the book. Do you like it? Did it gave something to you?

Links:
http://www.buzzmarketing.com/
Amazon – here

Support Kathy Sierra

March 29th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Fabulous blogger Kathy Sierra stops blogging because of some morons. The story is here.

Just want to say – Kathy all the best to you! I hope the police will take care of those who are after it.

Presentation Zen

March 20th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Presentation Zen blog is fabulous! Check out the fresh analysis of John Mackey presentation here

24 hours work

March 19th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Sign on the McDonalds express window: "Open 24 hours. Technical pause: from 4 till 6 am."
For me this "24 hours" looks illegal after that!

Differentiation and anchors: beer

March 14th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Differentiation is in all product categories. But there still are anchors on which other products are based on. Here is an example of beer:
1. Lager – the most popular and most widespread (I believe). Let’s say that Beck will be the anchor, but actually any beer can be the anchor in this category.
2. Dark beer – and here Guinness is the anchor with no doubt.
3. Non-filtered and non-filtered dark – here Czech beer like Franziskaner, Krusovice are anchors (in my mind).
4. With some flavor, but still beer – Hoegaarden is the anchor in this category.
5. More alcohol but still tasty and still beer – Belgian Leffe is the anchor here.
6. Light beer – Velvet.

Of course there are a lot of other types of beer. But if you take a consumer, and give him to try all of the beer that is on the market – these are the anchors categories he will think about while trying. Of course everybody has it’s own favorites, but in general there are 6 tastes, and six anchors for every taste. Some of the anchors are very clear to identify (like Guinness) some of them are not (like in lager category).
So what is the point of all this? The point is – 6 categories it’s so tiny! Dear producers, is this all you can imagine – 6 types of beer? Simple statistics shows that there are so many things that can be invented (beer cocktails, mixed beer, really alcoholic beer, beer without gas, foam beer, hot beer etc.), there are so many edges not yet discovered.
So keep working and keep creating new markets.

Types of best practices

March 12th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Here Tom Peters writes:

I love best practices.
I hate best practices.
I love them when they are available to learn from.
I hate them when they demand mimicry.

I want to proceed with best practices idea a bit more. From Tom’s citation there are two types of best practices:
1. Best practices can be something that has to be done by everybody – so they become like a "standard of quality". Like Wi-Fi in coffee shops. It’s simply has to be done in every coffee shops, and this is not the thing that distinguish you from you competitors. This is a standard.
2. Also best practices can be something, that makes certain company distinctive, something "purple". And if you will do the same for your company – it will be a sort of mimicry. This won’t work, because you are not the first one to use it and it looses the remarkability.

News from Moscow

February 28th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Some news on what is going on with me here).

On Friday I will have a French exam T.E.F. – so wish me good luck! It is a bit equal to IELTS, except that they deduct scores for wrong answers. It’s a bit weird, but I’ll live with that.

Every second day I visit Respublika book store and work on the business section shelves. This is a very interesting experience. While I’m there, I talk with visitors, see what they are looking for, try to understand their needs and catch their reaction. This communication with client brings me to the side of customer and that’s fantastic! I really enjoy working in this way, as a consultant. More to come ;) .

A few evenings a week I watch some tv series. My favorites, for the moment, are: Lost, Jericho and, of course, Heroes! The most fantastic is that you can download them from the web, with professional translation, before it appears on tv. Moreover, Jericho and Heroes are not shown in Russia at all! There are even several translation groups, who compete with each other. And again – you can download them absolutely for free. Internet is changing our interaction with media in a brutal way.

The last is the book I’m finishing right now. "The 7 habits of highly effective people" by Stephen Covey. This is a book number one for everybody. If you hadn’t a chance to read it – do it now. This will change a lot in your life.

Remarkability

February 21st, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Dear readers of my blog! I need comments, your comments, especially on this post.

One of my favorite books is Purple cow by Seth Godin. And I’m fully agree that in order to be successful, it’s necessary to be remarkable. This concerns everything and everyone. And after this, I’m thinking – what is it so remarkable in me? In how I do things? In how I write this blog?

I need your help to get the answer. Can you please write about yourselves? What do you think is so remarkable in how you write your blog? In how you do things?

p.s.: I will also be pleased if you post a link in your blog to this post.

Drunk people in plains

February 19th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

One of latest problems btw. It’s well known that many people drink alcohol before flights. But in Russian, with an average 4 times in a month, there are problems with very drunk and aggressive people on the airplanes. So some guys get drunk, begin acting like idiots and all the other tourists suffer from this idiotic behavior. Does this happens in your country?

Apple

February 14th, 2007. Published under General. 4 Comments.

Last days I’m working a lot. But there is one thing I couldn’t write about.
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We’ve bought this fantastic Macbook Pro! What can be said? Un-be-lie-va-ble! First hour we were sitting and laughing, making shots through webcam using some effects.
To be frank, the system is not perfect. It’s definitely much better than Windows, but still there are some programs I already installed and more to come. But this is ok.

One thing that really is strange for me – the sound of DVD-ROM. It’s kinda quirky slightly metallic sound that just must not to be produced by such a notebook!
Anyway – it’s completely new experience of the computers and thank you, Apple, for this!

What blogs can give you

February 8th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Reading a post of Mike here, I thought – and actually "what blogs really do?"
Mike writes:

Conversations happen everywhere, but blog conversations are unique. Their reach is worldwide. They last as long as the Internet exists. Their impact is unpredictably dynamic.

I’m fully agree with this, and finalizing this thought – a blog can create a lot of weak connections. You remember, Dan Pink wrote in his book, that weak connections make a lot more in your life than we use to think. For example – you more probably can get a job from a guy that you saw only once than from your best friend. If you are consistently write and comment others you are creating this weak connections and that’s why blogs are superb.