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FT: Lonely owner in need of a listening ear

Lonely owner in need of a listening ear

By Luke Johnson

Published: July 29 2008 19:25 | Last updated: July 29 2008 19:25

It is lonely being the boss of a company in crisis. There is nowhere to run from the problems. It can get pretty desolate up there on the bridge, trying to captain the ship through the storm. You have to make the difficult decisions. And you get the blame if it all goes wrong.

In public companies there are boards of directors, and probably a chairman to offer wise counsel to the chief executive. But in a private business there is rarely someone of substance to advise the entrepreneur running things.

Of course they chose to be the leader, to take command and call the shots. Nevertheless, from time to time even the broadest shoulders need an encouraging word, an intelligent listener, a trusted ally. “People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds they are eager to talk about,” Anton Chekhov wrote. Especially when the economy is unravelling like it is now.

‘Over the decades I have been lucky enough to be able to call on various partners and friends as sounding boards’

The modern management industry has coined phrases such as mentoring and coaching to describe what is really an ancient art. This recent terminology is partly a pretext for armies of consultants to charge executives hefty fees for a little bit of nurturing that they could probably obtain elsewhere for free. Because from time immemorial those in charge have sought a confidant to whom they can unburden the woes of high office and discuss hard choices. Someone honest and discreet who understands and offers a veteran’s perspective on matters of business – and life.

This is not therapy or some sort of clinical treatment. It is an occasional boost to one’s confidence and a word of caution from an experienced player who has done it all before. In my view it is closer to a philosophical discussion than management waffle.

The professionals would no doubt argue that “proper” mentoring involves a more experienced mentor and a protégé – any other relationship does not qualify. And they often say that training is needed to mentor. I think this is rubbish. Intelligent understanding is what is needed. I believe that the less structured such arrangements are the better they work. Each dynamic functions differently. What ultimately matters is that each side gets something out of it: guidance, learning, fulfilment of some kind.

My earliest mentor was probably John Stein, my university tutor. He stood by me when I should have been thrown out for failing my first-year exams, and was enthusiastic about me pursuing a commercial career once it was obvious medicine was not my vocation.

Later on, but early in my career as a business owner, I drew on the counsel of the retired founder of several successful companies. Over the decades I have been lucky enough to be able to call on various partners and friends as sounding boards and supporters, figures to whom I turned in moments of isolation. And now and then I have attempted to help aspiring entrepreneurs in their endeavours, always starting with my golden rule: no entrepreneur should offer their personal guarantee, that is, risk their house or being made bankrupt.

Those who are not the sole boss but work as a team may well get enough support from their partners and have no need of an outside mentor. But there may be issues that cannot be discussed with a direct colleague. Sometimes shareholders can be a useful source of advice. I suspect that the two periods when there is the most pressing need for external knowledge come during the start-up phase and if the company gets into problems.

Even if they need the odd bit of moral support, those who run their own show should never complain about the solitary nature of their calling. They decided to roll the dice and take a chance at controlling their own destiny, rather than be a cog in someone else’s machine.

Taking on such responsibilities is never easy – least of all at times like these. But all the research shows that in spite of the bleak moments and hard work, for certain individuals the freedom and vital engagement that come with self-employment are worth the heartache. In the words of Sir Philip Sydney, courtier to Elizabeth I: “They are never alone that are accompanied by noble thoughts.”

[email protected] The writer is chairman of Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Singapore works hard to attract foreign staff

Singapore works hard to attract foreign staff

By Sumathi Bala

Published: July 24 2008 01:10 | Last updated: July 24 2008 01:10

Singapore is a place in need of qualified workers.

This was underlined recently by the relaunch of Contact Singapore – an organisation that aims to be a one-stop shop for people from around the world who want to find a job there.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Taiwan’s tourist industry receives a boost - Jul-17

China’s finance houses vie to lure workers - Jul-10

Skills shortages still hamper Islamic finance - Jul-03

Vietnamese firms welcome financial refugees - Jun-26

South Korea cries out for legal expertise - Jun-19

India helps recharge batteries and open eyes - Jun-12

Contact Singapore is jointly run by the city-state’s economic development board and its ministry of manpower and the plan is to alert both potential workers and entrepreneurs keen to invest to local opportunities, in order to enlarge the existing talent pool.

Wong Kan Seng, deputy prime minister and minister for home affairs, told a conference that in today’s global economy, businesses moved to where manpower was readily available. Therefore, it was essential to boost Singapore’s status as an attractive place to live and work.

“Even as we enhance our efforts to reach out to and attract talent, we must ensure that Singapore is a great place to live. It is not just economics; it is about growing the Singaporean community and sharing in a common future,” he said.

“The new Contact Singapore, with its focus on talent attraction, is a critical node in the continuum of government efforts to this end.”

Its relaunch is one signal that recruitment and retention are a big worry, not just for the government, but for businesses as well.

A fifth of Singapore employers polled as part of a global survey are concerned about local employees leaving to work abroad, at a time when many vacancies need to be filled and qualified, able staff are in short supply.

Su-Yen Wong, managing director at Mercer (Asean), the business consultants, says it is imperative for the private sector to work with the government to attract workers, especially in the current climate where the battle has become heated.

“Talent, as a commodity, is in short-supply worldwide,” says Ms Su. “In Singapore, the government has taken many initiatives and has set the strategic direction. Implementation, however, has to come from the private sector to push things through.”

A recent survey by Mercer ranked Singapore as the city with the best quality of life in Asia this year, above Hong Kong and Tokyo. Globally, the city-state is ranked 32, climbing two places since last year.

The study considered a number of factors, including the political and social environment, medical and health systems, public services, transport and housing.

It underlines the competitive edge Singapore has over its closest rival, Hong Kong, in attracting employees from abroad.

“Hong Kong has always been a more transient place, with a wheeler-dealer kind of image. It attracts a younger talent pool, such as those working in the banking sector, who can become successful quickly,” notes Ms Su.

“But those who are family-oriented, with spouses and children, would prefer Singapore because it offers a better quality of life. When it comes to issues such as the environment, air quality and schools, Singapore comes out stronger.”

Nowadays, it is easier for people to move to most places in the world and industry experts say that compensation packages are becoming more similar in all continents. This means that financial incentives are no longer enough; people are looking at other factors before they move abroad.

While Singapore may be the most livable city in Asia, it still faces the challenge of becoming a “global” city. Currently, it is a tough balancing act for the government to make policy decisions favourable to job-seekers from abroad that are also palatable to locals.

A wide-ranging poll carried out last year revealed that a majority of Singaporeans were uneasy about the government’s policy of rolling out the red carpet for foreigners.

Nearly nine out of 10 feared losing their jobs to overseas professionals and therefore opposed efforts to attract them.

The results shone a light on low-level worries among Singaporean workers about foreigners living and working in their midst and competing for their rice bowls.

More telling was the negative perception Singaporeans had of their government’s handling of the issue.

The survey highlighted that nearly 43 per cent believed the government was more concerned about foreign workers than its own people and doubted whether the open door policy will help create new jobs and opportunities.

Most seem to think that foreign professionals enjoy all the privileges of living in Singapore, but shoulder none of the responsibilities.

Industry observers say that problems in attracting and holding on to employees will linger until this attitude changes.

This will need to happen, particularly if Singapore wants to become more cosmopolitan.

“A truly global city has to have a global mindset. If you go to New York or London, which are truly cosmopolitan cities, the issue of foreign talent doesn’t even arise,” says Ms Su.

“For Singapore to make the transition successfully some things have to happen.

“The ‘us and them’ mindset won’t change overnight, but it will in time.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

IHT: At Berea College, 'the best education money can't buy,' sets an example

At Berea College, in Kentucky, the Ecovillage houses one-parent families. Josh Noah, 21, a senior Appalachian studies major from Mount Airy, North Carolina, fertilizing the Ecovillage's vegetable beds.

At Berea College, 'the best education money can't buy,' sets an example

 

Published: July 21, 2008

 

BEREA, Kentucky: Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and "poor white mountaineers," accepts applicants only from low-income families, and it charges no tuition.

"You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt-free," said Joseph Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. "We call it the best education money can't buy."

Actually, what buys that education is Berea's $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation's wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, mixed-gender dormitories, hot tubs or indoor mountain-climbing walls. Instead, it has a no-frills budget, with food from the college farm, handmade furniture from the college crafts workshops and a 10-hour-a-week campus job for every student.

Berea's approach provides an unusual perspective on the growing debate over whether the wealthiest universities are doing enough for the public good to warrant their tax exemptions or are simply hoarding money to serve an elite few. As many elite universities scramble to recruit more low-income students, Berea's no-tuition model has attracted increasing attention.

"Asking whether that's where our values lead us is a powerful way to consider what our values are," said Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, who considered the possibility of using Amherst's $1 million-per-student endowment to offer free tuition but concluded that it would make no sense, given Amherst's more affluent student body and given that the college already subsidizes about half the cost of each student's education.

"We're not Berea, much as we respect them," Marx said, adding there would be no social justification for giving free tuition to students from wealthy families.

Although the market drop this year is taking its toll, the growth in university endowments in recent years has been spectacular. Harvard's $35 billion endowment, Yale's $23 billion, Stanford's $17 billion and Princeton's $16 billion put them among the world's richest institutions.

Such endowments have helped make higher education one of the nation's crown jewels. As the president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, said in her spring commencement speech this year, endowments at Harvard and other research universities help fuel scientific advances as government support is eroding and help drive economic growth and expansion in difficult economic times.

Although most universities have only modest endowments, the wealth of the richest has made them increasingly vulnerable to criticism from parents upset about rising tuition costs, lawmakers pushing them to spend more of their money and policy experts arguing that they should be helping more needy students.

"How much do you need to save for future generations, and at what point are you gouging today's generation?" said Lynne Munson, of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington.

In January, the Senate Finance Committee requested detailed endowment and spending data from 136 colleges and universities with endowments of at least $500 million, with a possible eye to forcing them to spend at least 5 percent of their assets each year, as foundations are required to do. Large, tax-free endowments "should mean affordable education for more students, not just a security blanket for colleges," said Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is reviewing the data.

Officials in Massachusetts are studying a proposal for a 2.5 percent tax on the part of university endowments greater than $1 billion - a threshold exceeded by nine of the state's universities.

"The endowments have grown to such an astonishing extent that people are asking, if the wealth and the value of the tax exemption are increasing, is the public benefit increasing, as well?" said Evelyn Brody, a tax professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

This year, Brody said, the debate has entered new territory.

Traditionally, discussion about endowments has focused on the balance between using the money for the current generation versus saving it for the benefit of future generations.

"Endowment spending has usually been a 'when' question, about when the money would be used for a charitable purpose," she said. "But now, it's also being viewed as a 'what' question. What is the money for? And I think that's new."

The mounting scrutiny by lawmakers has already prompted some action. Dozens of wealthy colleges have increased their aid to low- and middle-income students, many substituting grants for loans. Many have announced plans to expand their student bodies, and some are doing broader outreach and working with nearby primary and secondary schools to improve academic preparation.

Nonetheless, according to 2002 data, only 1 in 10 of the students at the nation's most selective institutions come from the bottom 40 percent of the income scale. And the proportion of low-income undergraduates at the nation's wealthiest colleges has been declining, as measured by the percentage receiving U.S. government Pell Grants, for families with incomes less than about $40,000. At most top colleges, only 8 to 15 percent of students receive Pell grants.

At Berea, more than three-quarters of the students receive Pell grants.

Over all, Berea's statistics speak worlds about the demand for affordable higher education; this year, the college accepted only 22 percent of its applicants. Among those accepted, 85 percent attended Berea, a yield higher than Harvard's.

Berea can be a haven for the lower-income students at high schools where expensive clothes and fancy homes demarcate the social territory.

"When I first heard about Berea, I didn't think I wanted to come here," said Candice Roots, who will be a junior this autumn. "But I visited in my senior year, and as soon as I got here, I knew this was what I wanted. Everybody was like me. You don't have to have all this money to fit in."

With its hilly campus, Georgian president's mansion and old brick buildings, Berea looks much like any elite New England college. But its operating budget is less than half that of Amherst, which has a $1.7 billion endowment and about 100 more students. Faculty pay is much lower, and the student-faculty ratio higher. With no rich parents and no legacy admission slots, fund-raising is far more difficult at Berea.

Lacking tuition, Berea receives 80 percent of its $43 million education and general budget, and about two-thirds of its $55 million operating budget, from the endowment income.

Families taking a student to a campus interview may stay, free, in a four-bedroom house, complete with flat-screen television and handmade sleigh bed. Students who are single parents have their own residences.

To satisfy the work requirement, some students have jobs in the academic departments, administrative offices and labs, while others are assigned to the college farm, the workshops that make and sell traditional mountain crafts (its handmade brooms are especially well-known) or the college-owned hotel, which anchors the town square.

Marx, in homage, keeps a Berea broom in his Amherst office.

IHT: A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul

At Hongik Sootbul Kalbi, a barbecue restaurant near Hongik University.

A quest into the gustatory heart of Seoul

 

Published: July 18, 2008

 

SEOUL: Sometime after midnight on a Sunday, the streets of the Myeongdong neighborhood in Seoul were quiet and cold. The young shoppers who flit from Adidas to Tommy Hilfiger to Club Monaco had gone home to study for December exams, and restaurant workers were setting barrels full of leftovers onto the curb to be picked up by early-morning garbage trucks. The city was going to sleep.

But over near the subway station, in a little orange tent, or pojangmacha, a good night's rest was on no one's mind, least of all mine. Inside, a semipermanent kitchen was working overtime, cranking out hearty, salty, spicy dishes to warm the air and fill the bellies of the drinkers around plastic tables.

On every table stood bottles, tall ones for beer and petite emerald ones for soju, the Korean spirit made from sweet potatoes.

Suddenly, from one corner of the tent came a crash! Bodies and bottles tumbled to the ground, and for a moment all conversation halted. One fallen tippler pulled himself back onto his stool, and a grim-faced waitress rushed over to wipe the blood from his head and bandage the wound. Then it was back to normal. I sipped my beer and plunged my spoon into a bowl of kimchi jigae, a rich stew of pork, tofu and kimchi, the pickled cabbage that is Korea's national dish. I had been in Seoul 30 minutes, with plans to eat my way through the city, and already, I felt, I was getting to the heart of things.

In the last two years, South Korea has spawned one major trend overseas - Pinkberry, Red Mango and other cheery frozen yogurt parlors - and at least one minor one: the fried chicken joint Bon Chon Chicken, which arrived in Manhattan last year to much acclaim. Meanwhile, Momofuku's David Chang has rocketed to the top of best-chef lists, thanks in part to his clever reinterpretation of traditional Korean dishes and ingredients.

Understand where these trends were coming from - and, I hoped, to discover the next ones - I spent a week eating the weird and the wild, the tasty and the comforting, and, more than once, the sublime. Oh, I also ate lots and lots of kimchi.

(If you don't like kimchi, you might as well stop here. Everything comes with kimchi: spicy or mild, salty or sour, crisp or soft, with mineral notes or the briny aroma of dried shrimp. The variations are endless, but all have one thing in common: ubiquity.)

Let's begin with the familiar: barbecue. There is perhaps no food more accessible, in any culture, than meat grilled over an open flame, and in Seoul you can't walk down a street, whether in the über-trendy Apgujeong neighborhood or a grayer district like Dongdaemun, without inhaling the invigorating fumes of charcoal fires.

When four friends and I arrived at Hongik Sootbul Kalbi, a barbecue spot in the frantic dining-and-nightlife zone near Hongik University ("Meat Street," one friend called it), the first thing our waitress did was hand over a huge garbage bag - for our coats, to protect them from the smoke.

And boy was there smoke! It wafted up from dozens of small, round metal barbecue tables, turning the air so opaque I could barely make out the enormous wall mural featuring caricatures of Korean celebrities - and Michael Jackson. We clustered around a table, and soon the house specialty arrived: chunks of well-marbled pork neck. The meat came pargrilled, to cook faster, and my friends spread kimchi around the base of the grill, where it slowly fried in the rendered pork fat.

Soon we were wrapping pork chunks in red-leaf lettuce leaves - along with spicy bean paste, shaved scallions and kkaennip, an anise-flavored leaf, similar to Japanese shiso, that I found addictive.

Sariwon, a calm, family-friendly restaurant, employs special extractors on its grills to keep the air perfectly clear. And yet high technology does not trump high taste: Sariwon's kalbi, or beef short ribs, were the most tender and succulent I ate in Seoul. Better yet, Sariwon offered a lengthy wine list that mixed New and Old World bottles, and at reasonable prices.

The best place for serious pairings of food and wine might be the Gaon, the city's most refined Korean restaurant.

The menu consisted of Korean classics, gussied up with premium ingredients and presented on stunning custom ceramics. The Gaon's kimchi jigae put the pojangmacha version to shame. The flavor was so pure and intense, the crimson broth so creamy, it reminded me of tomato soup (albeit one whose depths hid rich nuggets of pig's feet).

For revolutionary food, one must hit the streets. At a stand in busy Myeongdong, I tried the tornado potato, a single spud carved into a helix of starch, then skewered, deep-fried and sprinkled with salt and powdered cheese - an Iron Chef-worthy innovation.

Just down the road was Balena, a storefront that whips up spaghetti with spicy chicken and steak-studded xpenne, and crams them into ice cream cones, to be eaten on the run with a fork.

The strangest thing I ate, however, was far from newfangled. It was at Noryangjin, a cavernous marketplace that stocks stingrays, squids, oysters, snails, crabs and a host of scaly, slimy organisms that I had no name for.

But at Jinnam, one of several restaurants on the market's second floor, I knew the name of my lunch: sannakji. Commonly referred to as live octopus, sannakji isn't really alive, but the raw tentacles writhing on the platter might lead you to think otherwise. Rather, it's just some lingering electrochemical reaction that causes those thin strands to curl, stretch and attach their suction cups to your lips and gums as you try to ingest them. Rumor has it that people occasionally choke to death on sannakji, but a quick dip in sesame oil keeps the suckers from adhering too tightly.

The most surprising thing about sannakji? It tasted good - clean and meaty - and once I'd gotten over the discombobulation that comes from eating something that most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was chopsticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octo-popcorn.

More commonly, I ate at restaurants like New Andong Zzimdak, which serves a single dish: boneless chicken pieces sautéed at your table with mung-bean noodles, vegetables, and gochujang, a red-pepper paste that is to Korean cuisine what butter is to French. This is easy food, slightly spicy, with an unexpected sweetness from caramelized gochujang. Like most Korean food, it comes in massive quantities and is meant to be eaten by large groups of friends (mine included Joe McPherson, who blogs about food at ZenKimchi.com), who pour one another beer and soju and snip the long noodles with scissors.

Promiscuous eaters should wander around Kwangchang Market. Kimchi stalls offer samples of myriad chili-flecked varieties, including one of kkaennip, the shiso-like leaf that was part of almost every meal, wrapped around grilled meat or embedded in silver-dollar-size pajun.

For me, herbaceous, anise-y kkaennip came to symbolize authentic Korean flavor, and when I'd returned to New York, I asked for some at Kunjip, my favorite restaurant in Koreatown. The waitress looked at me oddly, then shook her head. Then she smiled and ran to the kitchen, returning with a "special kimchi" of crisp, juicy baby daikon.

"Kkaennip" was a shibboleth, a password into the world of heretofore unknown herbs and nameless crustaceans, of kimchi fried in pork fat, of hours-long meals with newfound friends - of all the gustatory pleasures of Seoul.

 

Grilled sirloin at the Gaon, one of the the city's most refined restaurants.

For revolutionary food, one must hit the streets. Tornado potatoes, skewered and deep-fried, are sold by vendors along the streets of the Myeongdong district.

A french-fry encrusted hot dog.

A kimchi stall at Kwangchang Market.

 

The restaurant New Andong Zzimdak serves a single dish: boneless chicken pieces sautéed at your table with mung-bean noodles, vegetables, and gochujang, a red-pepper paste that is to Korean cuisine what butter is to French.

 

Diners enjoy soju, the Korean spirit made from sweet potatoes.

 

Sticks of fish cake, called odeng, boiled in broth.

 

 Roasted chestnuts, left, and ginkgo nuts.

 

The storefront Balena in the busy Myeongdong district whips up spaghetti with spicy chicken and steak-studded penne, then crams them into ice cream cones.

 

 

 

FT: Looser rules on cuddly extra benefits

Looser rules on cuddly extra benefits

By Rhymer Rigby

Published: July 21 2008 22:10 | Last updated: July 21 2008 22:10

Piscines Ideales, Europe’s biggest swimming pool builder, wins plenty of awards as a good place to work. And for employees who get married it is even better – they get a month’s extra salary, loans to start their new life together and the company even puts the chief executive’s and chairman’s cars at their disposal for the wedding.

In addition, the patter of little feet attracts a bonus of €500 per child and, perhaps mindful of Europe’s tumbling birth rate, the company doubles this from the third child onwards. Chief executive Stelios Stavridis says the scheme comes from an “intense desire” to promote work-life balance.

Innocent Drinks, the London-based smoothie maker, is also keen to salute milestones outside the office. “We give people who get married or enter into civil partnerships an extra five days’ holiday,” says Karen Callaghan, head of people. “The thinking behind it is that getting married is a pretty big deal and that it is nice to be able to take a longer honeymoon or holiday.”

Ms Callaghan adds that Innocent also marks everyone’s birthday with something called the “circle of death”: “An e-mail goes round, a member of your team has to bake you a cake and you have to tell a story.”

Recognition of personal milestones is not confined to smaller businesses. Goldman Sachs gives employees who get hitched up an extra paid week off; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national broadcaster, also gives employees an extra week when they get married – and one day off for divorce proceedings in court should the need arise. And at UK-based Bayford Oil, staff who meet their sales targets can take their birthday off.

However, warm and cuddly as these initiatives to recognise personal milestones sound, they are becoming pretty rare.

“In my experience not many businesses do this sort of thing”, says Julie Vile, a flexible-benefits consultant at human resources consultancy Watson Wyatt. “Long service awards are still quite normal but the idea that you give people time off because they have got married or had a child was probably much more common in the past.”

It has, she explains, “a slightly paternalistic feel about it”. More usual, she says, is to allow people flexible benefits and time off around “life events”.

“So you might allow someone a day off to move house or when they get married or for whatever reason. Or you might give them study leave. But linking it to events such as marriage is likely to be rarer.”

Also, as Ms Vile notes, although the initiatives sound great, employees might be better off with a different overall package. Innocent used to give out baby bonuses but Ms Callaghan says this is changing as the company enhances its overall maternity and paternity packages; the end result, she says, will be better for staff.

Similarly MBNA, the credit card operator, used to give employees time off when they got married. This stopped when the company was bought by Bank of America in 2006. The overall package “is [now] much more comprehensive,” it says.

Tying fewer benefits to family events could have other advantages too. Although employers invariably cover themselves legally by ensuring that marriages and civil partnerships get equal time and that if they pay baby bonuses, they do something similar for those adopting, they may nonetheless incur the annoyance of those who have no interest in either committing to each other in law or raising a family.

Singles may complain about “partnerism” in the workplace, especially when it comes to social events.

Elsewhere in the world, organisations might look at this quibbling over positive incentivisation with bemusement: Iranian newspapers recently reported that the state-owned petrochemical and gas business, the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company, issued a directive telling its employees to get married or get out. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single,” the directive was quoted in the Etemad newspaper as saying.

“As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this duty.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Calvin and Hobbes: Ignorance Is Bliss

FT: Presentation skills on the slide

Presentation skills on the slide

By Stefan Stern

Published: July 21 2008 22:19 | Last updated: July 21 2008 22:19

Today I am going to tell you about...This, the experts tell me, is the worst possible way to begin a presentation. It seems counterintuitive, I know, but apparently when we get up to speak we shouldn’t be trying to tell anyone anything. Oh no. Rookie mistake. The goal here should be shared understanding: a conversation not a speech, a message (or messages) conveyed, received and taken away.

Simple, isn’t it? But not for the thousands of executives who step up to the lectern of fear every day to launch the next dire, life-sapping, career-jeopardising presentation.

Why are so many of us so bad at doing these presentations? According to James Caplin, author of the newly published primer I Hate Presentations – I think we get his message – too many presenters are stuck in the school-essay mindset of imparting information. This involves telling a long story about the past (“how we got here”), the present (“where we are now”) and the future (“where we are going”). The whole thing is dull and lifeless. It patronises and bores the audience.

The school-essay presentation is always packed with too much data, in the hope that colleagues will see that the presenter has done lots of hard work and knows what he is talking about. Slide after deadly slide pops up on the screen, containing too many words and too many bullet points – which are, in any case, too hard to read.

The last two presentations I actually enjoyed and remember anything about contained very few slides. And the ones they did use had hardly any words on them. One speaker offered only pictures and no text. This allowed her to create and sustain the illusion of spontaneity.

This is rather like what Apple’s Steve Jobs – perhaps the business world’s greatest presenter – does. He rehearses hard for many hours, and ends up knowing exactly what he is going to say and when. And yet the ultimate aim of his presentations is to make one very simple point: about the amazing functionality of his iPhone, or the slimness of his new laptop.

His slides and visual prompts may be minimalist, but he achieves the maximum possible impact.

OK, so it may be a bit easier to command people’s attention when unveiling the latest bit of must-have Apple kit than, say, explaining to the board why you need to relocate a manufacturing site, but the challenge is the same. How can you take people with you and get your message across? (Without resorting to the crude methods of George Bush senior, who once declared in the middle of a campaign speech: “Message – I care!”)

We need, Mr Caplin says, to understand the difference between being interesting to an audience and being interested in them. “If you approach [your presentation] from the point of view of being interesting to the audience, you’ll become little more than someone doing an act. If, however, your audience senses that you are interested in them, you are on your way to establishing a bond between you.”

The greatest speaker I have ever seen is Bill Clinton. At an event in London a couple of years ago I watched him conduct an intimate conversation with a roomful of about 1,000 very clever and rather self-important people. (Mr Caplin sees presentations as belonging to a different category from public speaking, but the lessons are relevant all the same.)

President Clinton was humble, ever so ’umble, as he began his speech. He spoke slowly, as if struggling to summon up the energy to make his case. He took us through his argument – about the troubling state of the world and what we needed to do about it – steadily. And he flattered us, ending on a cheerful, upbeat note, challenging the audience to be optimistic about the future.

The extraordinary thing was that the speech felt like a dialogue.

It was as though he had been able to tune in to my thoughts. The rest of the audience seemed to have experienced something similar. He was interested in us, not trying to be interesting to us. His talk was about us, not him.

Clinton, Jobs... you’re on next. No pressure. Anyway, nerves are good. They show that you are taking your audience seriously.

How to start? Jokes – funny ones – can work. But make sure you try them out on a range of people first. Perhaps you could refer to a topical event to help get you going. Mr Caplin makes a sensible, journalistic point. “With practice, almost any bit of news can be used as a hook to introduce almost any presentation.”

But don’t use up all your nervous energy worrying about the beginning. The ending matters at least as much. So start with the end in mind. “What do you want people to think, feel or do as a result of all this?” asks Andrew Mallett of the consultancy Present Action.

A strong ending will stay with people and may deter stupid questions. Make sure to save something special to finish with.

And so, my fellow FT readers: ask not what your presentation can do for you, ask how your business will benefit from your presentation.

[email protected]

Read and post comments online at www.ft.com/stern

For the latest thinking on management and strategy, go to: www.ft.com/managementblog

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jan/05/newmedia.media1

Behind the magic curtain

Next week Steve Jobs of Apple will grab media attention with another simple-looking stage show. Mike Evangelist tells the insider secrets of his gruelling preparation

• Mike Evangelist
• The Guardian,
• Thursday January 5, 2006
• Article history

If the chief executive of Cadbury-Schweppes speaks at a conference, or Nike's boss introduces a new kind of trainer, you might expect to see it covered in specialist magazines, then quickly forgotten. But on Tuesday a chief executive will stand up and announce something, and within minutes it will be scrutinised across the web and on stockbrokers' computers. It will be in newspapers. They'll talk about it for months.

That chief executive is Steve Jobs, and I know why that speech makes an impact. To a casual observer it is just a guy in a black shirt and jeans talking about some new technology products. But it is in fact an incredibly complex and sophisticated blend of sales pitch, product demonstration and corporate cheerleading, with a dash of religious revival thrown in for good measure. It represents weeks of work, precise orchestration and intense pressure for the scores of people who collectively make up the "man behind the curtain". I know, because I've been there, first as part of the preparation team and later on stage with Steve.

Objectively, Apple Computer is a mid-sized company with a tiny share of its primary market. Apple Macintoshes are only rarely seen in corporate environments, and most software companies don't even offer Apple-compatible versions of their products. To put it another way, Apple is just bit larger than Cadbury-Schweppes and about the same size as Nike or Marks and Spencer in terms of annual sales.

Such comparisons come up short in trying to describe Apple's place in the world of business, because they leave out a key factor: Steve Jobs. That's something only one other company - the filmmaker Pixar - can claim. He's the closest thing to a rock star you will find in the world of business.

When Apple announces something new, people pay attention. This is due, in large measure, to Steve and the way he delivers Apple's messages. His preferred method of making major product announcements is at one of his public presentations, or "keynotes" as they are called inside the company.

Steve starts his preparation for a keynote weeks in advance, reviewing all the products and technologies he might include. Although development and release schedules are set far in advance, he still has to satisfy himself that the chosen products are keynote-ready. For software, this can be hard to decide: the engineering work is usually still underway, so he will make a preliminary determination based on seeing unfinished software. More than once this has caused some tense moments in rehearsal when programs haven't behaved.

Baptism of fire

My first experience of this preparation came in the runup to the Macworld Expo keynote of January 2001, which was to include new Macs able to burn DVDs - then an amazing capability. Steve wanted to show off the new software, iDVD, that could do it. As I was the product manager for Apple's DVD software, I had to organise everything that Steve would need.

The team and I spent hundreds of hours preparing for a segment that lasted about five minutes. Several weeks earlier Steve summoned me to demo the software, and highlight what I thought were its most interesting aspects. Of course he already knew most of this, but the process was still useful. He used the key points from these demos to mould his overall presentation and decide how much time each product would get.

Next, my team was given the task of locating movies, photos and music to be used when he created his sample DVD on stage. Most companies would just choose some clip art, or hire a video producer to make some simulated "home movies". Steve wanted material that looked great, yet was possible for an average person to achieve. So we called on everyone we knew at Apple to submit their best home movies and snapshots. Before long we had an amazing collection of fun, cool and heartwarming videos and photos. My team picked the best and confidently presented them to Steve. True to his reputation as a perfectionist, he hated most of them. We repeated that process several times. At the time I thought he was being unreasonable; but I had to admit that the material we ended up with was much better than what we had begun with.

Then came the process of the demo itself: what precise steps Steve should follow, whether the program should already be running on the computer, what sample movies to play, everything.

With the demo set, my role was to stand by in case of technical problems with the software, or if Steve wanted to change anything. This gave me the opportunity to observe what was going on around me. The big keynotes require a very large crew with separate teams for each major task. One prepares the room to seat several thousand people. Another group builds the stage with its motorised pedestals, risers, trap doors, and so forth. A third manages the stage lighting, audio and effects.

Yet another sets up and calibrates the state-of-the-art projection systems (complete with redundant backup systems), and a huge remote video truck parked outside has its own crew handling video feeds for the webcasts and playback of any video needed during the show. Then there are the people who set up all the computers used in the keynote, each with at least one backup that can be instantly brought online with the flick of a switch.

And of course there's the secrecy. The impact of Steve's presentations depends on surprise; so once the rehearsals begin, security people help keep the curious out and the secrets secret. It was fascinating to watch. No detail was overlooked: for example, while rehearsing the iDVD demo, Steve found that the DVD player's remote control didn't work from where he wanted to stand on the stage. The crew had to make a special repeater system to make it work.

So when Steve steps out on that stage, with its stark black-on-black colour scheme, and does his apparently simple demos, he brings the combined energy and talent of all those people and many more back in Cupertino, California, and channels it to the audience. It makes me think of a magnifying glass used to focus the power of the sun on one small spot until it bursts into flames.

Fast forward a year; much to my surprise I was asked to do a demo in the keynote. And then I really learned about demos. In mid-2001 I had been promoted to manage both the DVD products and Apple's professional video-editing software, Final Cut Pro, a new version of which was to be released in early 2002.

But Steve never does the demos of the pro software; he always relies on someone on the product team more familiar with its features and operation. The job fell to me. It turned out to be my lowest and highest point at Apple.

Steve usually rehearses on the two days before a keynote. On the first day he works on the segments he feels need the most attention. The product managers and engineering managers for each new product are in the room, waiting for their turn. This group also forms Steve's impromptu test audience: he'll often ask for their feedback. He spends a lot of time on his slides, personally writing and designing much of the content, with a little help from Apple's design team.

As each segment of the show is refined, Steve and his producer edit the slides live on a PowerBook so the revised slides can be used immediately. That day Steve was very methodical, going through every aspect of the show. He would test variations of content and flow, looking for the combinations with the most impact. When introducing a major new product, he also liked to show the TV commercial Apple would be using to promote it. Often these had been finished just minutes before rehearsals; Steve would sometimes preview alternate versions to gauge the team's reaction before deciding which to use.

Crunch time

On the day before showtime, things get much more structured, with at least one and sometimes two complete dress rehearsals. Any non-Apple presenters in the keynote take part on the second day (although they cannot be in the room while the secret parts - the unveiling of hot ticket hardware such as a new iPod or laptop - are being rehearsed.) Throughout it all Steve is extremely focused. While we were in that room, all his energy was directed at making this keynote the perfect embodiment of Apple's messages. Steve doesn't give up much of his personality even in rehearsals. He is strictly business, most of the time.

I had worked on my five-minute Final Cut Pro demo for weeks, selecting just the right sample material and honing (I thought) my delivery to a fine edge. My boss and his boss were there for moral support. Steve, as was his custom, sat in the audience. I was very nervous, and having Steve's laser-like attention concentrated on me didn't help. About a minute into the demo, Steve stopped me, saying impatiently, "you gotta get this together or we're going to have to pull this demo from the keynote."

I was devastated. I didn't even know how to respond, or if I should respond. Mercifully my boss and Phil Schiller (Apple's head of marketing, and a frequent keynote presenter) came to my rescue. Over the next few hours they worked with me to polish my demo. More importantly, Phil gave me some great advice: "Those 6,000 Mac fans out there in the hall aren't against you, they're the best friends you can have." The next day at final rehearsal, Steve watched me again. This time he gave it his nod of approval. It felt great; but the real work was yet to be done.

Next morning, as I sat in the front row waiting for my turn on the stage, the full weight of the event hit me. There were several thousand people in the room, and approximately 50,000 watching the webcast. It was the very definition of pressure. Steve started the segment that preceded mine, and my heart started pounding. I felt those hundred thousand eyes all about to be focused on me and feared I would crumble. I had done a bit of public speaking before, but nothing like this.

The assistant producer came over to me to guide me to the stairs at the side of the stage. I stood in the dark, watching Steve put up the slide that introduced me. Just then a wonderful thought hit me; in five minutes the whole thing would be over. If I could only keep going for five minutes I would be fine. I bounced up the stairs and on to the stage, and everything was suddenly OK. The demo worked perfectly, the audience seemed to love the product, and their applause was an incredible adrenaline rush.

When it was over I received many compliments on how well it went, including the one I prize the most, from Steve himself.

In the following months I was on stage for two more keynotes, and each time was incredibly grateful for the apparently harsh treatment Steve had dished out the first time. He forced me to work harder, and in the end I did a much better job than I would have otherwise. I believe it is one of the most important aspects of Steve Jobs's impact on Apple: he has little or no patience for anything but excellence from himself or others.

· Mike Evangelist left Apple in 2002 and is writing a book about his time there, provisionally called Jobs I've Known, live on his site, www.writersblocklive.com

· If you'd like to comment on any aspect of Technology Guardian, send your emails to [email protected]

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http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2006/sb20060406_865110.htm

APRIL 6, 2006

Presentations

By Carmine Gallo

How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs

The Apple CEO is well known for his electrifying presentations. Here are five tips to make your next talk just as mesmerizing -- or close

Apple Computer (AAPL), now celebrating 30 years of innovation, has revolutionized the way we use computers and listen to music. Now its charismatic co-founder, Steve Jobs, has transformed the corporate pitch. Anyone who has watched a Jobs keynote will tell you he is one of the most extraordinary speakers in Corporate America. Jobs learned a long time ago that a leader must be a company evangelist and brand spokesperson.

As a communications coach and former business journalist, I have spent plenty of time with Apple executives and have watched my share of Jobs' presentations. He is magnificent. But whether you are pitching a hot gizmo, such as the iPod, or a hot sub sandwich, a story is a story and your goal is to win customers. Here are Jobs' five keys to a dazzling presentation.

Sell the Benefit
Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience. Instead of focusing on mind-numbing statistics, as most technologists tend to do, Jobs sells the benefit. For example, when introducing a 30 GB iPod, he clearly explains what it means to the consumer -- users can carry 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or up to 75 hours of video. In January when Jobs introduced the first Intel (INTC)-based Mac notebook he began by saying, "What does this mean?"

He went on to explain the notebook had two processors, making the new product four to five times faster than the Powerbook G4, a "screamer" as he called it. He said it was Apple's thinnest notebook and comes packed with "amazing" new features like a brighter wide-screen display and a built-in camera for video conferencing. It's not about the technology, but what the technology can do for you.

Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More
Jobs takes nothing for granted during product launches. He reviews and rehearses his material. According to a Business Week article on February 6, 2006, "Jobs unveils Apple's latest products as if he were a particularly hip and plugged-in friend showing off inventions in your living room. Truth is, the sense of informality comes only after grueling hours of practice." The article goes on to say that it's not unusual for Jobs to prepare for four hours as he reviews every slide and demonstration (see BW, 2/6/06, "Steve Jobs' Magic Kingdom").

Keep It Visual
Speaking of slides, there are very few bullet points in a Jobs presentation. Each slide is highly visual. If he's discussing the new chip inside a computer, a slide in the background will show a colorful image of the chip itself alongside the product. That's it. Simple and visual.

Apple's presentations are not created on PowerPoint, as the vast majority of presentations are. But PowerPoint slides can be made visual as well. It's a matter of thinking about the content visually instead of falling into the habit of creating slide after slide with headlines and bullet points. I once worked with the vice-president of a public company who planned to show more than 80 data-heavy slides in a 40-minute presentation. Imagine how quickly his audience would have tuned out.

After I showed him just how visual his message could be, he went back to the drawing board, dismantled his existing presentation, and reduced it to about 10 image-rich slides. The next day a newspaper reporter wrote that my client had "wowed" analysts and investors. The stock rose 17% in the days that followed. Take a cue from Jobs and help your listeners visualize the message.

Exude Passion, Energy, and Enthusiasm
Jobs has an infectious enthusiasm. When launching the video iPod, Jobs said, "It's the best music player we've made," "It has a gorgeous screen," "The color is fantastic," and "The video quality is amazing."

The first time I watch my clients present, I often have to stop them to ask if they are sincerely passionate about their message. They usually assure me they are, but they tend to lose energy and enthusiasm when they fall into "presentation mode." Jobs carries his enthusiasm into his presentations.

There is no better example of Jobs' passion than the famous story of how he convinced John Sculley to lead Apple in the mid '80s by asking him, "Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world?" The former Pepsi executive chose the latter and, although the pairing ultimately failed to work out, it reflects Jobs' sense of mission -- a mission that he conveyed consistently in the early years of Apple and continues to today.

"And One More Thing..."
At the end of each presentation Jobs adds to the drama by saying, "and one more thing." He then adds a new product, new feature, or sometimes introduces a band. He approaches each presentation as an event, a production with a strong opening, product demonstrations in the middle, a strong conclusion, and an encore -- that "one more thing!"

It's Your Turn
Thank you for supporting these columns and passing them along to your colleagues. It's very gratifying to hear from many of you. If you have ideas for future columns or suggestions for profiles of great business leaders, please contact me directly at [email protected]. I would enjoy hearing from you.

Gallo is a Pleasanton (Calif.)-based corporate presentation coach and former Emmy-award winning TV journalist. He's the author of the new book, 10 Simple Secrets of the World's Greatest Business Communicators. Visit him online at www.carminegallo.com

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Life after death powerpoint

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp8dugDbf4w

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See ST: THE POST-65ERS - When a little style can add substance

http://chutzpah.typepad.com/slow_movement/2008/07/st-the-post-65ers---when-a-little-style-can-add-substance.html

Economist: Piracy

Piracy

Look for the silver lining

Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Piracy is a bad thing. But sometimes companies can turn it to their advantage

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

“MERCHANT and pirate were for a long period one and the same person,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. “Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.” Companies, of course, would strongly disagree with this suggestion. Piracy is generally bad for business. It can undermine sales of legitimate products, deprive a company of its valuable intellectual property and tarnish its brand. Commercial piracy may not be as horrific as the seaborne version off the Horn of Africa (see article). But stealing other people’s R&D, artistic endeavour or even journalism is still theft.

That principle is worth defending. Yet companies have to deal with the real world—and, despite the best efforts of recorded-music companies, luxury-goods firms and software-industry associations, piracy has proved very hard to stop. Given that a certain amount of stealing is going to happen anyway, some companies are turning it to their advantage.

For example, around 20 times as many music tracks are exchanged over the internet on “peer to peer” file-sharing networks as are legitimately sold online or in shops. Statistics about the traffic on file-sharing networks can be useful. They can reveal, for example, the countries where a new singer is most popular, even before his album has been released there. Having initially been reluctant to be seen exploiting this information, record companies are now making use of it (see article). This month BigChampagne, the main music-data analyser, is extending its monitoring service to pirated video, too. Knowing which TV programmes are being most widely passed around online can help broadcasters when negotiating with advertisers or planning schedules.

In other industries, piracy can help to open up new markets. Take software, for instance. Microsoft’s Windows operating system is used on 90% of PCs in China, but most copies are pirated. Officially, the software giant has taken a firm line against piracy. But unofficially, it admits that tolerating piracy of its products has given it huge market share and will boost revenues in the long term, because users stick with Microsoft’s products when they go legit. Clamping down too hard on pirates may also encourage people to switch to free, open-source alternatives. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, told Fortune magazine last year.

Another example, from agriculture, shows how piracy can literally seed a new market. Farmers in Brazil wanted to use genetically modified (GM) soyabean seeds that had been engineered by Monsanto to be herbicide-tolerant. The government, under pressure from green groups opposed to GM technology, held back. Unable to obtain the GM seeds legitimately, the farmers turned to pirated versions, many of them “Maradona” seeds brought in from Argentina. Eventually the pirated seeds accounted for over a third of Brazil’s soyabean plantings, and in 2005 the government relented and granted approval for the use of GM seeds. Monsanto could then start selling its seeds legitimately in Brazil.

Innovators ahoy

Piracy can also be a source of innovation, if someone takes a product and then modifies it in a popular way. In music unofficial remixes can boost sales of the original work. And in a recent book, “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, Matt Mason gives the example of Nigo, a Japanese designer who took Air Force 1 trainers made by Nike, removed the famous “swoosh” logo, applied his own designs and then sold the resulting shoes in limited editions at $300 a pair under his own label, A Bathing Ape. Instead of suing Nigo, Nike realised that he had spotted a gap in the market. It took a stake in his firm and also launched its own premium “remixes” of its trainers. Mr Mason argues that “the best way to profit from pirates is to copy them.”

That this silver lining exists should not obscure the cloud. Most of the time, companies will decide to combat piracy of their products by sending in the lawyers with all guns blazing. And most of the time that is the right thing to do. But before they rush into action companies should check to see if there is a way for them to turn piracy to their advantage.

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Internet piracy

Thanks, me hearties

Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Media firms find that statistics on internet piracy can be rather useful

Illustration by David Simonds

GLOBAL sales of recorded music fell by 8% in 2007, according to figures released in June by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group. It blamed 70% of the decline on “file-sharing” software, which allows internet users to exchange music and video without paying for it. Industry groups have sued thousands of users of such software, and have supported legislation to criminalise it. But file-sharing has so far proved impossible to stop. And it is not all bad news for the industry, because it can provide helpful insights into music-lovers’ interests.

For every song that is bought legally, in shops or online, around 20 songs are illegally downloaded, according to BigChampagne, a firm based in Beverly Hills, California, that compiles and sells statistics about file-sharing. Its customers can find out how many times, and where, a song has been illicitly downloaded, for example, what the figure was five weeks ago, what other music its fans like, and so on.

“It doesn’t make sense to put your head in the sand,” says Ken Bunt, head of marketing at Disney’s Hollywood Records, a BigChampagne customer. One of Hollywood Records’ artists, Jesse McCartney, is particularly popular in Italy, so that might be a good place for a tour, says Mr Bunt.

David Ross, the editor of Music Row, the largest country-music trade journal, based in Nashville, Tennessee, says the “anti-intellectual argument” not to use such data is emotional nonsense. Music Row publishes file-sharing figures, as well as conventional charts. Such information can help managers promote their artists. Jennifer Bird of Red Light Management, a management agency in Los Angeles, says her agency knows the names and geographic destinations of the 7.5 billion songs swapped in 2007. That is a big help if you are trying to work out whether people are raving about an artist—or merely about a song. And planning joint tours is easier when you know what other music an artist’s fans listen to.

BigChampagne’s latest venture, launched this month, extends its monitoring to television programmes and films, which are also widely shared online. Knowing what is popular among file-sharers could help broadcasters and film studios when negotiating with advertisers, for example. Hulu, a website operated by News Corporation that offers free, advertising-supported video-streaming, already uses file-sharing statistics to design its programming and to set advertising rates.

Many music executives were reluctant to take advantage of file-sharing statistics because of the trouble the technology has caused in the industry, says Eric Garland, BigChampagne’s boss. TV stations and film studios, by contrast, are “sprinting through the stages of grief”—and coming to terms with the reality that details of the illegal use of their material can, in fact, be very useful indeed.

ST: Online privacy versus piracy

July 21, 2008
Online privacy versus piracy
Millions of YouTube enthusiasts - including many in Singapore - should be relieved the video-sharing website's owner Google has to hand over only anonymised viewer logs in media giant Viacom's US$1 billion (S$1.35 billion) copyright lawsuit. Viacom and other plaintiffs may be suing only for payment of fair value of their content YouTube has made freely available online. They may have no wish to go after individual uploaders or viewers. Another, less obvious, motive might be that the usage data may come in handy in carving out their own online video market share and in boosting their own advertising revenues. Stripping out users' names and their Internet protocol addresses from the evidence allows the plaintiffs a chance to prove their case without compromising US privacy protection law. In welcoming the compromise, nevertheless, Web surfers would do well to realise that online privacy and copyrights are legal issues that are still evolving, in the United States and other jurisdictions. Singaporeans have only to recall the legal action the company Odex brought in the past year to see that surfing the Net is not totally free from privacy and piracy pitfalls. The firm, distributor of Japanese cartoons called anime, obtained court orders requiring SingNet and StarHub to reveal the identities of 2,000 subscribers by tracing their IP addresses captured when they allegedly downloaded cartoons illegally. At least 100 settled last year. On an appeal that six Japanese studios - owners of copyrights - joined earlier this year, the High Court ordered a third service provider, Pacific Internet, to identify other offending downloaders. The success in court seemed to make clear that those who access copyrighted online content cannot claim a right to privacy. This time Google managed to avoid a public relations debacle over users' privacy in forestalling Viacom's initial demand. Next time a service provider may not be as able or as willing to resist when privacy rights come up against copyrights. The US music industry, for example, continues successfully to track down and sue people exchanging tunes online illegally. Still, many legal questions remain unsettled, such as the method and extent of IP address detection and disclosure, the role and responsibility of service providers versus the interests of copyright owners, and the possibility of use of confidential information unrelated to litigation. Until such issues are resolved in a way acceptable or at least tolerable to everyone, surfers should read the usage fine print on websites and remain circumspect about risks of exposure and legal trouble.

ST: Success makes it a scapegoat

July 21, 2008
WESTERN CRITICISM OF SINGAPORE   Success makes it a scapegoat
By Jonathan Eyal, Straits Times Europe Bureau
-- ST FILE PHOTO ANOTHER week, another pinprick. In an article published last week in The Guardian, one of Britain's most influential dailies, Singapore was yet again disparaged as a modern, but authoritarian state. Writer John Kampfner - a distinguished local columnist and the author of the broadside - was not concerned with Singapore as such: He was merely using the Republic as part of a broader attack on the policies of the British government. His contention was that ordinary Singaporeans allegedly gave up their personal freedoms in return for prosperity and that, if Britons are not careful, the same could happen to them. But Mr Kampfner's article is part of an emerging pattern: Reports from a variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international media sources periodically portray Singapore as a wealthy yet less than attractive state. What accounts for this outpouring of venom about a country which, when all is said and done, remains just a tiny speck on the world map? The answer is rather simple. Singapore is merely a convenient scapegoat for a deeper crisis of confidence which now grips the West. As such, the flow of criticism is likely to continue, and very often the Republic can do little more than just grin and bear it. Singapore is being scrutinised precisely because people suspect that the Singapore model does have wider applications. So, this is one instance when criticism may be the sincerest mode of flattery. Regardless of how much it stings. To a large extent, success is Singapore's biggest problem. It is hardly the only Asian country to undergo a remarkable economic and political transformation. But it is the only Asian nation whose academics and politicians are completely plugged into the current Western intellectual circuit. So, Singapore's international visibility far outstrips the country's actual size. One explanation for this big footprint may be prosaic: the ability of Singaporeans to think and speak in English. To be sure, other Asian nations have many commentators and academics fluent in foreign tongues. Yet few Asian countries have an education system which so faithfully replicates that of key Western states: Singapore's intellectuals not merely speak the language, but know how to fashion their arguments in a digestible way. More significantly, because their country is so small, globalisation is not merely a choice for Singapore's thinkers, but a way of life. So, unlike academics in many other Asian countries, those in Singapore always extrapolate from their own national experience to that of the wider world. Their message is complex and varied, but ultimately boils down to a few key propositions. The West - Singaporean thinkers frequently assert - is experiencing a relative decline. Western nations no longer enjoy a monopoly on ideas. Their mechanical advice for political and economic development - including various recipes for democracy - are no longer universally relevant. And the Western-dominated international system is no longer tenable. Of course, some of these arguments have been advanced by Western intellectuals as well. As long ago as 1959, celebrated sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset noted that Western-style democracy only takes root after economic development, and not the other way around. Earlier this decade, Dr Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International magazine, criticised the West's obsession with exporting the mechanics of democracy. And most Western academics now accept that the West is in decline. So, why should the 'Singapore Model' of development grate so much? Part of the answer is that Singapore's example is still generally misunderstood. A view which often prevails in Western academic circles is that Singapore's leaders had a master plan for development right from the first day of the country's independence, and that this model was, supposedly, designed to be the antithesis of the West. The fact that Singapore's government experimented with many different policies over the years, or that Singapore's government remains 'paranoid' - as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once candidly put it - about its performance never registers with Western academics. Western criticism of Singapore usually falls into two categories. One school of thought argues that the Republic still has plenty of problems: look behind the glitzy facade and you'd find many warts. Another school of thought accepts that Singapore is successful, but claims that its example is irrelevant: It is just a small, beautifully-decorated fish bowl which cannot be replicated in a big ocean. But both critical trends converge on one point: Singapore is a laboratory experiment which should have failed but which, for some apparently devious reason, has instead succeeded. Meanwhile, some international NGOs fret about what Singapore means for the development of other nations. Over the past decade, countries as far apart as China, Russia and the Gulf states have explicitly praised the Singapore model as the one they wish to follow. Yet again, the facts are more complex. Few countries are proposing to copy Singapore to the letter: They are merely borrowing specific management techniques and government solutions. Just consider the crop of recent examples. The Punjab police chief in Pakistan copied Singapore's experience in managing road traffic, India's Minister for Women looked at Singapore's practice of controlling the migration of maids, Mauritius applied Singapore's regulations on foreign law firms, and Japan copied the Singapore Exchange model by creating a comprehensive bourse able to handle a variety of securities and derivatives. Meanwhile, South Korea's President Lee Myung Bak has asked his civil servants to study Singapore's experience in rooting out corruption, and Abu Dhabi has launched a civil service college on the Singapore model. In all these cases, far from being anti-Western, the Singapore model actually strengthened Western policy objectives. Indeed, during a recent visit to Singapore, Britain's Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells praised the Republic for its innovative measures in dealing with youth radicalisation. More significantly, no Singaporean politician has suggested that the Singapore model should be exported wholesale. 'We certainly do not claim to be a model for exact replication,' President S R Nathan told Singapore's civil servants last year. And, in a recent speech to Harvard University students, Foreign Minister George Yeo went further by suggesting that the learning process goes in both directions. 'Without the American dream becoming the Asian dream, today's Asia would not be possible,' he told them. But none of these reassurances seem to work: Western NGOs resent Singapore because they see it as an exporter of a model which challenges their cherished assumptions of development, the so-called 'Washington consensus' which decrees that 'good governance' - by which they mean all the technical trappings of democracy - are a prerequisite for economic prosperity. The reasons why facts are no longer important is that Western policymakers are growing desperate over increasing evidence that, far from being unique, Singapore-like development theories are actually working in an increasing number of states. But, while it may difficult to criticise Russia's or China's development, it is relatively easy to hit at Singapore - a small country which can be criticised with impunity. So, Singapore is a battering ram for broader frustrations: it is merely a risk-free tool for bigger political battles. Many Singaporean intellectuals are trying to move the discussion on to more productive lines. Professor Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, recently published an acclaimed book - New Asian Hemisphere - which sought to debunk many of the prevailing Western myths. And many other Singaporean intellectuals are regular participants at various international academic gatherings. But still, the assault on Singapore looks set to continue. Yet Singaporeans can also derive satisfaction from the current climate. First, they are the subject of international curiosity because theirs is a system which works. And they are being scrutinised precisely because people suspect that the Singapore model does have wider applications. So, this is one instance when criticism may be the sincerest mode of flattery. Regardless of how much it stings. [email protected]

ST: Animator Miyazaki draws on pencil power

July 21, 2008
Animator Miyazaki draws on pencil power
PHOTO: AFP TOKYO - Hayao Miyazaki's first full-length film in four years hit screens across Japan last Saturday, putting aside speculation that the Oscar-winning Japanese animator had made his last picture. A 650-seat cinema at Tokyo's shopping and business district of Hibiya was filled with his fans, mostly children and their parents, to watch Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea, which the reclusive 67-year-old wrote and directed. Inspired by the 19th-century fairy tale The Little Mermaid by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, the story centres on a tiny fish-girl, Ponyo, who rides a jellyfish to escape her home in the sea. She meets a five-year-old boy, Sosuke, who vows to protect her, but Ponyo is taken back to the sea. Desperate to be a human and live with Sosuke, Ponyo heads to land again with help from her sisters. Miyazaki is one of Japan's biggest cultural exports. His last film, Howl's Moving Castle, broke opening box-office records at home in 2004 before winning a cult following in Western and Asian nations. 'I believe that making animation with pencils is the only way for us to survive' Hayao Miyazaki (left in picture) in front of a poster of his movie Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea with actress Tomoko Yamaguchi, who voices one of the characters Miyazaki has said repeatedly in the past that he wants to retire. The 2004 release of Howl's Moving Castle was met by speculation that it would be his last film, raising concerns in Japan for the future of the lucrative animation industry. But Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea has dampened such concerns. Miyazaki, who had used computer graphics since Princess Mononoke in 1997, decided to shun hi-tech effects in his latest picture. 'I believe that making animation with pencils is the only way for us to survive,' he told a press conference. 'Everybody is discarding pencils. Because of that, at least we should not lose track of ourselves,' he said. 'I want to continue to work in such circumstances.' He used 170,000 hand-drawn pictures to animate characters and objects in the film, a record number for a Miyazaki production. It took 11/2 years for 70 staff members to draw the pictures, according to Studio Ghibli, which has released his works. Numerous other manually drawn pictures were also used as the background. Asked what animation he is considering next, Miyazaki only said: 'I will soon turn 70. I'm now telling myself that I should not talk about things in the future.' The animator's Spirited Away won the Academy Award in 2003 for Best Animated Feature, Japan's first Oscar for a full-length work in nearly half a century. He also received a Golden Lion award from the Venice Film Festival in 2005 for lifetime achievement in cinema. AFP

TED Talk: Benjamin Zander - Classical music with shining eyes

Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes

A leading interpreter of Mahler and Beethoven, Benjamin Zander is known for his charisma and unyielding energy -- and for his brilliant pre-concert talks.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

Why you should listen to him:

Since 1979, Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. He is known around the world as both a guest conductor and a speaker on leadership -- and he's been known to do both in a single performance. He uses music to help people open their minds and create joyful harmonies that bring out the best in themselves and their colleagues.

His provocative ideas about leadership are rooted in a partnership with Rosamund Stone Zander, with whom he co-wrote The Art of Possibility.

"Arguably the most accessible communicator about classical music since Leonard Bernstein, Zander moves audiences with his unbridled passion and enthusiasm."

Sue Fox, London Sunday Times

BusinessWeek: Danone Innovates to Help Feed the Poor

Danone Innovates to Help Feed the Poor

Along with Grameen Group and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the French food company has created a nutritious and inexpensive yogurt for Bangladesh

by Carol Matlack

At an ultra-modern research center in the Paris suburbs, scientists employed by French food group Danone search relentlessly for new products—from immunity-enhancing yogurt (BusinessWeek.com, 11/15/07) to energy-boosting drinks—that will entice consumers to dig a little deeper into their pocketbooks.

But Danone (DANO.PA) faced a different kind of innovation challenge when it teamed up in 2005 with Grameen Group of Bangladesh to develop a yogurt for some of the poorest consumers in the world. The goal: to create a product that would retail for less than 10¢ per serving yet provide 30% of the minimum daily requirement of iron and other key nutrients.

What's more, it would have to be manufactured in a small, environmentally friendly factory, with a low-tech, labor-intensive supply and distribution network—the kind of small-scale "social business enterprise" championed by Grameen's founder, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

Slashing Manufacturing Costs

Danone had never done anything like that before. Indeed, the project ran counter to the strategy Danone had used successfully in developing economies such as Indonesia and South Africa, where it built large, super-efficient factories and used refrigerated truck fleets for quick delivery. "We had never before found a model for really poor populations," says Emmanuel Marchant, managing director of Danone Communities, a fund the company established to invest in the project.

Per capita income in Bangladesh is under $4 a day, less than half the average in Indonesia. To operate profitably, the Grameen Danone Foods joint venture would have to slash manufacturing costs to one-third the average cost-per-ton in other countries.

But Grameen Danone met the innovation challenge, which proved to be as much about management and processes as it was about technology. Last year its first factory opened—in the northern Bangladeshi city of Bogra. The plant now produces more than 10,000 containers daily of a fortified yogurt called Shoktidoi that Danone researchers developed for the Bangladeshi market. The operation isn't profitable yet but is expected to break even within two years. "We're still in the pilot phase," Marchant says.

Local Labor and Ingredients

Shoktidoi is made from milk produced by local farmers, who bring it to the company on foot or on bicycle rickshaws. The finished product is delivered to small shops within about a 20-mile radius of the plant or is sold door-to-door by local women called "Grameen Ladies," who receive a commission of a little over a penny on each container sold.

Sounds pretty simple—but getting there wasn't easy. Scientists at Danone's research and design center struggled to find a recipe that would be inexpensive to produce and meet basic nutritional requirements, but still have a pleasant flavor and texture. Some early Shoktidoi prototypes were too runny or grainy, or had a faint taste of iron. The final version has a consistency resembling other Danone yogurts sold worldwide and is sweetened with sugar and syrup from locally grown date palms.

Removing the Stigma of Door-to-Door Sales

Developing a reliable milk supply also was a challenge. Most local farmers were too poor to buy feed that could boost their cows' milk production, so Grameen Danone has helped them obtain microloans from Yunus' Grameen Bank. The company also has helped farmers organize cooperatives to set up refrigerated collection centers where they can deliver milk.

Even recruiting Grameen Ladies proved difficult, because Bangladeshis traditionally assume people who go door to door are beggars. To remove the stigma against Grameen Ladies, the company launched a public-information campaign in neighboring villages.

A Model for Feeding the World's Poor

The job of designing the Bogra factory fell to Guy Gavelle, a longtime Danone production specialist. Besides keeping costs low, he had to develop non-polluting technologies. For example, the factory boasts a "bio-gas" system that transforms manufacturing wastes into gas that powers some of the plant's lighting and heating systems. Although it is only about 1% the size of most Danone plants, the Bogra facility "is more advanced than the huge plants I have designed in Brazil, Indonesia, China, and India," Gavelle says.

It's pleased with the project so far, but Danone says plenty of challenges remain before the company proceeds with its next step: building similar factories in other poor communities. Among other things, rising costs for basic agricultural goods are forcing Danone to raise prices on Shoktidoi by about one-third. But if Grameen Danone stays on track, it could become a model for an effective—yet profitable—solution to the problem of feeding the world's poor.

Matlack is BusinessWeek's Paris bureau chief.

===

From Publishers Weekly
Economics professor Yunus claims he originally became involved in the poverty issue not as a policy-maker, scholar, or researcher, but because poverty was all around me. With these words he stopped teaching elegant theories and began lending small amounts of money, $40 or less, without collateral, to the poorest women in the world. Thirty-three years later, the Grameen Bank has helped seven million people live better lives building businesses to serve the poor. The bank is solidly profitable, with a 98.6% repayment rate. It inspired the micro-credit movement, which has helped 100 million of the poorest people in the world escape poverty and earned Yunus (Banker to the Poor) a Nobel Peace prize. This volume efficiently recounts the story of microcredit, then discusses Social Business, organizations designed to help people while turning profits. French food giant Danone's partnership to market yogurt in Bangladesh is described in detail, along with 25 other businesses that operate under the Grameen banner. Infused with entrepreneurial spirit and the excitement of a worthy challenge, this book is the opposite of pessimistic recitals of intractable poverty's horrors. (Jan.)

See also: http://chutzpah.typepad.com/slow_movement/2008/07/ft-yoghurt-makers-recipe-for-funding-social-businesses.html

BusinessWeek: Facebook's Big Facelift

Facebook's Big Facelift

The social networking site's coming redesign will be marked by a cleaner, more organized look to appeal to its vastly bigger, more diverse user base

by Matt Vella

The elements of the currently crowded Facebook profile page will probably be divided within separate tabs when the redesign goes live.

Facebook's designers want to cut the clutter. The Palo Alto (Calif.) social networking site is readying an extensive overhaul of its core profile pages in an attempt to bring back the sleek aesthetic that helped fuel its early popularity. Executives say the redesign should hit the Web browsers of Facebook's 70 million worldwide users in the next few weeks.

The moves come in reaction to Facebook's becoming "more cluttered and harder for users to parse," according to Katie Geminder, the site's director of user experience and design, who oversees the design team working on the project. As such, the redesign represents a major simplification. Elements currently displayed on one crowded page—personal information, photos, the continually updating news feed, and the "wall", where users can post comments, for example—will probably be divided between separate pages and accessible through distinct tabs. The new design also collects and sidelines independently developed applications, such as games of Scrabble or the chance for users to rank the "hotness" of their friends.

"People are starting to feel that Facebook is quickly becoming like MySpace," says Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of Mashable.com, an online social networking news site. He's referring to the fact that News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace has allowed its more than 100 million users to create wildly different looking pages, replete with neon backgrounds and blinking text. In contrast, Facebook's design had been praised for being clean and tidy. But now, with the proliferation of viral applications that are simply "spam in disguise," according to Ostrow, things have gotten messy. So in February, Geminder and her team set to work. The same team, which includes people from engineering, graphic, and user interface design, will also analyze usage data and process user comments once the changes launch.

New Ways to Arrange the Info

The makeover itself is more than skin deep, though many critical elements of the site's identity remain untouched, including its typography and color palette. "They're not questioning the visual identity of the brand," says Christopher Fahey, a partner at New York's Behavior Design. Instead, designers are focusing on the site's wider architecture and on ways of displaying and ordering the information. That, says Fahey, could give users more options without radically altering the look and feel of the site. As Fahey points out, this belief in a company's fundamental design language has worked well for companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) and signals a sense of C-suite confidence in the product at large.

That confidence will come in handy as Facebook deals with maturing from a scrappy campus startup into a corporation valued at $15 billion, thanks to the $240 million investment made by Microsoft (MSFT) last October. The new design, template, and architecture have to keep pace with the site's growth—U.S. membership has jumped 71% since last March, according to comScore (SCOR)—and with the increased diversity and desires of its user base. Of course, off-loading some features onto new pages could also increase page views, a critical metric for advertisers looking to spend their marketing budgets online.

Facebook's designers have been open about changes, publicizing their proposals through the company's developer blog and wiki. Designers also created a Facebook Profiles Preview group within the site, which has about 55,000 members who are monitoring the redesign and commenting on new features as they are developed. 

It's an obvious response to a series of public missteps, such as the introduction of the news feed feature (BusinessWeek.com, 9/8/06) added in September, 2006, which drew immediate animosity from users. In March, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for missteps associated with last fall's launch of the Beacon advertising platform (BusinessWeek.com, 11/28/07). "In this round, we are focused on listening to users, gathering feedback, and giving users more control," says Geminder.

Designers to the Fore

Still, the site's designers are facing a milestone. A quintessentially Web 2.0 product, Facebook was an early cohort of sites whose growth has been characterized by developers and designers' willingness to heed users' desires when creating new features. Now the site may have reached a point where designers need to listen to themselves as much as the users. "Sites like this have evolved depending on how people want to use them, but Facebook is [so big it] may need to slow down and formalize its process," says David Armano, vice-president for experience design at Critical Mass, which has created sites for the likes of NASA and Mercedes-Benz (DAI).

"In many ways, the hallmark of the Web 2.0 movement is users' belief that 'this is our Web,'" adds Bruce Temkin, vice-president and principal analyst of customer experience at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., who says listening to feedback could be as important as asking for input ahead of launch. For her part, Geminder says Facebook's designers are engaged in the process, preparing smart changes rather than simply foisting them on an audience without allowing them to interact or push back. "Sometimes," adds Fahey, "a designer's job is to interpret carefully what may lie behind even cantankerous feedback." Users, in other words, may not appreciate all the ramifications of their requests, and designers must sort through the responses and apply what's appropriate.

And, as Temkin points out, it's hard for the designers of a social network to formalize too much of the user experience. While designers of, say, an online banking application can make changes purely in the name of usability, Facebook's designers must strike a balance between the site as a form of entertainment, on the one hand, and a useful tool, on the other. "If you take the fun out of Facebook, you've got a big problem," says Temkin.

In the end, the moves today could provide a blueprint for future high-profile redesigns at the company. In fact, if the site's designers pull it off, restoring simplicity while maintaining popularity, Temkin says the move could even become a test case for "what happens at the next level of maturity for a lot of Web 2.0 companies, writ large."

Vella is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

Calvin and Hobbes: Summer thoughts

ST: Ice cream that's oishi cool

July 20, 2008
Ice cream that's oishi cool
Singaporeans are slurping Japanese ice cream as it is lighter and not so cloyingly sweet
By Huang Lijie
From ramen to robatayaki, Singaporeans just cannot seem to get enough of Japanese food. They are also lapping up Japanese ice cream, and more than 20 scoop outlets have sprung up in the last two years to satisfy this appetite for a sweet treat that is not too cloyingly rich in taste. Marvelous Cream in CityLink Mall, which opened earlier this month, is the latest to join the fray. It offers parfait and cold stone ice cream, where a smorgasbord of 28 items such as coffee-flavoured jelly, raspberry macaron, fluffy sponge cake and millefeuille are mixed into the ice cream on a frosted marble slab before being served. The shop is the first overseas outlet of the trendy Japanese ice cream chain that was started in 2006 in Osaka by patissier Keita Ito, who is trained in French-style pastries. Mr Yasuhiro Kaihara, 45, owner of a furniture export company in Singapore and three Japanese eateries in Hiroshima, learnt that Mr Ito wanted to expand the business into South-east Asia last year, and decided to start a Marvelous Cream franchise here. He says: 'The store is very popular in Japan but its takings dip a little in winter, so Mr Ito wanted to open in a place where it is always summer.' Having lived here for 14 years, Mr Kaihara believes Marvelous Cream would be well received among sweet-toothed Singaporeans. He says: 'There aren't other stores here that sell cold stone Japanese ice cream with such a wide range of mix-in items.' On what makes his ice cream, produced in Marvelous Cream's Hiroshima factory, distinctively Japanese in taste, he says: 'Our ice cream is made using milk from Hokkaido, which is well-known for its high quality dairy. Hokkaido milk is smooth and rich in flavour, so ice cream made with it is creamier.' Japanese restaurant Azabu Sabo's five Hokkaido Ice Cream scoop stores here, including one in Central, as well as ice cream kiosk MOF @ Japanese Express in Raffles City, also use Hokkaido milk because of its premium appeal. To keep the taste authentic, retailers such as Haato, which opened its fourth shop recently at Friven & Co in Tanglin Road, also uses imported ingredients, including green tea powder and red beans from Japan. Haato's owner, Mr Oliver Chan, 34, says the chain uses the recipe inherited from the former Japanese owner, who ran the flagship shop in Liang Court in the 1980s. Another thing that sets Japanese ice cream apart from Western versions is its lighter taste, says Ms Jacquelyn Ng, 26, business development manager of Uzumaki, a soft-serve ice cream chain with outlets in Bugis Junction and Cineleisure. Uzumaki's ice cream contains less than 10 per cent fat and is certified as a healthier snack by the Health Promotion Board. It was started in 2006 and it is a collaboration between Singapore food and beverage company Oishi International, and a Japanese soft-serve ice cream chain that operates under a different name. While customers here prefer Japanese ice cream in traditional flavours including green tea, red bean and black sesame, they also appreciate it in Singaporean flavours such as durian and lychee, available at Azabu Sabo Hokkaido Ice Cream, and in varieties such as cookies and cream and rum and raisin at Haato. Adding a twist to the usual presentation of Japanese ice cream in a cone, cup or waffle bowl is Mochi Creamery's mochi ice cream. The bite-size confection of ice cream encased in mochi (sticky rice flour) skin comes in 20 flavours and is sold at Beard Papa cream puff counters here. Mr Ng Kee Huat, 51, who owns the Beard Papa franchise here and Mochi Creamery, says the ice cream is his own line of product. It was introduced last year as an alternative dessert option to the Japanese cream puffs he sells. He adds: 'Our mochi ice cream, which is imported from the United States, does not compete head-on with traditional scoop shops selling Japanese ice cream.' Owners of ice cream shops selling the Western version do not feel themselves melting under the heat of competition from Japanese ice cream stores either. Ms May Chan, 28, co-owner of Cold Rock Ice Creamery in Holland Village, which is a franchise of the popular Australian chain, says: 'We sell more than just ice cream. We're selling a fun experience because our customers get to personalise the ice cream with their own combinations of toppings.' Mr Stanley Kwok, 53, owner of Island Creamery in Serene Centre and Great World City, adds: 'Different customers have different preferences and every ice cream shop has its niche, so the market isn't overcrowded.' Events organiser Althea Lim, 24, for example, is a fan of Island Creamery's icy treats because of its creative flavours such as pulut hitam (black glutinous rice) and teh tarik. That said, the demand for Japanese ice cream remains strong. Mochi Creamery sells about 1,000 pieces of mochi ice cream daily and Haato has seen business at its Liang Court outlet grow by 20 per cent year on year since 2005. Music teacher Jessica Irawan, 25, says she is a fan of Japanese ice cream because 'it tastes richer and silkier than other types of ice cream, without being heavy on the stomach'. Likewise, Mr Davidson Ang, 35, manager of an import-export wood business, says he enjoys Japanese ice cream because unlike American brands such as Ben and Jerry's, it is not too sweet. Hence, expansion is on the cards for all six Japanese ice cream retailers LifeStyle interviewed. Haato is looking to open another two to three outlets by the end of this year, while Marvelous Cream is in talks to open another two by March next year in Orchard Road. For singer-songwriter Caroline Tjen, 25, this is good news. The Japanese ice cream lover says: 'I will travel to satisfy my craving for ice cream when it kicks in, but if it's more widely available, the pangs won't be so unbearable.' [email protected] CREAM OF THE CROP Six cool spots to try out UZUMAKI Where: Three outlets, including 200 Victoria Street, B1-K18, Bugis Junction, Open: 10am to 11pm Price: From $4 for a scoop of ice cream What: This 90 per cent less fat soft-serve ice cream comes in flavours such as wasabi (Japanese horseradish), green tea and black sesame. AZABU SABO HOKKAIDO ICE CREAM Where: Five outlets, including 6 Eu Tong Sen Street, 01-46, Central, Tel: 6534-7178, Open: 11am to 11pm Price: From $3.80 for a single scoop of ice cream in a cup, and $4.30 for a single scoop in a cone What: Its range of 25 flavours includes dark chocolate, sea salt with caramel, durian and lychee. MOCHI CREAMERY Where: Four outlets, including 68 Orchard Road, B2-58, Plaza Singapura, Tel: 6238-7008, Open: 10am to 10pm Price: $2 per piece, $11 for a box of six pieces What: Its bite-size portion - gone in two bites - is big on gustatory pleasure for those who like their ice cream with a soft, chewy bite. HAATO (main picture and below) Where: Four outlets, including 56 Tanglin Road, Friven & Co, Tel: 6734-5686 Open: 9am to 9pm Price: From $3 for a small cup of ice cream and $4 for a single cone of ice cream What: Crowd favourites include green tea, black sesame, cookies and cream, as well as rum and raisin. MOF @ JAPANESE EXPRESS Where: 252 North Bridge Road, B1-49, Raffles City Shopping Centre, Tel: 6334-2202 Open: 11.30am to 9.30pm Price: From $3.80 for a cup of ice cream What: Choose from 16 flavours where the traditional varieties, such as green tea with red bean and black sesame, are the toothsome winners. MARVELOUS CREAM Where: 1 Raffles Link, B1-04, CityLink Mall, Tel: 6238-1683 Open: 11am to 10pm Price: $5.90 for a parfait and from $4.90 for a small cup of cold stone ice cream What: Pick from 28 recommended combinations of cold stone ice cream, including strawberry sweet shortcake, Belgium banana chocolate and macaron rouge framboise. There are also seven different parfait selections such as mont blanc and tiramisu.

ST: Fukuoka's food fiestas

July 20, 2008
Fukuoka's food fiestas
Eat your heart out in this city on Kyushu island which offers everything from ramen to cow offal steamboat
By Frankie Chee
Teo Chuu Yong Age: 37 Occupation: Translation co-ordinator Length of stay: 11 years   Many Singaporeans abroad long for char kway teow and chicken rice, both of which translation co-ordinator Teo Chuu Yong has been unable to find in the Japanese city of Fukuoka. But the 37-year-old is not exactly complaining. Having lived there for 11 years, he finds the city has no lack of great food, from ramen and yakitori to buffets and cow offal steamboat. He has been able to find Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese fare, but has not had as much luck when it comes to food from Singapore. Culinary delights aside, Fukuoka also offers a balanced mix of city activities and natural attractions, with the late autumn season towards the end of the year being the best time for a visit. GETTING AROUND The best way to explore the city is by... Bus, subway or train, which links to most of the tourist spots in, and outside of, Fukuoka City. The city is rather compact, somewhat like Singapore, and its centre is located around three areas: Hakata, Tenjin and Nakasu. The buses and subway all pass through these places. The Nishitetsu bus and the subway are the most convenient means when moving around within the city. Nishitetsu's 100-yen (S$1.29) bus is recommended as it allows passengers to move around the Hakata-Nakasu-Tenjin zone for that price for any single trip. If you are travelling to many spots within the city centre in a day, the Nishitetsu bus and the subway offer a one-day pass at 600 yen for unlimited rides within a designated zone. One-day subway passes can be bought from any Fukuoka City Subway station and the Nishitetsu one-day passes can be purchased either from the major bus centres at Hakata and Tenjin, or directly from the driver when you board the bus. The respective companies sell their own stored-value cards, as well as the Wai-wai card (for use on JR trains and subways) and the Yoka-net card (for use on Nishitetsu buses, trains and subways). If you are staying for at least a few days and plan to move around frequently by public transport, these cards are recommended as they cut the hassle of having to carry around coins to pay the fares. The best time to visit is... Either during spring (between end March and early April) when you will get to see cherry blossoms, or in autumn (between mid November and early December) if you are interested in maple leaves. Fukuoka is sunny and humid in summer, and windy in winter because it faces the Japan Sea. However, in my experience, the weather seems more unstable in spring, so I prefer the drier autumn season. The Japanese divide the autumn season into two parts - early and late. The weather during early autumn, from early September till mid-October, is cool at night but still very hot in the day. Late autumn, from mid-October till end November, is probably the best season of the year because it is dry and cool, between 10 and 20 deg C on average. It is also the season of maple leaves and most people would head for the mountains and parks. Which places in the city excite you? There are mobile roadside stalls known as yatai that are scattered along the streets in the Nagahama, Tenjin, Nakasu and Hakata areas. You can taste most of the local dishes, including the famous Hakata ramen (noodles), yakitori and oden, at these stalls. The Manyo-no-Yu (2-3-66 Yutaka, Hakata-ku, tel: +81-92-452-4126) is a hotel and spa which allows you either to stay overnight or to simply make use of the hot spring (onsen) facilities, massage services and restaurants that are available inside the premises. There is also Canal City Hakata (1-2 Sumiyoshi, Hakata-ku, tel: +81-92-282- 2525), which is a shopping and entertainment facility that houses many branded apparel stores, cinemas, restaurants and hotels. Lastly, there is the Umi-no-naka-michi Seaside Facility (18-25 Oaza Saitozaki, Higashi-ku, tel: +81-92-603-1111). It is a multi-purpose facility that comprises an aquarium, hotels, a swimming pool and park. FOOD AND WINE Where can you find food that is close to Singaporean fare? I would certainly love to know where I can find Singaporean food in Fukuoka too. So far, the closest ones I have been to are probably the ethnic restaurants that serve Thai or Vietnamese food, besides the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants that are quite common. My favourite breakfast is at... In general, the Japanese do not have a habit of having breakfast outside. The only places I am aware of that serve breakfast are either coffee shops, fast food restaurants, 24-hour Yoshinoya outlets or udon and soba chains. My favourite eating places are... Hakata Fuudo (Level 1, Dai-roku Okabe-biru, 2-4-17 Hakata-eki-higashi, Hakata-ku, tel: +81-92-472-0210) for yakitori and Show-Raku Haruyoshi branch (3-21-30 Haruyoshi, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka, tel: +81-92-731-0027) for motsu-nabe (cow offal steamboat). For ramen, there are Hakata Ippudo, Daimyo shop (1-13-14 Daimyo, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka 810-0041, tel: +81-92-771-0880); Ichiran, Canal City branch (Level B1, Canal City, 1-2 Sumiyoshi, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka 812-0018); Hakata Kokumaro, Najima-bashi branch (2-2119-4 Najima, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, tel: +81-92-673-1875); and Ramen Stadium (Canal City, 1-2 Sumiyoshi, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka 812-0018), which houses a number of famous ramen stalls, mainly from Kyushu, as well as other parts of Japan. The buffet lunch and dinner at SLOW +K, Nakasu Gate's branch (Gate's Level 6, 3-7-24 Nakasu, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka, tel: +81-92-283-0400) is also good. The coolest places to chill out at are... Club O-D (Void Fukuoka, 2-4-28 Imaizumi, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka, tel: +81-92-733-1167) and Cafe & Bar D's 11511 (Daimyo 11511 Level 5, 1-15-11 Daimyo, Chuo-ku, tel: +81-92-736-8727). Club O-D is probably the largest club in town, with many famous Japanese and foreign DJs holding events there, while D's 11511 is a cafe and dining bar that has an open-air terrace and very good ambience at night. CULTURE FIX What is the biggest difference between Singapore and this city? Fukuoka has a very well-balanced blend of urban infrastructures and nature spots. While modern infrastructures are increasing rapidly around the city centre, it takes less than 30 minutes by train to get out of the city to the nearest nature spots such as mountains, waterfalls and hot springs. Located on the island of Kyushu, Fukuoka is also the place to find a wide range of fresh fish and agricultural products. This is probably one of the reasons it is able to offer so much good food. What is one place you always take your friends to when they visit you? If it is within Fukuoka City, I will take them to the yatai food stalls and the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine (Dazaifu City, Fukuoka Prefecture). Outside the city, it is Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture. What do you do on weekends? Dine out at a nice restaurant, laze at home, stroll around the nearby parks or shop in town. FESTIVAL TOWN Are there any notable festivals that travellers should look out for? For those who are interested in major traditional or cultural events, there is the Hakata Dontaku festival (similar to Singapore's Chingay Parade) from May 3 to 4. Also, Hakata Gion Yamakasa falls on July 15. You will get to see different groups of men compete in pulling a one-tonne decorated float called Kakiyama, or Yama in short, through a designated course. SHOPPING Where is the best place to go on a shopping spree? Canal City Hakata is convenient for those who want to shop but do not like to walk too much. Tenjin's Nishi-doori and Daimyo areas are where most young people from Fukuoka and other neighbouring cities head to for shopping. There are also two shopping outlets, Marinoa City (2-12-30 Odo, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0001, tel: +81-92-892-8700, www.marinoacity.com/english) and Tosu Premium Outlets (8-1 Yayoigaoka, Tosu City, Saga 841-0005, tel: +81-942-87-7370, www.premiumoutlets.co.jp/en/tosu/index.php). The former is located at the west end of Fukuoka City, while Tosu is situated in Tosu City of Saga Prefecture. A LITTLE FURTHER Are there things to do or see outside of the city? Plenty. There is Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine and park (4-7-1 Saifu, Dazaifu, Fukuoka 818-0195, tel: +81-92-922-8225) in Dazaifu City, Fukuoka Prefecture; Yoshinogari Historical Park (1843 Tade, Yoshinogari-machi, Kanzaki-gun, Saga 842-0035, tel: +81-952-55-9333) in Saga Prefecture or Huis Ten Bosch theme park (1-1 Huis Ten Bosch-cho, Sasebo City, Nagasaki 859-3292, tel: +81-956-27-0526) of Nagasaki Prefecture. For hot springs, you can go to the Aso area - which also has a volcano and dairy farms - in the Kumamoto Prefecture, and Yufuin area (Yufuin Hot Spring Tourism Association, 2863 Kawakami, Yufuin-cho, Oita 879-5102, tel: +81-977-85-4464) or Beppu area (559-1 Oaza Kan-nawa, Beppu City, Oita 874-0045, tel: +81-977-66-1577, www.beppu-jigoku.com) in Oita Prefecture. [email protected]

It is a food-lover's paradise in Fukuoka, where you can get local fare at the yatai, or mobile roadside stalls (above). Also, head to Cafe & Bar D's 11511, which has an excellent ambience at night, or slurp up some ramen at Ramen Stadium. -- PHOTOS: TEO CHUU YONMG, ISTOCKPHOTO, JETRO, JAPAN

 

It is a food-lover's paradise in Fukuoka, where you can get local fare at the yatai, or mobile roadside stalls. Also, head to Cafe & Bar D's 11511 (above), which has an excellent ambience at night, or slurp up some ramen at Ramen Stadium.

 

It is a food-lover's paradise in Fukuoka, where you can get local fare at the yatai, or mobile roadside stalls. Also, head to Cafe & Bar D's 11511, which has an excellent ambience at night, or slurp up some ramen at Ramen Stadium (above).

 

There is a good mix of nature and modernity in Fukuoda. Take a walk in the parks during spring, where you can see cherry blossoms (above), or head for Canal City Hakata, which has branded apparel stores, cinemas, restaurants and hotels.

 

There is a good mix of nature and modernity in Fukuoda. Take a walk in the parks during spring, where you can see cherry blossoms, or head for Canal City Hakata (above), which has branded apparel stores, cinemas, restaurants and hotels.