For me, 2012 was an intense year of encounters and meeting of the minds. As I was replaying it in my mind, I remembered three unusual job titles, and three special persons behind those job titles.
These persons and their titles also represent what I wish to be hot topics for 2013 - possibilities, innovation and the “internet of things”.
The first best job title of 2012 is “Princess of Possibility”, and it is proudly worn by Min Xuan Lee (twitter: @minxuan, LinkedIn), co-founder of PlayMoolah.
PlayMoolah was the winner of the Innotribe Startup Challenge 2012, and I had the pleasure of giving Min and Audrey Tan (the other co-founder of PlayMoolah) the $50,000 prize at Innotribe@Sibos Osaka in November 2012. More about PlayMoolah in my earlier post on this blog.
Min has chosen the “Princess of Possibility” job title, and I find it goes perfectly with her – she is all smiles, outgoing and very kind. At the same time, she (and Audrey) relentlessly pursue a very ambitious and noble goal related to kids (educating them to master money and finance). And she manages to pull some magic (which really is all about perseverance and passion) to make this small startup grow.
The second best job title of 2012 is “Chief Happiness Officer”, and is a title that has been acquired after considerable effort by Laurence Vanhée (twitter:@happy_laurence, LinkedIn). Surely by now you must be thinking Laurence works in some startup in the Silicon Valley to claim a title like that. Well, not really. Laurence works as the head of human resources at the Belgian Ministry of Social Security. One of her basic beliefs (to which I subscribe 100%) is that people should be happy at work. Here is her TEDx talk explaining some of the ways she uses to make this happen in a governmental organisation. Don’t do the mistake of considering this as wishful thinking. Laurence is a woman on a mission, and she has many success to demonstrate that, yes, being happy at work is possible and necessary.
The Innotribe team has recently run an “Ignite” event at SWIFT – a kind of a TED event for the SWIFT employees, where we have brought some of the best 2012 Innotribe speakers (in fact we call them “Igniters”) to inspire our people. Laurence was with us and here is my sketch of her talk.
I really love the way Laurence says it – “Don’t Complain, Innovate!”. It’s a mantra that helps me at many occasions.
The third best job title of 2012 goes to Erik Kruse, “Networked Society Evangelist” at Ericsson. I got in touch with Erik (LinkedIn) when organising a SWIFT Business Forum is Oslo earlier in October 2012, and he simply … evangelised … me. I’m a technologist at heart, and he talks about pervasive technology, hyper-connectivity, and the “internet of things” (the internet where billions of humans but also hundreds of billions of things – computers, cars, fridges, micro-drones – will be connected and interacting). I’ve heard similar speeches before, and they tend to be threatening (at least to me). The big difference with Erik is that he explains this simply, in a non agressive manner. He is very humble and he talks in a kind of ”around an open fire” manner. I also like the way he uses the life of his son to illustrate many of his concepts. Here is his TEDx talk for you to enjoy.
I also invited Erik at the Ignite event at SWIFT, and here is my sketch of his talk.
Erik Kruse uses the expression “Digital Transfomation” which I vibrate in sync with, see here for my thoughts about the digital transformation of finance.
2012 is drawing to a close, and as I said I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with incredibly creative and innovative people. I’ve highlighted three of them in this post, as they have what I thought to be inspiring job titles, but if you read this blog you will find out about many others.
On to 2013 - I think the above three job titles are the perfect representation of my wishes -
- Possibilities. We need to be open, to scan and understand the tremendous change we’re going through, driven by technology.
- Don’t complain, innovate. For the financial industry, this means: yes, we have more regulation, more rules, more costs. And yes, we have to do all of that with flat or reduced budgets. The only way ahead is innovation.
- The “internet of things” or hyper-connectivity. This drives tremendous changes in the social fabric, especially with the younger generation, soon to become our new employees and/or consumers. Focusing and understanding this new generation will be of paramount importance.
I want to use the opportunity to wish you an innovative, sparkling, exciting 2013.
A HAPPY 2013.
Kosta
Here we are mid April 2012, and I’m reflecting back on the already very rich year.
I don’t know about you – until recently when I wanted to go back in time and remember everything that happened, I would go to the Outlook calendar at work and browse through. This could be for remembering the secretaries day (hint, hint it is soon!) or for preparing my end year appraisal.
If you read this blog, you know I have picked up since some 8 months to jotting, painting and otherwise scribing – event summaries, abstract impressions of some significant moments, paintings of places I visited that I particularly like.
So as I was sitting reflecting on 2012, I figured that rather than going to the boring Outlook I would rather go to my (now very familiar and fond) sketchbook pro app on the iPad and review what I had drawn and painted recently.
So here we go.
First a a very beautiful mountain landscape in my little retreat in Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise in the french Alps – I was there in January.
Here is a painting of the Kremlin. @matteorizzi and I were there in February (cold!) for a very succesful business visit.
Here is my colleague Javier Perez-Tasso announcing a new SWIFT product on the same day Tim Cook was announcing the latest iPad 
In that same week in NYC, @martinedeweird, @mela_atanassova and I were holding the first Banks for a Better World workshop. Here is what we used to kick-start the meeting.
And finally, here is an impression from another of my retreats, Zeebrugge in Belgium on the North Sea coast, pictured here in a typical April belgium weather .
Nice year so far. And it is definitely a more fun to remember significant events than going through Outlook…
Kosta
This work by Kosta Peric is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
A week ago the internet connection at home started acting up. Goes down, then available for a couple hours, then down again.
A big problem!
We’re all so used to have internet that all at once we started being a bit … anxious is not the right word. A bit stressed.
My wife works from home 2 days a week, and she’s heavily dependent for her job on being connected. So she started using her iPhone as a hotspot. Works but not ideal.
I started being uncomfortable as all the bills, home banking, investments (all these things I’m responsible for… 
) are all electronic, so I started feeling a little late for everything. I also began using my own iPhone as a hotspot. Not ideal – slow, some things somehow don’t work. Granted, I could do some of the stuff from the internet connection at work, but it’s kind of in between meetings and things, no time to concentrate.
The boys (and girlfriends) – when they are around – started clamoring about all their contacts waiting for them on Facebook, that couldn’t wait, so they all went to friends and cafés where they could connect.
A big problem, I tell you!
So I asked one of my sons, who is in between jobs and thus has some free time, to call our internet provider – Scarlet in Belgium. He tried over two days many times, at all periods of a working day, without success. Call the hotline, wait with music for 20 minutes, then the line disconnects.
Impossible to get in touch with these guys. #Scarlet #Fail
So I was sitting and thinking what to do. One of these solitude moments
And I figured: maybe it is some hardware, wiring, problem… I’ve never paid attention to where the phone wires were – as a matter of fact I don’t even recall ever seeing phone wires in the 25 years we live in this house.
So I took a flashlight and went down in the cellar. Indeed very quickly I found a whole mess of wires on a wall, to which I had never paid any real attention at all before. There is one wire coming from the street into the cellar. It connects to a hub where clearly many people had a go: the phone guys, the alarm system guys, the digital TV box guys and god knows who else. It looks like a wild cat!
But I figured the key thing is this phone wire coming from outside. A big, thick, many times painted over, nailed to the brick wall, wire.
I poked it a bit, took it in my hand, pulled a little …. and there it goes: breaks free! The solution is near!
The house we live is from 19th century, so god knows how old is this wire. For sure more than the 25 years we live in the house. Very brittle, kind of falling apart from age. I took my swiss knife, cut out a 10cm piece of it. Still very brittle. I cut 10cm more. Looked better. Connected the wires to the right spots in the big mess of wires.
Ran up the stairs to the office where the Time Capsule router is.
And miracle: the green eye of the Time Capsule is on! And has been now on for 2 days. Clearly, problem solved.
I ran an internet speed test: I have 20Mbps download speed. We connect the 5-6 computers in the house on this wire. We download all sorts of music and movies all the time from iTunes. And Skype. And digital TV. And Internet radio. On and on and on.
Think about it. All of this on this piece of brittle copper wire coming off the street into my cellar. From another age and generation.
And this wire choose a particular day to start acting up. Isn’t it amazing?
This work by Kosta Peric is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
If you follow this blog or my tweets, you will have noticed my recent tendency to illustrate my posts, presentations and tweets with various drawings and paintings.
It all comes from an aHa moment I had around September last year. I’ve been watching for several years many “scribes” (illustrators) in the context of my work (for example the people from The Value Web), and notably my team members Mariela (@mela_atanassova), Martine (@mdeweird) and (most recently) Dominik (@ddebuyser). What they do is give a totally different, fresh perspective to things by drawing rather than (only) writing.
So, on this one particular day in September last year, I was updating the “white board” of my team (a board in my office capturing our activities and plans), and I figured it’s…. very boring. I was wondering on how to make it more exciting, and it’s where the aHa struck – scribe it! Make it more authentic, fun, attractive, drawing rather than writing. Do it like Martine, Mariela and Dominik would!
So I jumped in the pool, erased the whole boring mess on the white board, and started jotting. Very quickly, some memories came back – in my early teens, my friends and I were doing some tagging! Mind you, not on the walls of my native Belgrade, but at our school on specially prepared surfaces. So some drawing memories flooded back.
So, what happened?
Well, I won’t share with all of you on the wide internet our new white board – after all, as open as we Innotribe are, we still have to keep some secrets so that we can surprise you all However see below for other examples.
Since that aHa moment, I practiced. In the way I work, I tend to draw and erase a lot, try things, so very quickly i settled on my iPad as the tool of choice, where you can draw and erase as many times as you wish. I bought one of these pens, some apps, and experimented a lot. Then I started illustrating some events – here are some examples to date: compass summit scribings, the “essence of innotribe” prezi, and the recent “castle and the sandbox” post.
Most recently, I also started another exercise, capturing some scenes of particular importance, or surroundings that felt particularly good. More paintings than drawings. Here are some examples.
Fall evening in NYC
All of it is fun, and hopefully provides a more entertaining approach to some work topics, or just is plain different.
All (positive ) criticisms welcome!
Kosta
This work by Kosta Peric is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I'm a technologist, and my interests lie at the point of fusion between technology, finance and innovation. I'm currently director in charge of communications at SWIFT, and leader of Innotribe, the financial industry initiative to enable collaborative innovation.
I'm the author of The Castle And The Sandbox, a book on how to innovate in conservative companies. I serve on the board of TiE Brussels.
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