Tiago Costa

28 June 2011
by Tiago Costa
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How do you treat your team?

I just came across this very interesting post where things I believe and practice everyday about how to deal with teams and Clients are very well expressed:

“…as a business owner my allegiance first and foremost is to my staff, then to my client, and then to myself and the rest of the board.

The reason for this is that happy and productive staff is a prerequisite to having happy and productive clients – it simply doesn’t work the other way around.

This doesn’t mean that I will side with my staff if they are wrong, or not be critical of what they might say or do, it means that I acknowledge that it is my staff that deliver great work and they need an environment conducive to producing it.

(…)

Treat me badly if you like, I have skin as thick as rhino hide, but treat my people with respect and they’ll swing for the fences for you every time.”

17 June 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Improving productivity with traffic management

Credits: Keng Susumpow

One of the worst things of living in a fairly big city (at least, big, for the Portuguese standard) is traffic.

I have this thing with traffic because I feel like it is such a waste of time and one that you can hardly control, not only because in some roads (like Segunda Circular) it always feels like playing the lottery but also because if you have to schedule appointments with other people you can’t always avoid the peak hours, which is something I try to do.

With that said I have not yet seen any reports on this matter for our country but in the context of all the efforts needed to improve workers productivity I would believe that more could be done to reduce traffic jams and thus improving productivity.

If you give it a thought, with some quick math, we can conclude that a minor traffic accident, causing a jam afterwards, that would delay, say, 8.000 people for 30 minutes, could cost something like 200k€ (considering an average of 50€/hour for the value added to the GDP). We know that a lot of car accidents happen everyday on rush hours in the most busy cities in Portugal so I would say that it is a safe bet to believe that more than 1M€ is lost every business day on traffic jams, considering people do not fully compensate for the time they wasted waiting inside their cars.

I think that two simple measures could reduce the thousands of hours lost to traffic everyday:

a smart system that could re-route drivers in real time through less jammed streets or roads (perhaps via mobile notifications or with people rapidly deployed on the ground – we all know 90% of the critical traffic spots everyday);
a swat team for traffic that would intervene in car accidents as they happen, urging drivers to move cars to the side of the road or tow them away quickly.

I deeply believe the cost of this two solutions are way smaller than the loss on the GDP.

Of course that reducing the distance between your house and the office could also be an option but that wouldn’t stop car accidents from taking too much time to be sorted so when you need to deviate from that “standard” home/office/home route the same would apply.

14 June 2011
by Tiago Costa
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New blog theme – Yoko

As you probably already noticed (or not if you don’t came here often) I have just replaced this blog’s theme.

This one is a courtesy from Elmastudio and it’s called Yoko. I have heard about it first here.

I trust this can be a nice theme to better support readers coming from other devices rather then the desktop, since it works with media queries to resize the page elements to fit the screen size. I also like the template more than the simple Twenty Ten WordPress’s default.

Since this is a new one there might be somethings still on the need for an improvement, so just let me know if you find anything broken.

14 June 2011
by Tiago Costa
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It’s really the people

Credit: Seattle Municipal Archives

Everybody knows the all too common saying that people are the most important companies asset. We have heard it everywhere, repeatedly in same places where that is really true and on most of the places when it is corporate jargon BS.

Even if you read about this a lot, you might not believe it so much deep within. You might just count this in together with every other “critical success factors” that populate the business world.

At the end of the day I have never seen a truly great product/service evolving and keeping all its greatness for long, when there is not a strong team to standing behind it. You might just get away with a fair product/service for a couple of months, but it will not last for years.

This brings me to the point that it is really the people that make all of this work or break.

It’s in fact the brain power that makes it go, as it is coordination. You can have the better team but you also need them to row into the same direction and for that you need quick and effective coordination (project management, account management or traffic manager, whatever you would like to call it) – yet, coordination is about people, not tools or money.

17 May 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Non disclosure agreements vs Ethics

Every now and then in the business world people come to you with NDA for you to sign because they are about to tell you their plans to conquer planet Earth or maybe even the entire galaxy – even if that’s only in their heads… 🙂

I have signed quite a few NDA when receiving briefings for digital projects and I recognize I have also handed them out to some people who work with us at WayNext mostly because I must enforce it in writing, since we have confidentiality clauses in contracts with most Clients.

Tonight I came across a post from Mark Suster and I really agree with this excerpt:

– You shouldn’t worry about NDAs because they’re mostly unenforceable or unprovable anyways. Paraphrasing Fred Wilson, “you’re far better off working with somebody of high ethics with no NDA then somebody of low ethics with a signed NDA.” Confidentiality is our business. If we had a reputation for sharing proprietary information we wouldn’t get too many entrepreneurs knocking on our doors.

This is so true, because whenever someone becomes paranoid with confidentiality they tend to look for a safe harbor on the legals (NDA and stuff) but I think the most important thing is the ethics of the people you are dealing with – and for most of us, like agencies, where we often get product details before they hit the market, I agree we must be liable for the information we get. I also believe we don’t have a second chance to prove our ethics so we must commit to it and keep it confidential if its needed, not because it’s written on a piece of paper, but because that’s the way to earn your business partners trust.

Let me just give you a quick example to show how ethics plays a major role here. We work in a small market in Portugal for digital projects (mainly web strategy, design, development and marketing) and everybody more or less knows everybody even if they haven’t met IRL. People must keep confidential data for themselves because the market is so small that it is very easy to have friends or people you know, working for your Client’s biggest competitor at the agency across the street and still you must resist and not share any little detail when you grab a cup of coffee with them…

11 May 2011
by Tiago Costa
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BMW M5

I am a big auto fan even if I don’t agree to the way too exaggerated price tags in Portugal. If I would be in Germany I would probably keep on the garage an overpowered car for some weekend pure driving pleasure.

And while there are already impressively fast electric autos (read: Tesla Motors), for the true motorsport fans the time is yet for pure breed gas powered engines.

And this is when BMW unleashes the new M5 beast, already a legendary car, not a bit eco-friendly I’m afraid, but I’m sure that is an hell of a ride. Just have a look at the video and make your own opinion…

3 May 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Brain power vs Bruteforce

Another great post from Seth Godin – read it here.

Most of us have already figured out the joy of working smarter not harder, but, this is something I truly believe:

I think it’s worth noting that long work often sets the stage for hard work. If you show up enough and practice enough and learn enough, it’s more likely you will find yourself in a position to do hard work.

26 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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If you can afford: save money buying good hardware!

In several occasions I had to make the call about which hardware to buy for the companies I had either funded or where I was working at. The decision was easier at the companies that were not my own because most of them were not bootstrapped start-ups so we could afford what I would call corporate class hardware.

But then when you are just starting out and money is tight you must save here and there. A couple of years into it and you will quickly find that hardware is not the place to save money; of course you can try to get the best deal as prices vary a lot in different retailers, but in the end, whenever you can, just go for the top tier.

I am not saying you should buy the Porsche or the Aston Martin of the hardware (because you probably don’t need it anyway), but if you can afford don’t hesitate to take the Audi or the BMW because it will pay on the long term.

Just a quick example: when the team at WayNext started growing we needed some desktop computers and good tft displays but at first we did went cheap and that turned out costing more money than we have saved.

Now we have learned not to go that way. We always try to buy good hardware. In the first place nowadays a good brand will probably not cost more then 20/30% than the crappy unbranded computers, but then in the medium term you will get your money back very easily, because you just don’t have to worry with replacing parts or sending it to be repaired which always has a huge cost:

the time it takes you to find what the problem is;
the time it takes you to go out buy and replace the broken piece;
the time it takes because you just bought the wrong replacement but you only found out after dismantling the while computer;
the time the guy who is expected to use the computer is waiting or trying to manage with another computer where he doesn’t have his files or software…

you get the picture right?

Why all this today? Because we just spent 10+ hours sorting network problem (and its collateral damages, of course…) because of old crappy hardware we were still using – but we will do the right thing as soon as the shop opens… “can I have a Cisco router please?…”.

Ah, and we’ll take the chance to go upgrade the network to gigabit.

18 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Running shoes? Asics FTW!

Since I started running I have been trying a couple of different running shoes.

Just like lots of people (I think) I first started out with Nike. Why? Because Nike is a brand with a very high awareness and they position themselves as the best brand o running shoes. Back in 2007 I bought a pair of Nike Air Pegasus in New York (they had this little NYC lettering in the back, making them a bit exclusive – whatever ;-)).

I remember buying this pair not only because Nike is big and have an high level of perceived quality. I also bought them because they were announcing the Nike+ system, at the time allowing you to sync the shoes with your iPod so you could keep track of your running data and archive/share it online.

Nike Plus for iPod It seemed like an interesting system but when you want to take running to the next level you can’t just trust a system that measures all your data from your foot strikes. Why? Because if you go with longer/shorter strikes the data will not vary so you only have approximated values for your performance (training length in km or pace) – which probably is just fine if you only want to have a little fun.

Besides this thing with the Nike+, I started looking for more information on the shoes performance and I read in several places that the shoes have too much cushioning – something you probably will only realize after you try a different brand. Why is this bad? Too much cushioning is not good for your feet and knees because it is anti-natural (no, I’m not yet going on to bare-foot running – we will get there, eventually).

Then 2 years later I bought the first pair of Asics. I picked the Gel Kayano 16 from an online retailer with a 30/40% discount over the local Decathlon store. Ever since then I don’t hesitate when in the need to change running shoes and I am already the happy owner of the newer Gel Kayano 17 (2011’s model) – although, truth be told, I couldn’t find any difference from the 16 to the 17’s model (Asics launches a new model every year).

The Gel Kayano have much less cushioning compared to the Nike and are also lighter on the foot. I find them cooler (which is important for spring/summer) and fitting better on the foot. But the most important thing is that even on longer runs my knees and feet feel much more comfortable then with the Nike.

So, if you are still running with Nike just try some Asics because I believe you will be surprised with the superior quality of these shoes – it’s not wonder that many professional athletes prefer Asics.

15 April 2011
by Tiago Costa
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Lanzarote Waves PKRA 2011

Very nice video of the kitesurf waves championship happening in Lanzarote, with the presence of some portuguese riders (kudos to Inês Correia & Paulino Pereira)!

I miss sharks bay in Sal – Cape Vert. I really prefer waves compared to freestyle 🙂