Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Standing ovation for Desay & Villazon

Roland Villazon (tenor) was singing tonight in a gala with Natalie Desay (soprano), with the Radio France Philhamonic Orchestra conducted by Myung Wung Chung at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

It's the first time I hear Desay live: I'm a bit disappointed by her "light" soprano voice. It's not high-pitched, but too-cristalline. And she over-acts.

I heard Villazon last month, and tonight he was better. Definitely a Domingo voice to become: great showmanship, great presence on stage, lots of humor; his voice needs to mature still, and he needs to add some power. Nevertheless he was great.

It had been a very long time since I saw Chung on stage: he still conducts with minimalism and lots of expression at the same time. With my binoculars I could see how the musicians were watching each of his instructions.

Overall, not a great night for me, as I found the répertoire to be too cliché: love themes, and more love themes. After 2 hours, you do get bored.

Desay did a massacre of the first Traviata aria ('un di', felice'), one of my favorites; nevertheless by the end of the concert, her voice was back on par with Villazon.

In a nutshell: bet on the guy from now on.

I fought the law

Lycée Montaigne, Paris

Happy Birthday, M. Billaut

You might not know it, but Jean-Michel Billaut, the so-called father of the French Internet, turned 61 today !
He's the guy exploding our stats at vpod.tv and the #1 user of our storage... I'm told he shot 41 GB of footage this week at Capital-IT.

Can't wait to see it online :)

By the way, JM, this is my gift to you today: we are going to update YOUR blog design SOON ;)

Great CGS 4.0 dinner last night

100_0732.JPG, originally uploaded by rmen.

all pictures are on Flickr with the CGS4.0 tag. Click on the pix for more.

who came Thanks to the 30 people for sharing a great entrepreneur dinner with us all.

Ksso interviewed me at Capital-It

Capital-it backstages rodrigo
Video sent by ksso

actually we were rehearsing our laptop connections the night before the show. I look tired and really was. I guess it was worth it. Here's the original post.

Photo de famille web 2.0

Photo de famille web 2.0, originally uploaded by Altaide.

Great dinner last night with some representatives of the best French web 2.0 startups. Click on the pix to see more pix and the names.

and now back to work...

Actually my first day off in 15 weeks (a saturday)...

The F pattern (what users look at in a page)

interesting. I had mentionned something similar a while ago.

" In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users' main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F"

[...]

" The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:

• Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words."

(Via Jean-Luc)

and the party's over :)

indeed... my first day of vacation in 15 weeks, and it had to be a saturday with a bright blue sky and sunshine! Back to work in the hotel lobby, in order not to bother the folks in the room.

And just to give you a hint to what I consider a day off...

1. (no breakfast - way too late)

2. very looooooooooooooooooooong lunch at the Bar du Soleil / de la Plage (I never know which one I'm sitting at);
- fondue de fromages et doigts de polenta (delicious)
- bar (fish) et pommes de terres écrasées (fantastic)
- coffee and mignardises back at the hotel bar, I couldn't stand the wait at the restaurant

3. quick dinner at Les Vapeurs in Trouville (the kid was not feeling well)
- 6 escargots de bourgogne
- raie à la moutarde à l'ancienne
- and coffee again at the hotel bar...

on Microsoft's new strategy

I had missed this original article on Fortune, missed it on Techcrunch, but spotted it on Didier Beck's blog (always a great source of information).

I always find it interesting how people reinvent their strategy, and how they involve their team in shaping the thinking, but also the execution. Actually I started reading (almost finished) EXECUTION by Larry Bossidy last night in the train to Deauville (yep you all win :), Indeed, the book is simple enough but stresses a couple of points: linking people with strategy and operations; debate and conversation is good as it fosters critical thinking and buy-in. And that 50,000 feet helicopter views are better left to dreamers. Modern CEOs need to be strongly connected to their business.

This article is a good illustration on why Microsoft is doing a number of right things. Now internal issues are never enough when you have to deal with a very competitive marketplace.

Last thougths on this article: the total shift of the web industry to ad-based business models. indeed... if you think "outside in", what we all are doing is competing for mind-share or 'time-share", currently allocated to leisure. It's not raelly extensible, and it eyeballs are shifting from the printed press & TV to online sites, then that's where the money of large advertisers should go. The article has a few numbers.

Finally, interesting note on the source of power and energy in the future. I hadn't thought about that myself yet. I should probably subscribe to Fortune Magazine...

update: the original Ray Ozzie memo that is a must-read and re-read.

update2: additional thoughts by Don Dodge.