Linux – saviour of the universe or right royal pain?

I have had a self-imposed blogging holiday.  After a while you start to get a tic in your left eye and go around wearing an Vulcan-shaped alfoil earmuffs.  Or perhaps that is just me – I’m not sure.

Actually, I just had four weeks holiday travelling as far as exotic North Ipswich (with two small children, a trip to the shops is less of an excursion and really has more in common with the Bataan death march).  One of the things I did do though was resurrect an old PC.

The reason for my attempt at resurrecting a 1998 Hewlett Packard8210 Pavilion – that’s the one with 266 Mhz of raw pentium power, which is kind of like describing a Ford Anglia as Michael Schumacher’s likely new motor – is that my three-year old is under instruction to ‘get better hand-eye coordination – he can’t even use a mouse’ (or words to that effect).  My son is already showing nerdish tendencies, which is perhaps the risk you take when casting the DNA dice of an accountant and a lawyer. 

At any rate, I decided I would resurrect the old PC – mainly so that he would stop stealing my new PC.  My first attempt was to load it with Linux.  And that’s when the fun began.  Firstly, I found that the BIOS had corrupted somewhere along the way so the keyboard was no longer recognised – result chaos.  After much searching I found the sophisticated solution – take the battery out (d’oh).  Keyboard working, I was then able to install Linux.  Installing Linux – admittedly Mandrake Linux 9, which is a bit old by now – was quite straightforward.  Unfortunately, if I was going to use anything other than the out-of-the-box setup, I would need to install new software. 

If you’ve never done it, installing software on Linux is a right-royal PITA.  No simple double-click installs-and-follow-the-bouncing balls here.  It’s all tarballs, gcc, and package managers.  And try as I might, I still couldn’t find the instructions for the installation of Firefox on Linux, despite the numerous sarcastic put-downs in forums to ‘go to the Firefox website’.  I did that, and if the instructions are there to be seen one seems to need to be equipped with the proverbial fine-toothed comb.  As a result, after probably a day of mucking about with Linux, I was yet to install anything new without a total reinstallation of the box – a less than satisfactory result.

So I then decided to install Windows 98 back onto the PC – which is when the second act of the fun and games began.  Installation of Lilo had blown away the master boot record with the result that the PC would not boot, full stop.  It was very easy to find that the problem was that the master boot record had been blown away; it was a little more difficult to find the solution to the problem.  Eventually I found that it is necessary to use debug and reinitialise the mbr manually with hex codes (ouch!).  Once that was done, though, the installation of Windows 98 was a breeze, and on the positive side of the ledger my son can now run ‘Grandma and Me’ quite well.  The only issue was installing internet explorer onto the machine – by default it came with ie4, and ie7 (the latest release) is far too heavy a load for my 9-year-old PC.  So I wanted ie5.  Unfortunately the world has turned since ie4, and it doesn’t work with a lot of websites that have a high demand for javascript (result: sadness, particularly since the ie5 and ie6 Microsoft download sites are incompatible with ie4).  Firefox – usually my browser of choice – also gave some bizarre errors that I couldn’t be bothered hunting down (recalling that by now I had spent a fair chunk of my holidays mucking around with the darn thing). 

So in the end I downloaded the latest version of Opera, which has reasonable performance if you’re a patient person.

So as a conclusion, and to round out my thoughts on this topic, my heart wants Linux to be good and great, it wants Linux to be useful and do everything I want.  Unfortunately I have several degrees by now (one of which is in IS), plus years of experience and experimenting with many different technologies, and a fair chunk of exposure to Linux, including a rather handy brother-in-law who is a guru in these things (the words ‘recompile my kernel’ pass regularly through his lips), and I still can’t install software with any form of reliability.  I can’t help thinking that Linux doesn’t really scale all that well for the home user by its very nature.  If software installation could ever be made much easier – and there is probably a distro that does this I suppose – I would be more easily convinced.  This might be a bonus for a site that wants to lock down software – after all, a big problem with Windows is that it’s very easy to install software! – but for now my head tells me that Linux, even after all this time, is still a curiosity best left to the hard core technical people who like to recompile their kernel (whatever that means).  For those of us who want to ‘do stuff’, Linux, despite the hyperbole and my wish for it to succeed, remains the tech-head’s choice and not ours.  I would love to be convinced otherwise, but if I have to take a course to get training in installing the software in my home pc, it kind of misses the point, doesn’t it.

Coffee treats…

And another thing – here I am at the Melbourne Convention Centre, and they’ve given me a $10 voucher to buy lunch at the coffee shop (since I was diligent and turned up early).  I bought:

  • Chicken Schnitzel Sandwich (I’m sure it’s approved by the National Heart Foundation), and
  • A small flat white coffee

$10.20.  $10.20.  I had to find my own 20c piece!  Us accountants may be tight, but sheesh, isn’t $10.20 for a sandwich and a coffee getting a bit up there?  Perhaps I live in the past, when you could use money to buy yourself stuff. 

Ah well, wish me luck.  Time to set a little mood lighting for this workshop…

CPA Congress in Melbourne – Catchy Titles R Us

Today I am presenting to CPA Congress in Melbourne, at the Melbourne Convention Centre.  The topic I am presenting to is "What is Open Source Software and When can Businesses Use It?".  I must spend more time on the titles, as I see that all the other sessions have catchy little titles like ‘Communication that Captivates’ or ‘Introduction to budgeting for non-accountants’ (OK well maybe that one’s not all that catchy).  I really should start with some eye-grabbing titles.  In this case, it probably should have been something like ‘Never Buy Software Again!’ or ‘What you don’t buy could hurt you’. 

Hmmm.  Maybe I’ll think about that.

Unfortunately I have always liked my seminar titles to say what they’re about – kinda boring, but functional.  I bet I won’t have anyone turn up to this seminar thinking they’re going to get free software from me.  I might have to establish a Catchy Names for Seminars department. 

Anyway I flew down this morning at 8.50am on the plane – but had to leave home much earlier than I had intended to since Brisbane is suffering greatly from traffic chaos.  Amazing what can happen when someone realises that about 100m or so of roadway could collapse and kill everybody in its path.  I’m sure they’ve done the right thing but honestly who can tell?  Got into Melbourne about 11.30 and immediately the fun and games started.  It seems my email with the presentation and workbook didn’t actually come through with the email I sent on Sunday.  Maybe I mucked up – it occasionally happens, and even more rarely do I admit to doing so.  Anyway, after much toing and froing I found the Press Room in the Holiday Inn (Trap for Young Players:  as an outsider looking in, apparently I am supposed to ‘know’ that the hotel with Crowne Plaza written all over it is actually the Holiday Inn.  What gives?).

That has lead us to a place where they can have the presentation in the room and can photocopy (!) the 12 workbooks I need to do my workshop.  Again, insert a big fat hmmm here. 

Why only twelve people I hear you ask?  Well, darned if I know either – I hope they all turn up or that whole group discussioon thing I’ve got planned is going to go pretty lamely.  Perhaps everyone knows everything about there open source software (I can but hope) or perhaps somewhat more realistically they have a nagging faint suspicion at the very core of their souls that three hours spent discussing open source software could send them into cardiac arrest or a reall really deep coma. This I think is a real problem for a profession when the topics I am up against are things like ‘3 secrets of how workplace fun boosts results’, ‘GST and Property Update’, and ‘Excel Beyond the Basics’ (that one needs two rooms).

Gak, perhaps this is my problem.  Accounting still thinks of IT as Excel (a tool to help you report on the financial aspects of the business) whereas I am thinking of IT as a tool that helps the business deliver its services or products.  Perhaps I should have mentioned that they wouldn’t have to pay for Excel to do 80% of the work they want to do…

Ah, accountants.  A conservative lot.

Horwath Sydney to merge with Deloitte – a comment on the profession

I was fascinated to read in today’s news that Deloitte has struck a merger deal with Horwath Sydney so that Horwath Sydney will become a large part of Deloitte’s ‘Growth Solutions’ – which is their ‘middle market practice’. I am fascinated on several levels by this.

Firstly, as of 1 July I became a Director in BDO Kendalls’ Growth Services Consulting area (I still focus on issues in the management of information systems), where we consult to exactly this middle market, from small startup companies through to corporate listed companies (from Deloitte’s perspective, we probably go from really quite small to really quite large, whereas they go from the biggest of the big to really who would want to be that small anyway? :=) ). So Deloitte is turning up the heat on what should be our market niche (ironically, I think it’s hard for them to deal with that market, but clearly they don’t think that way).

Secondly, I used to work for Horwath Brisbane before the Brisbane office merged to create the uber-professional services firm that is BDO Kendalls – in our market, we are bigger than Deloitte, and the merger did some wonderful things for our local market. Not that a big accounting firm in Brisbane is remotely like, say, a big accounting firm in London or Hong Kong. But anyway, as a result of my previous experience, I know many of the people in the Horwath Sydney firm (not that, for obvious reasons, we have been all that close for some time). And Horwath Sydney was always a firm that was focussed on its growth as a practice. For Horwath Australia, the eastern seaboard was always traditionally the strongest part of the practice (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane), but this has probably changed since the merger. Anyway, I have a little insight into Horwath Australia.

Thirdly, when Andersens collapsed a few years ago, the conventional wisdom was that a second-tier firm would arise like the sword held by the lady of the lake, and become part of a new ‘Big 5’. Four big accounting firms is just too small in Australia, or the world. They are too often conflicted out of their engagements. For instance, let’s assume a government is undertaking a hypothetical infrastructure sale, and is selling off this business to every big player in town. Each of the big four firms want their stake in advising the purchasers – there’s more fees in it – but of course no purchaser wants to receive the consulting advice of a firm that is advising a competitor, and often for this size sale the ‘big players’ only want advice from a ‘big’ accounting firm. Instantly, you can only really have four serious potential purchasers (this is a little simplistic, but I think essentially correct). Now, of course, this leaves the Queensland government in the lurch – who will act as probity auditors over the sale process? None of the big four can do it as they’re working for the potential purchasers (last time I checked, this was kind of a probity problem). The point is, the wisdom is that four is too small, so a fifth player should emerge in the marketplace. It has been four years now, and it hasn’t happened. Which leads me to my fourth point.

Fourthly, the BDO Australia network did its darndest to create a merger with PKF Australia, but in the end it did not come off. This is a well publicised and discussed fact, particularly quite frankly by PKF Australia :=).

Fifthly, Deloitte recently acquired the Melbourne practice within the BDO Australia federation, so we have only recently felt the pain that Horwath is now feeling having lost Horwath Sydney from its practice (not that I know much of the details). I believe we are still looking for a Melbourne suitor to take our hand in marriage (not that I would have any inside information, and if I did I wouldn’t be silly enough to blog about it).

So, those five points – where am I headed?

A little crystal ball-gazing firstly. Firstly, without Horwath Sydney, there’ll be a hole in the national Horwath network, just like there was when we lost BDO Melbourne. A key difference between Horwath and BDO though, in my humble opinion, is that our network has been relatively stable. Horwath has now lost its Adelaide, Brisbane, and Sydney offices within four years, I believe, and in the Brisbane and Sydney cases the managing director of Horwath Australia has been involved in both cases. Horwath Melbourne is very strong, but do they have the energy to rebuild the Horwath network?

The next question, though, is an interesting professional one. I really wonder whether we will ever see the much-touted Big 5 emerge. It needs a ballsy bit of merging to make a real difference. To date it has been mid-tier merging with Big 4 (doesn’t help matters e.g. BDO Melbourne to Deloitte) or one firm jumping from one mid-tier network to another (e.g. Horwath Brisbane to BDO Kendalls). In the latter case, since everyone plays musical chairs, what a network gains on the swings it loses on the roundabouts.

To really make it happen, and to get through this bottleneck in our economy (I know some might disagree or not even consider it, but accountants are needed if you’re going to realise synergies from business), you need one network to completely merge with another, which is what BDO Australia tried to do with PKF Australia. And from what I hear at other firms around town and across the country, these sorts of mergers all tend to founder on the rocks of narrow self-interest (best advice I ever heard: if there’s a horse called Self Interest running in a race, bet on it because self-interest always wins).

Partners may recognise that the merger is good for the practice, good for the profession, good for their staff, but if it takes them out of their comfort zone, earns them less, affects their equity or ‘superannuation’ in the practice, increases their risks, or something that they don’t want to see, the merger will founder. We accountants are a risk-averse bunch :=). For a national merger – particularly between federated networks – you just need one or two firms to hold out seeking a better deal and the entire merger collapses.

And meanwhile, the Big Four charge more for their services, pick off mid-tier firms as soon as they get big enough to be a threat (or, as rumour has it, start poaching their staff, although they’ve never given me a phone call!), and the bottleneck gets bigger, and the overall profession suffers. On the flip side, of course, who can blame partners for taking an offer of cash, to realise some of their investment in the business. Accounting’s a harsh game, a hard game, and a poor paymistress, really, for the risks these partners take – every time they sign a letter they could lose their house. From what I understand, motor dealers are better paid, get to drive flashier cars, and usually didn’t spend seven years of their lives studying (hands up everyone who thinks the accountants are smart? Cos you’re wrong).

I just despair a little though – where’s the profession going and are we ever going to see a Big 5? Perhaps PKF is best placed as they have been touting their new national ownership model, so once they have a national vote they can actually make a binding decision – federated associations can pretty much ignore decisions they don’t like. To date though most of the merger activity has been rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic – a potentially pleasing activity but nonetheless one bound to end in getting the cushions wet.

Implementing your online collaboration strategy

My speaker’s notes (not that they bear much resemblance to what was actually said) are to be found here as a downloadable pdf:  Implementing an online collaboration stategy.  This presentation was given at the Blogs, Wikis, and RSS conference in Sydney on August 29th 2006.

Implementing your online collaboration strategy

We work in a Web World for business outcomes

Introduction

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Micheal Axelsen, and this presentation focuses on providing a practical guide to the implementation of your online collaboration strategy, with some useful tips and thoughts on how to proceed with the implementation of collaboration technologies, including blogs and wikis, into the business.

This presentation is focussed upon:

  1. Business
  2. Collaboration technologies
  3. How to succeed with their implementation

At all times, though, this is intended to be a practical look at the application of these technologies, and addressing the practical concerns of business.

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