PećkoPivo

Kosovo and ICJ rule – a view of one Internally Displaced Person from Kosovo

Nikola Jovanovic — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:30:32 +0000

“Legal experts said that while the International Court of Justice had ruled that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal, it had avoided saying that the state of Kosovo was legal under international law, a narrow and carefully calibrated compromise that they said could allow both sides to declare victory in a dispute that remains raw even 11 years after the war there.”
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/world/europe/23kosovo.html?_r=3&ref=world

Disgrace.

And I’m not saying this as a Serbian nationalist from Kosovo or anything. It is a disgrace because an institution that is supposed to use the logic and common sense (whatever that is in this case) decided not to decide at all (!!!), and left the politicians in the UN to play the game and make a “final decision” withing the General Assembly of the UN. An easy parallel would be if the pedagogues in the kindergarten would be asked for an opinion on who is right and who is wrong and they just tell the kids to decide themselves. Who wins? Bigger and stronger, of course, and in most cases those that won’t ever admit they made a mistake.

This way, all they did was to pretty much retain the status quo for now. Both sides will read between the lines in their own ways and we are still far from any kind of a decision. Disgrace!

What has this shown us? Only one thing, in my opinion – that ICJ doesn’t have cojones/balls/muda to do their job.
I mean, since the ’90s, we are being told that we have to deal with what our leaders and people did in the past, been that Srebrenica or whatever else. And we pretty much have dealt with it. I don’t know many people in Serbia that don’t accept Srebrenica as a crime against humanity, and don’t feel ashamed that someone of our kind did that. Sure, there is still a lot that needs to be discussed and accepted on all sides in that bloody war, but we are going into the right direction. As a whole region, that is.

However, what we have in this case is that a major institution – International Court of Justice, which was created to deal with such situations, clearly rejected to show some courage and either confirm that independence is OK, or admit a mistake and support the negotiations about the final status.

What kind of a crap is that? Were they afraid to make a decision that either USA or Russia will not like and thought that this way they won’t get in a position where one super-power doesn’t care about and overrules such decision (remember USA and UN)? Or were they just afraid that a clear decision will spark either fights between Albanians and Serbs or enforce secessionist movements in many regions in the world (Catalonia, to start with - check out the reaction of their PM yesterday, or Armenians in Azerbaijan, or Cyprus situation - check how quickly Germans issued this press release)? (check also other reactions here and here)

: Pic from http://worldfrontpage.com/kosovo_grenade

I honestly believed that this agony will be finished, whatever the decision would be… Honestly… For the sake of the youth that should grow up learning about important things and enjoying life and not watching the news and looking forward to find a way to get a passport and leave the country. I honestly believed that international community has balls to make a decision and stick with it. And, believe it or not, I was ready to accept that Kosovo will not be part of Serbia anymore. I knew it would be hard, but I was ready to cry my ass off and feel miserable for some time. For the sake of the future.

But that was until yesterday. Who is going to convince me today that it is OK to be OK with losing Kosovo? Nobody. Ever. Again.
I’m OK when someone proves me wrong. Someone with a clear idea why I am wrong and he/she is right. But who can prove me wrong here? Someone without a stand?
And stupid rhetorics about “de-facto situation” or “it would be too hard to get back there and convince Albanians that living with Serbs is OK” doesn’t work anymore. It’s just absurd.

And don’t think I’m becoming a nationalist. Nope. Never been, never will be. My thoughts are on a much higher level. I’m actually sure now that my old idea about the need of the World War 3 and “restart of the system” is actually very good. Couple of nukes would probably help solve all the world’s problems. Am sure that Mr. Bush and Clinton would agree with me, along with all leaders of NATO countries. Don’t you agree?

That, or and old idea of Mr. Arthur C. Clarke (somebody reminded me of this idea today):
“Any teacher (leader) that can be replaced by a machine, should be!”
Machines think logically. They know only 1 and 0, true or false. Their logic cannot be affected by Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Putin or fancy Mr. Obama and his administration. They don’t know what the word “inat” means. They don’t give a fuck. That’s why I love computers.

Balkan – the definition

Nikola Jovanovic — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:48:42 +0000

This definition is circling in Serbian for some time already, so I decided to translate it for all of you.

Balkans – plain on which the Romans beat the Avars, then Avars and Slavs beat Romans, and then Slavs beat the Celts and Avars, and then were beaten by the Turks and the Hungarians and Bulgarians, who were also fighting among themselves, and finally The Turks were defeated, while Slavs were left to beat the Hungarians and Bulgarians, supported by the Austrians, who were helped by the Germans, for whom it was not enough to be beaten once, but they came for more, and in the end, when there was noone else to beat, the Slavs began to fight against each other.

It’s funny ’cause it’s true…

Cartoons from: http://www.donika.com/cartoon.html

Piece of wisdom

Nikola Jovanovic — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:27:06 +0000

“That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.”
Paul Valery

I could have tweeted it, but then I’d probably forget it by tomorrow. This way I’ll be reminded from time to time about this amazing thought.

Teaching the teachers – School of the future

Nikola Jovanovic — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:13:22 +0000

From time to time I happen to be invited to talk/present/lecture at various seminars and conferences. Not that I’m too smart or anything, but there’s simply not so many people and companies that are genuinely paying attention or investing into modern HR practice and CSR.

These invitations include guest lecturers at Universities, student seminars, and once I was even trying to explain CSR to a bunch of not-so-keen-to-learn SME people.

This time, though, I was invited to (together with a colleague of mine) think about a 90 minutes workshop for 40 high-school teachers from 20 European countries (well, in the end there were 20 from 10 countries, but anyways…). Now that’s a challenge – how and what do you teach people that make their living by teaching? Sure, we’re in the same field of work – education – but we doubted that our approaches and way of thinking are anywhere similar. Nevertheless, we wanted to give our best to make this time useful for them, so we decided to try to challenge their views and give them some space to think and talk about the future of education in high schools.

Name of the workshop was “Creativity and Innovation” and we started it with a 20 minutes presentation about the world enormous growth in last 200 years, how everything changed (ways we communicate, cars we drive, shops being online today etc) except how classrooms look like (they look almost exactly the same in last 100 years, if not longer). We also added a few slides about modern technology (Kindle, audio books, social media etc), then about the switch between Generations Y and C (Gen C – born after 1990 – connected, communicating, content-centric, computerized, community-oriented, always clicking), and finally we gave them a food for thought before splitting into working groups – a paradigm shift:

–1990 – we are using knowledge
–2000 – we are involved in learning
–2010 – we are creating the knowledge together.

This provocation kinda worked and this cool group was eager to discuss openly situation in their countries (Georgia, Turkey, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Austria, Israel, Macedonia, Serbia…) and give ideas and good case practices to be worked on towards creating a better school in the future. After some 45 minutes (how convenient) of rotations on these topics, the results are 3 flipcharts with a lot of cool stuff on them. And this is how, based on these teachers, the schools should look like in the future:

Environment (how classrooms should look like, seating arrangements, space for leisure, school appearance, the appearance of the school yard etc)

teamwork, different rooms for various purposes, out of school activities, visits and exchanges (business), computers with internet, a place to relax, more colours, school tv, radio, newspapers, website, tv hall (for lectures), volunteer work for the school and community, competitions, blogs etc.

Teaching / knowledge transfer methods

analyze the needs (what and how do they want to learn?), analyze types of learners (most lectures are auditive, while visual people are ignored…), encourage especially those that are motivated, create a link between student and teacher, teacher must be leader/facilitator/guide, technology and social media should be used more, students should be taught how to learn and to be motivated to search for more knowledge, exchange programs should be encouraged (especially intercultural ones), e-learning as a support to traditional methods

How to support/facilitate effective communication (teacher – student and student – student)

teacher needs to be a mentor, permanent access (e-mail, facebook, chat), there should be no fear, active learning through interactive methods, teacher should be a marketing manager – sell his product, trust is crucial, groupwork.

As you can see, there are cool ideas and there are awesome ideas. On the other side, some of those ideas are already in place in many schools in the western world and some are really easy to be implemented. But I honestly did not hear many inspirational and visionary ideas, not at all. Instead, they were listing basically what they hear in the news, on seminars they visit from time to time, or what ministries in their countries keep promising before every elections.

Except for one really big idea: “Let students create schools they will enroll”

Now that’s what I call an idea! A bold, visionary idea that could change everything. Ask the end users how they want to be served with products. Evolve.

Even in the presentation before the workshop, we used slides and ideas from visionaries such are Thomas W. Malone (The Future of Work) and Marcus Orlovsky (Bryanston Square Consulting), people that are already trying to change things (especially the latter) and I’m really happy that these high-school teachers had enough capacity to come up with such a big idea. I mean, regardless of the development of our countries, we all know that education/school systems are the hardest to be changed. Just look at Bologna system and how slow the implementation is…

So, the challenge now is to figure out what to do with this. I know I will share the results with the participants and the organization that brought them together – Junior Achievement, as well as with Mr. Orlovsky that is trying to do something similar in the UK. But what else can we do? What else can we tell them and encourage them to do?

Is there anyone out there that shares this idea that schools should be completely redesigned to support creativity and innovation and most importantly designed by students themselves? How should that look like?

Please, do share your thoughts…

wtfjeans review

Nikola Jovanovic — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:56:23 +0000

Finally got them!

After a couple of days of pure misery with Serbian City Express delivery service and their more then poor customer relations, I finaly received my wtfbox with my own pair of BETA wtfjeans!

Of course, I couldn’t wait to get home after work, so I unpacked and tried them immediately.

I have to admit – I was a bit afraid of what will they be like. I mean, I immediately fell in love with wtfjeans idea when @blogowski & @aurorans announced the project, so the expectations were quite high and I was wondering if I should really expect that much, since it is a beta of the very first model.

In any case, I unboxed them and instantly loved the color of the jeans. I already have one light and one dark jeans, so this one perfectly fits somewhere in the middle. The jeans itself feels very good in hands. Am not an expert, and couple of machine washes will tell the real truth, but it looks like good quality. Details like extra padding in the crotch area (extremely useful!), twitter blue stitching and very cool “beta 2010″ print in the back are just adding to the overall feeling of a very cool design.

Also, there are a couple of moo stickers with wtfjeans logo inside, to help spread the word I guess…

However, once I tried them, I wasn’t so happy. Apparently, I gained some extra weight in the last couple of months, so the jeans are a bit tighter then they should be .

Jokes aside, I put them on and have been wearing them whole day today and they are very very comfortable. Sitting, crossing legs, walking, it all felt good. The only thing I didn’t really like is that they are kinda low cut both in the front and in the back. Dunno, maybe it’s because my ass got bigger in the last couple of months, but the jeans are tight in the front and kinda low and loose in the back (you can definitely see my boxers). Am planning to lose some kilos next couple of weeks, but would love to hear other beta users feedback too.

Other then that, there is also a great feeling of wearing something uber-geek, which adds value to the whole product.

Now the thing that I loved the most – my Blackberry Storm 2 fits perfectly in the micro-fiber pocket (now I have to figure out a way to “holsterize” the pockets with magnets and make them really perfect)! And the whole feeling of using this pocket is exactly like promised – phone goes in and out (clean!) easily regardless if you are sitting or standing, but also it feels safe when inside.

I wanted to try if HTC Desire fits, but the phone in Vip Mobile store is attached with anti-theft cables, so that didn’t work. It looks like it fits though.

To sum up, wtfjeans beta 2010 edition are awesome.

Partizan at Euroleague Final 4 in Paris!

Nikola Jovanovic — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:19:16 +0000

A moment we waited for 12 long years has finally arrived -- Partizan won Maccabi in the quarter-finals and reserved the place at the Final 4 in Paris! With a little luck this team can also achieve something we are waiting for 18 years -- to win Euroleague…

Yup, I actually said “with a little luck”, because this team is, despite the youth and low budget (salary of just one Olympiacos’ player is bigger then the complete budget of Partizan), really something special and far from an underdog. It is consisted of a carefully selected group of players which are all talented, but combined with Partizan’s legendary coach, Dule Vujosevic, and the equally legendary Partizan’s fans, Gravediggers, this group becomes a very special team that gives 150% on every match and has become a very tough cookie for all the biggest teams in Europe.

Even Mr. Gershon, Maccabi’s coach, has noticed in one of his interviews that Macabbi has already taken a couple of great players from Partizan, but they never played anywhere as good as in Pionir Arena and under Dule’s guidance.

Below is what I’m talking about, and what Paris can expect from 7th to 9th of May.
I suggest the city of Paris to strengthen the foundations of Bercy Arena, for earthquake called Gravediggers is coming!

Last minute and celebrations:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZTjTXNNOb0

Coreography:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRa0AePQS8M

President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, cheering with the fans:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnCEMe1QEvI

Celebrations in the Arena and later streets of Belgrade:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzQUsQlyo8M

Emotional moments before every match (with subtitles):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4NpPN-NC5U

RIP Srecko Jamnisek 1931-2010

Nikola Jovanovic — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:37:42 +0000

: Srećko Jamnišek 1931-2010

A sad day.

Mr. Srecko Jamnisek, a great guy that, among other great things, started AIESEC in Belgrade and Yugoslavia back in 1953, passed away.

Starting AIESEC in Yugoslavia 57 years ago was a huge thing – that was the first time that such innovative and self-governing movement was allowed in one communist country. I suppose I can even go a bit further and say that it sparkled AIESEC offices and youth networking and leadership development in many other communist countries.

Mr. Jamnišek was inducted to AIESEC Alumni Hall of Fame in 2003. at 50th birthday of AIESEC in Yugoslavia.

Profile of the inductee below copied from aiesec.org:

Srečko Jamnišek

Date of Birth: 8th of February, 1931

Home Country: Slovenia

AIESEC RECORDS
:: Founder of LC Beograd and AIESEC in the Former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia NCP of AIESEC in the Former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia 1952-1954
:: Traineeship in the UK, 1954
:: Honorary member of AIESEC Alumni Club in Slovenia

ACHIEVEMENTS
In the early 50’s establishing an exchange program in a communist country with Western Europe and other countries. In 1953 he realized approximately 100 exchanges.

Srečko Jamnišek worked as the Export Director in a 12,000 employee steel company in Zenica, Bosnia in 1955-1959, after which he moved to Emo Celje, Slovenia. In his time as the Export Director and Commercial Director of Emo Celje (1959-1967) the company started taking AIESEC trainees.
He extended the market of EMO Celje to Germany, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, Nigeria. Lebanon, Jamaica, Cote D’Ivore, Ghana.

He worked as the General Manager of the Intertrade subsidiary in Prague and later in Slovenia as the Intertrade’s General Manager for Europe.
In 1979 he started leading the Rep office of Ljubljanska Banka in Germany, in 1982 he became the CEO of Ljubljanska Banka Združena Banka and in 1986 the General Manager of a Rep office of Ljubljanska banka in Germany again.

In 1982 he wrote a proposal to government about a law on joint ventures of foreign investors in Yugoslavia. In 1991 he wrote another proposal to government of Slovenia concerning a law about privatization of Slovenian enterprises.

Several times he has organized charity events to support clinics in Ljubljana.

Download Srecko Jamnisek’s Profile here [PDF Format]

Mr. Jamnišek, thank you for starting something that eventually changed mine and lives of thousands of people in ex-Yugoslavia.

Rest in peace.

Notes and Neurons

Nikola Jovanovic — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:38:00 +0000

: Photo: bobbymcferrin.com

Remember Bobby McFerrin, the world famous author of “Don’t worry, be happy” song?

Well, if you are aware of him and his work, you also know that he is more then just a singer. His style and approach is very unconventional and his music cannot really be put under any of the genres, which makes him unique and which brought him 10 Grammy awards, invites to play with most famous orchestras in the worlds etc.

But not only… Recently he got an invitation to participate at the World Science Forum and its Panel “Notes and Neurons – Search for the Common Chorus”, which aimed to find answers on questions like “Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined?” or “Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?” as well as to illustrate “music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions”.

And he did it in his own way. They told him that not everyone is musical. His answer was to show the power of pentatonic scale:

See full coverage of the panel here.

Now, this video is fun to watch for anyone, but if you think a little bit about it, it’s much much more. It shows how wrong and limiting our education system is… Imagine if education was there to really support your creativity and not to limit it within the curriculum made in 1960. or whenever… Imagine if teachers were talking to us instead of lecturing us?

When you misunderstand Corporate Social Responsibility

Nikola Jovanovic — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:39:46 +0000

: Pic: nwrc.sk.ca

Internal CSR, or being responsible to your own employees is equally important as being responsible externally and communicating it.
Depending on your business, that can mean anything from allowing them to have unions, have fair compensation and benefit systems, growth opportunity, security, but also quite often their own safety.

However, it’s just not good when you overdo it. I bumped into this example at sustainabilityforum.com and found it very disturbing.
I mean, keeping your employees safe is one thing, but having a policy not allowing them to help someone not to be beaten up brutally is something else…

Check it out below. Conclusion is after the video.

The Potential Brutality of CSR

Written By Chris Milton
Published On February 12, 2010

There’s a reason I’ve not put any picture with this post: because there’s a video at the bottom.

I think you should watch this video. It’s just over seven minutes long.

It’s of a news item from CNN in the USA last night.

It shows CCTV footage of a girl getting beaten up and having her head kicked in at a bus station in Seattle, Washington.

Then there’s the three (four? five??) security guards who watch this happen. Clearly within arm’s reach.

This is terrible, says the commentator. Surely as decent human beings, maybe even fathers, they should intervene and stop this brutality?

The attacker even returns for afters and is unhindered.

Why didn’t they intervene? Because there is a policy, apparently, that security guards do not intervene in violent confrontations. Difficult to swallow that one.

So on comes a guest, a Sergent from the local police force, who steps through this policy and explains why it’s there and that, once the fight had finished, over 60 officers attended the scene.

Then at the very end the presenter thanks the Sergent for his time and for explaining it to them.

So that’s OK then.

Now, why am I posting this on a CSR blog?

Simple. The reason these guys didn’t intervene is because they had a policy to follow. Tick boxes, insurance (no doubt) and all of that.

And this has subverted their normal human behaviour.

CSR and sustainability is all about reinventing business: it’s not a standard to acheive, it’s a model to follow on a path of continual improvement.

The tick-boxers and standard acheivers in the CSR world are little better than these security guards: watching disaster happen infront of them “satisfied” that they are following their professional protocols.

No one, not even a member of the public, intervenes. But it’s the security guards who are best placed to do so.

We all want to be on the side of the defenseless, the impoverished, the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. However, we — as people — have to act for that to happen, not just implement a policy and think that’s the best we can do.

Needless to say, those of a sensitive nature may prefer not to watch the video, and please be sensible with minors. The video can also be watched here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/11/seattle.beating/

Please watch it. Now.

Conclusion:
Personally and as an HR professional, I blame this not only on the company policy, but also on the corporate culture that they obviously have. I mean, this culture has to be very passive-defensive and very strong to change (in my opinion) basic human behavior to react in such circumstances. Or all of these 3 guys are simply bad people…
I hope that the kid is fine…

Customer Centricity – What a fail by Toshiba

Nikola Jovanovic — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:57:09 +0000

I’m not really sure who’s fail this is, as I don’t like pointing finger at anyone and am quite sure that all players in this chain have “logical” explanation, but in the bottom line, it is Toshiba’s responsibility and definitely deserves attention as a great example of how a great company can fail in customer focus/relations/centricity.

So, what happened was that a friend bought a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed and with a free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. A free upgrade sounds very good, especially since Win7 is far better option then Vista, easier to use, faster, more secure etc…
And doing the actual upgrade should be really easy, shouldn’t it? I mean, the year is 2010, even in Serbia a lot of people have a good internet connection and downloading the upgrade file should not be a big deal… Or the company itself should offer free upgrade service to it’s clients. Not a big deal really…

However, it is not that easy as it sounds, apparently… He was told that he will be contacted regarding the upgrade and 2 weeks later he was contacted by DHL and gets this:

If you can’t see it properly, it’s a ~77 EUR bill, and it came with an information that you additionally have to pay customs, VAT and if you don’t have your own carrier, they will use their daughter company (or something) and will charge you extra 5.000 RSD (~50 EUR).
Simple math told him that this “free” upgrade will cost him around 14.000 RSD (~140 EUR) which is 2.000 RSD (~20 EUR) more then buying a Full Home Premium version od Win7 in Belgrade. Just how stupid and illogical does this sound?
Of course, he sent them an e-mail to return the shipment…

I don’t know anyone in Toshiba Serbia, but would be cool if this post somehow reaches someone there, and would be even more cool if that someone contacted me to get this friend’s contacts and actually tried to fix this problem (regardless of who in the chain has actually failed).

(Funnily enough, this example came just in time when a company I work for is pointing out customer centricity as one of our major focuses, so I’ll use this as a very good example)