After a difficult first couple of days, things eventually got back on track and we started to get used to the idea of being a bigger family. When I say we got the idea, I really mean it. Apparently, when it comes to having 2 kids who are 2 years apart, life becomes a little bit tricky. 1+1 no longer is 2, but now equals to 3. And for 3, you might sometimes need 3 people at home to keep things under control; mommy, daddy and grandma. Yes, our special thanks goes to Pelin’s mother who has sacrificed the last 5 months of her life to help us before and after the birth of Onur. We can’t thank her enough.

Having said that, despite all the hardship, having another child is still a blessing. You can witness our happiness in My Photo Gallery. As always, please let us know what you think.

He was born on March 7th, 2008 3:37 am at Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital. He is a healthy cute little boy as you can see below.

You can take a look at more of his first photos in My Photo Gallery.

Due to minor complications following the labour and delivery, Pelin had to stay in the hospital a little longer than expected. She got finally discharged yesterday evening and I just had the chance to update the blog and the pictures.

Our daughter, Hande Selin, is celebrating her 2nd birthday today and I think, as parents, we gave her the best birthday present ever; a brother.

And for Pelin and me, we are, one more time, overjoyed by the miracle of procreation.

Kaş is a lovely seaside town in the province of Antalya at the southwestern part of the Anatolian peninsula.  It is also the closest town to the Greek Island of Meis (Also known as Kastellorizo or Megisti in Greek). While the number of ugly concrete buildings in the town center are definitely on the rise, it is still protected from the tourism vandalism which transformed many of the coastal towns in Turkey to ugly mini cities in the last two decades. It preserves the ambience which makes you feel that the time is moving slower there. It is a laid back, relaxed, relatively cheap and quiet destination not crowded by the party people who will migrate from one bar to another.

I had done my first scuba discovery dive in Kaş with Nautilus Diving Center in 2002. Nautilus was one of the first to run an around-the-year dive operation in Kaş back then. Owner Süleyman Biber and his team are exceptionally friendly people and they know the local waters very well. So, on our second day of arrival, we got on the diving boat and set sail.

Having logged more than 100 dives in 2005 and only 1 in 2006, I was feeling a little bit rusty but also very excited to be back under water again. Our first dive spot was called as Hörgüçlü, named after two pinnacles which resembles a camel’s back. Wow! Incredible visibility, little bit of a current and 30+ degrees celcius water temperature. This is the first time my dive computer logged something warmer than 30 degrees, ever. I had not experienced such water temperatures even in Philippines during the rainy season. It was such a nice comeback for me.

Our second dive was even better. We dove the Fener spot which means lighthouse. Biber asked me to lead one of the dive groups. His team was caught shorthanded due to high demand that day. Since I felt like the rust was off my skills, I proudly accepted the offer. Aside from the groupers and horse mackerels joining our dive group occasionally, we got to see an Ottoman ship wreck starting at 22 m depth. Large pieces of amphoras scattered around the wreck and the wreck’s still intact wooden skeleton were the highlights of the dive. I came out of the water with a big smile on my face. As my scuba instructor Daniel Burgaud once wisely said “People dive for fun and diving makes them happy. If you love teaching diving as a professional, that puts you in a beautiful environment having good time with clients who are with you simply to have fun. There are only only few professions which provides you that.”

 I couldn’t agree more. 

Now, what is Spock? Spock is the new people search engine. Once logged in, you can search for a certain person and if this particular individual is already in the Spock database, you can tag him/her as you wish and even upload a photo which you think relates to her/him. The leveraged Web 2.0 concept is “wisdom of the crowds”. So, ideally, once there are enough voters and votes for a person on the same tag or photo, his/her most popular and true attributes will prevail over the others. And if the person you are looking for is not there, you can send an invitation and then start tagging.

When I first logged in, I found my name and all the tags were by the ”Spock Robot”. Spock team seems to have used the LinkedIn database for the ordinary folks like me. If you find your name in Spock and if the information source is LinkedIn, you can claim that is you by simply clicking on the “claim: This is me” link and entering your LinkedIn email and password. At that point, the system will merge your two profiles into one. This merging process sometimes takes forever. Good thing is you won’t need to keep your browser window open for it to be completed. Just start it and come back in couple of days, you might find yourself lucky.

While there are some hickups with it, I like the Spock concept. I would be happy to see these folks at Spock succeed. Spock is still in private beta. That means to be able to use it, you will need an invitation. I initially got an invitation through a close friend and since than I have been tinkering with it. Apparently, these guys at Spock might have noticed that I have been very active so they gave me more invitations to share. So, I have plenty of invitations to share for anyone who is interested. Just post a comment and I will be sending you one shortly. I would like to hear about your experience with Spock as well.

So, what is Web 2.0? The first Web 2.0 conference was held in 2004, so at least since four years, people are trying to define and refine the answer. Apparently, there are many answers to that question and they all seem to complement each other.

Tim O’Reilly briefly defines Web 2.0 as “Networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects”. This is quite a simple form of referring to user generated content, social software, syndication, participation, folksonomy and all other names and descriptors used to define Web 2.0. It covers a lot of ground, but does it cover all?    

The movie below was shown just before the keynotes of the first day.

And this one was shown on the second day, again, just before the keynotes.

Now, after watching these, I’d say Web 2.0 is all about “harnessing collective intelligence and enabling two way use of web”.

What is your pick?

Our latest pilgrimage to Istanbul was scheduled on the afternoon flight of Lufthansa on March 1st. Around 2 pm, just half an hour before we left for airport, a major snow storm started to unleash its fury on to the city. What was a relatively beautiful day up to that point, turned into chaos and mayhem. While we were already in the airport taxi struggling through an incredible traffic jam, I checked the flight status of Lufthansa flight LH 471 through my BlackBerry, not suspecting any cancellation but anticipating some delay, and it was surprisingly on time. I remember saying to myself “Geez, these Germans, they seem to be on time even under these circumstances”. Thanks to our driver’s extraordinary maneuvering skills, we showed up at the check-in counter on time. Before I could say anything, the lady at the other side of the counter looked at me with a stone cold face and said “I cannot check-in anybody yet so please wait and we will let you know when we are ready”. No explanation, no timeline, no empathy. While most of the afternoon flights were starting to announce their cancellations, the airport’s departures screen and web site were still showing the Lufthansa flight on time. Half an hour later, the announcement came: “The flight is cancelled; you can book for another flight through our 800 number”. Funny part was, when we called the 800 number, we realized that call center agents were not yet informed about the cancellation and they were still referring us to the Lufthansa airport ticket counter. Another hour of struggle at the line of the airport ticket counter and we got ourselves a booking on the next day’s flight. Feeling lucky to be able to get a seat to the next day’s flight and we did not mind the two and a half hour taxi ride back home due to ongoing traffic jam. This day was simply a bad surprise from Mother Nature.

Next day, there was just occasional snow. Our flight was showing on time when we reached the check-in counter. Once checked in, we placed ourselves at a vantage point with a view of departures screen at the waiting lounge. One hour after the planned departure time of our flight, the first announcement from Lufthansa staff finally came; the plane coming from Germany to pick us up had to divert to Montreal and it was still there. It was expected soon to make it to Toronto. The departures screen got updated. After two more hours of waiting with no official announcement, we were told that the plane was still in Montreal and our flight’s fate will be decided within the next hour. We saw another late update on the departures screen. And finally, half an hour later, unexpectedly, first the departures screen flashed the bad news; our flight was, again, cancelled. Feeling frustrated and desperate, we rushed to the ticket counter. On our way, we heard the Lufthansa staff making the cancellation announcement, almost 10 minutes later than the departures screen update. Thanks to our fast reaction, we were at the beginning of a 200 people line. We quickly realized that the ticket counter team was understaffed, ineffective and their manager had absolutely no idea how to manage a crisis at that scale. He even did not seem to care. Our complaints did not change anything. An hour later, we got rebooked. For the people at the end of the line, it took up to 6 hours. The chaos at the luggage collection belt was even worse. There was no staff to coordinate the luggage handlers and for some reason these guys were simply throwing the luggage from the belt to the floor. After another hour spent at finding our stuff through the piles of bags, way past midnight, we were home.

On the third day, we got on the flight. It was still delayed for 4 hours due to a “mechanical problem”. Again, the Lufthansa team at the airport was not up to the task of customer care. We felt again out of the loop, unconfident that we would fly and more importantly not respected. When we finally took our seats, I was certain that I would never fly Lufthansa again. That feeling somehow waned through the flight since the in-flight teams and Frankfurt airport transfer staff caught up with good customer care. When we landed in Istanbul, we knew that Lufthansa overall was still OK, but their team in Toronto was the weak link.

The Mother Nature can be a force majeure, especially for airlines but it is not an excuse not to treat your customers with respect. What we experienced was a true example of how a weak customer care team could place a respected brand’s reputation in jeopardy. Toronto might be a small town, but world is also a smaller place now. I am sure Lufthansa management team will learn this lesson pretty soon; no matter how good your product, your technical team and your management team is, customer is the king and your customer care is your kingmaker against your competitors. Make sure that they are up to the task.

At the consumer front, there was a lot of talk around the Full HD (aka 1080p) TVs, HDMI standards, Blue-ray Disc and HD-DVDs. Here in North America, Full HD TVs and HDMI are already commodities. All major retailers are increasingly pushing these products into our living rooms. In December and January, we needed them because it was Christmas and in February, it was the Super Bowl. Most of us, who are into watching TV, will eventually get one 1080p HDTV if not already have. The CES proved to me that the affordability is defined by the size of the screen, not by the technology anymore. Some consumers will pay for the larger screens as long as their living room and their wallet can accomodate. And the manufacturers will keep on delivering bigger sizes. For the Blue-ray and HD-DVD, many of us have been holding off since we did not know which technology would prevail. Not a mystery anymore, both technologies will do OK. LG introduced the combo Blu-ray and HD-DVD player, BH100 “Super Multi Blue Player” during the CES and even priced it around $1200 to be available in major retailers by the beginning of February. I am sure there will be more manufacturers to follow LG’s lead and eventually two formats will be treated as one, of course, other than their technological differences.

It was also visible to me in CES that Voice over IP (VOIP) telephony was getting more accessible and consumer friendly. VOIP based telephony service providers and VOIP related hardware manufacturers had claimed huge booth territory. There is a disruptive revolution happening on this front and it is just a matter of time until it becomes a commodity. Beware big telco, it won’t take long until each household with a broadband internet connection will have a plug and play configurable, half the price of standard phone VOIP service with a nice looking telephone set. There is a lot of money to be made for the enterpreneurs in this business at many levels.

Nokia and Microsoft were both heavily showcasing their location-based services through their GPS enabled telephones and software. GPS based products and services will continue to make our lifes easier while we are on the road by seamlessly integrating into our mobile phones, laptops and alike. Soon, like claiming the first spot in search engines, to claim the first spot among many competitors in a certain business line or on a building floor might depend on how much it is spent for bidding by the advertiser to these location-based service providers.

One of the busiest booths in CES was Sling Media. Sling Media sells the Slingbox, which beams programs from your TV to your laptop, cell phone or like, so letting you watch your TV while you are on the move. They have announced two new products. First one is Sling Catcher, which makes the Slingbox technology two-way, by letting web video to be viewed on your TV or your home TV to be viewed on your, say, hotel room TV. The second one was the Clip + Sling technology, which lets you to record clips from the shows you are watching and send them to a portal to share with your friends. Certainly, these are very interesting, very creative disruptive technologies and not only are changing the way we watch TV but also the concept of TV viewership.

The people at Sling Media are also working with CBS to build a Sling and CBS branded video destination site for Clip + Sling. Les Moonves, the CBS CEO, shed more light into the big picture as he sees it during his keynote address. Following the popularity of YouTube and myspace, the media companies seem to formulate the success equation on Web 2.0 with three main components; content, portal and community. Since content is their main line of business, they are heavily concentrating into building different portals and expecting the community to gather around these. They expect that as the community grows, through interaction, the content will get more aligned to community expectations, hence their customer base will also grow. He emphasized new partnerships of CBS with Sling Media and YouTube in his keynotes and supported the positive impact they make on CBS’s business with some neat examples. You might want to check “CSI Miami - Endless Caruso One Liners” on YouTube. Now wonder why Horatio Caine (David Caruso) makes much less cheesy one line statements in recent episodes of CSI Miami.

I agree that the content-portal-community approach is a good recipe for success and opportunities are not only limited to content providers but also portal providers and community opinion leaders. If you have an opinion and want to get heard, there has been a better time. With all this technology and buzz about mobility, connectivity, accessibility, community interaction which enables content enhancement, Web 2.0 sounds to me more and more like Renaissance 2.0.

It is always refreshing to see and hear new things, things that make you think deeper and thoroughly which normally you would not have time in your daily routine. For me, CES was not only a physical marathon but a mental one. And of course, a very rewarding one.

I think the answer is “hardly”. There are several reasons for that, but primarily, the project people have the project mindset. They are used to work under strict deadlines, for defined tangible outputs and most of the time under high pressure. This is high adrenaline environment and as we all know, adrenaline is addictive. On the other hand, the operational departments are quite different habitats. In departments like Finance and Administration, the tasks are repetitive and expectations are predictable. In departments like Marketing, mindset is completely different, creativity and deadlines are not the best friends. And in Sales, yes, the presssure is there but at specific intervals within specific targets. At the end, when the sale is done, product delivery, acceptance, support becomes somebody else’s problem and that is always a relief for the Sales team. Project people hardly fit into these roles. And then, there is the fundamental question, do they really need to fit? Do companies need project managers with sales skills? I am a strong believer in specialization and expertise so, I seriously doubt that.

Bottomline is, companies need projects to retain their key project people. Or else, those who live by the sword, will always die by the sword.

When the tour was over, we finally drove over to Brockville, 52 km’s norteast of Gananoque along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. It took us less than 5 minutes to locate the Dive Brockville Adventure Centre and couple of minutes later, we were discussing about the dives, equipment and rates with Helene, the very friendly lady who runs the shop. When we left the shop, I was convinced that this would be the place I would spend couple of weekends next summer. Brockville not only has a fantastic dive shop, it also has many places to eat. We were handed out a pamphlet, “Downtown Brockville Restaurant Guide” by the dive shop which listed many good eats within walking distance. Among the many local favorites circled by Helene, we opted for number 12, the Keystorm Pub. At the pub, the menu offered many choices, but we settled for a suggested hamburger which has proven to be the right choice.

On the way back to Toronto, we stopped by Kingston. Apparently, the city has a lot to offer for the history and nature lovers. We got our caffeine load in a local coffee shop on the main street and then off we go, back home to Toronto. Trip back took again around 3 hours with no difficulties. Certainly, it was a pleasant trip done most probably at the last warm weekend day of this year.

And finally about testing my new car, highway driving was a pleasure and occasionally speedy. Later on, I read in the newspaper that, during that weekend, Ontario Police ticketed 5500 drivers for speeding. Luckily, I was not one of them.

Keep discovering and drive safe…

I posted some photos from that weekend in My Photo Gallery. While I was uploading the photos, it suddenly appeared to me that all the participants of that trip are scattered around four continents now. Daniel is still in the Philippines, Cai Feng is back to China, Pascal is now in Paris, Bora is somewhere in African continent and I am in Toronto. Of course, we all keep in touch and make plans about diving somewhere sometime together but then again, we all know that it is quite unlikely that it will happen that soon and that easy.

It is amazing that how quickly life can change. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean it in a bad way. I did some great stuff with some great people last year and I am doing the same this year but within a different environment. It is completely a different experience and yes, it is fun as usual.

About diving, Canada so far has not been the best place, but there is some positive signs. I will go into details in my next post.

Until then, for the ones who are able, keep diving, and for the rest of the flock, keep dreaming.