Posts tagged ‘Canada’


About me (according to libraries)

28.10.2022

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that I have a US Library of Congress entry, as a published author, though if I am reading it correctly, it relates to my 2010 mayoral campaign.

Following the links there, I arrived at a Virtual International Authority File but the data there seem to relate to my Wikipedia entries. Disappointing.

Keep going, and there’s an entry at OCLC, a non-profit library collective, also linking to Wikipedia.

But from there I have a WorldCat identity that OCLC manages, and this is where things get a little more interesting.

There’s some 2010 mayoral campaign stuff, five references to academic papers I wrote (nice to see they are ‘held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide’), an early book I wrote, Typography & Branding (though I don’t recall having written it in 2002 as they claim), and a book I didn’t author but am credited in the colophon as the body typeface family’s designer, Mainland Island from Wai-te-ata Press.

I’m flattered that Typography & Branding is held at two Australian locations, the University of Newcastle Auchmuty Library and the Curtin University Library. I hope their students are getting a lot out of this early book of mine.

I admit I like this tag cloud:
 

 
Commiserations to my namesake, Jack Yan, on not winning the Toronto mayoral election. I was getting a lot of news hits from Toronto and Ontario, far more than our media here managed back in the day. I also thought he did rather well in the televised debates. We only had one episode of Back Benches in 2010 that wasn’t really a debate. But there was a fun quiz, which I won—some of us know more about this city than others.

In a very crowded field, Jack managed seventh out of 31, with incumbent John Tory holding on to his gig with 62 per cent of the vote.

I hope he has another crack at it if he feels he has something to offer. I found him a really great guy to deal with.


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Posted in branding, internet, New Zealand, politics, technology, typography, USA, Wellington | No Comments »


On the mayoral races in Wellington and Toronto: Tory for us, not for them

06.09.2022

Almost makes you want to run for mayor again.

I had a look at my 2013 manifesto during the weekend and it wasn’t half bad. And, with respect to our candidates in Wellington, each of whom I know socially (and politics aside, actually like), it goes into more detail, and is arguably more visionary, than what I’ve seen from them to date.

It was quite uplifting to read this from Stephen Olsen writing in Scoop, covering the 2022 mayoral candidates’ meeting at St Peter’s Church last night:

To be honest the lack of rigorous thinking made for a lacklustre event. It even had me pining for the 2010 and 2013 Mayoral campaigns of an outsider, Jack Yan, who did reasonable and intelligent things like put forward a detailed manifesto and who did justice to the role of an articulate, knowledgeable and expressive candidate. (A disclaimer being that I was on the Back Jack team of 2010 and a supporting advisor three years later).

It was written without bias, and evaluates each of the three leading candidates.

Stephen concludes:

Tory Whanau did have a few Jack-like moments in calling as forcefully as possible for more democracy, more boldness, more engagement of citizens and more community-based co-design opportunities to rejuvenate Wellington. However for her campaign to get some wind under its wings it will need far more amplitude on those basic but vital notes. It’s not a time to pull punches.

In both of the elections I contested, I said we could not have politics as usual. I stand by that, because look at the lack of progress between 2013 and 2022 when voters choose politics as usual: rising rates, little change in the industry make-up (which is another way of saying very few high-value jobs have been created as a proportion of the total), which leads to a lack of economic resilience (and things being unaffordable for Wellingtonians). I said as much nine years ago.

Paul and Andy represent the old guard, and are conservative. Tory is a well read woman—I recall seeing Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy in her office, among others, and she is aware of the world outside politics. She is the same age Mark Blumsky was when he was mayor, and the same age I was when I first ran. A good age, young enough to articulate a vision and have the energy to carry it out.

Whomever took a jab at her ‘inexperience’ as detailed in Stephen’s article obviously does not know her history or background. That person evidently does not know Wellington well enough, either, or just how well the last 30-something mayor we had improved the place. Maybe their memory’s playing tricks on them now and they’re out of touch. I mightn’t have agreed with everything Mark did, and maybe there are some rose-coloured glasses at play—but I do agree with the digital advancement this city made under him. Anyone miss the wooden bus stops along Courtenay Place? Anyone? Bueller? I thought not.

Our choices this year are Tory boys or Tory in name. Tory Whanau would make a fine mayor and (finally) the city’s first non-white mayor, too.
 
It wasn’t nostalgia that had me looking up my 2013 manifesto. It was one Jack Yan running for mayor this year. Not me, but the guy in Toronto.

Jack’s finally got his website up and got in touch, in good humour, as he saw the crazy coincidence of not just the name but of running for mayor of one’s city. I naturally forwarded on the emails I received thanks to mistaken identity. Out of interest, I had a look through what I wrote back then and sent it on out of interest. Just helping a brother out.

He probably doesn’t need it, as he has good, comprehensive policies tailored to his city. There’s a Tory called Tory running there. Torontonians have way more candidates to choose from. To the folks there, give the guy a chance and check out his website at jack2022.ca.


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Posted in leadership, media, New Zealand, politics, Wellington | No Comments »


I’m not the Jack Yan running for mayor of Toronto

11.07.2022


 
As far as coincidences go, this was unexpected.

To readers from Toronto, and anyone else emailing me about this, I’m not the guy running for mayor there.

I realize I’m way more likely to come up in searches for my name and for my name with mayor or mayoral candidate, since my namesake doesn’t appear to have much of a digital trail yet.

If you’re the Toronto mayoral candidate, please get in touch. I have a domain name you might be interested in. English and French spoken. (Which no doubt will add to the confusion.)
 
PS.: My namesake now has his website up. Head here to visit it. Some decent policies here!


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John’s on first

27.08.2021

Bill Owen posted the above, and I replied in this thread on Twitter.

‘John’s on ïŹrst, John John’s on second, John’s on third.’

‘Who’s on ïŹrst?’

‘John.’

‘The guy on ïŹrst.’

‘John.’

‘But that’s the guy on third.’

‘One base at a time!’

‘I’m only asking you, who’s the guy on ïŹrst?’

‘John.’

‘I don’t want to know third! Who’s on ïŹrst?’

‘John.’

‘So John’s on first now? Who’s on third?’

‘John.’

‘But you just changed the players around!’

‘I’m not changing nobody!’

‘You’re saying there’s one player on two bases! It’s John! John!’

‘He’s on second.’

‘Who’s on second?’

‘John John.’

‘What? John’s the name of the guy on second base?’

‘No, John’s on first.’

‘But John’s on third.’

‘He is.’

‘He can’t be on both! Which base is John on?’

‘Which one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which one?’

‘I just asked, which base is John on?’

‘Tell me which one!’

‘I’m asking you!’


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Seasonal Canadian humour

22.11.2019

My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season.
 

 
   It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist:
 

 
   The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get the top joke.
   I have a ringtone on my phone for SMSs, namely Derek Flint’s ringtone from In Like Flint.
   If I mention In Like Flint, in my circles there’d be about one person every two years who’ll get what I mean.
   Twenty years ago, everyone would have said, ‘Who’s Derek Flint? That’s Austin Powers’ ringtone!’
   Today, some of my younger readers will ask, ‘Who’s Austin Powers?’
 
So far, only a tiny handful of people get my reference when I say, ‘Dear guards, Jeffrey can be taken off suicide watch. Signed, Epstein’s mother.’
   No, what Epstein did to his victims—children—is no laughing matter.
   However, I don’t think I’m alone in needing humour as an anchor for my sanity when the news is abhorrent.


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Ford to stop selling passenger cars in the US and Canada, save for Mustang and Focus Active

26.04.2018


The Ford Focus Active: by the turn of the decade, this will be the only four-door passenger car Ford will sell in the US and Canada

In a surprise move, Ford has announced that it will cease selling passenger cars in the US and Canada by the early 2020s, excepting the Mustang and the Focus Active.
   The announcement was actually for ‘North America’ but as Ford of MĂ©xico does a reasonable trade on Figos and Fiestas, it’s hard to see the policy be uniform right across the continent.
   It’s a cost-cutting exercise, designed to save $25,500 million in five years, and trucks and SUVs simply make more money for them. Small cars mean small profits. In fact, car sales lag those of the F-series, Escape and Explorer in the US. Shares have risen on the news.
   That means Americans and Canadians will say goodbye to the Fiesta, Fusion (the four-door sedan counterpart to the Mondeo) and Taurus, the last of which is already superseded in China. If you liked the cooking RS and STs, then too bad. Lincolns are losing money for Ford, too, so maybe the Continental will vanish—given the Fusion is history, the MKZ will follow. That doesn’t leave much in the Lincoln line-up.
   My initial reaction was that the economies of scale would worsen: if you’re not developing for a global market, will development costs be successfully amortized in the same period? We have, however, seen the Japanese do reasonably well with products strictly for the North American market, e.g. certain Acuras and Hondas that are sold only in their neck of the woods. We also know most of the costs of the car are in the platform and architecture, and Ford has shown decent adaptability, particularly with the C519 Focus (the recently released Mk IV).
   Ford says the cuts will come from sales and marketing, engineering and product development, as well as material costs, manufacturing and IT, in that order, according to Automotive News.
   The fact that product development and engineering rank so highly there is worrying to me.
   They’re bandying the word efficiency about a lot, and that always has me worried. That’s the word you used to hear from corporate raiders like Slater Walker. Things can look efficient while they’re being weakened.
   CEO Jim Hackett says he’s feeding the healthy parts of the business, ‘and deal decisively with the parts that destroy value.’
   While it’s true that the crossover, SUV and truck markets are strong, as they are in many parts of the world, I can’t help but think that Ford isn’t preparing itself for tougher future scenarios.
   Energy crises can come unpredictably, for one. Ford was late to the downsizing game in the 1970s because it saw the dollar signs with big cars. By 1977, GM had stolen a real march on Ford. By the turn of the decade, Chrysler was back from the brink with fuel-efficient cars while Ford sailed into the red.
   Chrysler found itself too truck- and SUV-heavy with the recession of the late 2000s, and its entry-level nameplate Plymouth had already vanished, thanks to mismanagement by Daimler earlier in the century.
   While there’s not always a need for a full line—AMC taught us that extending yourself too far isn’t always wise—I wonder if Ford is leaving itself vulnerable.
   Crossovers like the Escape, which might outsell the Fusion, are being beaten in the market-place by the likes of the Toyota RAV4, so it’s not as though Ford is that strong in all the markets it wishes to remain in.
   GM, having pulled out of Europe and Russia, might be in better shape because of its position in China. Ford trails GM when it comes to its Chinese footprint, although it will remain in Europe.
   Ford’s Jim Farley says the company is looking at new types of vehicles that are spacious, versatile and economical, which hopefully will fill the gap should economic surprises surface. Because you need something cheap to hook buyers and get them to the brand. That’s not going to happen if Focus Active is the smallest car in the line-up.
   Ford is likely to have these on global platforms. But that signals to me a real need to remain strong in R&D. Failing that, Ford is looking to partner up with someone, and it may already have an idea who that is.
   I am speculating here, since I don’t have any figures outlining what proportion of revenue is devoted to that area.
   Nevertheless, this sounds like an appeasement of Wall Street.
   That leaves one concern over nameplates. Ford has successfully introduced nameplates over the years because the product was right: Cortina, Mustang, Escort, Capri, Fiesta and Focus among them. But it has also failed by killing nameplates and replacing them with ones that had no real goodwill, such as Five Hundred and Freestyle.
   Whatever Ford has in mind, I hope for their sake that the new product is compelling, as much as the Mustang and Fiesta were when they appeared on the market. Both emerged in the wake of economic recessions, with Ford innovating because it had to.
   In this century, Alan Mulally’s time at Ford had a measured, sensible approach, where you could understand the future. There are question marks over what Hackett has planned, and usually we have some clue what these new products will be four years out. All I know of is that the Ranger will make it to the US again, boosting truck sales, but that’s hardly an innovation. That’s just filling a market niche with familiar product.
   Will Ford do Brasil come up with something that can be sold in both North and South America? Perhaps the next-generation Ecosport?
   There are lessons in history that shouldn’t be ignored, and Ford has one of the most interesting pasts of any car maker. There is, however, a feeling from the announcement that this heralds a time of retrenchment, as its profits fall globally, and net income in the US rising for the first quarter in part due to a lower tax rate.
   Remember, Isuzu also once thought it was a good idea to stop selling passenger cars and focus on SUVs and trucks. And they’re no longer around in North America.


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Posted in business, cars, China, globalization, marketing, USA | 5 Comments »


Does TPPA redux protect Big Tech?

25.01.2018


SumOfUs/Creative Commons

Prof Jane Kelsey, in her critique of the still-secret Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (formerly the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA]) notes in The Spinoff:

The most crucial area of the TPPA that has not received enough attention is the novel chapter on electronic commerce—basically, a set of rules that will cement the oligopoly of Big Tech for the indefinite future, allowing them to hold data offshore subject to the privacy and security laws of the country hosting the server, or not to disclose source codes, preventing effective scrutiny of anti-competitive or discriminatory practices. Other rules say offshore service providers don’t need to have a presence inside the country, thus undermining tax, consumer protection and labour laws, and governments can’t require locally established firms to use local content or services.

   If this new government is as digitally illiterate as the previous one, then we are in some serious trouble.
   I’m all for free trade but not at the expense of my own country’s interests, or at the expense of real competition, and the Green Party’s position (I assume in part operating out of caution due to the opaqueness of the negotiations) is understandable.
   Protecting a partly corrupt oligopoly is dangerous territory in a century that will rely more heavily on digital commerce.
   While there may be some valid IP reasons to protect source code, these need to be revealed in legal proceedings if it came to that—and one hopes there are provisions for dispute settlement that can lift the veil. But we don’t really know just how revised those dispute settlement procedures are. Let’s hope that Labour’s earlier stated position on this will hold.
   Google has already found itself in trouble for anticompetitive and discriminatory practices in Europe, and if observations over the last decade count for anything, it’s that they’ll stop at nothing to try it on. Are we giving them a free ride now?
   Despite Prof Kelsey’s concerns, I can accept that parties need not have a presence within a nation or be compelled to use local content or services. But the level of tax avoidance exhibited by Google, Facebook, Apple et al is staggering, and one hopes that our new government won’t bend over quite as easily. (While I realize the US isn’t part of this agreement, remember that big firms have subsidiaries in signatory countries through which they operate, and earlier trade agreements have shown just how they have taken on governments.)
   She claims that the technology minister, the Hon Clare Curran, has no information on the ecommerce chapter’s analysis—and if she doesn’t have it, then what are we signing up to?
   However, Labour’s inability to be transparent—something they criticized the previous government on—is a weak point after a generally favourable start to 2018. The Leader of the Opposition is right to call the government out on this when his comment was sought: basically, they were tough on us when we were in government, so we hope they’ll live up to their own standards. Right now, it doesn’t look like it. I suspect Kelsey is now the National Party fan’s best friend after being vilified for years. Bit like when Nicky Hager (whom one very respected MP in the last Labour government called a right-wing conspiracy theorist) wrote Seeds of Distrust.
   And the solutions that Kelsey proposes are so simple and elegant that it’s daft they weren’t followed, since they are consistent with the Labour brand. I know, trade agreements can stay confidential at this stage and this isn’t unprecedented. But that’s not what Labour said it wanted. At least these suggestions would have shown some consistency with Labour’s previous positions, and given some assurance that it’s in charge.

What should a Labour-led government have done differently? First, it should have commissioned the revised independent economic assessment and health impact analyses it called for in opposition. Second, it should have shown a political backbone, like the Canadian government that also inherited the deal. Canada played hardball and successful demanded side-letters to alter its obligations relating to investment and auto-parts. Not great, but something. New Zealand should have demanded similar side-letters excluding it from ISDS as a pre-requisite for continued participation. Third, it should have sought the suspension of the UPOV 1991 obligation, which has serious Treaty implications, and engaged with Māori to strengthen the Treaty of Waitangi exception, as the Waitangi Tribunal advised. Fourth, it should have withdrawn its agreement to the secrecy pact.

   I once joked that National and Labour were basically the same, plus or minus 10 per cent. On days like this, I wonder if I was right.


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Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics out in China with a new edition

11.12.2017

My good friend Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics hit China a year ago, and it’s been so successful that the second edition is now out. It looks smarter, too, with its red cover, and I’m sure Chinese readers will get a decent taste of Stefan’s writing style, humour and thinking.
   I even hope this will pave the way for translations of his earlier works, especially Detective Marketing and One: a Consumer Revolution for Business (the latter still remains my favourite of his marketing titles).
   I’ve written a brief quote for Sharkonomics and the publisher (with some nudging from Stefan) has taken the time to make sure my Chinese name is accurately recorded, rather than a phonetic translation of my Anglo transliteration, which, of course, then wouldn’t be my name.
   Stefan’s inventive and innovative thinking might seem left-field sometimes, till some years pass and people realize he was right all along. Take, for example, Google wanting to build a high-tech neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, announced in October. Notwithstanding the hassles Google has created on its own turf in Silicon Valley, it’s the sort of project we might expect from the giant now. But would we have expected it in 2007? Probably not, except Stefan did.
   In 2007 (though he actually first floated the idea a year earlier), Stefan blogged about his idea for Google Downtown—why not make real what Google Earth does virtually? Why not shop at places that already know all your personal preferences, if that’s where things are heading? The town would have free wifi and you’d be paying for it with ‘your self’ (the space, I’m sure, was intentional). In 2008, 500 people heard his plans at a conference and laughed. The following year, he met Eric Schmidt and mentioned it to him. Eric paused and didn’t laugh—and maybe the idea sunk in.
   It’s not the first time Stefan has hatched an idea and it gained legs, from Coca-Cola delivering its product through taps to Ikea making flat-pack fashion—both have wound up being done, though the latter not quite in the way Stefan envisaged.


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Travel diary (or, a diary that travels)

11.04.2016

A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on

A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on


 

What a fun project! In September, a class in a QuĂ©bec school set its pupils a travel diary project. The idea: see how well travelled each pupil’s diary gets by passing it to a friend, then to their friend, and so on. The aim is educational: they want to learn about different cultures. The person who receives it nearest April 15 has to send it back to the origin. That was me: the diary arrived in my office on Friday. I’ve since written a four-page letter to the schoolgirl about my life in Wellington, my hobbies, and my family, in reply to her opening piece.
   It has been over 25 years since I wrote in an exercise book. Prior to me, it went to the Netherlands, France, and Hong Kong. I hope she has the most well travelled journal in her class.
   And yes, I chucked it on a courier. It would suck if it travelled all this way and got lost on the last leg. It left for QuĂ©bec this afternoon.


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Time for a rewatch: Reza Aslan interviewed on CNN about Muslim violence

14.01.2015

Found on my wall today. While it’s over three months old, the responses from Prof Reza Aslan of the University of California Riverside address a lot of the comments that have surfaced post-Charlie Hebdo head-on—which shows that we continue to go round and round the same arguments and not making an awful lot of progress.

   In October, he contrasted the coverage between Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the Canadian Muslim who murdered Cpl Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, and the Norwegian Christian mass murderer Anders Breivik who killed 77 people, in an op–ed for CNN:

In the case of Bibeau, his violent behavior could have been influenced as much by his religious beliefs as by his documented mental problems, his extensive criminal past or his history of drug addiction. Yet, because Bibeau was a Muslim, it is simply assumed that the sole motivating factor for his abhorrent behavior was his religious beliefs 

   Nevertheless, a great deal of the media coverage surrounding [Breivik’s] actions seemed to take for granted that his crime had nothing to do with his Christian identity—that it was based instead on his right-wing ideology, or his anti-immigrant views, or his neglectful upbringing, or even, as Ayan Hirshi Ali famously argued, because his view that “Europe will be overrun by Islam” was being censored by a politically correct media, leaving him “no other choice but to use violence.”

   Aslan does accept that ‘religious beliefs can often lead to actions that violate basic human rights. It is also true that a great many of those actions are taking place right now among Muslims,’ which will require more than a blog post to analyse, but adds, ‘When we condemn an entire community of faith for sharing certain beliefs with extremists in their community, we end up alienating the very people who are best positioned to counter such extremism in the first place.’
   Aslan probably came to most people’s awareness after his interview on Fox News about his new book Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, where he was questioned why, as a Muslim, he would write a book about Jesus Christ.
   As a religion expert who has to defend his position academically—and in the mainstream media—Aslan makes a far more compelling case, backed by research, than some of the anti-Islamic rhetoric that has made a reappearance in social media lately.


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