Tag Archives: Sony Mobile

Community Manager Workshops

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This week has been quite busy so far. It started off with a workshop on Community Management on Monday and Tuesday. The workshops were the completion of an idea I got 1.5 years ago while attending an Open Source Think Tank in Napa Valley. At that time I met Jono Bacon, the Community Manager for Ubuntu and got the idea that he could come and have a talk with us about what it means to be a Community Manager.

One and a half years later he’s been here and had the talk, and it was better than anticipated 🙂

For anyone that wonders what community managers do, you can have a look at Jono’s book that is available for free here. It’s available under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Wednesday was also dedicated to Jono’s visit. We had a round table discussion on what community management could mean to SONY. After the round table discussion we headed directly to Keio University so Jono could talk for a group of students there. I joined because I wanted to show Sony Mobile’s openness and support for open source.


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After the talk at the Keio University we had a quick dinner with some of the students before we sent Jono to the airport for his flight back to California.

Friday 13th and Flying

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Have spent a week in Beijing for business. Arrived Monday afternoon and managed a session at the hotel gym before my work colleague arrived and we could jointly go to the office.

The whole week was filled with meetings, even during lunch time. Networking and connecting people (and with people). In the evenings I had dinner with work colleagues, except one night which I spent in the gym. Before going to bed I also had time to watch some football 🙂


Smoggy Beijing Chinese food

Today it is Friday the 13th and it seems like a poor day to travel back to Tokyo, especially with China Airlines. But it all went well and I could spend a busy afternoon at the Tokyo office. Actually, the air in Beijing was probably more risky than flying on Friday the 13th 😉

Got a Job

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Woke up a felt much better, though not 100% as I was quite weak. I still went to work as I was quite busy.

In the afternoon my manager told me that the grading presentation and interview with Head of HR to decide about a “permanent” employment had been concluded and that it went excellent 🙂 It means I will become a full-time-until-further-notice employee of Sony Mobile. Feels a bit more secure than the one-by-one year contract I have had and that will expire by August 20 this year.

I celebrated by buying 10 lottery tickets from a work colleague (Henrik Enckell). His three daughters are selling them on behalf of their school and to support building a playground for children in Tohoku. All prizes are donated by different companies so the whole cost of the ticket is going straight to building the playground. I bought 10 tickets for 2500 yen.

When I got home and told Chie about the lottery, she wanted 10 tickets for herself and 10 for her work colleague too. Neither of us really care about winning but are thinking that now 7500 yen is going into the playground.

Business Trip to California

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Chie gave me a ride to Shinagawa station on Sunday morning. From there I took the Narita Express (NEX) to Narita Airport. Spent some time in the lounge, taking a shower, having something to drink and eat before I boarded and had a long sleepless flight to San Francisco.

Once I’ve checked in at the hotel, had a salad for lunch then I headed out in the lovely and sunny California weather. It was spring feeling. I spent most of the day out in the sun reading and waiting for my work colleague from Lund, Calle. He arrived late in the afternoon and we almost directly went for dinner.


Redwood Shores

Monday, we spent it at the office. We had meetings with work colleagues at our Redwood Shores office. Fruitful. In the evening we went to Stanford Shopping Centre for some shopping. We also had a brief stop at Lululemon Atheletics, one of my favourite stores.

Tuesday, we spent the morning at the office clearing out our inboxes. In the afternoon we drove down to San Jose to meet with Tim Bird and Frank Rowand at a SONY office. We wanted to meet with them to discuss joining Sony Mobile and if so what kind of work they were interested in. From Sony Mobile’s side we already had something in mind, but you cannot just push things on people 🙂 After the meeting we went back to Stanford Shopping Centre as Calle could not finish his shopping yesterday. Once finished we had a quick dinner and drove to Calistoga in Napa. The next day we would join the Open Source Think Tank there.

Wednesday, first day of the Open Source Think Tank. About 100 people had joined from various companies in various roles but all having something to do with Open Source. Many good presentation, but one stood out… Netflix’s chief architect presented their video streaming architecture and how they in three years could become one of the most innovative companies in IT right now – great ideas and Open Source drive their speed of innovation. We also got an introduction to this year’s case study, OpenStack, and some time to work with it.


Dream house

Thursday, second day continued with more presentations. We got a brown bag for lunch containing a sandwich, some fruits, water and a cookie. The idea was to bring it for the social activities that was planned for the afternoon. Three different activities: i) wine tasting, ii) golf, and iii) bicycling. I went for a lovely bike ride in the wonderful sunny California weather. It was warm and I could go in a t-shirt 🙂 In the evening we had dinner at CIA (Culinary Institute of America). It was fun and tasty – I was next to a really nice guy named Laszlo from Portland.


CIA

Friday, last day of the Open Source Think Tank. Mainly dedicated to preparations for case study presentations and the actual case study presentations. I was happy to see that my new friend Laszlo and his group won the case study presentations. The OpenStack Foundation thought their ideas and suggestions on how OpenStack can improve their setup was the best and most complete. They won Beats earphones. Congrats!

At lunch the conference was finished for this year. Calle and I drove into Calistoga for a quick lunch and then headed back to the San Francisco airport. Calle had a flight back to Sweden the same day but I had to wait until the next day. But it was OK, I had time for a quick dinner and then I spent most of the time relaxing at the hotel watching videos on my iPad.

Saturday, woke up and got to the airport. Checked in and went to the Delta lounge – it’s great to be a gold member 🙂 Spent the time in the lounge relaxing and reading. Once it was time to board I realised I had been upgraded to business class – super nice. I even managed to sleep for a while on the flight.


San Francisco, Golden Gate, Alcatraz

Sunday, arrived at Narita around 16:25. It took my max 30 minutes to get from the airplane to the train platform – including picking up my bag, passing immigrations and buying train tickets. Sometimes things just run smoothly. And lucky boy as I am, Chie picked me up at the Shinagawa station 🙂

Written Test

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In August my one-by-one year contract for up to five years will come to an end. It means Sony Mobile has to decide if they want to keep me for good or throw me out. Currently it seems they want to keep me so my manager and HR has initiated a hiring procedure.

First activity in the hiring procedure was done today, a written test under time pressure. First part was a logic thinking and math test that had to be done in 60 minutes. Questions like “in a bowl there are 5% apples, 35% bananas. The remaining fruits in the bowl are oranges and kiwis. There are 2 oranges for every 1 kiwi. There are 3 apples in the bowl. How many percent oranges are there in the bowl?”

The second part of the test was behaviour and characteristics test. About 200 statements that you should indicate how well they describe you, like “when I face a problem I take action directly without thinking.”

You can wonder why it is necessary when I already did the same type of test when I got hired 4.5 years ago. Also, it seems a poor substitute for evaluating what value I have added to the company over the past years – “it looks like you have done a good job but it cannot be true because you scored so low on the written test.” I actually had a crazy idea to test this by just answering everything the wrong way 😈