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Markets for the Digital Generation

I wanted to give BA a constructive suggestion to improve their website. It’s a site I know all too well, and I must say it’s pretty good and encouragingly actually gets better with each new iteration. The suggestion I was going to make was something I’ve been annoyed at for some time now: when you book a flight for your family online, the site does not allow you to enter Executive Club numbers for children which is a real pain in the ass, because now you have to check in physically at the airport and remember to give the agent the kids’ numbers or (and this is what I was doing this evening) you have to go through the somewhat tedious process of claiming ‘missing’ miles online after the fact. What makes this all the more annoying / dumb is that it would make no difference to their booking process to allow a field for the executive club number for all passengers; it is not a required field so I cannot see how their web workflow is improved or simplified by excluding this option. Ah but you might ask, how many kids have executive club numbers? Well obviously I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is quite a few as BA has a great ‘family account’ where you can pool miles from all family members, so if Mom and/or Dad have a card given their frequent business travel, it makes sense to sign up the kids too even if they only fly a couple times a year…

Anyhow why am I writing about this on my blog? Well sheer frustration. Spent a good 15 minutes trying to find a ’suggestions’ mail address or forum or something on the site and nada… One way commerce… we speak - you listen. Very annoying. They should have a blog. Maybe they are scared of their customers? We’re not all angry. At least not all the time. And it would be a million times more useful than those stupid surveys you hand out in the plane that just annoys your clients and embarrasses your staff. I guess no one at BA has read Scoble or Doc or Euan. (Euan there has to be a consulting gig there for you!)

If somehow this message does get to someone at BA who is responsible for the website, please fix the booking bug outlined above. Thanks.

***Update***

Dom has some ’suggestions’ for BA too! …could the someone referred to above fix this as well?

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The Africa bike. Stumbled across this great idea/initiative via Bicycling magazine:

In addition, Kona unveiled the Two-For-One Kona AfricaBike sales program. For every two AfricaBikes sold worldwide, Kona will donate one AfricaBike to Bicycling Magazine’s BikeTown Africa project, or to other non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose missions include helping to improve the quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Kona AfricaBike caught the imagination of cyclists everywhere as they followed the design and development of the special edition bicycle last year. As with every Kona, the AfricaBike was built for a specific purpose: to assist home health care workers in Botswana with the delivery of antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS patients.

Kona’s Design Group, normally employed in the design of world cup racing caliber bikes, teamed with African experts and other bicycle industry manufacturers in the research and design of the AfricaBike. The result was a simple, durable, comfortable and effective means of transportation that could handle all of the unique social and environmental challenges Africa presents. To Kona’s delight, the same design elements that make the AfricaBike an efficient means of delivering medicine in Botswana, also make it attractive to urban commuters as they search for reliable, affordable transportation alternatives.

What’s not to like? Practical, useful, green…fun(?) If I wasn’t so terrified of riding a bike on the streets of London I would definitely be thinking hard about putting one of these in the shed.

Delivering hi-(bio)tech with a good ol’ low tech bicycles. Love it. Now all we need to do is hook up a pedal-powered battery recharger and a $100 laptop &/or iPhone dock to the bike and you’ve got a mobile internet/phone kiosk. Talk about enabling and enpowering technology… (And just in case you are wondering, no I’m not kidding…maybe I can drum up some interest for this idea at TED Global - Africa: The Next Chapter.)

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From the Betfair forum, ‘Is it still worth betting on horses?’:

Backing, laying, trading, it doesn’t matter.

Having read the input from various gurus on here over the past few months, I’m beginning to wonder if any of them still bet on horses as a major part of making a living.

I ask because I’m trying to develop a winning (laugh) system for horseracing. If I’m wasting my time, would somebody please tell me and point me at snooker or darts or even football if that’s where the profits are to be had.

According to many on here, horseracing markets are now so accurate that there’s no percentage to be had.

Serious question. No offence intended.

Replace ‘backing and laying’ with ‘going long and short’, ‘horses’ with ’securities’, and ‘horseracing’ with ‘markets’…and what follows in this thread is an interesting debate on efficient market theory and whether or not one should believe in such things as hedge funds.

(btw please welcome Betfair founder Andrew ‘Bert’ Black to the blogosphere!)

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