Some readers will be aware that every now and again my friends are lovely to me and they take me out for dinner at places like the China Tang restaurant in the Dorchester, where they make a great salt+pepper squid and steamed sea bass:

Most of the time, I  cook at home and experiment with flavors, textures and different ingredients I’ve sourced from the markets. Nevertheless since some of my friends don’t cook (too busy to) they dine out and they occasionally invite me along, particularly if it’s a special occasion. Now, the whole of October is full of potential special occasions because it’s the month of my birthday; yes, I am…………….a Libran (a Libra-Scorpio cusp to be more exact).

Libra is the same sign as Mahatma Gandhi, Baroness Thatcher, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, William Faulkner, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, Rupert Brooke, Arthur Miller, George Gershwin, Guiseppe Verdi, Sting, Luciano Pavarotti, Franz Liszt, Julie Andrews, Le Courbusier, Eleanor Roosevelt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Evil Knieval, Niels Bohr, Alfred Nobel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof and two of France’s greatest cinema beauties (Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve) as well as Wales’s most notable recent export, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Librans are said to be bright, bold, dynamic, charming, conversational, fairly nuanced with relationships and occasionally beautiful with a predisposition to improving the lot of Mankind and/or making wondrous art, music and literature as well as being capable of penetrating scientific discovery and philosophical reasoning. That or we’re just off-the-wall and razor-sharp wits like Marx and Wilde. Our negative traits are said to be vacillating indecision, trying to please others at the expense of self neglect, being critical (nothing we do is ever good enough) and also viewing life through rose-tinted spectacles, i.e. idealistic.

Hmmn, we’re certainly a complex sign!

That’s all before I factor in the Scorpio cusp aspects which are said to be a cool logic and precise reductivism, passion for causes and topics of substance and formidable drive. Plus the negatives which are cutting realism, compulsion towards perfectionism (which compounds the Libran tendency to self criticize) and overbearing presence.

Anyway, ordinarily, I would have either been in China Tang last night or tonight for an early birthday dinner with one of my best friends, GC. This year, though, I’m spending birthday time in Paris and Italy where I’ll be wandering markets and hanging out in my casuals and sneakers.

It’s just as well there’s no dinner at China Tang in the Dorchester this year because apparently……….that’s where George Clooney is staying whilst he’s in London to attend the 2009 London Film Festival:

I was once accidentally out in Chinatown, picking up weekly groceries, during a Clooney red carpet premiere. I had no idea that the block around Leicester Square would be sectioned off at a certain time because I entered Chinatown from a different direction, where there were no warning signs. I went into the store to pick up my usual noodles, seasonings, Oriental soft drinks, seaweed wrappers to make sushi and fried bean curd. Half an hour later and I found out that I couldn’t take my usual shortcut through Leicester Square because hundreds (thousands?) of screaming female fans were camped out in wait for Clooney.

That’s something which completely bypassed me, even as a teenager: no irrational fan adulation for any movie or pop star, no camping out, no hysterical screaming at concerts, no posters of them on my walls either. I had the Periodic Table pinned up, foreign languages grammar, poems, artworks, computer schematics and Star Wars stuff.

I also don’t think I’ve ever paid a full-price movie ticket to watch any film of Clooney, btw. Usually I wait until the film shows at a theater where tickets are at up to 75% discount. I will happily pay full-price to watch Robert Redford in ‘Barefoot in the Park’, Javier Bardem in ‘El Mar Adentro’ and Tony Leung Chiu Wai in ‘Infernal Affairs’, though!

Besides, when you’ve met the Princess Royal when you’re 5, worked directly with Masters of the Universe who control US$ billion portfolios (affecting US$ trillions more) and your genealogy stretches back to the founding members of the Han dynasty — renowned as a great Age of Enlightenment for the Chinese — you’re not likely to be irrationally impressed or phased by anything, are you?

You’re also not going to stand for hours (squashed by others who are twice your height and size, in the freezing cold and schizophrenic London rain for a glimpse of George Clooney’s back) when you already have a friend with those initials who’s a lot more interesting and intelligent, and who bestows on you the generosity of good conversations, hmmn?

Right, no Libra-Scorpio would: it’s illogical.

:*).

I just watched this trailer and it looks……………ROTFLOL! I love the comment about Jedis — ha ha.

Whilst in Spain I had yet another surreal film watching experience. We went to see Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time (Redux) which is essentially a re-edited version of his 1994 classic, starring Tong Leung Chiu Wai (the Johnny Depp of Chinese cinema in terms of versatility who everybody says my brother looks like, btw). Whilst the dialogue was in a 50-50 mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin, the subtitles were in Spanish and I found myself understanding both forms of Chinese and also trying to translate the Spanish subtitles into English in my head!

Here’s the version of the trailer with English subtitles:

It was surreal not only for the linguistic differences and “lost in translation” effects I was dealing with, it was also surreal because Ashes of Time (Redux) is a distinctively art house piece, full of aphorisms and profound Chinese wisdoms from the wuxia era and plays as a collection of the central characters’ memories, hallucinations, reveries about lost and forbidden loves and mental illness psychosis.

Despite the Spanish subtitles, my friend left the cinema none the wiser about what the film was about and meant! All she came away with was an impression of the visuals and how the lighting was very specific — reflecting the seasons.

I contextualized it and said it’s about chance and the connectedness of seeming strangers. Each passes on a communique or a chain of actions which links back to the moment the central character lost his love to his brother in marriage — a connection of unity — and the madness which splinters and affects his perspective on life and personality thereafter. He drinks a “memory wine” to forget the pain without knowing that the wine is a gift from the woman.

Ashes of Time is definitely not as easy to follow or as simplistic as typical Hollywood films: boy meets girl, obstacle appears, obstacle is overcome and they ride happily into the sunset.

Hollywood draws from the traditions of Homer and the stepwise trials of Hercules; that’s how film arcs get structured. Homer and Chekhov and Shakespeare. Chinese films nod to different reference frames: Luo Guanzhong, Cao Xueqin, Wu Cheng En and Shi Naian.

Often Chinese films are multi-layered, complex characters, multiple time-stranded and imbued with philosophies and allegories. Hollywood versions are perceptibly different — think Infernal Affairs compared with The Departed (ambiguous, mysterious, like a puzzle to be cracked rather than a straight story about two guys from opposite tracks playing cat+mouse). Give me the Chinese version any day of the week………as much as I think Leonardo di Caprio, Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorcese are great!

Other surreal film watching experiences include:The Wonder Boys starring Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand and Tobey Macguire…..all dubbed in Spanish; K9 — The Widowmaker with Harrison Ford dubbed in German with subtitles; and Cyrano de Bergerac in Cantonese.

In any case, for me, film as a medium can transcend cultural differences in ways in which the written word in the blogosphere certainly can’t! Is the pen sharper than the sword? I’d say perspectives are sharper than both!

In case anyone wonders what the * signifies, it’s a convention in mathematics for the dot cross-product. This means that the multiplier and sum effects produced by matrix constituents is greater than the parts.

PROGRESS WITH PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE

HAPPY NEWS: We’re now closer to pinning down the who-what-when-where-why-and-hows of Project ART making money. Plus it’s now more clearly established that our platform will exist to service a well-defined and identifiable market opportunity and client base. The entire process so far is reminding us of the importance for companies to align interests with clients from the outset, on-and-offline. Luckily, my business partners are with me on the same plane of values wrt these points:

(1.) Participants on our platform will be incentivised, rewarded and valued.

(2.) Credibility is a key must-have.

(3.) There’s always room for improvement, so it’s our responsibility to others to seek it out.

I love it when people put their thinking caps on and strive together towards the better!

PROSPECTING FOR DIGITAL GOLD

Now it’s well-known that revenue models are the Holy Grail (and booby trap) for all businesses — whether they’re the likes of Newscorp or the newco dotcom. Those who work in the Internet sector have become increasingly familiar with the following:

· Member subscription (borrowed from trade publication models)

· Pay-per-View (borrowed from satellite and cable operators)

· Google Adsense (Internet innovation)

o Cost-per-Click (CPC)

o Cost-per-Mille (CPM)

o Cost-per-Action (CPA)

· Sponsorship and endorsement revenue (borrowed from sports operators)

· Affiliate revenue (CPA replacing CPC and CPM models, borrowed from car retail outlets and beauty franchise models)

· Subscriber data access (borrowed from information services model)

· Members as paid focus groups (borrowed from marketing + polling businesses)

In my view, it’s equally important to consider the offline measures needed to complement and drive online strategies. It’s no longer a question of bricks+mortar versus clicks+portals as we witnessed during Web 1.0. Nor is it the relationships networking and social recommendations which we’re seeing in Web 2.0. It’s actually probably some hybrid of complementary contextualized clicks with rewarded customer collaboration.

[At least, that's the model I believe in and am building towards --- lol, my digital gold detector @ work.]

WHAT WORKS ON THE WEB TO-DATE AND INNOVATIVE WAYS FORWARD

Obviously, there are other revenue streams and without exception all Internet plays have explored one or more of the above options at some time-point in their business development cycle. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple apps store are constantly in tech sector news about their revenue opportunities:

· How Google grows and grows

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html

· Facebook and how it can make money

·       Create a revenue model for Twitter and save innovation

http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/announcing-the-create-a-twitter-revenue-model-contest

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/help_twitter_find_a_revenue_model.php

·       Apple Apps store now a US$1 million a day business

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/analysis-app-store-now-1-million-a-day-business-cloud-mobile-apps-the-next-big-thing-20090424/

It’s great to note how leading techcos are evolving the Internet revenue model for everyone and increasingly extending it to enable users to earn money, e.g. Google’s AdSense.

ON*OFFLINE REVENUE: SHOW ME THE TWAIN!!!

Well, the revenue model in chemical companies is different from that in banking and that for dotcoms and PR is what I’ve observed so far — LOL.

The flavors and fragrances we developed in the labs were sold in bulk volumes and there were consultancy fees involved in us concocting and innovating physical end-products, which would make Cola Company A stand out from Cola Company B or FMCG A from FMCG B (fmcg = fast moving consumer goods as manufactured by the likes of Procter and Gamble, Unilever and all food retailers; we had household name clients which was a great insight for me as a teenager).

Wrt the Internet model, I’ve had direct experience of the revenue streams I list above as well as online trading, settlement and execution fees. This is distinctive to the financial services sector and is borrowed from the way traditional stock exchanges operate and how they earn income.

In banking, there’s a whole complex matrix of revenue opportunities which broadly breakdown into five main categories:

(1.) advisory and consultancy fees (e.g., for M+A and corporate restructuring)

(2.) market analysis fees (aka equity research reports)

(3.) product distribution fees (i.e., channels between the company issuing the stock and potential investors)

(4.) portfolio management fees

(5.) trading, settlement and execution fees

As for PR, this is the most simple and is, predominantly, consultancy fees for anticipatory, current and retrospective reputation management (the retrospective one is also known as “fire-fighting”) as well as analysis fees for focus group Q+A’s (usually in the form of a bespoke report).

REVENUE GENERATION IS CHALLENGING AND NEEDS NUANCED STRATEGY

What I’ve realized over time is that it’s about more than having the salesman’s “gift of the gab” or a marketer’s ability to promote and persuade a customer to convert-to-purchase. The key is, once again,………..STRATEGIC PLANNING + IMPLEMENTATION.

Companies need to think clearly about these three items:

(1.) incentivising customers to buy-into and participate with their company, product / service offering(s) and brand values.

(2.) structuring the channels to support front-line sales staff.

(3.) fostering ownership, democracy and flexibility over the value chain between the company and its customers.

Get those in a good shape and revenue will flow between various parties in a natural and organic WIN-WIN WAY.

Those statements aren’t offered based on cerebral idealism, but via sensible pragmatism and distilled experience. People whom I regard as role models, innovators and leaders have always exhibited this characteristic and I believe it’s a good revenue, life and value philosophy: win-win.

Incidentally, when I worked in the big bank I was a designated “revenue generator” so I do know a fair bit about business models. This is a distinction to be aware of because in banks less than 1% of the work force are revenue generators (aka we bring in the clients or are responsible for key investment portfolios). In film terms, we’re equivalent to the Tom Cruises / Julia Roberts / George Clooneys / Cate Blanchetts: we’re expected to generate box office gold and/or lend credibility to the product and the company behind it.

Everyone else is classified as “support” which means they’re not directly responsible for bringing money into the bank from clients, managing funds or rain-making deals. The assumption may be made that all Managing Directors are “revenue generators” but this isn’t the case at all. There were senior people who oversaw my work who were in the “support” bracket.

The challenges on revenue generators to perform aren’t the same as those for staff generally; we’re supposed to be the crème de la crème, the brightest of the best, the fittest and fastest in the jungle, the people dispatched to bat the ball right out of the park — preferably passing Pluto on its path — and to pull in and excite the crowds, and all other superlatives.

Of course, only a dolt dufus would let this go to their heads!

A normal, smart and reasonable person would remember that SHARING revenue generated fosters a much more interesting playing field. Revenue meritocracy and value democracy then become self-propagating and transformative.

ON*OFFLINE REVENUE MODEL: A TWAIN TEMPLATE

Now, in the interests of transmitting knowhow, this is the way I’ve structured the who-what-when-where-why-and-hows of Project ART generating income. For confidentiality and competitive advantage reasons, I can’t show readers the specifics; our model essentially combines the best of the way top Private Equity portfolios make money with how top Internet sites make money, all synergized with some Twain thinking.

In any case, even having a visual and systematic framework is helpful so here’s my share:

It’s unique and different from existing business models out there (on+offline), so we’re looking forward to its market implementation once the key pieces are in place and the platform goes live.