Persistence

Non-volatile thoughts on IT and business processes in the airport industry

Persistence header image 1

Twitter is Dave Winer’s Read-It-Later app … mine too!

April 26th, 2012 · Social Media, Twitter

RSS evangelist Dave Winer has revealed in a blog post from today, that Twitter is “his Read-It-Later app”. I totally agree. “Some things I push to Twitter are bits that I want to come back to”, Dave said. “Because there’s room in my mind for just one bookmarklet that ‘Routes this somewhere’.”

Twitter is a source of inspiration, where I can get aware of the stories, bit and experiences from my following. It’s so easy to retweet the stuff, which has touched you somehow and even easier to share this with your followers.

By the way … Dave Winer calls it “just one bookmarklet”, we call it “Unified Publishing”.

→ No CommentsTags:

Yet another test … Vimp!

Februar 4th, 2012 · Social Media

This is just another test: Checking how well videos can be embedded from Vimp based video platform.

Video Credit: www.bigair.tv

→ No CommentsTags:

2011: What a year! All the best for 2012!

Dezember 31st, 2011 · Editorial

→ No CommentsTags:

Do it yourself – Our tip for the easy parsing of Type-B messages

Dezember 27th, 2011 · Airport IT, Data Consolidation

Plane Toss. (C) 2011 by Maksim Shebeko, Fotolia.Why should an airport company think about new tools to parse IATA regulated telegrams and other Type-B messages?

  • The detailing is not achieved with today’s systems
  • Other systems for the interpretation of traffic data can be overdosed: Redundant to AODB and too expensive and complex to introduce
  • Message formats are constantly changing. Thus, the airport company is extremely dependent on external companies and consultants.

That is why we recommend “Floral Hall”, the do-it-yourself parser for telegrams:

  • Our parser provides detailing for all type-B messages, like LDM, MVT, PTM, ICL, or CPM
  • “Floral Hall” includes the interpretation of traffic data in conjunction with the already at an airport company running systems such as SITA, Arinc, E-Mail, AODB, or ERP
  • The settings of the do-it-yourself parser are easy with the standard IT methods to make
  • The precious know-how of interpreting messages remains at the airport.

Challenge us: We are ainimg to proof our tool against your data. Test data from about two or four weeks would be a good source for a proof of concept. Afterwards we are able to present you the results. Your benefit? You will get accurate data, never before detailing in data and a process which is partially not rendundant to functionality of AODB or ERP.

Get a first look on “Floral Hall”. On our product micro site you will see the presentation layer of “Floral Hall” with few sample data.

Picture credit: Plane Toss. (C) 2011 by Maksim Shebeko, Fotolia.

→ No CommentsTags:

Hardware of “Floral Hall” Server needs to be maintained

November 1st, 2011 · General

The underlying hardware of our “Floral Hall” application server needs to be serviced. During maintenance, this server for about 30 minutes is not reachable.

  • Period for the maintenance: 3 November 2011, 11:00 to 17:00 CET

After completion of the work, our server will naturally resist with all services available.

→ No CommentsTags:

Use cases of Floral Hall: The do-it-yourself parser for Type-B messages

Oktober 16th, 2011 · Airport IT, Data Consolidation

Our new product, the Message Parser Toolkit (Version “Floral Hall”), enables an airport to interpret automatically operational messages like Load Message (LDM), Movement (MVT), Passenger Transfer Message (PTM) or the list of inbound transfer passengers. Instead of cooking down the appropriate figures by a black box, “Floral Hall” provides XML formated Regular Expressions. These technologies are well-known in the IT world. It is up to the airport to maintain the way of how to get the data. Airline customers and the airport can find so a mutual understanding on the information, on which billing and planning will later be relying on. The precious know-how of interpreting messages remains at the airport.

How to use “Floral Hall”?

Usually an airport can rely on his legacy systems like operational and commercial software to drive his business. Detailed traffic data are crucial input. In some cases a link between airline operational systems and airport operational systems might be missing. The interpreting of the often underlying Type-B messages (aka SITA or IATA messages) would help to raise the needed detailed information more timely and accurately. In our experiences we have seen a lot of airport IT landscapes, where these airline messages could be copied especially for the purposes of interpreting specific data for billing and research purposes. The technical paths are there. At the end it is a question of costs, time and occassion how the messages will reach at the end the instance of the airport.

The idea of “Floral Hall” is to parse automatically the Type-B messages without a doubt. The interpreted data can then be exported to the appropriate legacy system, like AODB or ERP. If message data parsing causes an error, then this is a trigger to add or change the XML regular expression rules within “Floral Hall”. Ideally all messages will finally be ok and be exported. The operating of “Floral Hall” can be in one hand – in the responsibility of the airport.

“Floral Hall” is so a bit independent from the common use of the legacy systems at the airport. “Floral Hall” might be the proof of data. But the processes of getting the flight declaration and documentation ready for further purposes (e.g. billing or statistics) are still the same and remain kept within the airport systems. Often the handling agent do have access to the airport’s operational system. So the agreed quality checks can be continued. No change of organisation is mandatory. But the data are more rapidly and accurately provided then ever before.

Airport’s benefit

The legacy systems and “Floral Hall” are literally independent from each other. The official instances of traffic data at an airport are still the AODB or ERP system. “Floral Hall” provides “only” the interpreted data elements from source messages. All indications to the data can be done at the airport systems or the airline’s sources. So that no big changes in both areas are needed at the end.

As far an airport wants to enhance their data needs, the airline is usually not involved, as far the enhancement relies on the message sources. Only “Floral Hall” has to be changed along with the enhancement of the appropriate airport system to store the new data.

The operating of “Floral Hall” remains in one hand in the responsibility of the airport. So that not too many cooks spoil the broth.

Take a look on our demo web message parser

If you would like to have more insight in the way of fast data collection then take a look on our web based “Floral Hall” example. This “Message List” is already a result of a background worker process, which grabs the particular message objects from a specific inbox. Based on the regular expression (see our PTM example), which you can specify as interpreter code for traffic figures, the system automatically validates the messages and shows the lack of data, where a message is improper.

The web interface is easy to use. Nearly on the top you can specify the filter criteria. A click on each of the column headers brings the list into another order. Click on “Details” hyperlink to open a new tab or window in your web browser to see more interpreted data from the selected message.

As far you filter the list by SMI = “LDM” and Status = “Ok”, then you would be able to export the selected data. In this example to a web service. If export is successful another browser window or tab is opening, where you can see the so exported data. Leave this view by closing the window or tab. In the grid pane please click on the button “Filter/Refresh Results” to update the Repeat Index column values. This column shows per each flight data set the numbers successful attempts of its uploading to AODB. In our case the system does only export LDM data to an imaginary AODB of our fictional reporting airport.

More information and as well this dummy application you will find at our “Floral Hall Micro Site”.

→ No CommentsTags:

World Routes 2011 Social Media Briefings – An Insight into Social Media

Oktober 14th, 2011 · Social Media

“One of the most popular aspects of this year’s World Routes was the additional programme of presentations that ran alongside the traditional one-to-one meetings. These explored a variety of pertinent subject, although the social media briefings were of particular interest to many delegates”, UBM Aviation Routes Ltd. have written today in their newsletter “The Hub – Your essential weekly route development update”.

“If you missed these presentations or simply want refreshing of their content, we have uploaded them to Routesonline so you can view tham at your own leisure. Please click here to view these documents.“

Sven from solterbeck.net did talk about “How can companies sceptical of social media see the benefits and how should they use it to their benefit?”. His presentation can be downloaded here.

This presentation was a premiere. While he presented, Sven has posted his theses simultaneously in Twitter – in one single shot. The Social Media Presenter (Version “Gruga”) is developed by solterbeck.net and enables a speaker to show his presentation on one hand and to tweet content or pictures on the other hand. It shall be part of an “Unified Publishing” suite, we are currently working on.

→ No CommentsTags:

World Routes 2011 Social Media Briefings – A summary report

Oktober 4th, 2011 · Social Media

World Route Development Forum this year has taken the opportunity to set up a couple of briefing on different aspects of social media. During the conference, which has been finished today, seven experts did present their findings on how important the new media are for the aviation industry.

I was at least the last speaker. Hence I was able to sum up a bit the words from the other social media geeks. Mark Scourse from 3Sixty pointed out in his presentation from an airport perspective, that it is better to have genuine fans on the appropriate channel like Twitter or Facebook than thousands of never really reacting followers. Then the community, reached by an airport, could be an asset for talks with the airlines concerning new routes.

Justin Meyer, marketing manager and aviation geek from Kansas City International Airport (KCI) as well Julian Carr, MD of the airline bmibaby, told us from the old days, where passengers sat down with books and newspapers, waiting for the flight. Today more and more passengers are being online during their stay at the airport. Carr said: “Smartphone + social media + brands online = disinhibition.” Moreover it was never easier than today to communicate with executives via Twitter, Facebook, what else. KCI is an excellent example, which engagement with customers can be achieved, when passion, patience and committment is driving the communication. Even if negative feedback from user side is arriving the social media guys from the airport, some few friendly words may help to turn this critism into a positive way.

Shashank Nigam from Simpliflying gave his statement on important it is to prepare yourself as an airline or airport in case of a crisis. It may take only a few minutes, that a picture or a Tweet from a crisis scene is online. Instant feedback, full transparancy and dormant blogs for crisis cases help to get the media buzz under control without getting your legacy web sites running into denial of service.

According to Bernard Lavelle, Sales Director at London City Airport (LCY), users are “new researchers” for route development. “Engage as well with internal champions to ensure support within their companies.” Routes Online has tweeted on Wednesday (Update 05.10.11), that a video of Bernard “should be online by the end of next week. Check our weekly The HUB newsletter for updates”.

Finally Christi McNeill, emerging media strategy specialist at Southwest Airlines, gave us some good examples how employees share their behind the scene knowledge for passengers.

One presentation we have missed. Dr. Mathew McDougall (CEO at Digital Jungle) was in Berlin to give us a bit more insight into the Chinese Social Media Universe. As Matt told me, in China social media users are much more keen on having “big numbers” of followers, even if they have to pay for followers. His presentation slides one can find here. His book with the same title is walking “through the Chinese internet landscape and then drill down into the social media platforms that marketers need to consider when engaging with a Chinese audience”.

Lost in social media? Sceptical? Be encouraged!

I have had the last session today. Did presenting my thoughts on how companies sceptical of social media can see the benefit. In one word: You can not run away from Social Media. It is essential, not whether to do but how to do. You cannot avoid that people are talking about your company. With everything an airport or airline is going to public they will be noticed in social media. Sometimes this exceed the view on passengers. Target group of an airport for example are airlines, handler, destinations, authorities and brand embassadors. So what might be the reason for being sceptical on social media? Often the use of social media is a result of a certain kind of appropriation. It is not like that, that you could go through stream an messages comming with Twitter, reading bit for bit. You would be lost. You would like to get rid of this. The catching of information is by the way and selective. Experts are used to get aware accidentially of the buzz and trends. Monitoring tools help to categorize this stream of information.

Socialmediaguide.com found out 50 definitions about social media. My favourite is the “digital word of mouth”. This shows the mechanism of these tools and on the other side the necessity to put your service up for discussion . How you cause that conversation happen.

My presentation content has been posted instantly into Twitter

This afternoon was as a premiere of getting a presentation in realtime into Twitter. The Social Media Presenter (Version “Gruga”) is developed by solterbeck.net and enables a speaker to show his presentation on one hand and to tweet content or pictures on the other hand. It shall be part of an “Unified Publishing” suite, we are currently working on.

My presentation on “How companies sceptical of social media can see the benefit” is online.

Our tweets on the other Social Media Briefing sessions

  • RT @mark_scourse: Interesting @ChristiMcNeill at #worldroutes about how #southwest uses employee blogs to give a ‘behind the scenes’ view for passengers 2011-10-04T12:18:38+02:00
  • @ChristiMcNeill @SouthwestAir #WorldRoutes Luv at 30.000 feet http://t.co/IJ05bhwy 2011-10-04T11:58:31+02:00
  • @ChristiMcNeill @SouthwestAir Twitter is a media pitching tool #WorldRoutes 2011-10-04T11:52:01+02:00
  • @christiMcNeill @SouthwestAir has set up a Facebook Station Fanpage see eg LAX Station http://t.co/506LQzgz #WorldRoutes 2011-10-04T11:49:19+02:00
  • @ChristiMcNeill : Every SM task is done inhouse. That makes @SouthwestAir streams authentic #WorldRoutes 2011-10-04T11:43:01+02:00
  • @ChristiMcNeill @SouthwestAir social media initiative started 2005/6 with a TV show #WorldRoutes 2011-10-04T11:37:37+02:00
  • RT @mark_scourse: Dinner with Facebook – 3Sixty Internet Ltd http://t.co/kJDEwu8b via @3sixtyagency 2011-10-04T11:02:32+02:00
  • @londoncityair: Social media part of overall communication strategy. If you gonna use social media, use it properly. #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:43:38+02:00
  • @londoncityair stated: a lot of tweets more than 5/day would cut off the interaction with users #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:41:24+02:00
  • RT @BernieBaldwin: @LondonCityAir produces abbout 5 tweets a day. Just right amount, says Lavelle at #WorldRoutes. 2011-10-04T10:38:40+02:00
  • RT @BernieBaldwin: @LondonCityAir very unusually actually has a loyalty element – not common for airports, says Bernard Lavelle at #WorldRoutes. 2011-10-04T10:34:51+02:00
  • @londoncityair social media is still in its infancy for route development #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:25:18+02:00
  • @londoncityair recalls what @mark_scourse said yday: Get the airport’s SM engagement as an asset to convince airlines to fly in #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:24:07+02:00
  • @londoncityair Engage with Internal champions to secure support within their company for a new route #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:20:44+02:00
  • @londoncityair users are the “new researchers” for route development #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:16:30+02:00
  • @londoncityair is starting to engage people, to get feedback on routes whether on Twitter or Facebook #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:14:51+02:00
  • @londoncityair Users tell about where they are, what they think, what they want … targeting inti brand building #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:12:58+02:00
  • @londoncityair social media strategy means: building 1-2-1 relationships with potential and existing users #worldroutes 2011-10-04T10:11:59+02:00
  • RT @karenbryan: 5 Reasons I Love Ryanair: http://t.co/je1wTkSn 2011-10-04T09:51:55+02:00
  • @jjfcarr @bmiBaby_com is doing somehow like Seneca: if you want s.b. to fly tell him about destination #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:54:33+02:00
  • @jjfcarr @bmiBaby_com is 4 route news, updates, offers; inspiring cust. 2 travel (destination tweets) or influencer relations #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:53:41+02:00
  • @jjfcarr quoted “140 best twitter feeds” from Time Magazine please refer to http://t.co/jbZHDI1s 2011-10-03T16:52:11+02:00
  • @jjfcarr quoted @simpliflying: Pax sent 6 times more tweets than airlines responding on. #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:51:14+02:00
  • @jjfcarr talked about Amadeus study “Always connected traveller” (the source: http://t.co/wmhgLqW0 ) #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:50:30+02:00
  • @jjfcarr : smartphone + social media use + brands online = disinhibition #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:49:35+02:00
  • @jjfcarr and BMIbaby is having 2 yrs experience in social media. People do trust more in social media than in traditional press #worldroutes 2011-10-03T16:48:46+02:00
  • RT @simpliflying: My interview about Social Media for airlines to @TheHUBRoutes at #WorldRoutes in Berlin this morning. http://t.co/czRWuiyB 2011-10-03T16:36:41+02:00
  • RT @mark_scourse: @jjfcarr #worldroutes no hiding from the social media conversation! http://t.co/pVtQOmYe 2011-10-03T16:27:29+02:00
  • @fg_editor I’m feeling like an aussie, 25+ degrees and talking about christmas ;-) #worldroutes 2011-10-03T13:48:29+02:00
  • RT @BernieBaldwin: @Simpliflying discussing “Crisis Management using social media” at #WorldRoutes. Says you’re more likely to he… (cont) http://t.co/Kv1MxyiE 2011-10-03T13:47:16+02:00
  • RT @mark_scourse: @simpliflying #worldroutes dormant blog for airport crisis; backup for website in peak demand spikes 2011-10-03T13:45:41+02:00
  • This is genuine social networking practised last night by @simpliflying http://t.co/zJsmJIho #worldroutes 2011-10-03T13:45:41+02:01
  • @simpliflying is talking now on crisis management w/ social media #worldroutes 2011-10-03T11:46:48+02:00
  • Turn negative tweets into positive buzz. @KCJetSetter shows how important timely social media monitoring at an airport is #wordroutes 2011-10-03T10:18:05+02:00
  • @KCJetSetter shows us some pics from the good (?) old times #social_media_talks at #worldroutes 2011-10-03T10:05:55+02:00
  • Listen to @mark_scourse “social media is an asset of local knowledge, airports can bring to route development” #worldroutes 2011-10-03T09:34:54+02:00

→ No CommentsTags:

World Routes 2011 Social Media Briefings – How to get your synopsis on social media? For those who are sceptical!

Oktober 2nd, 2011 · Social Media

I am now on the way to Berlin. I feel be honoured to be one of the speakers. My presentation “How can companies sceptical of social media see the benefits and how should they use it to their benefit (profits/greater user interaction)?”will be held on October 4th from 14.20 to 15.10 at the Routes Talk Serminar area of the World Routes exhibition ground.

“Social Media is an important discussion point within most businesses at the moment and within our industry it is changing the face of how many
organisations communicate with with existing and potential customers”, World Routes host mentioned in a paper. “The dedicated social media theatre in Berlin will explore how social media is being used in the industry at the moment with presentations from key industry experts in the field, together with firsthand accounts from airlines and airports explaining how it works for them.”

For those delegates of you, which are still sceptical of social media, take your time to visit as well the other seven briefings from the experts. Keep an eye on the examples they will present. And prepare yourself a little questionnaire, which leads you in total to some kind of synopsis for social media strategies.

The Questionnaire

  • Question 1: What kind of examples you were getting presented? How other companies tweet, network, blog? What are the benefits?
  • Question 2: What kind of first experience the companies made with social media? What was bad, what was good?
  • Question 3: What kind of prerequisites are necessary for driving sucessfully social media campaigns and business?
  • Question 4: What kind of social media tools the other companies are using? How much time and how many people they do invest in social media?
  • Question 5: How these companies are organized? Which department or role ist repsonsible for social media?
  • Question 6: Which social media development has have the most impact on SM protagonist’s life?

Be encouraged!

Learn something from others, adopt and scale your brand. Social Media is not the play. It is rather some kind of stage, where the participants affect, which role they take up. But I can promise you, it is worth to do. Even if you convince a new customer who likes to tell people what he likes, as Akron-Canton Airports has mentioned once.

Enjoy the briefing and see you on Tuesday.

→ No CommentsTags:

Monetise Air Traffic Data with Floral Hall at Airports

August 31st, 2011 · Airport IT, Data Consolidation

A couple of weeks ago, we haved talked here about a blueprint on capturing air traffic data at an airport for billing, marketing and operational purposes. “A significant improvement in data quality at airports within three months is possible”, we stated. In the meantime we developed a web application for parsing Type-B-Messages to be run in an airport’s intra- or extranet, called “Floral Hall”.

“Floral Hall” is a Do-It-Yourself parser for Type-B-Messages

The Message Parser Toolkit (Version “Floral Hall”) enables an airport to interpret automatically operational messages like Load Message (LDM), Movement (MVT), Passenger Transfer Message (PTM) or the list of inbound transfer passengers. Instead of cooking down the appropriate figures by a black box, “Floral Hall” provides XML formated Regular Expressions. These technologies are well-known in the IT world. It is up to the airport to maintain the way of how to get the data. Airline customers and the airport can find so a mutual understanding on the information, on which billing and planning will later be relying on. The precious know-how of interpreting messages remains at the airport.

Here are two basic channels of interest:

  • Data for primary tasks at the airport (operational control):
    Timely inter-company data exchange for example, Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), landside control, resource planning, information display (billboards, Internet, Teletext).
  • Data for secondary tasks at the airport (commercial control):
    Collection of specific and detailed flight event data for statistics, marketing, route planning and billing of charges.

Avoid paperware and Excel-Lists

In terms of operations, most airports are well prepared. Many operations are so much linked that a “grain of sand in the gears” can be felt immediately at several internal instances – as well inter-company. Optimization, security and fast response time are important objectives, which provide not only high demands on the operations but also on data quality, so that:

  • Invoices can be prepared faster and easier
  • Invoice complaints go to zero
  • Easy and timely statistics
  • Potential for new routes or the optimization of existing routes through targeted programs

Our Promise

Floral hall can be implemented within three months. It is independent from any AODB or ERP system or redundant middleware. It concentrates only on capturing data. It is a self-driven approach, where the airport (IT) is driving later the customisation. Take part in the core of our software development and save around a third of costs, own development would cause.

Challenge us

We are ainimg to proof our tool against your data. Test data from about two or four weeks would be a good source for a proof of concept. Afterwards we are able to present you the results. Your benefit? You will get accurate data, never before detailing in data and a process which is partially not rendundant to functionality of AODB or ERP.

Get a first look…

…on “Floral Hall”. On our product micro site you will see the presentation layer of “Floral Hall” with few sample data. Our stress test shows that the listing, paging, sorting or filtering of 1.5 Million generated messages will last only very few seconds. On the other side “Floral Hall” will take minimum system requirements.

Presentation credit: Monetise Air Traffic Data with Floral Hall at Airports: Do-it-yourself parser for Type-B-Messages, (C) solterbeck.net, August 2011.

→ No CommentsTags: