Tag: Facebook

Attending my funeral

The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback.

Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run with a machine (1974).

The Luddites must have been out for blood.

They wanted to “grade” our essays, in the old Mandarin style whose exams lasted three long days (camping out etc…) (Leu Chong).

We had been anxious leading to exam date e.g. shopping for the right No. 2 pencils, rehearsing multiple choices etc..

Our real first exposure to the “spiritual machine” with its lock-in platform.

In our little minds, machine was God. It could fail you (and in my case, it did). Turned out, they had to manually grade a few hundred of us in between batches.

I never forget the worrisome faces of loyal friends, who had passed but decided to hang out (our version of “funeral wake“).

I told them they should go out and celebrate. Forget about me.

But they insisted “one for all, all for one”.

Then those girls in the class who also showed up expecting to see me in oxygen mask, or in a casket.

The feeling was “out of the body” to say the least.

How often can you afford the opportunity to look at this scene from the outside? (astronauts get a rare glimpse of the Earth from space, but it’s a matter of geography).

That should put materialism in perspective.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The story did not end there without a happy ending.

We were sitting around, long faced, when a friend (drummer from the band), rushed in to announce that they had just posted an addendum to the results. So we raced to the school (on scooters, like the new Zappos ads).

And we found my name (as if it were the Vietnam Memorial, except this one was framed in glass).

And we opened the beer (my father paid for it).

And we jammed the guitar.

And we screamed (no karaoke back then, just yet).

Then we went out dancing.

The dead came back from the brink.

The A+ student got his dog day.

And got admitted to Pre-med (I would have entered the tweet contest for U of Iowa MBA scholarship if there had been such a thing).

With confidence and momentum, I helped raise fund for the refugees floating into our city (public speaking in front of a large lecture hall etc..). After all, I could have stood outside of its walls, cursing  the machine? the manufacturer? the IT administrator?

No college, no draft deferment i.e. enlisted and got maimed ( a friend came back from the front with one eye left in him).

For that one day, I had a preview of my funeral. In Amadeus, Mozart used this powerful visualization to finish his Requiem.

In my end, my beginning.

Unless the seed dies, it won’t produce much fruit.

Lose yourself, that you may find it.

This not a suicidal instinct. Just an acknowledgment that the seed of creative destruction was planted in each of us since day one.

Like a tracker, lo-jack.

We will need to be “disassembled” to be “re-assembled” on the other end.

Pride and prejudice, fear and loathing, all nano bots in the wind (Kansas).

Ask any leader about his lessons in success, he will mention failings.

They went together, like two sides of a coin.

That shock has served me well. South Vietnam collapsed that Spring.

And my summer celebration was the last of “Happy Days” with my friends (drummer, dancer, bass player etc….) many of whom I have lost touch (and I don’t believe they are on Facebook).

I just know that friendship is to be cherished, and that true friends forget  their own celebration waiting out for you. Victory for one is victory for all. That’s why, on Spaceship Earth, we need to be concerned about one man whose vegetable cart was taken away unjustly

(not to mention he got slapped by a female inspector in a Muslim society).

To him, death by immolation was better than death by humiliation.

And one man’s death sowed the seed of discontent that sprung up to become what we now coined the Arab Spring. To him, immolation equals cremation.

Automation and creativity

What if you had a third eye in the back of your head? (one of the Creativity Test questions). Or how would it turn out if Earth goes without 0xygen for 5 seconds? If you were a car, what would that be?

Gone are the days of “you can have the model T’s in any color you want, as long as it’s black”.

In fact, S Korea not only won the bid to the Winter Olympics, Kia and Hyundai are surpassing Ford to position against Nissan and others.

Apple was quite daring when it tried to personalize the PC’s (emphasizing the P in PC). The result was the Mac series (when Jobs was still “hungry”, he took a calligraphy course, which helped shape Apple’s product  differentiation).

Once we reached full-automation, the only thing that makes us stand out is creativity and differentiation.

In the 70’s music was commoditized with unbundled single albums and in 2000’s for 99 cents (free Facebook Video chat and Google Plus ‘ hangouts).

Even Facebook IT admin jobs are not safe: they dispense hardware accessories via in-company vending machines (automation that cut through the red tape).

We cherish vintage cars (the Mini’s, the VW‘s) because they strike a chord: nostalgia.

Manufacturers will have to consider women in the work force, translating into purchasing power and buying decision. Pretty in pink.

The rise of Food Network and Interior Decor shows our inclination to differentiate and personalize (hence, the rise of my Facebook page or WordPress theme).

Yes, we often choose default template out of convenienc (organ donation default choice in European countries), but we also want to embrace individuality (a taboo in Asian culture).

Yet on this side of Taylorism, that’s what makes us stand out. Personal branding (I could hardly find my little silver Civic outside the Mall).

The age of automation asks: which do you prefer, a black car or a black car?

I applaud S Korean’s dare-devil (as opposed to highly conforming Japanese culture) choice for pink car. It must have been an eye-sore to older generations. After all, it’s the same over here when Mrs Robinson song was in full blast with Dustin Hoffman, the Graduate, zooming down the coast in a red convertible. You can cutaway to modern Korea, and visualize how the Presbyterian congregation there react to their  version of “Dustin Hoffman” in a pink car. “Heaven holds a place for those who pray” hey, hey, hey.

Technology doesn’t sleep, but we do.

I had my share of empty TV studio, that is, between broadcasts (6PM and 10PM). Now, there is no recoup time. We have evolved to Office 365, with servers resided in the “cloud” instead of the (telco) closets. Mobile working has evolved from CB radio, to Motorola brick phones, from Skypage to Skype chat.

Cryptography moved from a code book to complex self-improved algorithm (Amazon shopping experience : buy this + this = this.)

Pop-up ads even have a “K” for keep (time-shifting ads), while some companies are now offering a service to measure your Twitter‘s scores (influencer’s graph).

McLuhan was on the mark about “the medium is the message.”

Dot.com domain was just a start.

ICANN is opening up more domains.

And within a few years, we will be inundated with dot.this, dot.that, same way we now have with mobile phone area codes (which used to have a zero and a one in the middle of the three-digits).

As with cable TV channels where pundits feel the need to fill the emptiness with noise, new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook (and Google Plus)  will challenge us to come up with “sound bites”. Our attention span has evolved from attending for hours on end under preacher’s tents to today’s tweets.

Our brain has learned to process messages and images much quicker.

Bum, here is a Bieber’s (Be Bop a lula), Bang, there’s a GaGa (innocent like a Chic out of her egg-shell).

Good thing that we can upload and talk back. But not for long, just 140 characters.

You can tweet again, but it won’t be a part II of an earlier tweet. No guarantee.

So we learn to tame new technologies, and cope with their sheer availability.

User-generated content. BTW, from Page One, a documentary on “a year at the New York Times”, journalists on Charlie Rose, commented that the paper was now in better shape than it had ever been.

So the proliferation of citizen-journalists doesn’t threaten or dethrone existing media. Not when it’s the NYT.

Meanwhile, I keep reading volumes of “likes” from one Facebook friend.

All of a sudden, I miss my solitude in a broadcast studio when show’s over.

Lights off. Let’s go home. We need some sleep. The audience already turned off their sets.

In Vietnam, they would put back the Indian poster for white balance.

I guess it’s called the “sleep mode” because studio cameras need longer warm-up time. In today’s parlance, it means our influencer’s scores got dropped a bit when we are offline. The real self needs rest, so the virtual self must give.

Conversant program

If it weren’t for people like Shawn, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

You see, Shawn was a shy Penn State student of  the Horticulture department who wanted to volunteer his time.

It turned out that the Foreign Student Conversant Program matched us together in our first year of college.

That year as it turned out was my best year: how to pronounce “hor”, like in “whore-house”? onto going to frat parties where Shawn finally joined.

There are aspects of English which come across to learners as incomprehensible (what’s that silent “P”  doing there in front of “psychology”) to euphemisms we invented as we go along like “enhanced interrogation” , “assisted suicide” and Leanning-in/Leanning-out.

What Shawn did was :

– he showed me that he cared (by listening more than talking)

– he was trying to cope with the new situation on campus himself

– he was way ahead of the curve on environmental awareness and his calling in that direction.

We lost touch even during college, but I will always remember Shawn for his kindness and friendship.

The last time I saw him was at a frat party, in a crowded Greek-alphabet house off-campus.

We did not talk much that night besides acknowledging each other across the dance floor. So much for being “conversant”.

The fact that we were there in the same room, him rushing the fraternity and me rushing for life in America, said it all.

It was an unusual pairing: he from rural Pennsylvania, I big city. Shawn had not seen nor heard any noise except for Fourth of July fireworks, and I, witnessed practically every Cold War arsenal exhibited in the hot theater of war.

We found each other through the International Student affairs program. We often got “sexiled” (again using Tom Wolfe‘s term) and both felt proud that “WE ARE”  “PENN STATE”.

In our age of globalization, where a small dispute in the South China Seas could trigger a major war (Tonkin Resolution whose Pentagon Papers will be declassified Monday, and now China vs Vietnam with territorial disputes), we can use a bunch of “Shawn” for soft-power influence.

I did not tell Shawn much about my failed attempt at the US embassy in Saigon, or about my subsequent floating in the salty seas.

That fact was understood as subtext over rootbeer and fries. Shawn with a beard, and me hardly had to shave at all.

I wonder what he made of me. I just know that out of the 30,000 students on campus, Shawn was my friend, the very first one.

And the only one I have ever known to pick that particular major. I learned a new vocabulary out of him, if not a whole new appreciation for volunteerism. I learned another concept later in life: “paying forward”. To me, Shawn triggered a chain of events which last way past his freshmen year. He, in today’s social media parlance, essentially “friending” me, conversing instead of chatting. I miss those face2face days over rootbeer.

The genius of LinkedIn

Verifiable profiles.

Matching up people of similar professional stature and standing.

Enlarging the network beyond geographical boundaries.

Crowdsourcing that creates valuable content and demographics.

Most solid Who’s Who list on Earth.

In and of itself, LinkedIn could be the greatest company on the planet, if all members contribute their wisdom and help second degree connection connect. The content from various discussion boards by itself invaluable since these were experience from the trenches.

Personally, due to the volatility nature of my post dot.com telecom career, LinkedIn helps me stay in touch with past colleagues who themselves moved around in or outside of telecom.

LinkedIn is poised to grow into one of the biggest online professional continuing education sites , if it wants to. A gold mine for HR and talent management.

Even in this 8% unemployment environment, it still commands decent IPO. Wait until the next convergence i.e. rise of the rest, then we will see the true value of “first to the field” advantage of LinkedIn.

Remember, when President Clinton was dancing at his inaugural ball (Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow),

there were only 50 web pages in the world. Now, LinkedIn itself has millions and counting (and each of us tends to our own as if it were our “FarmVille” garden). It’s our personal WikiMEdia, since each of us has a narrative worth telling, a horn worth tooting, a puzzle yet to emerge and a life worth connecting to.

Tech buying spree

Even the President couldn’t help visiting Facebook campus in Palo Alto two weeks ago, and in Austin. California companies now talk of an Austin strategy, just like GE back in the 90’s with  India.

I finally realized the wisdom of Alex who made millions from his dollar-per-dot concept. Except this time, it will be the buttons (Like by Facebook, and +1 by Google). T for Twitter, I for LinkedIn and F for Facebook. No wonder MS needs the S button (for Skype). Companies stake out their turfs, online and on-screen to gain shares in this attention economy.

Speak succintly, and speak frequently. Retweet yourself after me.

“I, would like, to buy, a hamburger” (Pink Panthers).

Again.

I remember when companies would hire people to click on their websites so they can rise in Alexa’s ranking (if broadcasters could do the same to secure ratings).

Skype has been a tech marvel, and a business basket case. It had not made money, yet sold to E-bay, who lost money on the deal. And now, it earns a chunk of change passing on to Silver Lake.

Welcome to the 21st century. Members only. Multi-taskers only. Eat,pray and love.

Type, talk and think.

Tech topics cover M2M, which is the next big thing. Where does that leave us, human operators?

To preside on top of the food chain, we need to fight for our supremacy, not over each other, but over machines. Seek first SEO then all these things shall be added unto you. Establish your Web presence. And be relevant (unlike Bin Laden, who was rendered “irrelevant” by the 2011 Arab Spring).

It’s not a coincident that we are tackling, via crowdsourcing, the $300- house challenge for the bottom 2 billion.

Can I have Skype with that?

I just notice that Steve Balmer, during his announcement of MS’s biggest buy, did not even wear a suit.

MS, personified in Steve, is trying hard to stay relevant in this fast and forever young digital world. Time Warner was doing the same with AOL, who in turn, has just made a chess move with Huffington Post. Maybe Skype isn’t the end game for MS. Just its beginning to embrace Skype-type users (early adopters) in the hope that osmosis between MS and Skype will work miracle. If not, then “eat, pray and love”, as Time Warner and AOL once did.

When truth shows up

On the list of “cities that might get worse”, many are from California (Stockton, Bakersfield…but surprisingly, San Francisco as well).

Even with and despite boosted help from Tinsel Town. My first impressions of Los Angeles were formed back in the midst 80’s, during the commercial real estate boom (remember Michael Douglas and the Japanese gangs, or automobile factories that required workers to do exercise every morning – Michael Keaton and his gold fish!).

We were in Search of Excellence back then.

Re-engineering everything.

And greed was good.

Friends who worked for Zerox looked at me as if to say “who do you think you are, going to refugee camps trying to save the world” (today’s equivalence of “who do you think you are, going around leaving scars” by Perry).

Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda (before Three Mile Island) starring and posing as a news crew trying to cover  a nuclear meltdown and a financial meltdown. Both events happened albeit three decades later.

When truth shows up, it’s quite inconvenient.

Dead bodies cannot be recovered for proper burial in Japan.

Automobile and chip factories slowing products shipment.

Even if they could, oil price and overseas rising labor costs leave laser-thin margins for producers.

Even breakfasts at Tiffany will have to be rerouted to China.

Quite inconvenient indeed.

Operations folks now hedge their bets, co-lo and cloud centers spread out logistically. The next economic recovery will see millions if not billions of young Middle Easterners joining the fold. From Facebook to phonebook, they will show up. Their aspiration is our very own aspiration: housing, school, environment, sustainability, connectivity, dignity.

By the time America got used to spelling “Nguyen”, a sign that we finally came to peace with America’s lost war, it will need to learn a whole new lot of last names, some of which might not be as easy . Get used to it. The doctor should learn to take his own medicine. Democracy finally came home to root on American’s soil.

Roll out the mat (for prayers), not the red carpet.

Send them to Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Cities that can use some new blood launching another Facebook or Twitter.

The analog attachment

Years ago, I was fascinated with the California flea market.

Back East, we got garage sales or moving sales. But the Bay Area markets sold vinyl albums, “flower” clothing, books and even gourmet meals on wheels. A Vietnamese family even offered sugar cane juice next to a hot-dog stand.

Fast forward 20 years. A random walk down a flea market today found all things analog, for a dollar:  books, cell phone accessories and cleaning products.

People even tried to sell Sunday papers there (while the NY Times now offers membership package for its online version).

First we downloaded some music for free. Then we paid 99 cents.

Then comes the free online news. Now we have to pay a subscription fee for more exclusive content.

It’s fair, especially for mobile download apps etc…

Many will disagree with me.

But how would journalists feed their children, especially when they have to travel overseas on assignment (and got injured, tortured and kidnapped).

We evolve once again into a two-tier society online, just as we have off-line.

Financial Times, Rupert Murdoch’s News for I-pads, WSJ and now, NY Times

all go for paid content.

The developing poor got an analog version (the other side of the digital track), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html?src=me&ref=homepage

the middle class  enjoy free “coach” content, and the high-class, paid content.

We seem to have reached a compromise in this Pro-Am emergence. The digital divide is coming to clearer focus.

When I was in school, all I knew was that we lived in a world of 4 Billion people.

Now, it’s a 7-Billion digital play ground.

And many of us will watch movies on Facebook, in-mail each other on Facebook, and recommend news on Facebook.

Netflix, last year’s number one company, will have a run for the money.

Meanwhile, Rackspace and Amazon lead the way to the cloud.

We finally move up the value chain, where software apps rule.

IT admin guys will be the new Maytag men.

I remember clearly voice analog people spread the word that VoIp was quite choppy, hackable etc.. until people can dial 911 from their mobile phones,

which put the nail on the analog voice coffin.

Now, a walk down the flea market will find many CPU’s, servers  for sale because companies will have made a leap to the cloud. Moore’s Law wasn’t about the time it takes to double the speed of chips.

It’s more about how quickly we need to let go of our attachment to all things analog.

No wonder agriculture farms in Idaho and Dakota (cold weather) now give ways for server farms (cut down on the electricity needed to cool the cage).

Heartland America once again thrives after losing a horde of people during the Post Dust Bowl era. There is no turning back to One-hour photo or even Red Box.

That’s how fast change has arrived. Wake up to the new digital reality. If you don’t believe me, then visit your nearest flea market to see what ‘s on sale. Gadgets you now embrace at home.

If so, then it’s time to go shopping. And by that, I mean online shopping, not to Circuit City. It has been out of business.

Yearning for the new

The Year of the Cat.

Al Stewart in white suit.

Cyclical, eternal and in sync with nature. No “dominion over the land and seas” as in Western theocracy (in an ironic twist, outside my window, the work crew keeps digging, plowing, flattening and paving the sidewalks – one after another, from water to power, cable to phone companies – one dead-end street, multi-crew, stretching on for months).

People just want to rest, renew and reinvigorate.

Eat the fruit and replant the seed.

Eat the fruit, and remember those who planted the seed.

Greet the young and remember the old.

In letting go, one is free to receive the first visitor on New Year.

I could always tell who was going to be our first visitor while growing up in Vietnam.

Great Uncle, in bow tie.

(It would be an equivalence of man in black during New Year Eve’s party).

The bouquet, the basket of fruit and a bowl of brisket, all symbolize abundance from nature . This was during a pre-supermarket era i.e. fresh, not frozen.

Lunar New Year presents a different perspective.

I remember a movie joke line “the only restaurant opens over Christmas is Chinese“.

And perhaps the opposite is also true: the only establishment that is open in Vietnam during Tet is Circle K. (backpacker’s alley).

I miss the firecrackers. They replace them with fireworks now.

But the scent and sound of firecrackers truly marked the changing of the “animal” (from Tiger to Cat). New Year Day saw various shades of pink and red firecracker’ s ash on rich man’s lawn.

Everyone yearns for the new: new clothes, new money  and new coat of paint. The ancestral altar also got buffed up. My late parents used to pen some poems right after midnight.

If they had Web 2.0 back then, they probably would have gone on Facebook and “status” it. People forgive and forget. Life is hard enough with war, separation and loss.

For three days, food is taken for granted.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Let’s hear it! 10-9-8…count down. No, there is no such clear-cut.

Just a crack here and a pop there, and before you realize it, New Year has arrived . It dropped a ton of optimism in a hurry, like an overtime UPS man running late. Growing up in war-time and in poverty is like doing exercise: you have to do it every day to make it work for you (you learn to look at yourself and others not by the amount of possession,  but by the richness of one’s relationships).

New Year in Vietnam is  a time for communal self-renewal. Everybody yearns for the new, for a better tomorrow. For now, Al Stewart’s the Year of the Cat will do just fine, since it was a top hit back then. Every twelve years, it becomes relevant all over again.

 

Marketing genius

Charlie Chaplin would keep filming until he got it perfect (100:1 filming ratio to get the ladder to swing just right etc…).

In “the Kid“, the little girl would throw rocks at windows, while our handyman walks right behind to fix them.

Gillette would give away razors just to sell the blades (HP has done the same with its ink).

Levis would sell jeans during the Gold Rush, along with those who profited by selling picks and pickaxes.

Sony founder had his reps wear bigger shirt pockets to fit his “portable” radios (showmanship par excellence).

Hyundai founder tried his hands at the Pony, while Detroit was busy with its Pinto.

Pepsi had its “taste test” with blindfolded customers, while Wendy used little old lady for “where is the beef” campaign.

Barnes and Nobles followed Moses down the mountain, saying “let my people read” (beyond the tablets).

Woodstock organizers did the same when they decided to “let my people in”.

Costco built its shopping carts bigger than others (as a results, people bought more paper products) while Cisco bought up its competitors to solve innovator’s dilemma.

Apple launched its I-phone, with long lines wrapped around New York and San Francisco’s street corners. Chinese-Americans would buy them in bulk to stock up for their next suit-case entrepreneurial trip (where do they think the phones were first manufactured in?).

And the mother of them all is Facebook, where out of our own volition, we volunteer our intimate information, information we wouldn’t tell our mothers, so they can help advertisers target the right kind of demographics.

Marketing genius! They know about us more than we do ourselves.

Facebook went from on-campus to off-campus, from Tulane to Tunisia and flourished in an era of change, from Apartheid to ARPANET. The tiger is out of the cage, with its long tail. Nothing is for free. I learned that after my first 5 minutes of silent movie (wheeled around on the back seat of the peddler’s bicycle). Charlie Chaplin was timeless.

We all had our shares of being had by marketing genius, willingly especially during Super Bowl, the Davos of them all.