Tag: LinkedIn

Lehrer and Hart

The list goes on and on. As if they could fit another Vietnam War memorial wall, but this one, for broadcasting.

Someone observes that on campus, the dorm lounge during news hour is a quietest place to make a phone call.

I still remember when Peter Jennings, Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson  shared the ABC newscast.

NBC got two anchors, PBS two and CBS, just one. That’s 8 talking heads sharing pre-CNN Evening news prime time.

America has always had an appetite for news (and TV dinners) besides eating while driving.

Over-the-top pay services such as Netflix and soon, Apple and Google will take us, the audience, further down the road of our self-initiated programming. Combo number 1 (Panda video, consists of hard news, soft porn and targeted advertising etc…).

This paradigm shift is telling us that even seasoned broadcast journalists still can’t command digital native audience. TV viewing used to be a family affair. Now, news is what being sent and recommended by friends. We are transitioning from broadcasting to narrow-casting,

one-to-many to many-to-many (“followers”). Bin Laden raid was announced via a Tweet by, of all people, an engineer who wanted to take a vacation away from it all “can I catch some sleep now”!

My guess is we will end up getting the information via aggregators like Facebook or Alltop.com, the new priesthood of the information age.

BTW, LinkedIn starts publishing its own news headlines.

Black-and-white TV used to be the only “game” in town ( I grew up waiting for the sign-on at 6PM. The whole country turned on their TV sets to warm up with the Indian-head poster – I found out later, used by studio engineers to calibrate their white balance, and align broadcast signals).

As portrayed best by William Hurt in Broadcast News “what do you do when your life exceeds your dream”, we can now wish farewell to those veteran broadcasters with “what do you do when your retirement exceeds your entitlement”. They know when to hold, and when to fold. After all, they are the ones who have set the tone and the pace of conversation in America. Now the burdens are on those who try to sell soup, soap and cereal to know exactly which half of their marketing dollars fails. Again, someone observed that they should at least try Gagaville, a private-label site from Farmville before having bouncers on the set like Jerry Springer .

Before signing-off, I just want to quote Ishiguro through the observation of Madam (dean of “clones” in Never Let Me Go) “When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world.And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” “That’s the way it is” once a nightly sign-off by Walter Cronkite,  America’s most trusted man.

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.

Act 2

At the gym, I couldn’t help notice two guys with Mountain-Dew T-shirt. We can still have “black swan” scenario in our life time e.g. the US rises again from the depth of deficit (muscle memory), or someday a Hispanic president will seek a M&A with Mexico (will not be the first time the US offer to buy more territory).

When we went through Y2K (getting plenty of water and batteries) we anticipated worst case scenario. People said this has been a Lost Decade. Now, that the worst has been behind us, let’s buy some champagne and balloons.

The challenges of the past decade have steeled our resilience but at the same time diminished our faith in institutions.

While tragedy comes in pairs (two recessions, twin towers, two disasters in Louisiana), luck will also come in pairs. Look at what Web 2.0 has given us: friends from Facebook, free videos from YouTube and millions of Who’s who on LinkedIn. The list goes on and on, as one tweet begets another in this 4-G, 3-D, 24/7 always-on world.

As we defy gravity by going to the “cloud”, our experience will grow much richer

All of our investment in hardware finally pay back with an abundance of software options albeit cases like Iridium, Concorde etc…

Our global village will show case Best of the Best. Stay tuned. The next decade will unleash apps from 20 years old’s who are now in Middle School (Yahoo just bought  Tumblr, and now eying Hulu). The sooner they are bored with texting the better. New toys for tots will spill over as Act 2 for the rest of us (Act 1 being the Ipod, Ipad, mobile apps like Twitter, Social Network such as Facebook). With an audience of 7 billion, any content will be devoured in an instant.

Build it and they will come. Level 3 must have looked deep into the crystal ball. Without the likes, we wouldn’t have Netflix as is. Clusters of innovation all converged in our time while adoption rate has never been quicker.

Instead of shopping for batteries, I will go for balloons and instead of water, champagne.

 

Third life

As recent as 60 years ago, a businessman could let his hair down (or hat off) at home, smoke a cigarette or pipe, and watch the news

(in black and white). In fact, at the U of TX Austin museum, an exhibition is underway to show you just that: witness to a century.

Now, we spend a considerable amount of time online, commenting, following, blogging, liking and…venting.

Welcome to modernity i.e. jet plane, mobile devices, fast food and “social” sans borders.

It will either be misinformation or disinformation about us, and certainly, easy access (Snowden’s alert).

(at least, on LinkedIn, they let you reverse look up people who looked you up).

Some people even advocate cyber abstinence or cyber sabbatical.

The idea is to rearrange our priorities so face time can take precedence over screen time.

Twitter is so prescient in mobile connectivity. “Where are you now” has been one of the most asked questions in mobile conversation.

Now, with Twitter, we can proactively let “followers” know our where-about (In transit at a Korean airport, for instance).

Next and last frontier would be cloud-based computing (dropbox).

One exception: college students still prefer to haul around heavy textbooks over digital readers. Masochist?

Or just the last streak of rebellion?

In case you haven’t noticed, we now know more about Facebook friends of friends who posted regularly on-line, than our closest relatives who live far away.

So back to our businessman in the 50’s, who wore suspenders like Larry King‘s. Only now that our Happy Days dad comes home from work (first life) skips over his second life (wife, kids and supper time) to go online (third life), where he keeps taps intimate details of his “friends”, while his wife, perhaps is doing so on her mobile, while out shopping for a bargain on groupons.

And what about the kids? They have already got their daily dose of  100 SMS messages before seamlessly continue their virtual existence on multi-screen. The truth hit home to me, when, upon staying at a friend’s house last week, I discovered a stool in the toilet. Asked what it’s for. Guess what, the kids surfed the internet while using the bathroom. That stool was his lap top stand.

Welcome to our 21st century, when we not only have public and private life, as in the 50’s, but also, virtual life.

If unchecked, this technology-aided life (Third Life) will take a larger chunk of our 24-hour pie, even bathroom time. Amuse ourselves to death.

Under-utilized imagination

The-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo series got me hooked. I know it’s cold  in Stockholm. And I know he did not produce tangible products from the factory, such as sweet or swatch.

But he offered readers an emotional experience (getting out of mundane existence, stepping into character and experiencing triumph and tragedy unavailable to us otherwise).  The author did not live to enjoy his success, which is a tragedy in and of itself.

We despise those who cooked up sub-prime collateral obligation. But we wasted a lot of brain power which could get us out of our dilemma. I am hopeful that someone is building a better Twitter, a faster YouTube, and a more efficient Netflix.

On LinkedIn, the Innovation group has experienced phenomenal growth. It is to show that we want to connect with like-minded creative people.

If you want to generate energy, join a Samba group. We don’t get much results by exercising alone. The same way when it comes to exercising our imagination.

One person’s zany idea might trigger another’s bankable invention (the Orange Revolution).

Last Saturday, I sat with a few people who at one time in their career achieved sales success.

These sales veterans wanted to brainstorm some ideas. I remembered the excitement and anticipation among the group.

Multiply that experience by nth time. Then we might get  that gene pool to work. Each of us already is a miracle (at conception). Now, we need idea incubation (Edison and his team, not Edison the lone inventor).

And maybe, a star is born. It doesn’t cost much to exercise our imagination. It’s already there as nature’s gift. Some of us capitalize and monetize it better than others. In the case  of the-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo trilogy, the author did not live to see his characters alive on the screen. God rest his soul. His characters are so real to the million who bought those books. Who said imagination is cheap? It is just under-utilized.

Here’s my card

You have heard that line in movies, at the bar, or convention hall.

The Post had an article about the survival of the card in our digital age.

Maybe because it’s so small, so humble, and so obvious.

Google was thinking big i.e. “organize the world’s information”, thus, overlooked the tiny card in our wallet.

I received a business card which says “name, looking for employment in such and such field”.

I thought that was quite a sign of our time.

I got tired of printing my position (will work for food). So I printed my social network URL instead.

Our identity has slowly evolved, from off-line to online,  national passport to digital passport.

Virtual identity. We update photos and other data on our social graph.

We used to have coaches in sports, music, career. And now, there are  new breed of  online business coach.

Larger play place. More global. Higher benchmark.

It used to be “on the web, nobody knows you are a dog”.

Now, you need to approach multiple platforms from Twitter to YouTube, from Facebook to LinkedIn.

New rules of engagement.

New rules of PR.

Yet the business card stays the same.

Hi touch, low tech.

Easily exchanged at mixer.

Strong hand grip. Name tag on your right chest. Card on your left hand.

Impressive impression.

Twitter speech replaces elevator speech.

Let’s go.

Your name? Mine is .

Here’s my card.

 

last leaf

Skyline of West VA presents quite a scene and makes a case for Fall foliage. We used to play King of the Hill on top of a heap of dead leaves.

Reminds me of the Last Leaf, a story about a terminally ill patient looking out the window and said “when those leaves all fell away, I too would take my last breath”.

Our hero in the story waited till night fall to climb and paint an autumn leaf on the wall outside the window. “See, there is still hope. That last leaf still hangs in there, so can you”.

The patient eventually recovered. Without delivering the last lecture, he had the last laugh thanks to that last leaf.

The wheel of commerce has got stuck for quite some time. No capital for our capital-driven society, like a deer caught in an incoming headlight.

Terminally ill but still hopeful.

People already coined a new phrase,  “the post-consumerism society” (are we going to recycle old clothes, old styles – 70’s? ).

Like the terminally ill patient,  we as a society needs to hone our will to survive.

If I were the last leaf, I would dance with the wind, even defy gravity to buy me some time. And I refuse to go out with that institutional fluorescent overhead light (by default, it’s our last view while alive).  I would smile, and thank all the kind faces that have smiled at me during my entire life.

I often visited a cousin outside of HCMC. She was said to have visited me when I was born. I must have remembered it well, because I have returned the favor many times over.

In between stimulus and response, there is a pause. That pause of a millisecond could be for good or ill (The Vietnamese revolutionist once said to the French executioner at the gullotine, “let me die looking up so I can see how sharp your blade is”.)

In between Empty and the actual stopping of a car, there is always a reserve.

We have that reserve of good will, resilience, adaptability and untapped resources.

Put it to use now. Make it contagious. Practice leadership skills (Mongolian Khan got out of prison because his wife sold herself to the silk traders to bail him out. We know  the rest of history).

That’s Khan. That’s his-story. Now, it’s our-story. Last leaf or last laugh?

 

Twitter speech

Before there was “elevator speech” . Now Twitter speech (or CV) offers a quick summation of one’s career mission.

Best and worst of  wise cracks and fortune-cookie wisdom.

Modern-day equivalent of digital tombstones. Tombstones leave behind relationship-defining legacies  i.e. mother, teacher, sister etc…

In The Last Lecture, the author expounded on the importance of relationships.

Imagine yourself looking up to the fluorescent lights in the ICU, tubes in nose, trying to utter your last 140 characters.

What would you say, “I am sorry for all the lost times”, “I am proud of you”, or “I wish I were given more time to see you grow”.

I have said enough on these blogs. It lasts me a life time.

So my Twitter speech would be: “Dare to live, dare to love, dare to win, dare to fail, dare to face yourself in the mirror”.

What’ s your Twitter speech? Your last lecture? Your last blog? Your last Social Media update? Your last e-mail? Your last chat?

Your last sound bite.  Your bumper stickers? Your tatoo and tombstone inscription? (I deleted a dead friend from LinkedIn connection yesterday. Felt weird!).

So many tools, so little time to show or simplify our personal brand. No wonder marketing people insist on improving their Elevator Speech.

It seems that our brain cannot grab lengthy and winding abstract. In the age of over-stimuli and algorithm, our brain wants “instant Google” and our body, instant noodle., preferably spoon-fed, one tweet at a time. I am sure within a few short years, people will talk in Tweets and  choppy chats like campaign slogans even when bandwidth is more abundant and Twitter itself is no longer “over capacity”.  In our Twitter age, elevator speech itself needs a make-over. It needs to be twitterized. Gone are the days when we came back to the office, with a stack of pink telephone messages, asking us to “Please call your mom. ”

 

Vietnamese meta language

She said No, but her body language said Yes.

He said Yes, but his other language said No.

How to figure it out? Context is key.

Mothers love you your entire life, but never said “I love you” directly.

Teachers who were mighty proud of their students’ achievement, but remained stern and strict behind thick glasses.

Harsh society? Hardly. But one needs to learn how to decode it.

One moment, the lover scolds you, then kisses you the next  second.

Enough to give Westerners a heart attack.

Do not react quickly. Just paraphrase and confirm your understanding. Use a third party for independent verification.

Vietnamese is an interlinked society, way before LinkedIn .

My friend recommended “Com Tam Bui Saigon“, an upscale version of blue-collar broken rice dish. So I found myself dining there.

Word-of-mouth. Trusting “Like”.

Hard to break in if you were an outsider. But once you untangled the knot (after finding out that everyone seems to be related to someone else: from being an in-law to being a distant relative), then you know you are dealing with collective self.

Things get done, but not on your timetable. It takes time to build trust.

Lots of toasting and testing.

People don’t give you deserved praises directly. Even when they do it indirectly, praises came across as having been dipped in vinegar. It keeps you humble. On this point, it’s best to let others sing your praise. Self-promotion belongs in the West.

By nature, it’s a communistic (and somewhat stoic) culture . The nail that stands out gets hammered down.  You can dance, you can shout, but only for  a minute before someone steps in to enforce the rule (I experienced this first hand during my senior year: sending out some guy to rent a base guitar, just to see the power got cut off when it was finally arrived). Recently, a club (Feeling) got inspected with search warrant for running past closing time. Nowhere do we see this conflict on display then at the Water Park, where kids are into action and adventure, while stoic adults sit watching in complete aloof and alienated. Unwanted pregnancy used to be top of the shame list.  Now, it is joined by out-of-closet gays, abortion, interracial marriage and old maids.

Yet Thai Tai, Dao Vinh Hung not only defy the rule, but thrive on it (the former even went so far as undergoing surgery in Thailand, and changing his title, from Mr to Ms).

Imagine Vietnam as a boat, with everyone on it.

Rationing the morale, and rationing the meal.

Take your turn to speak, but make sure group speak has the last say.

Consensus, compromise and often win-lose is the way to go (the winner would rationalize that his win is for the common good. Hence, “hieu” vs “tinh” or filial duty overrides personal self-gratification).

To understand Vietnamese meta language, one doesn’t need a dictionary. Just be ready for upfront loss to hope for eventual gain. And be careful what you wish for,  just like the nation itself which is still trying to win the peace in the midst of urbanization and modernization. It will need a whole set of new language to define itself just to keep pace.

My first day at school

Everyone remembers that dreadful day.

I did.

My mom was a teacher herself, but at a different school.

So my sister, 19 years my senior, had to grudgingly play surrogate parent.

She dropped me off to join a bunch of babies whose cries were contagious.

The French school was two blocks away.

It required students to wear blue uniforms and  proper shoes. They checked our finger nails every day, a fear that takes me to manicure shop to this day.

Bonjour Madam. Bonjour Monsieur.

So I joined the crowd, moving from one lesson to the next, from private to public school (in Vietnam, back then, it’s an elite thing).

A lot have happened since.

I still remember walking to school with Pierre,  a fat half-breed.

We discussed the assassination of President Kennedy (cool? They have barely released the suppressed document on the second Tonkin incident).

And later, I eye-witnessed the self-burning monk.

I even played a woman in our annual school skit, and gave the student body a wholesome laugh (Tootsie).

And to this day, I could only recall two kids from my Elementary school.

Pierre was one of the two. He pulled the lever at the traffic post and somehow,

got traffic to stand still for hours.

Vietnamese literature has a famous passage.

It goes like this: “these routes I have taken everyday, but somehow, today it’s different.

The difference is, today is my first day at school.”

Because of that first day at school, I look at that intersection of Cao Thang and Nguyen Dinh Chieu in a different light.

The traffic post is still there, with faded white umbrella. (as of this edit, that was finally taken down, leaving a chunk of square concrete blocking the sidewalk).

Many pass by but few notice it. But to me, it’s special.

Because, it bears witness to my fun childhood albeit in war-time. People I interacted with then were of Indian descent, French half-breed, French (principles), GI teachers etc…

Later, I spotted a transferred student to my jr high. Over recess,  on his first day at school,

I approached him to include him in our group “Hi, would you like to join our volley ball team?”.

He remains my friend, if not best friend, since.

You’ll never know who will click and stay on with you.

But one thing for sure, you have to take that first step.

School or life, there will always be that first awkward, and sometimes, dreadful first day.

Even when it’s in your old neighborhood. The difference is, now, you see it with  different lens.

I cried hard on that first day. I realize now that I shouldn’t have. School has been fun, and I can’t get enough of it.

The only constant is change. So we must embrace it, and learn from it. For instance, the new battery in Volt

costs about $10,000. And GM promises that it will last 8 years, or 100,000 miles. Good luck with lithium.

No smog, no noise. But when it makes a stop at the intersection where my Elementary school is, watch out for Pierre, the Devil.

There will never be my last day at school. Learning has taken on a different form for me. It could be a pearl of wisdom on LinkedIn

discussion board. Or a stranger on the bus. People are willing to share hard-earned lessons for free. Embrace the new, the hidden gem in every day’s encounter, with capacity to surprise us.

(Coronado could have found gold in the SW territories of the US, but he went looking specifically for a city made of gold, thus missed out on a great opportunity). Learn all you can learn from those acres of diamond.

It’s not what you know that will save you. It’s what you don’t (see my other blog, Chief Learning Officer). The same with Social Network.

It’s not who you know, but it’s who knows whom you know. The network effect (more on that on other blogs as well).

Teilhard de Chardin predicted the Omega point sometimes between 2030-2040 ” when for the second time in the history of the world, mankind will have discovered fire”.

That “fire” which he refers to was “the energies of love”, among them should be the love for learning i.e. self-advancement (even if we come in full circle,  the journey is well worth it). I would cry harder than I did on that first day of school if today were my last day of learning.