Tag: Youtube

Green Fields are gone

The camera panned jerkily (watch You Tube) as the Four Brothers sang away their classic hit, Green Fields.

The comments section was led by “I miss my papa, this was one of his favorites”.

The Greatest Generation, and now the Boomer Generation, are slowly but surely fading away. Gone with them are the many lessons and exhibition A-Z on leadership (WW’s), on innovation (Elvis), and on ethics (Woodward-Bernstein). Next Gen, however, gives us new platforms (digital) and new media (text and tweet). They are more racially tolerant (geek is geek), and digital media perhaps contribute to present declining crime rate and growing  gaming industry.

Mecca to them is CES now underway in Las Vegas. Everybody’s an Inspector Gadget. In “From Russia with Love“, Sean Connery was shown a high-tech brief case after receiving his mission to Istanbul. It was a concealed Swiss knife. To open the case, he needs to turn the two knobs half way (quite laughable even by those days’ standards).

Green Fields may sound like farm boys’ ballad, Yellow Submarine , an Industrial utopia, but Digital Generation has yet given us a defining theme (Detroit 2.0?). With User Generated Content (from 1 Billion and counting Facebook fans) and Earth growing population (7 Billion), Next Gen needs its theme song.

I understand the need to stand out, hence personal branding.

I understand the need to be relevant and collaborative .

And most of all, the need to innovate before Green Fields are gone. “I only know, there’s nothing here for me……”  Well, there have been floods in Chile, Haiti, and Australia.

Watch out world! There is nothing Buddhistic about living in harmony with living things. Or else, with biblical-size flooding, the Noah’s Ark in a Kentucky theme park might be real specie-saving act.

On Seeing

With YouTube, Skype Video and 4-G network, we will be watching a lot of video.

Some content was finally “remastered” to be added on to the collective archive in the cloud.

Yet, we neglect to clean our lenses and learn to see as if for the first time.

The sense of wonder, curiosity, marvel, or just discover what’s been there all along.

(The National Archivist picked Star Wars among others for future

generations).

I had my glass redone last week. After trying the new lenses on, it got worse. Turned out that the store had the wrong measurement for the order.

What you see depends on where you stand.

A or B? Is this better or worse?

Yesterday, on Bloomberg, Pimm Fox had a great interview with Howard Davidowitz, who pointed out that with more online shopping, we are stuck with so much excess in commercial retail space.

I live close to the near-abandoned Palm Beach Mall. All stores had moved out, except for JC Penney. Even when it’s not “last chance bargain” store, it feels like it.

We view others and being viewed within a context. I have my daughter’s high school graduation picture on my desk. I might be looking at her picture, but actually, she has looked at me, watching Dad struggle, put on his best face, war face if need be.

We also see differently when we are intoxicated, or with a pocket full of money.

It’s sad to hear that attempts at micro lending in India have failed due to loan sharks.

Noble idea but not without some hiccups.

With a new decade comes new configuration, if only we can “see” (IaaS for instance).

See what’s left standing. See what’s coming up from behind.

See who are still with us when the dust is settled.

And most importantly, seeing our real selves: that which has actually emerged due to so much contextual stimuli (that draw out our characters, and sharpen them in the process.)

The old Western movies extolled the Alpha Male (Last Man Standing).

Somehow, our Capitalist society got a page from that same script. The result is, Chase  branch at every corner, and JC Penney the only left in the block.

I know now what’s tomorrow’s blog should be about: on becoming.

New terms such as “coffice” (in Korea, you pay for the coffee like at Starbucks and sit down to commandeer a table from 9-5), TARP, CDO etc…New Year Celebration, on ABC, I heard Ke$ha (We are who we are) say “let’s make twenty eleven a bitch”.

Underneath it all, we should be glad that next-gen are holding it quite well.

If twenty eleven turns out as expected, then we are going to be OK.

That’s how I “see” it. So much wasted retail space, so much wasted US talent.

 

A Face w/ a name

A few years ago, TIME’s Person of the year got a face with a name. In fact, he manages to drag in a billion faces and names with him. The last time someone wearing pajamas in public yet got that much publicity was John Lennon (who invited the press into his honeymoon suite).

Mark was told to attend one of the VC meetings in pajamas (talking about sabotage).

Facebook personalises the impersonal Web. Between Facebook and YouTube, we see a bottom-up movement that gets endorsed by enterprises (latest McKinsey research shows enterprises who adopted social media came out ahead).

To make media “social” we first need to put a name to a face.

Then, slowly, we learn about that person through his/her social graph (evolving profile). It  is another message altogether i.e. with subtext like “I am cool”, “I am with it”, “I am in the know” albeit starting out as a medium.

Change agent. Thought and opinion leader. Votes of confidence. Hot topics.

When Hollywood got into the act, you know it’s in (The book, the movie and now TIME cover).

Almost a billion and counting might not mean a lot, but in sheer number, it is a force to be reckoned with.

It has not been without some controversies (privacy) as well promises (in-mail).

In the hierarchy of snappy content, Facebook delivers creme de la creme (tweeting is by far a data burst while yahoo chat and G-mail, yesterday’s tools).

Inside Facebook, you interact with peers, your Web Ivy League. Think of the Web as a huge city, and Facebook as Cheers, where everybody knows your name (and face).

In an age of globalization (7 billion) and ubiquitous technology (mobile), we have carved out for ourselves a virtual community, discussing and gossiping about topic du jour. That beats “bowling alone” and bingo hall. No wonder a few  days ago, one of the topics was getting hooked on Facebook.

By naming Facebook’s founder Person of the Year, TIME was posting its own eulogy, acknowledging this many-to-many medium is here to stay and grow in influence.

TIME Person of the Year = Chief Influencer

Filter builder

Building up our filtering capacity does not mean firming up our prejudice. But no matter what we do, we can only watch an average of 4 hours of TV and a few hours on the Web, mobile or stationary.

So we rely on thought leaders. Two-step information flow. Except this time, information flow through a social network i.e. multiple gate-keepers. We essentially recreate what early radio stations did when they strung together broadcast relay stations (to deliver a larger audience to advertisers) with their affiliates.

To be prejudice-free (reaching out only to friends and reading only their posts), I try to connect with a diverse pool, from left, center to right, black white and yellow, male female and gay and straight.

While we die alone, we don’t have to be isolated in our thought life.

In fact, we should recalibrate our filter, to let in more

data of different shapes and sizes. Ours is a post-Columbus Google era and each of us, our own press agent. Some even venture to suggest Social Media profile to replace credit history.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/26/why-your-social-media-profile-might-be-your-next-credit-score/

In 2010 the year in review, they posted a picture showing a naked Haitian woman who contracted cholera, lying and dying on the streets. No one stopped to cover her up (I hope the photographer would, after taking that picture that stirred our conscience).

And remember Nida, dying in front of our Twitter eyes during post Iranian election?

When I was in International Journalism class, we touched briefly on information flow, and how it had always been from North to South, from information-rich countries to information poor ones. Well, that was before YouTube and Twitter.

Now, anyone with a clip or tweet can share. New Dean of Columbia Journalism school, Steve Coll, will have to start a Twitter account to  stay relevant.

I have yet learned how to build a twitter filter. So what harm can it do me, reading unsolicit 140 characters. It would be an equivalence of hearing an elevator pitch from an aggressive salesman, whose odd of success is quite small (because he skips over the discovery phase). But some tweets stick and I learn something new every day. Technology is just a tool to deliver content.  Just don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Do you hear what I hear.

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.

 

message in the bottle

Cast away. Sending an SOS. an SMS. I hope that someone will get my message.

We are born to connect (our belly button testifies to this) with nature and others.

Yet marketers are telling us that in Retirement Ville, cruise ship (with sauna sound that reminds us of incubator) and virtual existence can substitute for the real thing.

In Japan, a generation grows up with comic characters and robots ( Miku, a 3-D virtual rock star got

her star treatment not unlike The Beatles).

Children in the West and BRIC nations will follow suit with what Neil Postman coins “amusing ourselves to death”.

If you look at the statistics on how we spend our time, TV and the Web are at third spot after sleep and work.

We in mail, g-mail, dropbox, chat, text, store, tweet, Like, blog, comment, delete spam, mass e mail etc….

As of this edit, Salesforce is buying another cloud-based marketing company at the tune of 2+ Billion.

To be social. To connect. To be human. It will be the first time in our human history that one can connect more than the optimal 120 (The Tipping Point).  This revolutionary change is the most significant since the 60’s.

Music is to be shared (Woodstock), the Earth is to be shared (Whole Earth Catalog), ideas are to be shared (Google), courses are to be shared (Coursera) and ride is to be shared (San Francisco). It’s not by mistake that San Francisco and adjacent Silicon Valley come out ahead in thought leadership.

It’s been a while since campus coffee-house (our 70’s version of karaoke, except you have to bring your own guitar).

Now we got Facebook to share a clip (ironically from Youtube, which is own by rival Google), a photo or an article.

All of a sudden, it’s like play time, share time. Everyone is an artist i.e. to let the world know we once exist.

Adults, retirees, and yes, even x’s, “friending” each other. Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The Genie is finally out of the bottle.

I send an SOS to the world…….I hope that someone, I hope that someone, read my message in the bottle…….

Listening across the cultures

Listening is hard to begin with (just ask a psychiatrist).

Listening across the cultures is doubly hard. It requires an extensive grasp of the others’ frame of reference.

As technology enables the world to shrink, more groups join the globalized market.

(The PM of Malaysia was on GPS telling Fareed that in the 60’s, Malaysia poverty rate was more than 50% – it is now under 3.5%).

Shop till you drop.

Yet, we don’t listen to what our constituents are telling us. The algorithm from Amazon seems to do a better job.

At least, it mined data of my past purchases, and recommended similar products.

Listening is hard work.

In The Empathic Civilization, the author touches on our increased capacity to empathize, as more and more studies on how the brain works are released. To listen is to engage, to comprehend and to visualize being in their shoes. In short, to empathize.

Beginners in Sales were often taught to “push” their products and to sell features and rates, all the while praying for the law of average (numbers game) to work.

Until the pipe line runs dry, and these feature salesmen hit a drought.

Who are the customers? What do they really want? What are their felt needs? How can we uncover those needs and wants, then to show that gap between need and solution which brings values. A sale is just a beginning of a life-long relationship.

I was fortunate to have worked in multi-cultural teams, serving the needs of a multi-cultural market place.

In our team, you can find Russian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Indian, Filippino, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hispanic and Vietnamese. We  catered to Arminian, Cambodian, and everyone else in between.

It forced me to be culturally sensitive. What’s underneath the tip of that iceberg? What should be left unsaid? What should be uncovered?

There will always be misunderstandings across the cultures (comedians have a hard time cross-over this gap). And this makes negotiation much more challenging (we revert to the path of least resistance, and assume – with arrogance – that we know what they want).

People in general speak through their body language.

To listen across the cultures,  one needs to listen with both ears and eyes. Ask open-ended questions, and watch HOW the person across the table answer those questions.

I walked across the street in San Francisco once, with two really tall Eastern European resellers. One guy had his head shaved, the other long hair (makes me look like Chow in Wolfpack) . Then I visited another Pakistanis reseller who was always in suit and tie. And finally, I sat down sharing a meal with our Chinese agent. Food makes for good camaraderie. In each case, I morphed to “mirror” the others (be brief with Westerners, and be relational with Asians).

People want low price. Yes, but they also want a range of choices, great service and reliability (or brand).

During this recession, it seems that companies like Costco, McDonald, Nordstrom all did well because they have listened to their customers (besides consistency across all location – trust factor).

US News and World Report joined the fate of Christian Science Monitor to downsize and limit themselves to just newsstand and special issues on Hospital and University ranking.

Those are obvious examples of listening to the customers.

Yes, time is hard. It will weed out companies and consultants who did not research and respond to a diverse customer base. First seek understanding, then to be understood. The shotgun theory is out. Now is time for engagement, collaboration (across the cultures) and value creation.  If it’s too late to learn another language, at least you should try to “read” the non-verbal signals.  80% of communication is conveyed via body language (as of this edit, President of the US and China, both met “informally” near Santa Monica, without wearing a tie). Nail that, then you are ahead in this global market place. Watch YouTube where the world is trying to say something. Unless you preferred to stick with the old model T when consumers now have a choice anywhere between a Leaf and a Nano. Listening is hard because it requires you to change a hard habit in your formative years. To start, just pretend to be everyone’s psychiatrist, without the pay.

Then you might get your pay day on top of becoming a great listener who knows the what and why of the conversation across the cultures.

The bookmark of time

Recently I ran into a childhood friend, member of the band.  Almost 40 years in between.

It were as if I found a cartoon book, with a bookmark which landed me right where we had left off.

We could have been like two kids again, with passion for music and all things jr high.

He recently had cancer and miraculously, escaped death until then. An accomplished professional pianist, he  said he would come back to play in Saigon again.

All of a sudden, those tunes and those faces resurfaced. It’s like buying a ticket to a movie house which shows “Back to the future“.

No wonder movies could say more than any other medium: it got sound, image and mood.

The industry often uses yellowish lighting or black-and-white to denote flashback.

If it were a film, my friend and I certainly were in white and blue uniform, band-rehearsing our piece (3 electric guitars and a drum set).

My years in high school were rush rush. We were witnesses to political upheavals, fast social mores and intense clashes between modernity versus migration.

I remember our shirt collar styles. They kept changing during those years, from being pointy, to being round then Beatles‘ no collar.

The neighborhood tailor’s was doing brisk business.

Music was in Hit Parade, and fashion from Paris Match.

Boys and girls wore shirts so tight that they could be body glove. And those white shirts glowed when the disco lighting flashed on them.

My friend wore a wig when played key board for a Rock and Roll band.

He went pro.

(Ironically, he now needs a wig again with cancer and all).

We have so many unfinished “books” and they all are bookmarked.

The day the 7th fleet marines left a bin at the feet of the gangplank for refugees to drop their weapons before boarding, I also left many bookmarked relationships behind as well.

We call it legacy now. Just a flashback now and then. But one has to move on.

Each day is a new day. New “social network” relationship and connection to be established.

New way of collaboration.

But those memories stay there like books left on the shelves.

With bookmarks, for easy search.

My friend and I opened it right where we left off.

And in my mind, I could still see him with hair, 40 years younger, and a smile that was indelible.

Cancer or no cancer, our camaraderie sticks. Members of the band. Collaboration. Same beat, same tempo.

Many but one. Music dictates. In our case, it was Apache, by the Shadows. Got to go….to Youtube. Try it, you’ll like it.

Maybe it will land you where your own bookmarks were. Even first love, which melts away a hardened heart.

As of this edit, he passed away without another chance to play they Hyatt’s piano in Saigon. But memory of that brief encounter did bring closure to our chapter. Albeit short book.

 

My machine vs yours

When Henry Ford put together two motor cycles side by side to invent the automobile, he wasn’t interested in pleasing his customers, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  Now, car turns commodity, the Chinese came up with Cherry, the pink car designed to please its female customers  Bye bye Alpha Male.

We are moving swiftly to post-industrial society, where valued apps differentiate services (the Application layer).

My android app vs your I-Phone‘s. More women play games that fit their lifestyle, instead of shooting down the enemies in Mortal Combat. And medical records can be made available to avoid cross-drug effects. Ironically, pornographers are way ahead in tech curve (money-motivated people adopts invention very quickly).

How much more the “good” guys can advance if they put their mind into it.

My machine vs yours.

Let’s race.

We went to the Moon, collected rock samples, and returned safely.

Now, we just have to sit down in a chair and think.

Let our fingers do the walking on the keyboard, not feet on the surface of the Moon. Let them glide, and be the extension of our speed of thought.

Besides speed (Moore’s Law), and network effect (Melcafe), we need Movement (macro-wiki?)  to lift ourselves above the mundane.

Google’s “don’t be evil”, Steve Job‘s “be hungry”.

Sadly but truly, hunger and fear are good driving forces. The former compels us to hunt, the other to invent weapons to protect ourselves. Peter Drucker once said “organizations exist to do two things: innovation and marketing”.

From Taser to Tommy, it is not unusual to find in a woman’s bag: car alarm, I pod, I phone, flash lights, garage door openers, remote control of all sorts etc….

Wireless technologies have liberated dancers/singers so they can move around the stage, and their laptops around the house.

My machine vs yours.

Surround sound. Shared sorrow. The Japan that can now say NO.

Once thrived, now disheartened, Japan has quietly moved on to robotics to serve its aging population. If any country that could work technology into health care, Japan should be it. I had a chance to sort through first hand, all sorts of machines junked by hospitals. Brace ourselves for 21st-century hospitalization, where you can’t affor having allergy to all things machine. From Youtube to test tube, you will instead of viewing your music video, end up breathing from one.

My machine vs yours.

The Who will change its tune, from “see me, feel me” to “test me, read me”.

The machine won’t prolong life, but at least, it can give exact reading of time of death. That’s when the cursor blinks, without going to the next alphabet.

No period. Just blinking, incessantly.

My machine vs yours. Learn to live and love it while you can.

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.