Almost every month one or the other “Yellow Pages” book lands up in front of my door. All these “Yellow Pages” books look the same from outside. I don’t know how they look inside because I have never opened one in the recent past. There was only one time, my son brought one of the books inside to use it as a door stopper. Other than that, I have not found any use for it.
Two days ago, I found another Yellow Pages from a new company. This time, they went one step further. A day later someone from that company called from another city and wanted to check whether I received the Yellow Pages book and if the condition was OK.
I had a hard time not trying to laugh out loud.
You can’t handle irrelevance by hard work, unfortunately.
In places where Internet adoption is high, the days of Yellow Pages are over. They are irrelevant. Force-fitting something irrelevant won’t work however hard you try. The only thing that can happen is that you will postpone the eventual death (by a bit) but in the process you will annoy (or amuse) a ton of people.
There is a place for persistence and this is NOT it.
You handle irrelevance by innovation and re-invention, not hard work.
How long do you think it will take for 22 people to introduce themselves?
How about just over 2 days?
This was (almost) what happened at the CEREBRATE2010 event late last month (detailed write-up on Cerebrate blog here)
CEREBRATE is the brain child of Kiruba Shankar and it follows an Unconference format. I was so glad to participate in the 3rd edition. This edition was sponsored by MARG.
The Rules of Cerebrate
The rules of the conference are simple (read: the birth of Cerebrate by Kiruba Shankar)
Every participant (achiever) will be from an unique field. No two people will be from the same profession.
The event will always be a residential program, preferably at a venue that is away from cities.
There will be no audience. The only people who will be in the event are the achievers. There won’t be ‘talks’ but conversations.
Participants are highly encouraged to leave their laptops, blackberrys behind. There won’t be newspapers or TV either. The focus is highly on people interaction.
The event was one of the best I have attended in the last twelve months. I am already missing the participants and it’s not even been ten days.
What made CEREBRATE2010 successful?
Here are a few that I can think of:
1. Choice of People: This was an invite-only event and the participants were handpicked not just for their achievements but also for their mood and willingess to contribute richly.
2. Diversity: No two participants were from the same field. There was only one mountaineer (Sandhosh) and there was only one musician (Vasu) and there was only one designer (Ramesh) and there was only one historian (S.Muthiah) and so on.
3. Egalitarian Approach: From the get go, the approach was egalitarian and within minutes the participants felt “very” comfortable being in the group. There was no time needed for “warm ups” and “small talks”
4. No-holds barred Conversations: Every participant shared with an open mind and an open heart. Each one had their trials and triumphs and they laid them bare. The richness of the conversations shot up by 100 times as compared to a typical corridor conversation in a conference.
5. Choice of Venue: The event took place in MARG Tapovan, one of the new properties by MARG and the place was simply breathtaking. When we were not engaged in heart-to-heart conversations, we were busy swimming (actually playing water-touch-rugby in a swimming pool), playing table tennis or playing cricket. The hosts (MARG) treated the participants with love and caring that is typically uncommon.
6. Listening: Every participant was “totally” listening when others were talking. The focus was on people and the conversations and not on what was on their Blackberrys.
7. Openness: Last but not the least, participants were open and believed in the outcome of the event even though many of them were participating in an Unconference for the first time in their lives.
What will come out of CEREBRATE?
Apart from lifetime friendships with the 21 other participants, one of the highlights was to create a book called CEREBRATEtweet ( in the THINKaha format). It is a completely crowdsourced book with ideas and insights from the 22 participants. Stay tuned.
If you can’t sleep on a long plane ride, you have a problem – it can get boring.
If you can sleep very well on a long plane ride, you have another problem – like missing your meals.
I belong to the second category. So, when I don’t want to miss a meal or tea, I tell one of the crew members to wake me up or simply post a note on my seat to wake me up when they serve meals/tea.
When I was traveling to India via Emirates, I noticed a very simple solution to the problem. Along with the headsets, they provide “Wake Me Up” labels that you can peel and paste on your seat to notify them to wake you up.
I used these labels on both my journeys and they worked like a charm.
These little things are what I call micro-innovation – simple ways of solving a problem.
Note: The system is not foolproof. I saw two kids playing with these labels (sticking them randomly on seats all over the plane) – but something is better than nothing.
The performance is from students of a music school that teaches music to the blind.
The Southern California Conservatory of Music is the only place in the country that offers a braille music curriculum to teach musicianship of the highest caliber to blind and visually impaired students. It houses one of the largest braille music libraries in the world, and it also provides outreach programs to both blind and sighted children in the public schools who would otherwise receive no formal music education. After 37 years of steady service, this important community and national resource for the blind is facing severe financial difficulties, and has embarked on a fundraising campaign in an attempt to keep its doors open and continue its many programs.
I had an opportunity to talk to Dory Bavarsky, teacher over there and asked him about story behind the conservatory. Here is our conversation:
RS: Dory, what led you to get interested in this school?
DB: I was enrolled as a piano student at the conservatory at age 13. My teacher was Grant Horrocks, who along with Richard Taesch had founded the Braille Music Division of our school. I was studying classical piano quite intensively, and spent many of my weekends practicing at the conservatory. Since I was often there on Saturdays, I began to observe and then participate in the group classes for blind children. It was fascinating because the way these children were taught to engage in music was somewhat different than what I had been used to. Also, the range of abilities and disabilities presented in our group of students was quite vast and remarkable. I met children who had tremendous music gifts, including a few with incredible ears. Many of our blind students have perfect pitch, and some to such a degree that they can easily play back complicated music upon a single hearing. I was especially amazed by Rachel Flowers, who at age 4 was playing Beethoven sonatas by ear, though she could barely reach the keyboard. Eager to work with this special group of people, I continued volunteering as an assistant throughout my high school years. After graduating from UCSB, I was hired as a faculty member at the conservatory.
RS: Tell us more about the wonderful work the school is doing?
DB: Our school provides a variety of important services. We operate as a regular music conservatory, offering private lessons in all the major instruments, including voice, piano, violin, guitar, and flute. Our Braille Music Division offers the same level of intensive musical education to the blind community. We hold weekly group classes in Braille music notation, keyboard skills, and ear training, as well as private lessons for some students. In addition, the Braille Music Division has conducted numerous outreach programs at other schools for the disabled throughout Southern California. Last year, our teachers, including myself, visited three different schools on a weekly basis, and conducted music appreciation classes for their students. These classes involve playing all kinds of music, discussing it, and even giving the kids an opportunity to feel and play various instruments. These outreaches are an important aspect of our program, as they provided a wonderful musical experience for kids who richly deserve and enjoy it.
Over our many years of service, we have developed strong relationships with many other organizations working with the blind community, including Junior Blind of America, California State University Northridge, and California Transcribers and Educators of the Visually Handicapped. We are also the headquarters for The Music Education Network For The Visually Impaired, which is an information network composed of musicians, specialists, students, parents, and music educators.
RS: What can you share about some of the success stories of the school?
DB: Our school has had so many successes, especially in our Braille Music Division. We’ve had several students who have gone on to study music at colleges and universities. In fact, some of them have come back and are now working as instructors! We have also had students who come to our program unable to read braille. In several instances these students’ school teachers had declared that they would never be literate. However, music brings out hidden abilities, and after a few years with us, not only were these students reading braille, they were reading braille music notation as well.
One of our most inspiring students is one I mentioned earlier, Rachel Flowers. Rachel started with us as a tiny, nearly silent little girl. Though she would hardly ever talk, her musical ears were astounding. Over the years, Rachel has developed into an extraordinary musician. Her participation in music has also aided her development into a cheerful, talkative young lady. She plays piano and flute, and during the last few years become an excellent Jazz player. Last year, Rachel impressed some of the biggest stars of Jazz, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Hubert Laws, when she performed for them as part of an celebration honoring Herbie Hancock.
RS: What support are you looking for and how can people show their support?
DB: An important aspect of our Braille Music Division is that tuition for group classes is free for all our students. This policy ensures that no child is denied instruction based on financial circumstances. Thus, the conservatory has always relied on donations and grants to cover some of our operating costs. Unfortunately, because of the difficult economy, many of the annual grants we had been receiving did not come through this year. Simply stated, the conservatory needs immediate emergency funds in order to stay open for the next term. All donations help us keep our doors open and allow us to continue offering services from our current location. If we do manage to survive this challenging time, we will need continued support in order to continue and expand our programs. People can help us so much by donating to the school, and also by telling others about us.
Also, please visit http://www.sccm.us/index_files/Page1544.htm to view photos and performance videos of some of our Braille Music Division students. There is a terrific video of Rachel playing piano and flute, at the same time!
I am 75 days old on Twitter. I have a long way to go there but I know that I have to start somewhere.
So, here is what I am doing on Twitter in the next two three weeks (starting Feb 23, 2009 to March 13, 2009):
Everyday from Monday to Friday I will have five tweets from 6.30am to 10.30am PST under the ThinkTweet category. There will be a ThinkTweet at 6.30am, 7.30am, 8.30am, 9.30am and 10.30am PST. My goal is to make every one of these tweets count – meaning make you think.
I am VERY confident of keeping this promise about the schedule. Why? (wink) because I have already scheduled mostALL MOST of these Tweets using HootSuite. I wrote them over the last few weeks in preparation for these two weeks.
I know, I know – Twitter is all about conversations. However, I think Twitter can be used for something more. To enrich and enlighten. 140 characters is a lot to make someone think. These 50 tweets will be my humble attempt to prove that.
Come and join me on Twitter on this journey. You don’t have to be on Twitter to follow these tweets. There is an RSS feed option on my Twitter home page and you can subscribe using any RSS reader. If you are my friend on Facebook, you will see these Tweets as status updates on my Facebook profile.
They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here is the story of Venture Capital activity in Q4 2008 in pictures – ok, interactive charts powered by iCharts.
Here is the first interactive chart that shows total VC dollars invested – quarter by quarter
You can see more than 25 charts sliced and diced by sector (software, life sciences, clean tech), stage (first time, follow on financing), industry etc at the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) website here:
Take Retail – The competitive advantage is in owning real estate
Take Transportation – The competitive advantage is in owning the Oil “Real Estate”
Take Web 1.0 – The competitive advantage was in Operating System “Real Estate”
Take SaaS and Web 2.0 – The competitive advantage is in Browser “Real Estate”.
Of course, hindsight 20/20 – we see that Google is entering into the “real estate” game in a big way.
Take a few things that people do normally online.
1. They search
2. They communicate
3. They share
4. They manage their businesses (they use tools)
In the web 1.0 world, the “real estate” needed to do these things was the operating system.
In the web 2.0 and SaaS world, the “real estate” required to build a big empire is the browser. The power is slowly being taken away from the operating system. Google’s move to stake a big claim makes a lot of sense (for Google, for sure)
More about Google Chrome from Michael Arrington here and here.
This is a very nice lesson about extending the value chain one step at a time. Not just Google, every business can design and execute on this. Of course, not at this scale but the thinking has to be the same. For a brilliant explanation of the concept, please refer to Adrian Slywotzky’s work. Overview can be found in this book “How to Grow When Markets Don’t”
It is interesting to note that long ago Netflix ignited the change in the way DVD rental market worked.
Netflix model was simple and the core still continues to be the same. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent as many DVDs as possible and you can keep them for as long as you want. Depending on your plan, you could have as little as 1 DVD or as much as 5 DVDs with you.
It seemed like there is no stopping for Netflix.
Today, I think the playing field is changing again. While Netflix continues to enjoy the advantage of their innovation, it is now being attacked by a number of players. Here is the list of companies that are not allies but each one of them are trying to take a piece of the market.
1. Blockbuster: Has an offline and online strategy. You can rent online and return offline. Netflix cannot do it unless it has an offline presence. Plus, Blockbuster dropped the rental fee for old movies to $1 for five days
2. RedBox: Redbox has installed kiosks in several supermarkets and MacDonalds stores. The focus of Redbox is to rent only the latest 100 movies or so for $1/day.
3. Hulu and Other Online Venues: Watch movies totally free
Add to this the Cable Networks and Digital Video Recorders (like TiVo) and there is a battle zone in the making.
I am sure there are more innovations coming up. This is a case where whoever innovates first and fast will ultimately win. Will wait and watch
Chris Albrecht at GigaOm writes a story about a Luis von Ahn (Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University) who is one of guys who developed Captcha technology.
The story is about how NY Times is using CAPTCHA technology to fix errors that crop up in their effort to digitize old issues. I put together a schematic to explain what they are doing.
As you can see whatever words OCR (Optical Character Recognition software) could not recognize well enough are handed off to reCAPTCHA which sends them to various websites to be used as “challenge words” for spam protection. When humans decode them as part of their “response” to “challenge words” they go back to the database as “error fixes”
This story for me is simply an example of brilliant use of leverage. You are breaking down the problem (OCR errors) into small pieces and parceling them out to individual websites. These individual problem pieces are part of a SOLUTION to a different problem (spam protection). People are engaging in solving the first problem as a side benefit of solving the second problem – meaning at no cost at all.
A saree is a traditional Indian dress for women. Not just in India but probably many parts of South Asia.
Kiruba pointed to a link where a store in Chennai (India) had come up with a Saree with a small pouch – a place where a woman can keep her mobile phone.
I don’t whether this will take off or not but I am all for innnovations everywhere. Hats off for trying. You never know what is possible until you try.
What was interesting with this was the attempt to “change the organization” of something that has not changed for a few hundred years. Let me explain. Organization is an arrangement of components. For a few hundred years, a saree was a long unstitched cloth. While there were a number of changes to the structure (like material, design etc.) never was there a change to the organization of the saree.
Yes, Saree was a long unstitched cloth but there is no reason for it stay that way. After all, there were not a lot of women in the corporate world and no mobile phones a few decades ago and now it has changed.
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