Month: March 2008

The Art of Looking Sideways


The Art of Looking Sideways is an awesome book by Alan Fletcher. I just bought a copy.

I had blogged about it earlier also on SaurabhGarg.com (on 13th Jan 2008).

This book should help me with a lot of inspiration about design, advertising, creativity, decision making and thinking. Looking forward to reading it.

And now this book becomes the second most expensive book that I have purchased after Still Reading SRK.

Other links
A vid on Youtube where Alan Fletcher talks about it.

Thoughts on Twitter

Randy asked this question about Twitter on LinkedIn. Here is my answer.

Quick answer to your question would be Yes. It is advisable to use Twitter. It helps in dissipating information quickly and to a fairly large set of audience. I would say twitter can be compared to a crowd where everyone has a mic and everyone is talking simultaneously. Some have larger mouthpieces and some have very small.

I am a fairly active user on twitter and still to come across a business where they use twitter. Some companies advertise about it but that is all. II havent seen it being adopted by a company per se.

For your research, I think you should talk to people @ techcrunch where they use it extensively to promote their posts. Guy Kawasaki used it to market alltop.com. A guy proposed his girlfriend for marriage on twitter. People use twitter but users are sporadic at best.

Also, I think we should look at the bigger picture beyond twitter. End of the day its about a platform where you can get the largest audience. These platforms have come and gone. It started with Internet, moved onto myspace, then facebook, now twitter. There would be another platform tomorrow (I have no clue what it would be but there sure would be one). We should be ready to harness these platforms rather than focusing exclusively on one single platform.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want me to elaborate.

Regards,
SG

P.S.: Posted a link to my twitter page.

I’ve got a security mindset

Wired has this interesting article today on a new course as University of Washington on thinking like a security personnel.

Reading the article and the course blog, I realized why I always had destructive tendencies. I have always wanted to find a way to pilferage things off the markets, way to steal that large gaming console out of that building, why I always want to look at the about page and login page of a website, and other ways a person can break a system.

Does that mean I have what it takes to be a security professional? No. Does that mean I am a negative person with destructive energies? Certainly No. It means that I am someone who is programmed to think like a security professional and I can use it in other interesting ways.

What could be other interesting ways?
1. Launch a business where you consult people. Consulting is a keyword for all MBAs. All MBAs aspire to be consultants some day irrespective of their level of expertise.

2. Identify a vulnerability and create a business idea around it. Make it social, viral, more importantly feasible. Make money from it and retire.

3. Talk to other people about it. Educate them about a different way to look at things.

What next?
Talk to Prof. Yoshi and see if this course can be taken online.

Are there anymore people who think like that and would want to connect? What could be other ways to use this knack rather than feeling sorry about it?

P.S.: One of my all time favorite fictitious people is Jack Bauer. And more I see 24, more I can relate to way Jack thinks. Or may be every can relate to him and thats why 24 was such a big hit…?

Originally posted on Thoughts @ Work

Mumbai Barcamp 3

Mumbai BarCamp

Date: 29th March 2008
Loc: SJSOM, IIT Mumbai
Agenda: None 🙂

And this “none” agenda makes a barcamp an interesting place to go. I was there for Mumbai Barcamp 2 also and I met few good people there. Hope to bump into more people this time. Also, last time, I saw a lot of people and companies walking in herds and trying to create things without even knowing “the why” question. Hope things change this time around.

Register: http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM3_registrants

As of now 200 people have registered already. Keep watching this space for more.

Originally posted at Thoughts @ Work.

Jack Bauer – 24

I have been following the life of Jack Bauer for about a month now.

Jack gives me immense sense of confidence in ones ability. He epitomizes rebel, exceptional talent, hardwork, reflexes and other virtues unheard of in humans.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joe.

P.S.: The above post indicates what life could be like for someone who eats, breathes and thinks television. And Yes, I absolutely love the TV series. Its drama, action, suspense and everything else that you can think of.

1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity

Third in series after Popular vs Pertinent, Expert vs Employee.

Excellence vs Mediocrity

You can either pursue excellence or remain a mediocre.

A mediocre by definition is someone engaging in an act where objective is to finish the task rather than to complete it with best of abilities. Often, shortcuts are used and outcomes are ordinary. Borrowed wisdom is put to work and original thought process takes a back seat.

Excellence is where the objective is to compete with oneself. Idea is to create something out of the world even though the objective is well defined. Excellence could be in way you work, in way you opine of things or even the way you execute. People who pursue excellence sleep easy and tight.

Mediocrity vs Excellence in one line: The pursuit of excellence creates original thoughts that a mediocre person would put to use.

Both these are more about an attitude rather than expertise or availability of resources. And once you start the pursuit of excellence, its very easy to fall in the trap and move back to mediocrity. By definition, most of the human population falls in the mediocre category and funny thing is that they dont even realize it.

You can pursue only one at a time. You could be mediocre or you could be excellent. What are you?

Originally posted at Thoughts @ Work