Internet – 922

Rant on Digital India

This is a long rant on my inability to get a half-decent Internet connection. Read at peril and with caution. Lots of cuss words.

Context
So, ladies and gents, as you may know, I am a computer-science graduate. I run an events agency and a digital marketing business. All my life’s content is on a cloud storage. I use a iPhone as comfortably as a fashion model handles those stilettos on a ramp. I live at a pretty affluent neighbourhood in Mumbai in an even more affluent apartment complex (rented, shared and “semi-furnished”). I use Vodafone as a mobile-service provider, which is probably amongst the top 3 telcos in the world and is generally priced at a premium. My sis worked for Vodafone for 5 years. My ex-roommate continues to head one of the most important divisions there. A really good friend from MDI heads a product division there. So, I am pretty connected at Vodafone. I get access to a level of service that most others dont. And yet! I will come back to this.

The rant!
The place where I live, that locality is “owned” by this politician that controls everything happening around here. Might sound like bullshit in this day and age but he does. From the maids to shops around the building to servicemen to nariyal paani wala to brokers to the fucking Internet Service Provider, all are controlled by him. And since he controls the shit, he can actually choose who delivers what service to the complex. Including the ISP.

But I did not know this when I moved here. In fact when I moved, I had to choose between his ISP and MTNL (the state-owned-operated telco). The commonsensical man in me told me that MTNL is of no use and I must get the alternative. And I promptly did that. Little did I know that his ISP is probably the most fucked up I’ve ever experienced. Bad speed, unreliable service, unresponsive support staff that doesn’t know an IP address from a MAC address (wait, do I know? I dont. But am I a service provider?).

So after a month or so, I moved to MTNL, which is another story in itself. I will not digress. When MTNL started giving me trouble, I started looking for alternatives. And this is when I realised his clout. Apparently if you want to operate in the complex as an ISP, you have to use said politicians’ ISP as support network and of course they can hold you ransom. And no, I am not making this up. They did that to me. I was not allowed to get a new connection (from a different company) because I refused to pay for shoddy service.

Oh, the most established ones, the Airtels of the world do not provide internet because they dont have enough subscribers. Why? Because everyone else in the complex is using either the politicians’ broadband or MTNL and no one seems to be bothered about it.

This is where I could have relied on Vodafone. I am happy paying for a service that I use. And I am super happy paying for Internet, well its the lifeline. But Vodafone is another story. I do not get coverage at my place. Apparently the floor I live at is very high for them to ensure connectivity. No, they do not know that these days planes that fly at 33000 feet or something have fast mobile connections and Internet. They just cant ensure connectivity on the 24th floor. So when am home, I am living in a cage – no Internet (because of what I said above), no mobile (because Vodafone cant put a booster for just one house, even though my ARPU is like 5000 bucks and on top my sis knows EXACTLY the guy who can make it happen).

And when I am out, couple of days ago, Vodafone decided that I have exhausted all mobile data (even though their official app shows that I have data left) and I am downgraded to 2G. And no, I cant buy more packs as the packs are already active on my connection. So, all in all, I am pretty handicapped right now. My work is suffering – no I am not giving bahanas – I am just lamenting.

As a result, here I am. On a day when we are celebrating our constitution. Forced to workout from a business that is American and yet has found a way to operate in India. Irony much?

Anyhow. So, while we usher in the cashless economy and digital India (which I totally support), I remain in the dark ages. And I realise that I will continue to do so till the time I become someone who can influence things around him. For starters, grow the balls to tell the politician to fix things. I cant even do that. I choose to remain a faceless blog on the Internet and do a fucking candle-light march of the blogosphere.

And if you are living in an illusion, no, we are not yet free. We are not yet republic. We are and we shall remain in the dark ages till we sort us the people who cede the power and control and respect to a handful few.

Because of all this, my work suffer — I refuse to budge down and get a connection from the said person (and Vodafone can’t help). I refuse to give him my business. I know that my 1500 bucks a month is not significant to the billionaire politician (who apparently owns 2 benami flats in the said complex). I in my head is making a change. I dont know if this change will impact anyone in the long run. The point is, I am without an Internet connection. And there is no solution. Even if I throw money at it. So yeah. Damn!!

Over n out.

Posted from a Starbucks outlet – because they have a ISP that actually works. And no, its not owned by a politician. And no, the ISP is not Vodafone India.

Filed under: Urban Poor, First World Problems, Internet, Vodafone, ISP, Rant

Four Months of Frugal Life

Credits: This Link

Update. This post that you are reading was made in end of July. Since then, here are the updates on how I fared on living a frugal life. Here is the update from August.

Now that I am probably the most expensive city in the country with no stable income, I need to somehow stop spending as much I used to once upon a time. In fact lot of my gurus in life (Warren Buffet, VS, VK etc) are proponents of Frugal Living. I never understood the importance of the same before this. Now that I am jobless I will try an experiment with it. It cant really hurt more than a bank balance of Rs. 3417. No?

So first things first.
At any given point in time, I have had just one stable job. And that has been my only source of income. So whatever I make from that job, I survive on it.

I have used buxfer and a custom made excel sheet (mail me if you need the sheet) in the past to track my spends. And the categories where I spend the most are petrol, travel, flights, eating out, gadgets and gifts. Apart from petrol, I could have avoided pretty much all other expenses. When I had a steady paycheck, it did not matter much, now they would. I would work on not spending money like I used to when I was earning.

My spending policy has been, its one life and rather than saving money to help you when you are old, save experiences that you can recall when you are old.

Second.
Thanks to my attempts at tracking where money goes, I can clearly see there are few areas where I could stop spending immediately. Gifts for example. I have always given expensive gifts, even when I couldn’t afford them) to friends, family and strangers. I was like the secret “secret Santa” that I even I wasn’t aware of and even the recipients did not realize that they have been on the receiving end of pseudo-largesse. I dont know why was I doing it. Now I will stop it all. Family and friends would understand. If they don’t, good, Id know who to avoid. Strangers wont care anyway.

I can completely avoid eating out. I can reduce it to bare minimum if nothing else. I would stop working out of coffee shops and make my desk my best friend. I would spend more time at home and thus reduce the cost of intra city travel.

I can live without buying any more gadgets. I have the best smartphone in the market and I think I dont need to change it for another year or so. I have a decent laptop that I am ideally supposed to return but I wont unless my office calls for it. And I dont really need anything else. I would want a large television and a playstation and all that but no. I would give it all to younger cousins etc and try and live a simpler life. More on it later.

Having said all this, I will not compromise on

Cost of living. I would continue to stay at my current place, expensive by all standards and continue to maintain the same lifestyle (food etc). I dont booze so that saves a lot of money and heartburn.
Travel. This is my biggest passion in life. I would not let travel opportunities go by. Even if they are expensive, I would take up loans if required.
Internet. Whatever I am and whatever I am not, is because of my excessive exposure to Internet. I would not stop it. But I would change the consumption pattern. More on this later.
Time. And finally, I will save time, rather than saving money. So if this means taking a flight to Delhi, rather than train, I would take a flight.

Baby steps to Simpler Life
I read somewhere that its better to err on the side of action. Its been a few months and I have taken it to my heart. So before I wrote about a frugal life, here are the things that I have actioned already

One of my two phone connections is a Blackberry. It translates into a fixed bill of Rs. 399 per month. I stopped using it. Although this is not a big number, its more of a symbolic thing. I am thus no longer connected on email 24 x 7. Also this would mean that I am no longer stuck in the rut of immediate replies that push emails demand.
No to long phone conversations that I am dearly fond of. I dont know of an alternative but maybe less talking would help me save money, energy and time that I could use on other pursuits.
Reduce the amounts I spend on coffee shops and eating out. I would ration em out. And Even when I am forced to wait a ta coffee shop, I shall do so by ordering the cheapest thing on the menu, without any add on. I am ok with facing the wrath of social proof but I wont spend money. In last three days, I have spend some 300 bucks on coffee. If I was not jobless, I would have spent atleast 5 times than this.
When traveling I would try and use public transport (read local trains) as much but I would not compromise too bad on this. Its expensive and I would live with it. I would thus walk a lot more and try and spend time close to home only. No more extravagant travel bills to meet random people. This also means that I handpick people that I meet and thus avoid all unhappy, depressed, sad people. I would ofcourse spend on meetings that can get me work et al. I would maintain a separate account for it. Last two days, I have walked lot more, compared to what I would have done in regular situations.
And no more expensive gifts. Period.
And no more gadgets, like I mentioned already. Except one. A music dock. I dont really need it (I evaluated it on this flowchart by Vishal). I WANT it. Dont know why. I am in that waiting period of ten days that Vishal recommends

On Internet and On living a simpler life.
When I say Simpler Life, I mean a life where I am completely free and I dont get emotionally attached to objects and hoard them in closets. Probably to never open them again. Us humans have that stupid tendency to attach ownership and names to stupif things like books, gadgets, objects. I have been guilty of that. I never give my books to anyone, not even to VG. Starting now, I will start parting with these lifeless objects. They would hopefully free my head of conversations about ownership et al and let me think of other things.

And on Internet, I have been the connected kinds. I have million updates all the time.
From facebook, twitter, foursquare, emails from five email accounts that
I have, membership to multiple groups (MDI Alumni, Mensa etc). When my phone doesnt ring, I tend to get jittery and am scared to know if the world was falling apart. I always wanted to be the first one to know about anything happening anywhere in the world. Now that I dont have a BB and I have disabled all push notifications, I select times when I login to Internet and check everything. This is keeping my mind at peace and I am not in that constant state of living multiple lives – one in present and other on the TL. Someone said on twitter, “life is what happens to you when you are refreshing your TL”. Its a brilliant insight. I would live in the moment lot more. With no notifications to drag me towards them, I would have only one thing to focus on. The present.

Plus I believe if there is something that I need to know, it would permeate through my network and reach me irrespective of my use of Internet or not. So, if the world does fall apart, I would get to know about it. Sooner or later.

Thats it.

What next?
I would spend these four months chasing frugality like its nobody’s business. I would try and write about it as well because I have realized that writing makes me structure my thoughts better, apart from helping me hone the craft. I would also continue to make changes in my lifestyle to help me get fitter, calmer and happier. Of course I want to get richer as well.

Do help me if you think I must know of something that would help me in this “project”.

The keywords for next four months are freedom, frugalily, life-hacking, simplicity and action. More on these in the next post. Dont know when, but soon.

Summary!
Yesterday I called up my mom and I have never been happier while talking to her. Its probably toughest to mask real feelings when we talk to our folks. My mom, despite all the distance between us, she could sense and see that I was happy. Happy as in the Pursuit of Happyness happy. And I was totally loving it. Never before I have been so relaxed and happy.

And, do pray for me. This time, for a change, I mean it.

Hello Mr. Email Jockey

[Start Rant]

I hereby present myself with yet another title. Mr. Email Jockey.

I heard the term first time on a flight. One Chinese executive, working in Hong Kong was talking to an entrepreneur from Australia and while talking, one of them dropped this term. I instantly developed a liking towards it. It had just the right ring to it. It aroused curiosity. I ensured that you get into a conversation. And most importantly, it said a lot about what I really do.

So who is an email jockey? Someone who sits on his laptop and blackberry and fires away emails at the speed of light. Someone who is so overawed by the volume of email that he doesn’t get a single minute to think on things. Someone, on his day off, misses all the “action” that email jockeying entails.

You get on your desk at precisely 10. You open you mailbox. And next thing you notice is the grumbling sounds from your stomach and you realize that its 1. Time for lunch. You eat, pee, smoke, chit chat, visit the water cooler, stare at that girl you like. All in that 5 minutes break that you allow yourself. And then you are back at the station. Juggling emails from clients and vendors and team.

Next time you peek up from the sea of incoming messages and herd of outgoing mails, you realize its well past 9. And that colleague that you like and you hoped to ask out, has left for the day. And to make matters worse, you get an email from the guy who sits next to you, about how much fun he’s having with that very girl.

Coming back, so email jockeying is one of those things that dint exist as a profession till about 5 years back. Advent of technology and its ubiquitous penetration has now made everyone email aware. You can now email and get married. Its really convenient and all that but for people like me, who are on the receiving end, this is one of those things that you wish, you could un-invent!

[End of Rant]

@Saurabh is back

@Saurabh is back.

For the uninitiated, twitter suspended my account last week. I am now told that it was because the link on my account was compromised. I did everything to get it back. Wrote to them, made blogposts, spoke to experts, updated FB, asked for help.

And few people heard. They came forward and helped.

Starting with Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina who helped me understand the problem to all the people who tweeted and re-tweeted. This is going to be a long list. I did not know I had so many friends. AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m, Gagan, prolificd, anaggh, sahnigagan, sakthidharan, saaket, Netra, iMBA, KapilJoshi, nakulshenoy, Sampad, mtaram, deepakravindran, punkpolkadots, b50, thinkerwrites. I hope I did not miss a name.

Thank you guys. You rock. And this is my followfriday list come friday 🙂

P.S.: I missed twitter while my account was gone. 😐

@Saurabh finds friends on Twitter

After my Twitter account was suspended due to “strange activity” (which Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina helped me track to a malicious attack on my website), I have been trying to get the twitter account back. I wrote to twitter help, made this blogpost, posted messages on Facebook and asked for help from my online friends.

And it came.

Thanks to AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m for their tweets and retweets. You guys rock.

This is what they did. Only thing that remains to be seen is if I get my account back. Anyone else wants to tweet? re-tweet?

@Saurabh is suspended

Twitter. How can I live without it for a single day. Action, inaction, attention, ignorance, work, play, meetups, tweetups, its everywhere.

I went to Delhi and when I came back after about 4 days, I discovered that my twitter account @Saurabh has been suspended. Their support page says that they suspend an account if

Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others
Privacy: You may not publish or post other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.
Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.
Copyright: We will respond to clear and complete notices of alleged copyright infringement. Our copyright procedures are set forth in the Terms of Service.
Unlawful Use: You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activities.

I have been using twitter since 2007 and have about 1400+ followers and 8730 updates. As far as I can remember I have NOT impersonated anyone, breached privacy, threatened anyone, violated copyright or used it for unlawful purposes. Wonder why is twitter showering me with all the attention after two years of use?

Mails to twitter support remain unanswered as I write this blog post (I did get an automated response telling me things that I already know). My previous experience with twitter support has been really great (when I changed my handle from @s4ur4bh to @Saurabh). Wondering what is taking so long this time.

I really want my account back. And I dont know how to do it. May be a tweet to @biz, @ev and @twitter asking them to reconsider? Any volunteers for the same? Or any other tips maybe?

UPDATE (2009Jun 30)
Zishaan pointed that my website SaurabhGarg.com is reported as unsafe by Google. And may be that is what is causing Twitter to block my website. I logged into my twitter account and it DID point my website as “[ unsafe link ]”.

For the moment I have changed the url to point to this blog. Hope this would help expedite the process of removing suspension.

And this brings me to another problem. How do I fix my website? Twitter is important but SaurabhGarg.com is more important!! It cant be marked as a site “that may harm your computer”. More help?

Why do I blog?

I have been blogging for quite some time now (infact I started writing in 2004) and tons of people have asked me this question. I think its about time I answered this one honestly. On a public forum.

So why do I blog?

Blogging is thinking out loud. When I write/blog, I actually put pen to paper and I think before I dare make my thoughts public. And hence when I write, it helps me think. Helps in ideating.

Blogging helps create an archive of thoughts. I have always made notes on notebooks of all shapes and sizes. A blog gives me a permanent place to archive them. I can now look at what I was thinking, what I was like way back in 2004 etc.

Blogging helps me connect to more people. Since the web is permanent, anyone, anywhere in the world can read my blog (with a bit of luck obviously) and can give me feedback on what I am thinking. This is simply impossible in a real world. My immediate circle of friends can only be limited and there is no guarantee that they would be interested in what I am saying.

Blogging Opens up minds. Before I was blogging, I was an arrogant and a mediocre person who lived in his own self created world. I thought I knew everything and I was above all. Moment I started writing, I realized that I need to learn a lot more and there are more people who can teach me things. I am still a self-claimed mediocre but no longer an arrogant one.

Blogging is fun. As simple as that. 🙂

I am often asked why do I copy-paste my posts on plugdd.in, venturewoods.org, mutiny.in etc. Again the answer remains the same.

Platforms like these give me a larger audience to express my thoughts to and more importantly get feedback from.

Writing is about reaching out and meeting more people. Independently, I can never reach the kind of audience these platforms can give me (and have given me).

Finally It is also about connecting to the people who share the same ethos and ideas. Wonderful things can happen when people talk. And blogging at these platform enables conversations.

In one line, blogging for me is that constant pursuit of learning and exploration. Why do YOU blog? Is it money? fame? connections? timepass? what?

Bezos on Kindle, Amazon and EC2

Jeff Bezos + Kindle

BookExpoCast.com has this podcast where Jeff Bezos talks about Kindle and then Chris Anderson (Wired Mag, The Long Tail) speaks to Jeff about publishing industry, Kindle, Amazon and Blue Origin.

The podcast is very very insightful and here are my raw notes from the podcast. Please note that these are raw notes and I scribbled them while listening to the podcast. I might have mis-understood and/or mis-interpreted the podcast but there are so many gems of wisdom that it would be a crime to not post them here.

I am breaking them into sections.

On Amazon

Amazon was founded in 94. (I read later that Jeff Bezos created the Amazon business plan post his road trip across the country. I am planning to take one myself end of 2008. May be I will have some ideas too :D)

When he was founding Amazon, Bezos had more than 40 meetings with 22 angel investors to raise USD 1 mn for the seed.

Bezos also said more likely someone knew about the publishing business, less likely were they to invest in Amazon.

One Amazon customer has bought more than 1700 books. WOW.

Things like Super Saver on Amazon saves time and money or both Amazon and end customer. This helps them save by exploiting economies of scale and scope. They can ship two orders together faster.

On Kindle

It took more than 3 years to develop Kindle.

Kindle is a device that allows people to get books that they are looking for. And the ones they aren’t looking for. Serendipity and accidental discovery of interesting books plays an important part of Kindle experience.

Kindle uses electronic ink. This is different from text that we see on a computer or LCD screen

While designing Kindle, the Amazon team wanted to capture few essential features of the system that they were making redundant. Things like book like form, ability to take notes, underline things etc.

Other important things were weight of Kindle, ability to read in sunlight, efficient on power-consumption.

The annotations and markings are stored on the Amazon servers. These are later searchable and can be accessed from anywhere.

Kindle wanted to make it easy for the customer to browse the books and eventually buy more titles off the store. (The streamlined the book buying experience by integrating the buy button on recommendation engine and then not charging customer for the download separately. The cost of the network/download is bundled with the price of the book)

Bezos made sure that the popular titles, including the ones on the bestsellers lists were available on Kindle right from day 1. This is important so that the customer who have spent about USD 399 on buying a device are not disappointed.

Someone sent a comment “it is about the message and not about the medium” – when they were comparing reading physical books with Kindle. (This I think is very important. We can make thousands of industries redundant if we focus on the delivery of the message).

Interesting statistic. About 6% of total Amazon book sales (by volume) now come from Kindle. Kindle customers buy as many physical book as eBooks. This was a surprising for even Jeff Bezos.

The grand vision for Kindle is all books ever published in any language anywhere in the world made available to you in less than 60 seconds. Which in my opinion is as large as a PC on every desktop. Kudos to Jeff Bezos for this grand a vision and ACTUALLY making it come to life.

He actually got CEO of Simon and Schuster on stage to talk about Kindle and how it is making it easier for publishers. (This was probably to address concerns of publishers – since the publishers have to first make the books available in electronic format).

On Future of Kindle

Amazon sees Kindle as more than just an access device. They are already talking about experiments like never-ending book and collaborative writing using Kindle.

Bezos envisions Kindle as a toolset for publishers and readers. He further talks about giving both publishers and customers these toolsets and let them surprise everyone else with their discoveries and inventions (I am reminded again of Jan Chipchase and his research).

Its also about finding the right readers for publishers. If you are a student in Iceland looking for books on biological traits of Saharan camels, you can only find them on Amazon. Or Kindle. Kindle thus acts as a platform where a publisher can find his audience and vice versa.

When asked if Kindle is already redundant with faster cellphones and other access devices, Bezos compared it with cameras. Every mobile phone has a camera now and people still buy smaller cameras and SLRs and other photography equipment. (I am sort of confused at this one. I think cameras AND Kindle both might get redundant at some point in time.)

On Bezos himself

Jeff Bezos is bald. 😀 (And so am I.)

4 kids. 8.6.3 and 3. 😀

“You do not choose your passions. Your passions choose you.” Awesome quote by Jeff Bezos, when he was asked about Blue Origin. Bezos says motto for Blue Origin is Step by step ferociously and he says they are in an industry that helps humanity get into space.

Bezos says at one point in time that planetary alignments were needed to Amazon what it is today. Is he superstitious? (Am sure paparazzi would be snooping :D)

Other things

Jeff Bezos talk about a concept of “me time”. A time that you spend away from everyone including your family, co-workers etc. This time is typically spent bathing, exercising, traveling etc. A Kindle gives people something to do in this “me time”.

Awesome insight into way humans understand interactions. Humans are storytelling animals and we like narratives. (Actually wrote about branding as storytelling few months ago but I never developed the concept further.

What about used books? Is there money to be made there? Everyone wants to read books and doesn’t really want to pay for the book prices. If there was a website to regulate that? A pre-web2.0 era website is doing that in Delhi. Is their merit in buying that website out?

You make money when you help customer make the purchase decision. This was in response to someone asking if negative reviews are bad for the business. All reviews actually help make the purchase decision. Negative , positive doesn’t really play a role

On elastic compute cloud, the idea was to convert the huge fixed cost for customers into onDemand variable cost. (I wrote about onDemand economics for my Berlin School application)

The best part about any great conversation is the quality and quantity of ideas that stem out of there. For me, these are the things that I think have the potential to be businesses.

I think the Techcrunch Web Tablet probably stemmed out of the Kindle idea. And even though the commercial production and distribution might be years away, they want to stake a claim on the idea before anyone else.

How about doing something on the old books market in India. Especially in all the engineering colleges in India, the content remains same and thus there is a large chunk demand. And then obviously there is the long tail.

Search cost plays an important part in getting the buyers and sellers together. I wrote about Search Cost way back in Feb 08 and I think its about time I revisited that.

Purchase decision is an interesting thing to think about. My day job involves working on this purchase decision for some of the leading brands in India and there is so much that I learn everyday. Need to post about it. What if there was a tool that everyone trusted and assisted in purchase decisions?

The entire idea of making fixed costs redundant has been in existence for a long time. Things like outsourcing and contracts actually do that. But doing it to something as fundamental as network, access and storage is sheer brilliance. Airtel did that with their network in India and do far have reaped awesome rewards off it. What else can converted into variable costs? Brain power? Processing? Coding?

If you are listening to the podcast, please share your thoughts. And apologies for such a long post. I did not realize that I have taken these many notes.

Credits
Image: Gizmodo.com

Creating Communities – Online and Offline

Ashish says that you “enable communities” and I think you “create” them. And since it’s a serious challenge to my understanding of social behavior, let me defend my position.

By the very definition,

a community is a group of individuals who are brought together by force or they come together because they share a common interest.

Classic examples are community of slaves working on erecting pyramids and users flocking pluggd.in because they are interested in start-ups in India.

Keywords in the definition are group, individuals and together. A group that is useful to the individual and together the group and the individual make it worth sticking to.

When I say that you create communities, it implies that you bring all these people together (by force, by coercion, by advertising, by showing them advantages of being a member, by hook, by rewarding participatory behavior or by showing that everyone but you is a member, or any of million other ways). Once there is a group, you share ideas and vision on what could become of this group if everyone participates. And when they start participating and everyone is in sync with the collective vision, the group become a community.

For a community to thrive, there needs to be a connecting thread – a reason for members to believe in. A selling proposition. An answer to “Why this community” question. This reason can again be provided by force (if you don’t work, you will be killed) or by prestige associated by just being a member (I am member of AsmallWorld.net – are you? I have access to GMail – do you have it? Etc.).

Second part is that the community as a whole should be useful for the members. No one would want to just give and not take anything in return. People don’t join communities. People join groups hoping that the group would be useful to them. Moment a group becomes useful for individuals, or that user, the group transforms from a group to a community.

When you are starting a community, you HAVE to bring together people. You will have to hand pick people who are committed to this binding thread with or without the usefulness of the community. These are the people whose actions would make the community useful for subsequent members. In case of pluggdin, for example, Ashish would have started writing about start-ups in India. He would have posted the link at relevant places, would have sent emails to friends and family who are interested in start-ups and slowly and gradually people starting coming in. He thus created a community. One member at a time.

On the other hand when you talk about enabling a community, you assume people already know why they are there. You assume that they

know what is common between all of them.

know why are they not a directionless herd.

know what is purpose of their group.

can see a larger picture.

know how is group useful.

This all might happen in an ideal world and I refuse to agree that any heterogeneous or even homogeneous group of people can answer all the above-mentioned questions. And if you are just enabling the community without holding their hand, telling them what to do and what actions to take. In my humble opinion, they will be as lost as kids in the topless bar :D.

And with this your-honor, I rest my case.

Regards,
Saurabh Garg
www.saurabhgarg.com/thoughts

P.S.: And I agree that your group/community should be empowered enough to recommend and make changes. They should be empowered to remove things that they don’t like. They should be empowered to freely add on to the community. They should be allowed to explore. They should be given the tools to be themselves and create new things for the community. 😀

Image Credits: Sifah via Flickr.

What is Freedom for you?

Freedom is something that most of us has taken for granted. Most of us reading this have born in free India and had all the comforts and privileges offered by freedom. And we were thus shielded from an era where even things as personal as thoughts were controlled.

I was talking to few college students in Mumbai and I realized that most of us are disconnected with reality. Most of them think that its ok to accept western culture and leave our heritage behind. And then there are some who had their feet firmly planted in ground and want to first understand the past and want to plant careful steps in future.

I was wondering, is there a way to find out what everyone thinks about India as a country and what is their big idea of freedom and independence? For a lot of people freedom is an oppurtunity to pursue their dreams. For some it is their second nature. They look at it as a way of life. For some it is something insignificant for which all the freedom fighters lost their lives. Some are indifferent and haven’t really thought about freedom at all.

Which category do you fall under?

The Idea
This brings me to the idea. The Freedom Blog. What if Indians all over the world submitted one piece of work that they think symbolizes freedom? This could be an original thought, a blog post that you have written, an original composition, a link to a website, a photograph, a picture, a video, a music piece, an incident, a mashup or any other way that you think expresses your idea of freedom.

Post this submissions stage, all these submissions would be put on the Freedom Blog in context and publish them on a website or a blog on 15th August 2008 for everyone to scrutinize.

The result will give us a fairly good indication of what people really think of Freedom. How they perceive it and what it actually means to them.

Interested?

Few ground rules

Deadline for submission: 5th August 2008

How to submit: Email your ideas to saurabh.garg@gmail.com.

Ownership: You retain the ownership of your work. I will just re-publish them on the Freedom Blog with due credits.

Terms and Conditions: None.

How can you help?

Obviously you can help by submitting your work.

You can also help by spreading word about the Freedom Blog. You can post on your blogs, in your twitter streams, email to friends, share on social networks, call up people etc.

And finally if people do submit their work, you can help in filtering and putting things in context.

How did I stumble on this?
I happen to be a huge fan of collaborative experiments on the Internet. I have participated in quite a few myself and its about time I did something of my own. I was working on some other idea when I stumbled on this. Obviously serendipity plays a huge role in my life and it so happened that Independence Day is around the corner. And I thought If I started acceptance of media from 5th of July, people will have a month to ideate and create their work, I will have time to collect it and then I will be left with some time (9 days) to actually collate and make some sense out of it and finally release it on 15th August 2008.

What do I get out of this?

Satisfaction of actually being able to unite Indians into thinking like a group.

Understanding of the way people think.

Answer to the question “if people actually cherish freedom and independence”. Every submission would mean that entrant has indeed thought about freedom at some point in time and is aware of the comfort (and challenges) that freedom brings. Every person who spreads the world is an Indian at heart and is also seeking answers to these questions. Every person who reads is concerned and wants to enrich his/her understanding of Indians.

UPDATE: Someone has already asked if this is a commercial project. NO this is not commercial. This is not sponsored by anyone. There is no media coverage happening.

Obviously none of this is possible without help from you guys. Please let me know if this makes sense. Thanks for your time.

Branding 101 for Digital Brands

In this post I shall talk about brands as I understand them and as they are applicable to digital brands. Please note that this list is still in beta and will evolve with time. Your feedback would be really appreciated.

This is required because we need to stop looking at startups as just startups but serious businesses where branding plays a vital role. Often, the way you look at the business makes a lot of difference to way you work.

Coming to the point, I think there are three principles. Utility, Emotional Connect and Relationship that goes beyond just one product.

A: Utility

Customers never talk about a brand they are going to use. They talk about the action they will perform. What problem does the brand solves?

I need to book and air ticket. I will use Cleartrip.
I need to upload slides and show them to friends. Let me use Slideshare.

The brands that can make themselves synonymous to utility invariable become the leaders.

Can you Google the data on number of Internet users in India?
Can you Slideshare your presentation please?

The utility could be functional, mechanical, emotional, psychological or any of those –al things.

Using Twitter helps me stay in touch with friends on the go.
I use FB because the elite Internet users in India are on FB.

B: Emotional Connect

A customer will use a brand that he can associate himself with.

I like Apple products because they stand for innovation, user interface and simplicity.
Google stands for open culture. I am an open source evangelist and hence I will use and promote Google initiatives.

If possible, the association with the brand should elevate the status of the user.

Google could have invited everyone when they launched Gmail. Limited invite was a way to get traction. All limited launches are like that.
Alltop gave away batches like “featured on alltop”. People displayed these batches because it was a way to show off that you belonged to the best of the category (as rated by alltop).

C: Relationship extending beyond single product

The relationship should start with one product and when the company launches more products, I should be aspiring to buy them too. This is very important for creating sustainable businesses that go beyond one time relationship.

My relationship with Apple started with an Ipod. I have already bought a MacBook and have pre-ordered the iPhone.
I started using Google as a search engine. Then I started using groups. Then it was Gmail. And then calendar. The list continues.

Which one of the three things are valid about your brand? If it does only one, how can it do other things?

Please give your feedback to me at saurabh.garg+digitalbrands@gmail.com

Cubescape – Create your own pixelcraft.

Every once in a while comes something that brings that Wow feeling. Cubescape is one such thing. I stumbled onto it from a friends’ blog and moment I saw it and worked on it, I was WOW.

The idea is simple. It gives you a two dimensional grid and you can drop tiny cubes on that grid. You can change the color. You can delete the cubes and then everything else is left to your imagination. Once you are done, you can save the creation and then can edit it later. Sweet and simple.

This is a link to my creation. I can see myself wasting a lot of time on this.

Reminds me of PointOfView – one of my favorite games on a Mac. I think I have a fetish with cubes and pixel art.