Too many good sessions, too little time, coupled with an inability to divide and clone oneself meant that one had to be selective about the entire week’s events in New York. The level of discussion was amazing, and listening to people who were really into what they did is always highly inspirational.

Several themes that surfaced across various talks that were of interest:

1. Culture & Digital Identities:

• Don’t confuse Anonymity with Privacy
• Mentions of the shift from hiding behind avatars, even in traditionally privacy obsessed cultures such as Japan
• The question of the impact of culture on adoption?

I love how bits of culture still filter through online. As interactions become increasingly digital, there must be some discount to the 30-70% rule that body language contributes predominantly to non verbal communication. In my work, having a feel of the various digital conversations on the ground also helps – I’ve noticed that posts from India tend to be 2-3 times longer than other regions. Some social media landscapes are much more politically charged than others. We’ve found that there might be higher levels of sarcasm in certain markets than others. A huge bulk of Singaporean netizens might not haVe ReAchEd ThE sAMe MatUriTy LevEl of otheR PlacEs WorXX.~ (Note to self: If someone types like that to you. Run. Do not hesitate.)

Purely digital text conversation is full of nuances. How people behave and participate online is full of nuances. There is all this talk about digital plumage and how people create their identities online, and even how responses might vary to different avatars online (important for all those customer service folk). It’s been 2 years, I am still interested in how research in this field is developing.

The question posed was then, How can brands help people shape their identities, and share? Those who successfully tap into this would become part of the conversation, gain valuable mind space in this attention driven economy.

Another aspect of culture to take note of – organizational culture. Social media empowers a small number of people to change the culture of an entire organization. Like most change, time is needed, but now, all the tools are at your disposal. This is equally fascinating to me about how a dominant culture usually permeates those from a particular organization.

2. A Time Sensitive Idea Economy

One interesting thing about cloning was raised, about how the USA could learn from Chinese innovations. A mature culture will equate to more innovation, and it will not be the first time that copy and paste culture exists.

3. Platforms

• Birth of Hyper relevance- Opengraph, the semantic web. Location based advertising and marketing.
• Facebook positioning as a company to power the next generation of web.
• Question: Who’s going to be the open graph of China? Since Facebook is not in china. Ans: Localized versions of Chinese platforms? They have the money and resources.

4.  Infrastructure, Government & Politics

Big Government and politics also constantly surfaced.  How people used social media to organize themselves in times of unrest.

• Social media is now permeating up especially where government is concerned
• Freedom of Speech – With the law finally catching on to the game and laying down the rules, I’m really not too sure of the extent of this anymore.
• When mobile lines are cut, should an internet “kill switch” actually exist?
• When platforms like Twitter are blocked – How to use other tools to mobilize people?

We heard first person accounts of how some used public phones to stay anonymous, when the sharing of information became their daily goal when dealing with the situation unfolding in Egypt then.

Infrastructure always plays a huge role in communications (do not get me started about the lack of reception underground in the MTA subways.)

• In India, even the roadside florists are implementing mobile orders for their businesses. Free Wifi is increasingly common.
• The Delhi Traffic Police Facebook Fanpage allows citizens to upload traffic offences (hopefully the posters were not committing one themselves when documenting this.)

….and many have never even gone to school.

Interesting discussions & amazing people aside, this should be the beginning of a good trip.

And now, allow me to indulge in some #iphoneography.

Hues of the Brooklyn Bridge

Iconic.

Advertisement v.s Consumer Sentiments:

Horses @ Central Park

Flag.

NYSE; Wall Street.

I had the pleasure of running into Mary-Anne, who’s the festival director, all the way from Bondi and she shared some behind the scenes snippets of everything. It’s pretty interesting how she highlighted the need for entrance fees to a lot of the exhibits and events in Singapore – maybe this differs quite a bit from other places? Never quite noticed it, tbh.

She also spoke about soul, and passion (or perhaps the lack thereof in some situations), something that I had to agree with her. Sometimes things can get a little too clinical, too restrained around here. Until the generation learns, we’ve just got to live with it I guess. I constantly miss the ease that one can strike up a random conversation overseas, small talk, and all that jazz.

Sustainability was another thing – Fullterton had been supposed to turn of the lights to offset the energy usage from all of the installations, but somehow this wasn’t happening <?>. Pity, because the initiative definitely had a good intent. Even the paper fans that were distributed, on “paper from sustainable forest sources”.

I loved how there seemed to be a mixture of planned and unplanned interactions going on. There were some workshops at One Fullterton, where people were apparently turning plastic bottles into art. Photography buffs with their tripod and camera gear all around, snapping away. Curious gazers who just happened to wander in – the families, the couples, the accidental tourists on their own home turf, those experimenting with the technology capturing and projecting their images in a mosiac pattern on the screen….

Love the iphone App loading image too! I love the sketchy style and the mood of it, and the little plays of light. This proved really useful when trying to navigate through and planning the exploratory route.

You can check out more info here. I believe there are guided tours for those who want some directions, else its really much more fun if you take your own time to explore the area and just enjoy the scenery, literally.

Apart from mistaking another light installation at the Marina Barrage as the actual artwork itself, which was kind of hilarious..the only other thing was the haze which obscured some of the view on Day 1, but Day 2 was much better. It’s a bit of a stretch to try and cover everything in a day, but definitely worth it.

It’s on till the 7th of November, so if you haven’t caught it, you really should. I recommend the stretch from the Customs House all the way to Marina Bay Sands, where most of my favourites were concentrated. Awesome stuff!

Games

Ever contemplate disabling or deactivating your Facebook account? You know what is top of mind of users when they worry aloud in the FAQ section of FB about losing their data from Farmville (or any other FB game, really!). This, instead of losing all their friends and contacts. This was a few months ago, when Farmville concerns were right at the top of the discussion topics.

It will be interesting when the games and virtual goods segment in FB grows. The question then is how this will translate in markets like South Korea, where there is an entire virtual economy flourishing. It is also a market where other global players such as Myspace, Youtube and even Google have either had to bow out or simply be content with a smaller pie of the market share. Will FB finally have enough clout to go against the likes of Cyworld?

Another question is what happens when (and if?) app revenues surpass that of Facebook?

Zynga (creator of Farmville, Mafia Wars and etc) which has 230 million monthly active users was reported to have revenues of $200 million in 2009. The WSJ says Facebook revenues could hit $710 million in 2010, so there’s still some distance between the two figures. Still, if a fair percentage of return visits are due to the addictive FB games, it remains to be seen if the gap will narrow.

Facebook: Your One stop Internet Destination

You’ve seen the stats. Early 2009, Zuckerberg quipped the most overused quotable line about how “If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.”

Then, he was talking about 150 million people. It is now 2010. Techcrunch reports that Facebook now has something along the lines of about 350 million registered users, with over 175 million of them logging in daily.

That’s a whole lot of visits, a whole lot of eyeballs, a whole lot of power.

Enough power to simply change the FB layout AGAIN without word or warning. I hated it, but have since gotten used to it, since there wasn’t anything much I could really do about it (deja vu?). Everyone seems to have gotten used to the fact that we are all experimental guinea pigs, sigh and get on with our lives. And we  still keep going back to the site.

And now, FB has its sights on Google, who apparently has 800 million visitors.

“According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.” – Source: SF Gate

You can also read more about how FB could kill Google here. The gist is that FB and Google are complementary for now (since FB is leading all those eyeballs to Google), at least, until unique visits for FB surpass that of Google. Microsoft last cut a (non exclusive)deal with FB in the last quarter of 2009 to include real time search results from status updates, but it remains unclear where FB may run with the search pie.

What are these sites to you?

Interestingly, at least for now, Google seems to resonate more with users in terms of the serious stuff – maps, translators, finance info, useful software like chrome/earth.. versus more of a slant towards entertainment and games on Facebook.

Many people still use the Google search bar as a place to type in URLs like Facebook.com (for reasons I can never fathom.. why they can’t type it directly into the actual URL bar is beyond me).

These results below do feature a bit on the importance of mobile as well – with the mobile related and FB lite mentions.

I’m still curious as to how all this will play out and how people will respond to all/any of these changes online… What will keep people coming back for repeat visits?  Also,  with all the talk on privacy and merging of identities on various platforms,  something to explore in future posts!

It was a pretty lively session, from the responses on Twitter and conversations. Here’s the gang panel in discussion with Graham.

Amidst the blinding lights, waiting for the delegates to come back from coffee….

So a couple of highlights from the discussion:

Q: What do you like about digital marketing? What do you not like?

I remember saying that the one thing that I really felt didn’t quite “work” was corporate accounts following me on Twitter. I’d probably follow back if I like the brand, but if not…it just feels like going back to the old days of intrusive advertising. If I like the brand, I’d hunt them out.  This point apparently resonated with Jeremy Snyder, in his great summary of what transpired on Day 1.

The concept of Friends

… To me, it’s really not about the numbers game. The people who are in the numbers game are SEO/digital marketers on Twitter who follow 10000 random people who vaguely mention a keyword once, and have about 100 followers back (maybe other spammers“digital marketers”  who can help you “get rich quick”).

Someone asked if Gen Y measures success by how many friends you have. I sure don’t. The only people who do are the said people above…and probably the likes of Ashton Kutcher when he was in the CNN Twitter challenge.

Digital Identity

The question was whether or not digital identities were an accurate portrayal of ourselves, since marketers were probably using social profiles to try and get a sense of who you are as a person.

My answer : I (and partial mountains of psychology research that I had to trawl through for a past paper) believe that digital identities are not accurate on their own, but they could either be an extension of who we are or an aspect that may not be seen in our offline selves. True, social profiles are completely malleable online, so that people can choose to “create” their own digital identities, but the same can be said of how we pick how we speak, what we wear, how we behave, and where we choose to hang out. Impression management works the same way in real life and the digital channel.

I wish I had a photo taken with Devin and his hot pink glasses. Cool stuff.

Advertising

I think that advertising will move towards being invisible in the future, it will become content. Ideally content that people are searching for. If I’m looking online for the best hotel to stay while in a particular country, it says a lot if your brand is mentioned in the top post that search engines return. And no, I’m not talking about the text based ads (which I never really pay attention to anyway because they are not what I’m looking for).

Media consumption from different perspectives

Great to have fellow panelist, Devin, from Uni of Texas on the panel, with his statement that no one really reads the newspapers in the States anymore (“You’re throwing your money down the drain advertising there”, to quote him) . He also mentioned how magazines were probably 85% of advertising ( I reiterate the importance of my point about advertising as content in future). TV – no one’s watching. Malik watches TV ..but online. Did that count? he pondered aloud, to the chuckles amongst the audience.

The very tired argument about traditional v.s new/social media

Daryl & I have recorded some live Ad:tech thoughts on our newest installment of the GennY Podcast. , where we address:

• the traditional v.s new media issue as mentioned (must there really be a distinction? I’d vote for a wholistic campaign. Just because everyone is increasingly on digital doesn’t mean you stop talking in all other channels altogether.
• Influencers – do they need to be friends/family? (not really)
• Reaching out to youth…
• and finally questioning if youth are really that different?
  

Thoughts
All in all, it was a fun session. Always too short – its hard to really gleam insights when you’re pressed for time, so I do wish there had been more responses to Graham’s call for questions, both on radio and on the official Ad:tech blog. We’ve got forever now online to really respond. Would love to hear in the comments if you have any opinions!

True, we’re mostly alpha users of the tools online and exploring the social media space, but a panel session is not much different from a focus group. Qualitative research has never been about the numbers, but more on insights and trying to find out the reasons why, how people do what they do. We all fall somewhere along the technology adoption curve anyhow, so once you have a clearer picture of that path, you can pretty much predict some possible trends for the population at large.

More Link Love:

Graham’s Pre Ad:tech interview : 28th May : on 93.8 Live on ‘How to Market to Youths’

Some good insights here! Loving the research insight on how the folks at Apple visited a sweet factory before successfully deciding to name their products in yummilicious flavours.

Part 1: Play here:
Download Part 1

Part 2:

Play here:
Download Part 2

Ritsa’s post has a pretty detailed commentary about the main gist of what transpired, so do check it out. She seems to have a great sense of humour and I am digging the BYT (bright young things) description. But I’ll have to say that Graham is anything but a dinosaur!

Speaker page

My other Ad:tech posts:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #1 Live event Tweeting…

Next up…a post on Scott Goodstein. You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

This was the first time I’ve tried to live tweet an entire 2 day conference, and I’ve found it was no easy feat…

Brain Intensive

A couple of the guys were remarking that it was pretty trying to Tweet, listen, synthesize and breathe all at once. Tiring yes, but I shall credit the factors that supposedly make females more adept at multitasking, and maybe the live blogging practice from Social Media Breakfast sessions.  Still, end of Day 1, we were Zapped with a capital Z, reflected in the more modest number of Tweets on Day 2, if you were following the live Twitter feed.

Self PWNed.

I love Tweetdeck. really I do. I’d never tried out the Twitter/FB syncing on Tweetdeck so something in me asked why not? I’ll show you why (not). See this, and multiply it a few times in length.

Basically, I spammed my FB profile with my Tweets. Horrendous. I’m sure I spammed the FB News feed of all my friends as well, giving them sure reasons to filter me out .. haha ( just kidding).

Anyway, by lunchtime of the first day, I decided this was not working (not as fun as I thought it would be, visually or mentally), so I stopped the simultaneous posting to both Twitter and FB, so my profile could breathe. Left a status msg linked to my twitter feed instead.  The really un-fun part was having to go in and delete the posts on my wall..one by one. Didn’t quite erase them all… No more experimenting on this!

Lets try not to parrot

I also didn’t want to repeat every single thing that was being Tweeted, so the plan I had really was to watch the live feed and pretty much figure out on the spot the angles that each of the other people Tweeting were taking, and avoid posting similar thoughts. Not entirely avoidable, of course, since most good points are usually the ones that get picked up and Tweeted, but worth the effort and still manageable due to the number of Tweeters. Which brings me to my next point…

It’s a digital conference

…but where is the tech? went a Tweet that I saw. Should we hope to see more people actually getting their feet wet and using the tools that would help them understand the different aspects of how it could help them in their jobs better? Only a handful of people were live Tweeting, with the rest of the comments coming from interested parties not present at the conference.

Live event broadcasting

I can see why there is the debate over whether or not a portion of the presentation screen should be devoted to the live Tweets while presentations are going on. Possible issues I can think of are:

• It’s distracting : some people can’t listen and focus on the Tweets at the same time
• hijacking: some people mistaking the Tweet screen as a stage to send SMS-type msgs like on TV/ or saying something inappropriate.

The Tools are more powerful than you know…if used right

Some thoughts on the conference as a whole – It really would have helped if the folks organizing the conference could have confirmed the #hashtag, rather than the Tweeters finalizing it themselves. I saw Claudia taking the inititaive to try and standardiz the tag, but there was still some confusion and all conversation got divided mostly between @adtechasia (the official one) and @adtechsg, with a huge majority not even using them… so just adtech ought to return those results in Twitter search. The problem with the last option is that it returns all global adtech sessions – Twitter is now “mainstream”…hopefully digital marketers will make more effort to really utilize the power of the tools offered to them.

I found another Tweet about how Ad:tech singapore might end up as the conference with the most number of abandoned conference Twitter accounts ever amusing.

Having said that, it was very encouraging to see progress, however small, in terms of the ad:tech blog, using Twitter to get live audience questions during sessions ( although there was the query about why Wifii appeared to be cut off during sessions without a Twitter Q&A feature. Feedback off the Adtech Twitter stream should show lots of griping comments about a technology centric conference with no internet from both visiting and local delegates… ). Baby steps, but it can only get better!

Are you on Twitter? Drop a note to say hi if you were at Ad:tech too! If not, it would be cool to connect on Twitter anyway, or you can leave a comment here.

More up next on the Keynote Youth Panel session… and meeting Scott Goodstein (man behind Obama’s digital campaign)! I shall try not to fangirl too much.

My other posts on Ad:tech this year:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #2 Engage the Youth Keynote session

You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

In a couple of weeks, I will be speaking at youth panel at Ad:Tech, moderated by the very awesome Graham Perkins. We talked about how it would be interesting if we could carry on a conversation without using some words like Facebook, Gen Y, Social Media, and how everyone and their pet cat is on Twitter. Would this little alternative game of Taboo be even possible, the way people are throwing these terms around lately?

Seriously, at the heart of it all, is communication, good old word of mouth, but through a new medium – the digital channel. It is less about trying to pigeon hole all this as merely a fad or something for “youths”, which is the natural inclination.

I am partially convinced that ironically, most of what we believe we perceive of this digital movement is shaped by the traditional media, dying or not.

A couple of ‘myths’ that are becoming old…

#1. “No one watches TV, anymore.”

But what would you define as TV? The last I checked, a little site called YouTube was garnering a healthy number of hits (though not making much money), as so was Hulu.com (last year they were touted to surpass Youtube in profits in 2009). I wish I wouldn’t encounter so much of the US copyright restrictions where TV viewing oneline is concerned. Nevertheless, looks like the lucky folks over in the UK will get some of the action from Hulu and UK TV shows on Youtube soon.

What they really mean is the weakening popularity of sitting in front of the classical definition of a TV then …and the old channels, but most of us are watching shows and content off our mobile devices, off our laptop and computer screens, and then some. In other words, people are still watching, just on alternative screens, and in fact, for longer hours since mobile allows considerable freedom.

Nielsen Wire reports that Americans Watching More TV Than Ever; Web and Mobile Video Up too.

Tags: web2.0, gen y, media, facebook, twitter, news, mainstream, traditional, newspapers, social media, community,

So, things have been a little silent in this space for a while, because I just had an awesome trip to Sydney. And the first thing that accosts me while we head out from the Sydney Airport is billboards, billboards and more billboards. Never really noticed, but when coming home, we don’t really see many billboards in the airport, and that really is rather refreshing on the eyes. I successfully tune most of them out, but one that I really liked was this particular one from Heineken. Excuse the grainy photo – we were moving and high shutter speeds can only do so much.

I know the title of this post sounds rather like an oxymoron – disconnected blogger, but it was a good breather to just disconnect from the Interwebs for a couple of days (although it was also largely through a certain inability to find/stay within the wireless hotspots) and just experience the world. But truly, some things are just difficult to share over a blog (yet another little contradiction as I try to do just that), but I could try to stop marveling over how beautiful Bondi Beach was…

(the two gendered pairs made for an interesting shot)

the eclectic crafts at Paddington that I totally fell in love with,

how quaint the town surrounding Blue Mountains was, how we scared ourselves silly on a railway touted to be at a 52 degrees incline but really, felt like 90…

…or the plush seagulls that stalked and crept up on us while Fish and chips were savoured by the harbour while we ran our toes through the velvet sands of Bondi. It is not funny when you watch them do a 360 degree formation circle around you and start closing in, and I constantly thought of Hitchcock’s The Birds.

And a little drawing for my illustration site in the sands of Bondi. I think I redrew it 4 times, thanks to wave interference, each going higher than the next. So truly, this is a time based illustration.

I will end of this first post with the mandatory travel jumping shot. I think I’m getting better at them, but don’t ask me what my feet are doing. I usually let the music and moment take over. T’was only a first try, good enough but I now wish I tried more variations.

So here I am, defying gravity somewhat. Photo courtesy of S!

More thoughts; less pictures in the next post!

Tags: Sydney, holiday, blog, bondi, gulls, seagulls, paddington’s market, blue mountains, fish market, oysters, travel, tour, sand, doryandfillet

However, if it is true that there is going to be an expansion of the available domain names, (think .burger, .cola and so on) search is probably going to come back in a big way. It seems rather counterintuitive to introduce such a system on the grounds that we are running out of domain names to register under the current .com .net extensions. There is already a list of other generic top-level domains such as .edu, .info, .jobs, .gov, .travel for example, not counting the country extensions like .uk, .ca, etc.

I cannot imagine having to go manually go through all the possible extensions if I am looking for a particular website, so I’m probably going to head straight for a search giant like Google instead of trying my luck (and wasting my time) with the extension guessing.

On the flip side of the coin…..

here is what was happening last year, when it was predicted that the advertising dollar would shift from SNS and portals.

Portals, Social Networks Lose Share in Razorfish Ad-Spending Study
Digital Shop Says Clients Shifted Dollars to Search, Ad Networks in 2008

Right now in 2009, FB might be bringing and directing more traffic than Google to certain sites, but in general, I think it remains to be seen how this will play out. This issue is raised here in this article “Is Facebook’s Rise a boon for Google?” as well.

Personally, I am a triffle annoyed at the multitude of advertisements, repackaged as “suggestions”, in the new Facebook layout. FB is trying to be clever in placing your friends’ updates on the homepage on the right, training your eye to tune into the right sidebar area, so that perhaps you’ll make it a habit to glance through on your own profile page, where the Suggestions are. It’s not working. Too much clutter, and I’m on advertisement block out autopilot viewing mode.

I would rather go with Google’s interpretation of suggestions – sites that I actually am looking for, so that I’m getting help for my results even before the typing of the search term is completed. Talk about reading my mind.

FB needs to clean up their act and clean up their interface. It only takes a little nudge (and perhaps a great new platform that takes its users into account) to spark off a mass migration. This is the potential reverse social network effect looming. Then again, maybe FB shouldn’t listen to anyone, since they have never done so, and some good might come out of that.

Subscribe to this site’s RSS feed

Very amusing was the line up of fake fangs that greeted us at the entrance. Each of us got one. I have decided that they look very much like dentures, when placed on the appropriate prop (like white serviettes).

Bloggers mixing up a storm, trying to recreate the True Blood concoction after being “taught” on the spot. (True Blood is the name of a drink that we were served, and obviously, the title of the show!)

More photos from the True Blood Event from HBO can be found here. I thought the night was a riot, cos we were made to pose like the show’s poster as you can see in the background above. So apparently, mine was totally not sultry and came out looking oh-so-happy. haha! Poster imitation FAIL.

And because I was tagged by Yinqi, here goes!

1) Assuming that vampires did exist (and I’d want them only in Bill Compton/Edward Cullen types :p), would I date a vampire?

NO. For some reason, this question makes me imagine a T shirt with the phrase “I bite”. Anyway, still a definite no. =)

2) If you were a vampire (in True Blood times), would you choose real or fake blood?

So this is probably not going to make sense unless you watch the show, in which both species can (somewhat peacefully) co-exist because of synthetic blood. Um. I would probably go for fake? The thought of it being real disturbs me. Plus, the True Blood drink we tried at Ink Bar was pretty good! I only tried the non alcoholic version though, had a meeting to return to!

3) Which of these 3 abilities would you choose? Super speed, telepathy and shape-shifting.

As it is, I already get an excess of information from just being naturally attuned to the various things people are saying/not saying. Watching the preview snippets of True Blood and the telepathic waitress also made me realize it must be pretty tough to be able to keep hearing other people’s thoughts.

I’m going with Yinqi’s combination choice here. Super speed…sounds pretty good to me! Shape-shifting would be cool too, I’m imagining morphing into various animals, to fly, swim, run, and then turning the corner and becoming human again.

….You can read the HBO blog here!

Looks like all that is about to change. What will the future be like, when social media applications become integrated into other types of hardware? Like….your car?

OnStar is a GPS-like system (and more) that isn’t in Singapore, but is in some of GM’s vehicles in the USA and Canada. The concept of GPS is nothing new, but what’s exciting is their newly touted Twitter integration. Seems like the days of being a potential road hazard for drivers who are also compulsive Plurkers or Tweeters are somewhat over. Onstar is going to have the technology that can convert voice into text, so that you can send and receive Twitter updates in your vehicle, hands-free. Pretty neat!

A different kind of currency
Lets talk about a different kind of currency, one that is not financial, but financially linked.

Will Online Volunteers Transform Our Economic Recovery?
Josh Bernoff is the co-author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies“.

“A pessimist sees value erosion. But the value’s not gone, it’s just different. The consumer/creators get paid for their contribution in love, admiration, pride and a sense of belonging.”

“The online social world is driven by free, volunteer activity. Now add a horde of unemployed and underemployed digital talent, both those laid off and new college graduates who, when they reach the doorstep of the job market, find a sign that says “Sorry, We’re Closed.” While they wait for better jobs to appear, they’re going to invent online tools that supplant the current ones — tools whose modus vivendi is emotional, not financial.”

You know you truly have someone’s passion when they would be doing it for free anyway. Intrinsic motivation is hard to beat, easier to sustain in the long run. Will we see a surplus of innovative tools as digital talent fuel the volunteer economy? Only time will tell.

What people want – a “good job”
Here is another read on Global Migration Patterns and Job Creation.
The article details that what people really aspire for is a good job. Given that employment levels are at an all time high, there are no surprises there. As the world moves beyond the basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy, it is only natural that other qualitative factors come into play in determining one’s fulfillment in life.

This article makes for a good manifesto that leaders of countries, education, lawmakers, military leaders, amongst the few listed, could look into, as we try and move out from the current crisis. It also looks into the driving forces behind global migration and how best to tap into this trend of mobile talent.

Time for a “less selfish” capitalism?
The concept of progress is questioned in this article.

These reads were pretty thought provoking for me, and I do wonder how this situation we are all in will play out. Of particular interest for me would be how technology can help to connect talent around the world, so that physical migration is no longer necessary.

The reasons are, of course partially personal, and ones that I will expand on in future posts!

Subscribe to this site’s RSS feeds

Tags: management, economy, finance, talent, currency, social media, volunteer, job, career, capitalism, life, online

Right. The new Facebook homepage has finally arrived, and it looks like no amount of forewarning could have averted them from YET another episode of annoying their users.

Sure, the filters are cool, but I can’t see anything else that I actually like on the new NEW homepage. On top of that, there is no option to roll back to the OLD new homepage.

Obviously, while I love the perpetual beta-ness of Web 2.0, this does not include having to deal with yet another bout of figuring out where everything is. (Where are my event notifications that were always on the top right?) Replaced sneakily by some advertisement banner, that’s what. I am not in the USA, please do something about the timezone factor.

Renaming the wall posting feature into something fancy schmancy like THE PUBLISHER should be left to the concept development /storyboarding teams in movies. Please. It does nothing for me.

For a company that has access to a huge, immense amount of information of how people communicate, think and behave, they are extraordinarily tuned out about the basic fundamental fact about humans is that people are generally resistant to change. Change for the better is great, but for the most part, things were working fine. Why couldn’t this have been effected all at once, given the closeness of the previous major overhaul?

What the folks over at Facebook need, is to read this outline about change management, or maybe just run a quick glance over the general sentiments about what people are saying.

My very random sampling: None of the status updates look positive, and are at best, neutral.

The only positive thing is that people still know how to post status updates because it is unclear to me if I post something on my profile right now, if THE PUBLISHER will publish it on my own wall (total signs of a FB noob alert), or if I have to go to the HOME page to tell people “What’s on my mind”.

Can I un-like this new hompage?

Psst: I’ve just moved to Feedburner! Subscribe to/update your old RSS feeds

I’ll have to say that this was an interesting experience, recording my very first podcast with Daryl, Krisandro, Yin, Yinqi and myself!

Being a pretty visual learner, experiencing+creating material through an auditory channel was quite a different ball game for me! Anyways, so here’s GennY (as christened by Kris & Yin), which will see different people behind each episode depending on availability. Broadly speaking, everything is Gen Y centric, but fluid in terms of the voices in each session. It’s also pretty much free for all, topic wise. Leave a comment if you’d like a certain topic to be featured!

Gen Y, who?
Incidentally, Walter over at Cooler Insights recently posted on Are we ready for generation Y?, which gives a nice take into the people that make up this cohort, and how they compare to the previous generations as well as their mindsets and quirks.

The Podcast

All props to Daryl for organizing this & coming up with the podcast notes!

* 00:00 – Krisandro starts us off – introductions all round
* 00:53 – The topic: How is Gen Y different in the work force?
* 01:28 – Will Gen Y mindset change during the recession?
* 02:26 – Gen Y has no qualms with changing jobs, even in a recession
* 03:39 – Perhaps Gen Y feels there isn’t enough recognition at work
* 05:08 – Did the media influence Gen Y’s outlook on life?
* 07:56 – How is Gen Y different outside the workspace in peer-to-peer interactions?
* 09:57 – How does online interaction affect offline interaction?
* 10:51 – Krisandro claims he’s 19
* 11:01 – Are there different norms that apply online and offline?
* 11:58 – Maybe it’s easier for us to verify if people are weirdos online
* 15:10 – Blooper

Other links:

Daryl’s Post – Introducing the Genn Y Podcast
Krisandro’s Post- Introducing ‘The GennY Podcast’ – A Singaporean Podcast of Gen Ys about Gen Ys

Psst: I’ve just moved to Feedburner! Subscribe to/update your old RSS feeds

The Problem of Media Economics: Value Equations Have Radically Changed

Some of that stems from a failure to understand legacy media economics.

People ask why no one wants to pay for news anymore, referencing the decline in newspaper circulation, when in fact that misrepresents the value equation. People were paying for newsPAPERS, which contained a lot more than news, and they were also paying for newspaper delivery, which is a service.

….It’s not that no one wants to pay for music or movies, it’s that increasingly we want to pay for content when, where, and however we want. We’re willing to pay for the convenience of video on demand, but the service isn’t always being offered. Digital technology has put content producers in the services business, but they don’t yet fully understand that value exchange.

New business models for media require entirely new exchanges of value — it’s not about finding new ways to balance the old equation.”

It’s interesting to read the author’s take on this issue, because people have focused largely on the death of traditional media, when perhaps they should be focusing on the dearth of companies that should be working to deliver content on demand in the most cost effective and efficient way.

The Craigslist example where the author had been looking for someone to rent their room out to, and was “able to achieve for free on Craigslist what they couldn’t achieve by spending money in the newspaper” is also rather telling. The question is, Is the Freemium model, or even, Free, model sustainable in the long run? Then again, content has always been used as bait for eyeballs in advertising.

The internet has changed a lot of the ways that processes and services can be monetized. For benefits that accrue to end users, think about postage. Telegrams, airmail, shipping costs all used to come into play before the arrival of the web and suddenly, email made communication (almost) free, easy, and much faster to boot. Of course, the illegal side of free (aka piracy) has the the people in the software and music industry tossing in their sleep, but that is another issue altogether.

On that note, I blogged about the Pirate’s Dilemma book last year, and you should check it out if you haven’t. Youth culture, trends, innovation and “piracy as a business model”, that’s what this book promises. The author also informs you why the book is relevant to people from all walks of life(and not just the suits from Hollywood and the music labels). Other stuff also ties in nicely with the economic thread running through this post- the author weaves his own background and training in the said field and you can read snippets about his thoughts on the book here.

Enjoy!