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?

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.


4. 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.


5. 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.

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


2. 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).


3. 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

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

1. 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)


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


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


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


5. 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

1. It took more than 3 years to develop Kindle.


2. 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.


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


4. 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.


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


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


7. 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)


8. 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.


9. 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).


10. 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.


11. 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.


12. 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

1. 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.


2. 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).


3. 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.


4. 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

1. Jeff Bezos is bald. :D (And so am I.)


2. 4 kids. 8.6.3 and 3. :D


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.


4. 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

1. 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".


2. 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.


3. 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?


4. 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


5. 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.

1. 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.


2. 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.


3. 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.


4. 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?


5. 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

1. know what is common between all of them.


2. know why are they not a directionless herd.


3. know what is purpose of their group.


4. can see a larger picture.


5. 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. :D

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.

What kind of blogger are you?

I have been blogging for over 4 years now. I have been asked why I blog numerous times. And obviously I have give piece of mind to all those people. I have also met and interacted with a lot of fellow bloggers and I have realized that there are basically 4 kinds of bloggers.

1. Conscious Bloggers: People who really want to make a difference – not only in societal context but also in terms of business, way people use technology and other things. They are very focused in their approach and make sure they are attuned with the latest in their respective industries. More often than not, they end up becoming an influential voices in their respective fields.


2. Copy Cats: Because having a blog is cool, there are people who want to be cool and who would want to follow fads, they blog. Most of these blogs are abandoned within a short span and end up contributing to the Internet Junk. The lesser said about these people, better it is. Saves times and energy and content on Internet


3. Money Mongers: People who want to make money using their blogs (inspired by TechCrunch and other such blogs). They would start by posting everything and anything under the sun. They would blatantly copy things from other popular bloggers and will submit their blogs to search engines and aggregators at a feverish pace. It is very unlikely that they would ever make money with their blogs and will end up frustrating themselves. Some who are smarter, would on the course realize that blogging with an objective of making money would not work and they change course and obviously end up successful.


4. Confused Souls: People who don’t know why they blog but they anyways do it. The idea is not to make money or to get famous. The idea is to find an audience for their thoughts. Only gratification comes in the way of comments from their friends and other random visitors that have stumbled onto these blogs. They often have interesting things to say but due to the lack of recognition, they are lost in the noise. They are like the needles in the haystack that if identified could be put to good use.

What kind of blogger are you?

Originally posted here.

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.

Media in an Open Environment

I was talking to a colleague in office and I realized that I need to talk about taking media to a new level. I have been procrastinating it for a while. I am penning down my thoughts on media in India and invite you people to share this with anyone you think can contribute. Please add your opinions also.

In my opinion media is supposed to perform three functions
1. Inform junta about things
2. Bring people together and share opinions
3. Shape public thought

However, currently media as I see it is not really doing any of these three. Media is being operated as a business with profit motives and as my colleague put it, actual function has become the by product. I would not question why or how this happened. I shall talk about what can be done to bring it back on track. And obviously this is where I would need you guys to help me out. Please help me structure my thought process.

I think there are few things that are really critical for having media in true spirit.

1. Objectivity - Obviously we want to take sides, churn out opinions but we should do it with objective bent. We should kill a brand, praise a person but should be objective.

2. Independence - Independence is a huge word by itself and can have many connotations. Independence of thoughts, independence from influence, independence to write. And lots more.

3. Thought leadership - Apart from just publishing happenings and reporting events, media needs to have thought leadership. They should have original opinion on things. Thoughts on how to shape the society and probably a bit of foresight to be able to foresee the future.

4. Reach and feedback - There are two things here. Media could use any platform for delivery - paper, website, twitter, plays, design anything but it should have a certain reach. Atleast in the targeted audience, it should reach everyone and it should be contextual and relevant enough for them to consider it signal, rather than noise. And feedbcak is more critical than everything else. Media needs to know what is happening, how are people reacting to things, what is the audience thinking, is India covering the right things, is the media being a thought leader in the first place?

Now having established things that are critical for media in my opinion, I will talk about how can Internet help us in achieving the goal.

1. Collaboration - This word has been misused more than any other word on the Internet. When it comes to media, collaboration could take shape of co-authoring stories, thinking out loud, accepting defeats and promoting what is better, so on and so forth. Mutiny is a very good example but again we tend to incline towards popular things rather than pertinent things.

2. Reach and Feedback - With Internet as delivery model, both reach and feedback can be much simpler. With Internet, we can real time feedback from people and improvise at the same time. The time gap between conversations is reducing and making us faster.

3. Democratic - Since people on Internet are hidden behind a cloak, they can come forward and talk about things that they want to talk above without any fears of retribution. Although this silver cloak is a bane as well, it gives regular junta lots of power too.

There have to be some issues with the Internet. I foresee following issues with the use of Internet. This is not a problem because of Internet but because it is open.

1. Accountability - Everyone on Internet is hidden behind a silver cloak. If someone wants to misuse media, Internet help him. No one is owner of the content and no one is questionable.

2. Seriousness - Most people still consider Internet as "oh the internet" and think it as a collection of amateurs blogging away to glory. There are so many good authors that I cant even create a list.

3. Numbers - There arent just enough people on Internet in India. And most of people on the Internet don't really care about reading things. I am not sure how many would read this post completely, leave apart shaping opinions and contributing. If you do read , please say "SECRET REVEALED" in the comments, I will be happy to get 10 comments.

In the end, I dont know if this kind of an initiative could ever gain momentum in India or anywhere else or if this can ever replace traditional businesses disguised as media. I am just trying to present a perspective on things.

Please understand that everything I have said could be incorrect. They are just my opinions and want you guys to help me come up with something concrete.

Thanks for a patient hearing.

P.S.: I started this as a personal email to Sanjukta and another good friend (Swagat) but I thought I could share this with a larger audience too.

Originally posted @ saurabhgarg.com

Food For Thought

Yet another blog (located at FooForThought.Wordpress.com). This time, I shall be talking about technology, businesses and perspectives of customers.

Here is a brief QnA with myself about Foo For Thought.

Why a new blog?

I realized that War of Words is a personal blog with too many things that a reader might not want to read. Hence a new location and a new start.

How is it different from other similar blogs?

First and foremost, I would not be peddling news like a lot of other blogs. I would talk about things that I think are relevant for businesses and what most people often ignore. These are softer issues related to how humans use and interact with businesses. I would act as a customer advocate, an eager student and an egomaniac visionary.

Are you trying to say that you are a visionary and an evangelist?

Not at all. I am not an expert and dont want to be one. I just want to meet new people, interact with them and learn from them.

What tools would you use?

I would use the most potent tool of them all - commonsense. Then I would rely a lot on feedback and observations. I would also use few examples from history, biology, anthropology, physics, politics, economics, design etc. One of my gurus taught me the importance of multidisciplinary thinking and Foo For Thought would echo that.

Keep watching it for action. I would give occasional updates here also.

Please leave your comments and thoughts.
(As if there are going to be a lot of visitors)

PlaygroundOnline.com > Review

Playground Online
PlaygroundOnline.com is yet another entrant in the Indian e-commerce space. It retails sports related media and equipment. They currently offer books, CDs, equipments, apparel etc. This is probably first of its kind online store in India. I took PGO for a spin and here is my feedback.

What I like about PGO?
First and foremost, although they want to sell things online but they have put a lot of focus on customer friendliness and costumer interaction. Things like polls, news, forums can make this website a default place for sports enthusiasts. These initiatives help build a strong and loyal community and eventually garner sales.

The range of products on PGO is really wide. From a t-shirt worth Rs. 280 to a bicycle worth Rs. 46000 (obviously for a professional), PGO had a lot of things for offer. I could not check if this range is comprehensive but everything I could think of was either there or they were accounted for and being worked upon. This is a good thing for an e-commerce business. I can think of people visiting PGO to find out more about sporting goods and then buying it offline. Challenge will be to convert these information scouts into customers.

Design
The website interface is impressive for an Indian startup and they have used a good mix of traditional style web design and Web 2 functionality. They still need to work on few things though. Like for example when you are trying to signup, the errors are reported in a pop-up box. This should ideally be a Web 2 pop-up where errors are notified the moment they are encountered. I should never get a Windows pop-up.

Team
PGO has been started by a team of 4 people with average work experience of 15 years. Experience of 60 man-years could be a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. With experience comes rigidity; you might start shooting down ideas even before you give them enough time to fruit. You start living on assumptions. You are scared of breaking out of the mold.

And with experience one develops the knack of running businesses. The team is experienced enough to know what is to be done to make the business run efficiently. Looking at the website and they have used their experience well.

What I like about their team is the fact that all 4 co-founders have different and diverse backgrounds. From client relationships to technology to marketing to customer insights, they have it all. The roles could thus be clear and they can concentrate on larger things.

Competition
They don’t seem to have one large competitor right now. However they compete with bookstores (fabmall, om books etc), apparel stores (rediff, sify) and obviously with traditional retail stores. The business model is new in India and looks lucrative. There should be many more players in the market soon.

Payment Options
One of the key reasons why e-commerce is still in nascent stages is lack of adequate payment options. Credit cards penetration is still low in India. People are still skeptic of using their cards online. And finally they are not really convinced about credibility of these websites.

At PGO, there are limited payment options currently but they have mentioned that they are working on more methods. I would love to see them implement a cash-on-delivery method. COD gives an online merchant immediate access to people who dont have cards and people with cards who are scared of using the cards online.

What more can PGO do?
Comparison between brands and products. When buying a product, people love to understand the features, benefits and differences. I don’t see a link for comparing two items. If they can somehow implement a comparison, it would be great.

User community. All the ecommerce websites have been adding users to forums. If PGO is really convinced about sports as a leisure or a lifestyle activity in India, create special interest groups of people with similar interests. Give them things like competitions to participate in, platforms to talk about their interests etc. Basically in one word, give something more than a typical forum or a social network.

Final thoughts
PGO has done a good job with their store. The only thing that might let them down is the very acceptance of the business model. If I was a VC with money, I would have invested in the business, obvisouly after talking to the owners and looking at the projected cash flow statements.

And finally, since we are talking about ecommerce, lets try to see what can be sold successfully over the Internet? Something that is standardized. Something that you are confident would be similar irrespective of place you bought it from. Something like an airplace ticket. Something like a computer. Something like a book. Sporting equipment – I am not sure. Lessons for other players? Make the products standardized, eliminate shopping pains and have in place an awesome customer service.

Questions to ponder on?
Are sporting goods similar to airline tickets? Books?

Advertising online?

Adlab has posted this comScore press release on banner clicks. One of the most important observation is that

a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior.

What does this mean for online advertising industry?
For brands: Advertising online might be a good idea but its still far from generating the revenues.

Disclaimer
I am using a study conducted in US to base my opinion on. This study might not be relevant in India.

4 years of blogging

January 18, 2004, I posted my first blog post. It has been more than 4 years and 400 posts now. Would this make me one of the first Indian bloggers? I dont know. Has this helped me? Certainly it has. Would I keep doing it? Yes I would.

IBNLive.com > News or Sleaze?

I have wanted to join theatre for quite some time. I entered a query on Google and was directed to homepage of Mumbai Theatre Guide. And right on the top was this ad from Google Adsesne.

The copy read

Watch the hot pics of Indian Women in the world on IBNLive.com Now!

Is the biggest and the best media house in India trying to sell it website by paddling pictures of Indian Women?

Imagine. IBNLive.com is the internet presence of IBN7 – part of TV18 group and a news channel that goes with the punch line "Khabar har kimat par". I used to think TV18 is an awesome company. I am in awe of Rajdeep Sardesai and Raghav Bhal. I know competition on internet is huge but these small cheap tricks to get more visitors on a website will not take them very far. Are they winning medals for journalism by showing hot pics of Indian Women? Are they creating personal fortunes and big companies by selling soft porn?

Coming on to the other side of the issue, do these women know that their pics are being advertised? That their personal lives are being used by IBN to promote their website? If they don't, isn't this breach of their personal privacy? If they do know, doesn’t this amount to crime? Paddling soft porn? Ms. Sushma Swaraj are you listening/reading?

Can someone forward this to TV18 group? And specifically to Mr. Bhal and Mr. Sardesai?