Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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August 15 2008 - India’s 61st Independence Day. Most of the post would be a rant on India and what it means for me. Please ignore my over enthusiastic patriotism. In the past too, I have written about Independence Day on my blog. Links: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

For me independence means a lot. Freedom to act. It is the freedom to choose things I want to do. Freedom to think on things I want to think on. Freedom to express myself. One might argue that

Hits

• Gold at Olympics: India won a Gold at the Olympics. An Individual gold. After 108 years. Abhinav Bindra in 10 m Air Rifle. (Wrote about it here).
• Berlin-School: Berlin School of Creative Leadership has accepted my application. According to their email, people from more than 25 countries applied and I am one of the select few that have been accepted. Wow. I can not afford the course. I will see how to go about it.
• Saurabh Garg gets popular: For the first time in my life, my website was suspended for exceeding the bandwidth limits. Wow. This means two things. Either my website is too popular or I have too less bandwidth. Anyways, I got myself upgraded and hopefully my demands for bandwidth last longer.

Misses

• Omar Abdullah, one of the few leaders I really admire has decided to shut down his blog. I think the decision is short-sighted and impulsive. I sent comments, messages, posted on mutiny.in, Facebook and here. Hopefully he would not shut down his blog. Our politicians need to know more about powers and reach of social media and reaching out on the Internet.
• Freedom Blog: Back in July, I thought if it would be a good idea to collate opinions and views of people on freedom at one place, would it be a good idea? I posted it here and asked friends to share their opinions. Sadly the response was very limited (I got couple of comments and two emails). I wasnt expecting everyone to write in anyways but I did not know that people who read my blog are not really bothered about our country and what it offers us. Or may be my approach was incorrect and flawed? I would want to believe later.

Random Musings

• Other Indian Athletes at Olympics: Others disappointed at Olympics. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (medalist at Athens games) dint even qualify for finals. Surprise was Saina Nehwal - Shuttler from Delhi who reached the quarter finals. She is all of 18, hopefully, we will have more medals in future from her.
• Sania “trackpants” Mirza: Sania Mirza as expected lost out in the first round itself. But she did something even more audacious. She walked the opening ceremony in track pants. IMHO this is as big a disgrace as you can bring to the country. You might be busy with all the preparations but somethings are just sacrosanct.
• Hopes at Olympics: Only hopes left are now from Paes-Bhupathi and Kumar. I expected 5 medals but now at most we can have three.
• Movies: There has been a long list of really good movies that have released in last few weeks: Kung Fu Panda, Dark Knight, Jaane Tu. I need to get a life and think beyond businesses, money and twitter.
• Blogging: I changed my blogging policy. I will now try to create “Saurabh’s personal Wikipedia” rather than a blog. More on this here.
• MBA: I was thinking about my MBA from MDI. On one hand it gave me friends and idea about life, world. On the other hand it took away time and made me a more complex person. Still dont know if I should recommend a MBA to people.
• Marketing: I happened to walk past a Levis’ store and I was surprised to see real people dressed as mannequins and using synchronized movements in store to attract traffic. This is something that I have not seen ever in this country. Hats off to them. I dont know how much sales did this generate but people did look at these people and people did walk-in to the store.

In the end, since it is 15th Aug 2008, need to renew the vows to take the country to greater heights. I will make sure I do my bit. Future looks uncertain but there is a glimmer of hope somewhere hidden behind the clouds.

Every Friday I will now post an update that will talk about the week that went by and what to expect on the coming weekend.

• To begin with, its 08.08.08 and its a date that I will not see for rest of my life (until someone discovers the magic formula that can extend the human life span).
• The date also marks inauguration of Olympics in Beijing, China. India has never done great things in Olympics but this time I think we will come back with at least 5 medals - one from Tennis (Paes n Bhupathi), two from shooters (Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Manavjeet Singh Sandhu), two from boxers (Jitender Singh, Akhil Kumar) and one from Athletics (Anju Bobby George).
• This week also saw the launch of n00b.in blog. More information about n00b.in is available here.

Hits

• Nokia E 66: Nokia sent me a brand new E66 to review on my blog. The device looks awesome, will post a complete review once I have seen most of it, but the best part is the barcode scanner. It can read QR codes and interpret data. I see this as one of the most powerful things for time to come. At Cannes this year, Korean delegates already spoke about the interesting uses they are putting QR Codes to. The possibilities are endless. Will do another detailed post on QR codes. BTW the image on this post is QR code pointing to mt blog. Try it.
• India.Alltop.Com: I bribed my way into India.Alltop.com. This means I need to be more responsible while blogging. I need to produce better content. And I expect more visitors and subsequently more discussions and since they are coming from Alltop, I expect the quality of discussions to be better.

Misses

• Had decided to participate in the Nokia USID competition. Will miss the deadline and end up disappointing self and a very dear friend who had volunteered to help. Had quite a few ideas but could not put them in perspective.

Random Musings

• Indian brands on Twitter: Fasttrack is often quoted as a brand that has done well on Twitter in India. I asked tons of people on twitter about watches and I clearly showed my intentions of buying a watch but they never reached me. Its a fail. Ideally moment I publish this, they should know that I am talking negatively about their brand and they should somehow fix it. Lets see.
• Social Media: Nokia chose me to review one of their devices. Interesting use of Social Media to get bloggers to write about their devices. Few questions, why and how did they choose me? Is this replicable for other brands as well? Is this cost effective (I can always run away with an expensive phone) etc.
• Personal work style: I realized that I relish working at night more than the day time. I think its in the psychology. I think I like the fact that entire world around me is sleeping and I am sneaking ahead of them. I dont want to be part of any race to the top of mountain but I dont know why do I feel like this.
• Wordpress: I am using wordpress for quite sometime now and I think time is ripe to start reading more about it. I will spend this weekend trying to understand wordpress and in process learn a bit of PHP and wordpres moding. Lets see how it turns out.
• TED: TED talks is one of the most wonderful things to have happened to planet since Internet. I am on this mission to see all the talks on the website by end of this year.
• Quarter-Life Crisis: Avery good friend sent this Wikipedia link and everything on that page can summarize what I think. Except “desire to have children” part.
• If I was to tag this post properly, the number of tags on this post will exceed the post size. ;P But what the heck, it helps people find relevant content here and at other places.

P.S.: Inspired in part from Sampad’s Blog. Will update this as and when I remember more things.

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.

External Links

1. WSJ: Why Most Online Communities Fail - via elan2

What started as a random message on twitter, has now spiraled into something larger.

I sent this message on Twitter asking if anyone would like to co-author a book with me using Twitter and Web as medium. Idea was to use Twitter as a communication medium to write a book. I did not have a clue what the book would be on. What the title would be. What the storyline would be. How would we collaborate. I just wanted to see if people would want to participate in this experiment. And yes, in less than an hour, 5 people had replied.

Siyab, SimplyArun, kv, Asfaq and gsik agreed to be a part of the experiment. We soon exchanged emails and figured how would be go about it. I shall keep updating this once we flesh out the details.

Keep tuned.

UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a wiki to help Collaboration. PBWiki Link
UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a blog. Twitter Book Blog

Image Credits: Flickr

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.

If everyone is evangelizing new media and social media, then how come the same “evangelists” get excited about even a small and insignificant mention of their name in the most obscure of the newspapers and TV channels that no one bothers to read/see?

Dichotomy at its very best.

Have renamed the blog as The New New Thing.

Why?
1. “Saurabh Garg talks” was really an inappropriate title. I am trying to collect interesting things here and “talks” is a boring, overused and abused word. Had to move away from it.

2. Although I never cared for what people make of this blog, I have realized I should. This marks a fundamental shift in the way I perceive my blog. Earlier I was writing because I needed an avenue to let out my thoughts. I have seen that blogging is an awesome way to meet new people and get more ideas. More and more people around the world are looking at blogs to express their thoughts and share what they know. Everyone has a publishing power that they did not have. Everyone has the tools to be able to gather audience. Everyone can now make fans. Time is appropriate to start using blog for professional reasons. And hence the change.

3. Why “New New Thing” and not anything else? Since I am always in pursuit of interestingness and that new thing, I thought this would be an apt title for the time being. Until I find the newer, better and more interesting name. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Things might change rapidly, slowly, in small steps but the they do change gradually. What is interesting today might now be interesting tomorrow. In all probability it will not be. No one can predict what would be hot. And hence the name The New New Thing. And as I have said earlier, I might change it again. (Advisory: Name copied from the book The New New Thing by Michael Lewis. Brilliant book. Must Read. My review is here).

I have been really tired off the these copy paste blogs, “social media consults”, opinion leaders who are widely quoted in media. Something has to be done. The buck stops here.

This page is now officially the most useless page on the Indian Web scene because I would aggregate information about most boring and useless things on the Indian Internet. These people just add noise to already cluttered world of web and need to have a serious relook at what they do.

Please send in your recommendations here.

They have attached the word “social” to every word in the dictionary and are trying to make business models outta it.

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 Swagat but I thought I could share this with a larger audience too.