Month: July 2008

  • Social Evolution

    The issue has been doing the rounds in my head for sometime now, it started with a question on LinkedIn about companies using CSR only for PR purposes, and I thought now was a good time to share my thoughts, at the risk of it sounding like an attempt at gyan. šŸ˜‰

    There was a very interesting topic tossed up last week here, on the role of social media, not in general, but in addressing the world’s problems. Whether all the coding gurus sitting down and making cool apps that generate thrills from a devouring audience are just doing it for its own sake rather than making a difference. While that question can be posed to just about anyone, and would elicit ‘no’ for an answer unless you were talking to an NGO or someone who works on CSR projects, it seems pertinent because well, its er, social media, and at its core, its about connecting people (sorry Nokia!). And it only seems fair that when the medium obviously has so much potential to change the world by the sheer amount of information it has, and the conversations it spawns, the humans that are so connected and the ones who are making the different levels and types of connections possible should also help out in bailing out those who are not privileged as themselves.

    No, its not intended to be a moral debating session on career choices, although that’s welcome too. On the day i saw the (linked) post, by sheer coincidence I also came upon a few links which provided a start to answering the question. One was a presentation (via Chris Brogan) another, a site that holds immense potential. And yes, corporates can play roles that fit into their overall strategic objective and fulfill their business needs, check this by Motorola. (I’m beginning to have a healthy respect for this brand). Back home, this is worth a look, and I would like to see this Idea develop a bit more before I comment on it.

    But while all these are definite concrete efforts towards making the world a better place, my belief is that the underlying philosophy of social media – sharing, collaborating, and most importantly transparency, is more fundamental and will itself cause quite a few groundbreaking things to happen in the way we develop as a society. With one single service like twitter, the flow of information is such that I am exposed to a multitude of new people, new websites, new thoughts, some of which make a profound impact on me, and on the way i think. As more and more people get hooked on to social media, think of the number of change agents it would create.

    And it is vital for the change agents to absorb the inherent goodness that social media possesses. In an age when shortcuts to anything from file sharing to making money are eagerly lapped up, without a thought on its impact on others’ lives, and tech provides the means to do it and distribute it easily, it is important to ingrain a philosophy that would make developers and users think a little about common good when they engage themselves in social media, a thought that would at least discourage them from doing harm.

    until next time, evolve

  • So, what happened in the end?

    Happened to see ‘Via Darjeeling’ last weekend. It left me with a very poignant thought. About storytelling. Lets take a murder mystery/ thriller.
    When a writer develops a story, it exists only in his head, its origin, its twists and turns, and its conclusion. What happens when the author leaves the story open? Gives the audience all the twists and turns and refuses to give the ending? Worse, what if the story is such that it has many plausible endings?
    Now different members of the audience could propose several endings, based on their sensibilities, but they will never know what ‘actually’ happened. These days, we are so obsessed with knowing ALL the facts, that it would be an absolute blow. And its not like the real life happenings on which we are okay with some ambiguity. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get out of our conditioning that forces us to accept nothing less than conclusive endings in works of fiction, especially in cinema.

    until next time, unending

  • Carp

    I usually don’t pay much attention to car and bike ads, primarily because I am not their target audience, at least for now, and from a brand pov because, they will either show me ads, attitude or stunts (though i liked the most recent Pulsar ad, the music mostly šŸ˜‰ ) I really can’t blame them, they are dead if they do, and killed if they don’t.

    But I recently caught the Mahindra Logan ad because I thought Kunal Kapoor wore the same clothes (in one shot) he did in the Indian Terrain print ads. :p So i watched to make sure, though I haven’t figured it out yet. And I wasn’t paying attention to the ad content, but I watched it again thanks to a very thought provoking comment on another ad from the same category (cars). That was the Tata Indigo CS ad. I had caught that earlier thanks to its manic frequency and some nice music. We’ll talk about the comment in a while.

    Kunal Kapoor, in the Logan ad, wonders and questions the same rat race we are all participating in, our fear that keeps us from thinking differently, says how style can’t be achieved by showing off, and how one should think different from the herd. Mahindra Logan is more than ‘dikhava’ and apparently ‘the answer is here’. (Er, answer to what? the only question i heard was ‘why?’ ) :pĀ  That would come under the attitude + style category, but quite a ‘straight’ take.

    The Indigo ad was one that a lot of working pros could identify with. It shows an employess whose boss doesn’t miss a single chance to bully him – whether its opening his cabin’s shades just as the employee is about to take a break or showing off a better pen, or a tea set, or coming to his cubicle when he’s about to call his girlfriend/wife or any of the little things, that the ad uses to tell a real and believable story. The twist is in the parking lot, where the employee takes out his absolutely different car from among the regular cars around, while his boss is caught admiring the car, and then burning with envy while he drives off. The punch line- ‘at the end of the day, style does matter’. A ‘style’ ad that is treated with humour. The punch line for me came from the wife, who pointed out that while the employee can drive home in that cool car, the next morning after he drives to work, he’ll still have to work under the same boss, and take the same crap.

    Now, i’m not sure if many people would think that way, but if they did, it would be very sorry for the brand, because would consumers want to be associated with the kind of servile attitude that the employee projects during most of the ad, and then relies on his car to go one up on his boss? Especially if the target audience is a no-nonsense generation that has confidence in its own abilities?

    For me, the lesson was that no humour ad can be consumer-proof. There’ll always be a smart alec around who will twist your communication šŸ˜

    until next time, with consumers like these, who needs competitors?

  • Unaccustomed Earth

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    This is Jhumpa mashi’s (from her role in the cinematic version of ‘The Namesake) šŸ™‚ third offering. The book consists of 8 works, the last three related to each other.
    Melancholy, that’s always been my favourite takeout from her books, and this one does not disappoint on that front. But if you’re looking for anything beyond the regular Bengal and Boston chronicles, you are advised to look elsewhere. This book really reminds me of Interpreter of Maladies, her first book, though the premise of the stories (except the geography) do differ.
    To briefly describe the stories, ‘Unaccustomed Earth’, the first story, is of a man who discovers interests after his wife’s death, and connects with his daughter in a way she’d never thought possible. ‘Heaven and Hell’ is a tale told by a woman who discovers her mother’s affection for a young Indian their family took under their wing. ‘A choice of accommodations’ is about a couple coming to terms with each other and their marriage, a sort of reigniting the spark, if you will. ‘Only goodness’ is a woman’s attempts to hold together her family, and her guilt over her role in her brother’s downward spiral. Nobody’s business is a story of a boy who loves a girl who loves a boy. šŸ™‚ The last 3 stories trace the life of a man and a woman who appear in each others’ lives, as though pulled by fate. This was the one I liked best.
    The above have been simplified to avoid messing up the plot and giving a warped perspective. I have noticed that with Jhumpa’s works, people have different takeouts.
    Meanwhile, her eye for nuances and her subtle ways of expression make up for perhaps what can be roughly put as lack of depth in her characters.
    But the stories are a compelling read, and are very human. While I’m by no means an ABCD (perhaps Confused Desi, but definitely not American Born) it is extremely easy to identify with the characters’ emotions, in spite of an alien setting. The kind of book I’d love to curl up with on a cold, dark, stormy night, with Coldplay in the background.
    Melancholy, and the complexities of the human race!!

  • Kwippy quips

    Move over microblogging, here comes nano blogging. Have been exploring a new service the last couple of days. Most of you would have heard about it by now, it goes by the name of Kwippy. This gives a great intro to the service. (a Kwiki, if you will)Ā  While it is definitely related to the Twitter / Plurk clan, its distantly related, at least a cousin, and definitely not a clone. And its desi manufactured šŸ™‚

    I got hold of an invite by just asking for one, the response was prompt. And that, from my interactions so far, has been the hallmark of the Kwippy team – timely and efficient response.

    Kwippy can be made to work in sync with your GTalk or Y! Messenger, or like me, if you easily get sick of the GTalk alerts (i have disabled twitter because I couldn’t take the constant blinking) you could use the web interface. And using that, you can Kwip your status messages, share bookmarks and more or less do most of the things that you would do on IM with your friends. Ah, friends, thats another key thing, because unlike say twitter, where we add a lot of people who are not known to us, the IMs usually have friends we really know. While this may become very twitterlike when the crowd pours in, for now its friends and friends of friends, more so because its on ‘invite’ mode.

    So you might ask, THAT’s the differentiator from twitter? No, the difference maker for me, is the threading. Unlike Twitter, but like Friendfeed, you can comment on my Kwip on Kwippy, which means we can keep having conversations on a post, but open up other threads simultaneously, and most importantly, easily keep track of all this.

    So I’ve been reasonably impressed with the service so far, despite a few 500 errors. Dammit, twitter got funded, and still has problems,Ā  and we still grin and bear, so its okay!!

    But my common grouse with all the new services that keep getting launched applies to this one too. Most new services, with perhaps a small and partial exception – Friendfeed, take me out of the carefully created environs of the existing service, be it facebook, twitter, my blog and so on. To recreate the world, I have to wait till all my friends get there. So my immediate but (possibly) very ambitious wishlist from Kwippy or any service/ on the lines of ‘conversation enabling’ would be, for starters

    • making it easy to import friends from other ecosystems (kwippy from twitter? šŸ˜‰ )
    • evolving a mechanism to have a Disqus kind of widget (thanks to wordpress’ anti javascript stance, disqus won’t work here), that would allow me to connect my blog with a kwippy site (I agree that its a nano blogging platform, but in essence, comments are nanoblogging too) That would allow me to link my blog crowd (don’t snigger, my other blog gets decent comments) with the Kwippy crowd.
    • a browser (ff) add on, to some its more convenient than IM

    Meanwhile I’m awaiting an invite from LiL, it seems to be on a ‘sharing moments’ path. In case you need Kwippy invites, all you have to do is ask. šŸ™‚

    until next time, try kwipping

    PS Speaking of Indian startups, this is an awesome compilation. Hats off!!