Month: June 2011

  • Cause and Effect

    My fandom relationship with the Pepsi Refresh Project has resulted in a few interesting conversations on this blog, this CSR one being the pick. As Surekha's comment says, this is the longest disagreement we've had. 🙂  That being said, I do agree with Surekha's point of sustainability, but my conundrum remains on another front. Aligning social responsibility with existing strategy/processes will make it sustainable and give it context, but would it create a perception that is not fair to its (assumed) good intent?

    I was reminded of this last week when the news of Snapdeal's adoption of a village hit Twitter. Snapdeal was trending for 2 days of twitter on account of it. None of the comments on my timeline were flattering. I am guilty of contributing a couple myself, one of which was gamely retweeted by Rohith Awasthi, Head – User & Communities at Snapdeal.com. (as I have said on Twitter on an earlier occasion, the intelligence and maturity he displays when dealing with 'crowds' is something I respect)

    Snapdeal has also written about their intent behind this exercise on their blog, and it is heartening indeed to see that it also happens to be the village that one of their employees belong to, and that the entire idea started there. I also have to wonder why that never made it to the PR machinery. Meanwhile, as their blog says, their commitment is something that time will show. Ef

    ficacy is another thing about which time will have an opinion.

    I thought about this from the perspective of the earlier post – sustainability, alignment with strategy etc. Even if this were a marketing gimmick, I'm fine because the village gains. As Snapdeal says, maybe other companies will follow suit too. Now, if good intent is the only thing at work here, how is it measured with regards to their strategic objectives? As I've repeatedly said, it's the deal that drives my relationship with the brand, anything else is of little consequence, including this effort.

    On the other hand, what if Snapdeal had tied up their CSR with their deals? It could have happened in many ways – a bottom up approach, polling people on what they should do as CSR and taking the story further, or perhaps a commitment based on the number/value of deals sold, or promising a certain part of the revenue towards a CSR initiative (both of which can use a wiki like meter to show transparency), or a matching grant scheme for a cause (you pay Rs.x, we put in an equal amount). All arguably aligned to strategy, helps build community, and can be counted as CSR. But as a user, I wonder if I would then have said they are doing it to increase their deal counter. Note that even for a seemingly unrelated deed like adopting the village, some of the reactions were pretty nasty.

    So, dead if you do, killed if you don't, and that's my conundrum. Am I missing something here? If not, perhaps the only way is to organically grow a community that supports you, communicate clearly with them and show them through actions over time – not just in terms of CSR, but overall strategy as well,  that in  the commitment to a larger cause, you mean business. In a future era, when social business hopefully becomes more mainstream, and people see brands whose purpose ties in with the larger context of their lives, this won't be as difficult as it seems now.

    until next time, cause tick or Groupgaon? 😉

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  • Stop. Watch.

    Playing music on the mobile as you drift to sleep is probably nothing new. I’m sure many people do it. The snag of course is managing to switch it off before you sleep. You could create a list and make sure it stops after x number of songs, but there’s some joy to be found in random shuffling. There’s probably an app somewhere that will somehow manage it, but I haven’t found it yet. What I would like is something that will sense my breathing pattern and switch off, but that might be wishing for too much 🙂

    ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ brings up an interesting point, when it discusses sleep in the context of death and the state of consciousness. It asks

    How many of us are aware of the change in consciousness when we fall asleep? Or of the moment of sleep before dreams begin? How many of us are aware even when we dream that we are dreaming?

    From the music example, it is easy to guess that I certainly am not. In fact, my experiment on this failed too, as I completely lost track during a conscious attempt to ‘know’ the moment I fell asleep. I then realised that I should perhaps try being ‘conscious’ while I am awake without flowing from thought to thought unconsciously, especially since D is not very encouraging about me trying to sleep more. 😐

    Try recollecting the last 15 minutes minute by minute, and you’ll sense the unconsciousness 🙂

    until next time, asleep yet?

  • 99tests

    A crowdsourced software testing model that offers on-demand services to software developers and enables testers to build a repu

    tation and be part of a community, that is 99tests. In conversation with founder Praveen Singh.

    [scribd id=58358455 key=key-1hzrrg6tkr0rgr8gsnh7 mode=list]

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  • Ireland: Awakening

    Edward Rutherford

    The second part of Rutherford’s Ireland saga. Starting in 1597 and ending in 1922, it continues to trace the life and times of the six families first presented in Dublin, and adds a few more. It starts with the Reformation, the arrival of Oliver Cromwell and the Ascendancy.

    Rutherford, as usual, combines the lives of fictitious and real characters, like Henry Grattan and Daniel O’Connell, and tackles the famine, Home Rule movement etc to present a picture that justifies what might have been the sentiment of the age, though historians might have a few minor problems with accuracy.

    Towards the end of the book, we can also see the rise of Young Irelanders, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, precursors to the IRA.

    The book is perhaps at a step lower than Dublin, as the author seemed more preoccupied with presenting historical incidents, as opposed to characterisation, which he usually excels at. He might have sensed this too, but what has then happened is a slightly lumpy narrative, with occasional strong characters and at most times, a predominance of history itself. But having said that, it is still a wonderful read, and I particularly liked the author’s use of character names and situations (eg. Conall – Deirdre – MacGowan) to show that the more things changed the more they remained the same.

  • Weekly Top 5

    This week's stories include Apple's patent headaches, change in in-app subscription guidelines, Blackberry Playbook new market launches, upgrades and patent fight with Dolby, Facebook's IPO and

    valuation speculation, acquisition and hires, the reported new iOS app, Google's search moves on mobile and desktop, Twitter's domain moves, hidden features and bugs.
    [scribd id=58071600 key=key-2ka626uvmnwpkvuwz5w8 mode=list]

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