alchemy can work ...

billionaire mark cuban recently threw open a challenge on his blog.

how to convince the masses to go out and watch his movie without spending the earth.

in short he was looking for ideas in order to market movies, but with a difference.
the bait ? the guy who's suggestion clicked, would have the job of his dreams, courtesy the maverick businessman.

at the time of typing this, the blog entry had 828 comments from hopefuls.

gigaom's solution to the problem on their blog set my mind ticking.

confident that i am about the collective intelligence and talent and experience of the members of this blog, what do you say that we offer it as a package deal to any entrepreneur / professional looking for a solution to his business problem ?

we are looking to instituionalise alchemy any way.

it would be great if we could get paid for it. even if we don't ( in the beginning perhaps ) compensation could be a function of performance generated from our recommendations. with the rider that we get credit for our work. and that we can create case studies out of it.

in the meantime we can provide solutions on this blog to mark's situation.

what say, sunil ?

any one else ??

ajit narayan speaks..

...on how and why direct response cannot and should not be relegated to the also-ran category in media choice.

read about it here .

The Community Gym - A concept

Near where I stay is a Gymnasium. It is equipped with the usual lot of instruments, people trying to get fit, as well as people trying to stay fit.

Near where I stay is also a beachfront, littered every morning with debris comprising mainly stuff thrown around, or discarded or left over from evening jaunts.

And it struck me, that a workout can be coupled with much, much more than firm, healthy flesh and blood tingling through your veins.

Imagine a scene, where a community gym is formed, with the main objective of keeping this beach-front clean.

A trained fitness instructor evangelizes and creates equipment and tasks designed to ensure that a team performs various tasks, scientifically and in a structured manner, that ensures that the beach remains clean, morning after morning. It could involve squatting, stretching, walking, weight lifting, and all other exercises that one pays so hugely to a gym for.

I am sure that such a scene could be easily mapped to a community, and a tenth of the monies that are normally paid to a gym, collected towards purchasing scientifically designed equipment and hiring services of a trained fitness instructor.

What I would like to do is as follows :

1) Evangelize and produce such equipment that could be used for such cleanliness and maintenance exercises, equipment that would be designed to provide for an optimum of exercise.

2) Build up a team of trainers who could work out regimes, and instruct a community on how to do the work, through manuals, videos, etc.

3) Sell the above package to communities that would benefit through exercise and a clean environment as a result.

What I anticipate as a market? Over 400,000 such units of "community gym" in Mumbai alone. This target can be achieved in under 6 months, with proper tieups with action groups, CSR involvement, and correct evangelization.

We would soon have clean drains, no garbage lying around, and at the end of things, a committed citizen, who is proud that his body has been toned up and at the same time, and happy that he has provided a good environment to people around him.

Very soon ... Bye, Bye, Gyms.

Any takers?

Sanjeev Sarma

You blog? Or is it Me Blog?

Recently went through the findings of a survey that captures patterns in blogging, and tries answer the why, what and who blog.

Contrary to popular opinions, what I've been saying all along, emerges factually correct. That predominantly blogging is more like ones own diary! A medium of self expression, its young, is done by heavy internet users... Here are the top ten findings of the study. And this is basis Americana ... Guess what and where could be in India?

Here are the top ten findings:

1. Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world.

2. Telephone surveys capture the most accurate snapshot possible of a small and moving target.

3. Contrary to the impression created by the press attention on political blogging, just 11% of bloggers say they focus mainly
on government or politics.

4. The blogging population is young, evenly split between women and men, and racially diverse.

5. Relatively small groups of bloggers view blogging as a public endeavor.

6. The main reasons for keeping a blog are creative expression and sharing personal experiences.

7. Only one-third of bloggers see blogging as a form of journalism. Yet many check facts and cite original sources.

8. Bloggers are avid consumers and creators of online content. They are also heavy users of the internet in general.

9. Bloggers are major consumers of political news and about half prefer sources without a particular political viewpoint.

10. Bloggers often utilize community and readership-enhancing features available on their blogs.

Source: Lenhart, Amanda and Susannah Fox. Bloggers. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 19, 2006.Bloggers - v - Pew Internet & American Life Project

beat the ban

guys..ever since our moronic government and its lackeys blocked blogspot..no one has been saying or posting anything here. despite knowing fully well how to circumvent the ban and log on and post and view as well.

well..shake a leg. and fast. wake up and smell the coffee. is this all that it takes to put you all in to a stupor ????

sunil
ajit
sanjeev
gurpreet

where ARE you all ???

fyi we are now being tracked by google analytics and are on technorati as well...

test post

am i here or am i not ???

the brave new google world ...

as seen through the eyes of a die-hard googler with a bit of imagination..

cannot however disagree with the concept of EPIC. i see the beginning of that happening already as phone-cams and blogs and citizen journalists are the new lexicon.

one can debate nitty-gritties. or even the time frames. cannot however the fundamental truth which is out there.

tip of the hat to ajit narayan for this link.

fun ways with google !!!

courtesy dhoomketu's and lessig's blogs, i found 55 ways to have fun with google.

its downloadable as pdf here.

have a look and share your experiences.

cheers !!!

community expressions

push-button publishing.
make that click and post.

and then i heard about haftamag

published online every monday by a community of people-like-us who want to move beyond lunchtime journalism. a community of bloggers who blog on different subjects under the brand of haftamag. ranging from food to people to satire and politics..
this is what we have talked about and seen. communities driving and creating cutomised content..

then there is nandita's blog on food and cooking. mouthwateringly well executed with her passionate band of followers. such a pleasure to read and be part of.

and there is enough buzz about the guys who keep a watch on the TV news channels and their backroom shenanigans here

and i have been on my buddy naren kusnur's case to start his music blog..passionate rocker that he is and works for virgin records and writes on music in mumbai's mid-day.

then some upcoming stylist or designer can also start a style blog.imagine what would it do to build his / her brand ?

then will someone do a humour based blog ? that would be SUPREMELY difficult am sure. making people laugh is not easy at all. or may be they exist in regional languages ?

i mentioned this guy who uploads funny videos on his blog . do check him out..

in the long run they could turn in to profit making ventures. or insitutions. as we are in the process of doing.

let me know which other subject based blogs and communities come to your minds...

Institutionalising Alchemy of Thoughts

The first time I said the title aloud it did sound like I was talking about sending the blog to an asylum. On second thoughts, I let the title remain - it is so apt. Institutionalising - creating of an institution which has aims and definitions and everything else.

One of the ideas that floated around on the Blog has gone into production. There are models being evolved, plans being written and by the looks of it come what may the idea will see action soon. And all of this because Juno wrote a small piece some one month ago and others jumped in.

Here is what I propose - for every idea that is born on this blog and reaches some kind of business structure, let the custodian of the idea give a small percent of the company / business to Alchemy of Thoughts. It is not compulsary, it is based on an honour system which believes in the inherent goodness of some men and women.

The figure I had in mind was about 3% stake in the company / business. The figure is debatable. This stake goes towards formation of a corpus of fund that can then seed more ideas, a community of real technocrats, maybe some sort of a publication, events etc. It can also then attract industry leaders to be advisors on board to help startups find their feet. Alchemy can then become the virtual version of JATC in Bandra or the dozen odd coffee shops in the silicon valley that spawned everything from Apple to Skype and Google. And Alchemy can then be a platform for investors / funders / people with money to meet people with ideas (they are the ones who generally do not have any money)

What this means is that Alchemy of Thoughts has to become some kind of an entity. I suggest (comes from experience) that Alchemy of Thoughts be registered as a private company with a core group of people. The people who will be in the core group can be open to debate. I can fund this bit and let the idea get started.

I had thought of a business plan and all that jazz, but I think this one is simple enough to write on the back of an used envelop.

Will the people on this blog please respond to this thought and write back.

Sunil R Nair

The collective

Remember the dialogue - "we are the Borg, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated" (Star Terk - TNG). I think we are headed the way the Borg went - collective consciousness, decisions made via the collective thoughts of a group. Blogs, forums, cell phones are all headed that way. You join a blog, subscribe to a group and are influenced by the thoughts of the people there. Not all will subscribe to the thoughts but a small but significant amount of people will think alike and act accordingly. The collective mind set.

I took this off wikipedia

It defines what a collective would be, makes interesting reading:

While group and artificial intelligence have something to offer, collective intelligence is at its roots a human enterprise in which mind-sets, a willingness to share, and an openness to the value of distributed intelligence for the common good are paramount. Individuals who respect collective intelligence are confident of their own abilities and recognize that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of any individual parts.

Maximizing collective intelligence relies on the ability of an organization to accept and develop "The Golden Suggestion", which is any potentially useful input from any member. Groupthink often hampers collective intelligence by limiting input to a select few individuals or filtering potential Golden Suggestions without fully developing them to implementation.

Knowledge focusing through various voting methods has the potential for many unique perspectives to converge through the assumption that uninformed voting is to some degree random and can be filtered from the decision process leaving only a residue of informed consensus. Critics point out that often bad ideas, misunderstandings, and misconceptions are widely held, and that structuring of the decision process must favor experts who are presumably less prone to random or misinformed voting in a given context.

The best-known collective intelligence projects are political parties—which mobilize large numbers of people to form policy, select candidates, and to finance and run election campaigns. Military units, trade unions, and corporations are focused on more narrow concerns but would satisfy some definitions of a genuine "C.I."—the most rigorous would require a capacity to respond to very arbitrary conditions without orders or guidance from "law" or "customers" who constrain actions tightly. One interesting proponent of the rigorous view is Al Gore, the United States Democratic Party candidate for President in 2000, who noted that "the US Constitution is a program that lets us all do together what we could not do separately."

Now apply this to the communities on the internet and eventually to the mobile / hand held devices. The blogging phenomenon can drive / make or break a product or a service. Suppose we were to take together the collective clicks of people on a banner, we can get a fair idea of their needs.

Or the downloads of a particular kind.

Imagine the potential of creation of a monetizable collective.

True, you will be assimilated!!!

sign of the eating times...

had heard of this a number of times..saw it for the first..just outside manali...this picture features a colleague who wanted his two cents of fame...

What a way to make a million dollars …

The name: Alex Tew. Occupation: a student. Seeking: funding to go to grad school. Selling: Pixels. Rate: $1 per pixel. Quantity: 1,000,000 pixels. Current status: Sold out!

Starting last September this kid with a huge idea ran up the million dollars in almost a flash.

Why go to the grad school at all? Don't even drop out. Check out the site here.

The story does not end here.

Netherlands-based Sandberg Institute, is imitating the very same concept. But this one is selling space on its building facade!



The building displays ads and logos from brands such as Nike, BMW, Google and IKEA ... art imitating life, virtual or otherwise.

The Sandberg Institute site quotes "a new work that sets itself on the borders between commercial art and critical art, commerce and information, private business and public space."

These Europeans are crazy!

RFM anyone?

While one talks about databases and targeting, mining, beyond demographics and such terms today in marketing I am yet to find a refined use of the basics of database marketing in practice. Is it because of lack of energy to do it (remember there are tons who seem to be talking about it) or lack of the abilty of how to do it? Wonder which angle...

R = Recency, F=Frequency, M= Monetary Value... three behavioural aspects of customers. Fundemental to any marketer, especially when the category is repeat purchase led. (like say retail.)

Even following basics like studying latency would streamline any marketers offerings and deliver high end ROI on every Rupee spent! Latency would mean studying the time intervals before one interaction (choice of the interaction would be the marketers.) For example, one could be studying latency for web site visits, or actual purchases, or complaints, or calls to customer care etc...

And worse when you do tell people the how to do, they still don't buy it! The answer to it is "my CRM system is coming that will help do much more". WOW!

Any category that has a repeat interactive behaviour would benefit by using tracking and using the knowledge of the behaviour. RFM or latency anyone?

This is a huge subject that I am trying to simplify. Some of the basics covered here.

Multitasking with Balls!

Its may seem a bit preposterous to talk of soccer at the moment and I seek forgiveness for not being able to hold on to this rather innovating thought. This morning a wise guy asked me to spot the similarities between Indian Cricket and Indian Soccer. At the very broad level, mind you and not the pub hopping fashionably interested in soccer frenzy of the kind that I witnessed with much amusement this year. I could find no similarities - not money, sponsorship, audience or government interest, fan following...except may be the running (they all run all the time) or the ball (size matters!) or the ball stopper. And that could be the genesis of the Indian soccer team!

The wise man added that instead of only dreaming of watching an Indian team playing international soccer (we are 117th in the FIFA rankings ), it may be time for innovative thinking. Why cant the wicket keeper be the goal keeper? Isnt it the exact role that he is tuned to? Stopping the ball? Some practice to align for the size of the ball but that’s easier than the alternatives. The reflexes of a wicket keeper are geared to keenly watch, follow and catch a ball traveling at the speed of 80-100 miles per hour. And that’s a good starting point for our soccer team.

Mumbai Help is back

A few days ago I had mentioned in my posts that Mumbai Help Blog was dead. Here I acknowledge it's revival. Thank You Peter Griffin.

For information on Mumbai Blasts and How you can help.

Mumbai Meri Jaan

This city pays (according to one rumour) about 58000 crores in taxes. In return we have a train system thats 40 years behind times, roads ( is shehar main har jagah khuda hai) with moonscapes and a set of politicos who were busy trying to protect a muddied statue forgetting the millions who survive. Survive if the key word. This is the city where you can get a rick at 3 am or 'anda bhurji' at 4 in the morning and those who provide there services go back to stay in hovels, while those who afford the rick and the bhurji live in matchbox sized over priced apartments. Driving back to work this morning one can hear above the usual noise in the mind "Amazing Grace" being played over and over again. Amazing grace it is!! The maximum city survives another day. Pushing, slamming, ducking, living one calamity after another. One year in this city and it will change you. NewYork will seem like a walk in the park.

__________________________________________________________________

Who were the people who brought the scenes of the blasts to the people across the world when cell phone services, sms and landlines jammed as usual. IBN Live calls them citizen journalists. The era of grassroots driven journalism is here to stay. Live reports filed via mobile phones, pics taken on aim and shoot cameras, logged in via Reliance Internet cards.

Maybe one of these days we will no longer stay glued to the News Channels with their undertrained journalists and over the top style of story telling. We will just visit Flickr for the pics taken by a dozen odd people. Listen to podcasts for correct information on the ground situation and so on.

Maybe it it time for VCs to invest in communities - local websites that are self propogating, blogs that go beyond self glorification.

innovations here ...!!!!

amongst the first media innovations i heard of ..was a sunsilk hoarding on a pedder road ( or was it breach candy ? ) high-rise, with a live fashion show happening on it during peak hours..it caused traffic jams galore even in bored, been-there-done- that mumbai...

then the odd one like the axe website struck me..though hardly any one knew of it except its creators..

buying out a masthead or even an entire front page of a newspaper was the option when all other attempts to "innovate" drew a blank.

and then one fine day, while scanning the headlines, i stumbled upon this link which documented innovations in the field of communications.

when the maruti suzuki swift was launched, there was an actual car displayed on an elevated platform near a site at ITO in delhi. what could have been more impactful would have been a swift actually driving around in a single strip of road. or messages painted on roads ( except that they are supposed to cause driver distraction , in this day and age of in-car TV's and mobile phones ).

elevator doors in buildings with BPO offices are painted with messages of the "great kebab factory" a popular eating joint that hopes to cash in on captive consumers.

there are more examples of innovations in the article...and its heartening to see and note that innovation is slowly catching on.

cheers to that !!!

Rained out in Mumbai

Have a look at these pics:



Would you be interested in buying them as a wallpaper? No? what if someone out there wants them? Would it be worth while to set up a market place where these pics can be downloaded onto mobile phones? A part of revenue being kept for the owner and rest to the marketplace? Kind of an eBay for mobisodes and mobercials (he he thats a new one - commercials on mobiles = mobercials! you heard it here first). The more you get downloaded the more are your rating and the more visible you are.

What say Sanjiv can this be incorporated into your portal?

____________________________________________________________________


Technology never takes a back seat. In the 48 hours that I have to endure at home alone I learnt a few things. Work did not stop - E4M did get through for a deal on one of our projects, NDTV got what they wanted and the leads we get for our sundry clients got logged in as we progressed. Yes the number was far lesser from Mumbai - the rains got to many I assume.

Which brings me to the next topic on this rambling post - Freakonomics.

The premise of the book is that one can understand economics by looking at patterns in whatever happens around you. Combine that with the 'Database on Intentions' of the entire connected / wired world and you have an amazing story to tell. Database of Intentions can loosely be defined as the pattern emerging out of searches on Google, Yahoo!, A9 etc around the world. So if a huge volume of people in Upper Mongolia were searching for "cure for asthamatic Yaks" one can safely assume that a large population of Yaks in Mongolia are asthamatic and some bio tech firm can make a ton by catering to that requirement. Does that mean that I can employ a bunch of people who will scrape search engines and look for patterns and then cater to the shortfall? Is this an emerging science? Fuelled by Google, eBaY and so on?

I can predict what markets requirements are and then I advertise on keywords that are searched in those territories using Adwords and AdSense, get people to click on my Ads and get them to buy my product using Checkout. The landing pages are made using Pages by Google, Pics improved with Picasa, translated to Mongol using Google Translate, written on Blogspot and so on. Bloody Impressive.

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Rained out in Mumbai.

Ah well with so many gas bags on about everything about Mumbai being the overflowing gutter it is, one might just dare to remind a few know it alls that almost a year ago an initiative Called Saving Mumbai / Surviving Mumbai got hijacked by a few who did nothing about it for a year and now that the disaster is on us again, i wonder what they have to say about it?

Web 2.0 growth engines: Blogs, Social Networks, Local Info ...

Just got to see some interesting data on internet usage. Shows a shift
in growth. a.k.a eyballs and usage of sites.

The big daddy's are either stagnating or on slow growth mode. Its the newbies which are exploding... reaching beyond the stars. Only Google seems to able to hold on to own in terms of visitors.

Cut to a decade or so back. When the internet emerged with a promise. That of infinte possibilties of participation and empowering people to communicate and air their opinions.

That promise is only getting more powerful now with spaces like blogs ...

This is from a recent online-traffic analysis provided by market research firm ComScore Media Metrix, which examined visitor growth rates among the 50 top Web sites over the past year.

laff a lot

getting people to cry is easy. relatively speaking.

getting them to laugh is another matter altogether. i can count on the fingers of one hand the movies or people that make me laugh.

and no i do not mean the sidhu's and suman's of the world...

vir das yes.
jaane bhi do yaaron yes.
the odd santa-banta joke may be ?
the odd joke on sms ?
quick gun mururgan ?

umm ... ???

and then when we see ourselves or take-offs on our lives on screen ? sprinkled with mirch-masala ?
check out this blog , which is all about getting us to laugh at ourselves.
with the help of its collection of rib-tickling video clips..especially ones from southie movies...this is a laugh riot. and also a telling comment on our mindsets and (?) creativity !!!

enjoy !!!

The three magic words in marketing ... What's happened to them?

Just in case you're wondering; the words are You, New and Free ... The three magic words and probably in that order. These have helped sell millions or billions. The art of communication revolved around figuring out relevant usage of these words...

In other words it was about the benefit and not so much anything else.

An antithesis to this came to my notice in the form of this toon! Its a take off on the trust and authenticity waves that seem to be the hype around... Today's mediascape!

The holy trinity of blog currency. Indeed!

blast from the past...

on a holiday at dalhousie, i visited D.C. Khanna & Sons.

located on court road, this departmental store is over a hundred years old. it was THE leading supplier of groceries and all kinds of food-stuffs to the british and the desi saabs of the time.

the good folk there were kind enough to let me take pictures of the store.

there are signboards for nestle and cadbury's. plus an old-fashioned dispenser for chocolates.

i guess...in its own time, D.C. Khanna & Sons must have been an innovator too...