BarCamp Mumbai 6 on Oct 11 2009

Friday, October 9th, 2009 | No Comments

BarCamp Mumbai 6 is happening on Sunday Oct 11.

Venue: SP Jain, Andheri

Time: 9am (but things usually pick up from 10pm onwards)

I’ll most likely be holding a session at the BarCamp.

The tentative topic is:

History Lesson: What can history teach us about prospering in the tech age.

Its going to be fun!

So attend if you can.? Sign up for BarCamp Mumbai 6.

Is Blue The Colour of Success And Riches?

Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | 6 Comments

The colour survey: Sandtex Paints surveyed 3,000 households in UK. They check the colour of the homes. And then ask questions about how successful that household is. The survey results?

Colour = Household income on average

Blue = 38,000 pounds
Red = 23,500 pounds
White = 23,400 pounds
Magnolia = 23,100 pounds
Beige = 20,800 pounds
Orange = 20,000 pounds
Purple = 19,600 pounds
Grey = 19,000 pounds
Yellow = 18,500 pounds
Brown = 18,400 pounds
Pink = 14,500 pounds
Green = 13,100 pounds

But does that really mean that if you paint your home blue, you’ll become more successful?

That is highly doubtful. Just because there is a correlation doesn’t mean that the colour of your homes cause your success or failure. There could be various other reasons that lead to such numbers.

Eg: Blue paint could be more expensive. Leading to only rich folks indulging in it. Or that the decor and furniture that goes with blue is usually more expensive (silver goes very well with blue…)

Because otherwise, Jodhpur would be the richest city in the world!

Jodhpur – The Blue City*

I love reading such random surveys. But its even more fun if the folks conducting the surveys dig a bit deeper to find the cause and effect.

* Legend says that Jodhpur is painted blue to keep the mosquitoes away. But even that seems far fetched. Any colour + history mavens have time to find out the real reasons?

How To Manufacture a Hit

Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | No Comments

A post by me on NonToxin.com: How to manufacture a hit
(The last story of the article is one of my favorite ones!)

How to Beat the Catch-22 Situation (Or Dealing with the Chicken and Egg Problem)

Friday, September 4th, 2009 | 6 Comments

1. Chicken And The Egg

You can’t have chicken without eggs. And you can’t have eggs without chickens who grow up to be hens. So which came first?

2. Catch-22

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”

From the book Catch-22 (page 54 – 1985 paperback.)

So how does Orr manage to beat the Catch-22 situation and escape the war? Simple: he doesn’t listen to any rules. Crashes a plane. And then rows all the way to Sweden – a neutral country to escape the war.

Action Summary:

To beat the catch-22 situation, you have to stop heeding the rules. And make your own path that changes the status-quo.

You have to row your own boat to where you can escape the situation.

3.Real Life Case Study

Steve Samartino starts Rentoid.com. He is faced with a catch-22 situation. Customers won’t visit his site if there are no products listed there for rent. And people won’t list products for rent if there are no customers on the site.

How to break this vicious circle

Steve rows his own boat quitely but diligently. From his must-read post “Inventing Demand”

I went out and got myself a copy of the Harvey Norman and all the major department store catalogs. Scan through and them and picked off what items I thought would be suitable to rent. For the purposes of rentoid that meant items that were “hot” in market (their placement in the catalogue was proof enough of that), items which had a purchase value of over at least $200, and had a low likelyhood of damage. I then proceeded to gather photos of the specific items off Google images and listed each of them on rentoid. The rental prices I placed at 5% of item value for a week, and 10% of item value for a month. The bond I made 50% of the cost.

…

When people rented the items, I went out and bought them, first hunting for the lowest price on line. Then rented it to the new rentoid member in good faith and gave them an exceptional user experience.

After the rental I sold the item on ebay for around about 80% of the retail price. I pretty much re-couped my costs doing this.

Further reading: Six Strategies for overcoming the chicken and the egg problem

The One Change Necessary to Succeed

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | No Comments

This post is on another website. Click on to read the story: The one change necessary to succeed

The Perils of Overthinking Your Problem

Saturday, August 1st, 2009 | No Comments

1.

There is a factory that manufactures soap. They are faced with a problem. Out of every 1,000 soap boxes made, one always ends up empty.

So the company always gets one complaint per every 1,000 sales!

The executives try a lot of ideas to solve this problem. They implement elaborate checks and balances in place. They go through their entire manufacturing line up slowly and steadily. They hire expensive consultants to analyze the problem of the empty soap box. They upgrade their machinery. But even after spending a ton of time and money on the problem, one out of every 1,000 soap boxes remains empty.

Its a mystery that drives everyone crazy.

And then one day, a low level clerk hears about the problem. And solves it in a jiffy.

All he does is places a fan at the end of the line up. The fan blows away the empty soap box. Problem solved.

2.

Credit card fraud has always been a problem. Especially online. Fortunately, its not that big an issue in India yet. In India, only 0.16% of all transactions are fraud. Which is amongst the lowest in the world!

But the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) thinks that 0.16% fraud is still a big issue.

To solve the issue, they come with an elaborate plan. They enforce a rule that adds an extra layer of verification and authentication for online transactions in India. Consumers have to create an “ipin” with their bank account from whom they’ve gotten their credit card or debit card. An extra password which they are asked for during an online credit card transaction.

All banks have to spend time and money and upgrade their systems to support this ipin verification process.

All ecommerce websites have to spend time and money to implement this ipin loop into their order pages.

Any single order now requires participation from 2 websites: the credit card details are filled out on the vendors website. While the ipin is filled out on the banks website. And both these websites have to work in perfect sync. Or orders are lost.

What has this led to?

This ipin step has solved the 0.16% fraud issue. But in exchange, it has meant a 25% to 35% drop in payment completion rates!

Its akin to using an atom bomb to kill an ant!

(Source of my numbers: RBI tightens online card use)

What could RBI have done instead? How could they “place a fan” so to speak?

• Tighten the current system by using address checks a bit more prudently (like American Express does)
• Make sure that all the banks that issue credit cards get insurance to cover the 0.16% fraud
• Ask the credit card issuers to be a bit more pro-active and call consumers if their system flags an order above Rs 3,000 or so as “possible-fraud”

Action Summary:

• Don’t over think your problems. Don’t spend unnecessary time on creating efficiency.
• Get to the root of the problem before trying to solve it.

Deconstructing Hype: Why Do People Hype Up Products

Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | 2 Comments

1.

This past couple of weeks, the most repetitive conversations I’ve had are about:

i. Michael Jackson. Admittedly, the first tape I had bought was a MJ tape. But I was surprised by the reaction of folks to his death (Michael Jackson almost takes the internet with him) – seeing how he hadn’t released any new music since 2001!

ii. Google’s Chrome OS. Folks are excited by something that isn’t going to come out till another year!?Folks are going bonkers with speculation of how Google is going to pull down Microsoft once and for all (Google drops a nuclear bomb on Microsoft)… without even having a look at the software first!

So why do people over-hype such celebrities, products and events?

Why do more people buy Nokia phones than iPhones. But more people blog about iPhone than Nokia?

Why are celebrities like Victoria Beckham still so popular and in news when Spice Girls peaked ages ago?

Why are folks like Paris Hilton still hitting the magazine covers regularly?

2.

Nathanael Fast – who earned his PhD in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University conducts a test. He gathers 89 people. And shows them a list of 8 baseball players and their past years statistics. Some of these players are obscure players but who put up some amazing numbers on board. And others are very popular players who underperformed in the last season.

Each of these 89 folks is supposed to select one baseball players name from the list – and send a short email about him to someone else from the group.

• When the participant is told that the person she is going to send an email to is an avid fan of baseball and somewhat of an expert at it – she would select an obscure player who has fantastic statistics.
• But when the participant doesn’t know anything about her correspondent, she would select a popular but under performing player!

Conclusion of the experiment

People select topics of conversation based on their understanding of what the other party will be able to grasp. We converse to build connections with others. And nothing helps in building connections than talking about something we both are aware of.

As a result – we talk about things that are already popular. And thus fame begets more fame. Popular products and people stay popular longer than they should because they serve as conversational fodder.

Hype is nothing buy a by-product of our need to connect with others.

3. Why is Laughter Contagious?

Did you start laughing by the time the above 7 minute video ended?

The above video is awesome. It shows how laughter spread virally. It shows what we do to build connections with strangers. We will laugh for no good reason other than just because others are laughing. This is a deep rooted need of ours and we have very little control over it – because we end up laughing by just seeing a video of other people laughing too!

So how does this post help you?

Action Summary:

• Unless you’re famous already, tag with products and people who are famous. Its an easier way to show up on people’s radar.
• Start your posts and articles with a common idea – something people can connect with.

Trending & Timing (How do you know when a product will hit its tipping point?)

Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | 3 Comments

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” – Thomas J. Watson (IBM president) in 1943

Its disputed whether Thomas J. Watson ever said those words or not. But everyone makes fun of him today for the quote (or misquote as the case may be)!

The thing people forget is – Thomas J. Watson was correct for about 10 years after 1943! If IBM would have invested heavily in computers in 1943, they would have gone bust!

But IBM smartly waited till 1950s and 1960s. And became the first big company to become bigger by riding the computers bandwagon at the right time!

So how do you find when is the right time?

Derek Sivers (of CDbaby fame) recently posted an awesome video on his blog:

Spend the 3 minutes and 6 seconds to watch the video. Its an awesome video because we rarely get to see a movement starting out and gaining momentum in a 3 minute time frame!

If you see the video – you’ll see that the dance movement could have gone bust at any point in its first 1 minute.

• A single guy dances for 22 seconds (but we don’t know how long he had been dancing before someone began to shoot that video)
• Second guy joins at 22 seconds
• Third guy joins at 53 seconds
• Two more guys join at 1 minute 12 seconds
• Three more guys join at 1 minute 15 seconds
• And then we lose count as everyone joins the bandwagon

Most things that trend follow a similar path.

• Founders start.
• Geeks join in. (By geeks I mean people who know everything there is to know about the field. They are the tinkerers.)
• Then we see the early adopters.
• And then we see a few mavens join in (people who don’t attract huge crowds but attract the people who have huge crowds.)
• And then we see the influentials.
• Finally we see the huge crowds.

Sadly – most products and movements don’t survive till they reach the maven stage. But if you had to bet money on it, you can say with good accuracy that a product will trend and succeed only after it reaches and gains traction at the maven stage!

If you really want to be right with your timing on new innovations – don’t be an early adopter (because you’ll get burnt more times than not). And don’t follow influentials (because everyone else will be following them too – and so you won’t have any edge.) But find the mavens of your field. And follow them.

That is the only way you can stay ahead of the curve – ahead of your competition in your field.

(Of course – if you’re an investor – you need to be one step ahead of the mavens. And mingle with geeks. But keep a sharp eye out because not every idea the geeks tinker with will succeed.)

Action Summary:

• Find the mavens of your field. Heed the mavens.
• Notice when a product or a movement cross over from the mavens to the influentials.
• As soon as you notice that – jump on the bandwagon yourself. And be ahead of the crowd that is sure to follow.

###

A few of my trending predictions based on following mavens in the IT field:

• Shared hosting will be extinct. Cloud hosting will rule. Expect all the major hosts to jump over and invest in cloud hosting within the next couple of years.
• Virtual currencies will become big and hot. Expect your favourite portal site or social networking site to come up with its own trading platform where you can earn and use a virtual currency. Facebook and Twitter apps will reward you with points which you’ll be able to redeem for real $$.

Which ideas do you think will trend soon?

Rewarding the Bottleneck for Efficiency

Thursday, June 4th, 2009 | No Comments

1. Rewarding Drunks To Create Efficiency

While I was in USA, I was working with a local non-profit who provides temporary housing and support to poverty ridden folks. And while doing research for them, I come across Seattle’s “1811 Eastlake Project.”

The project rewards the chronic drunkards of the city by giving them a rent-free place to live forever. The reasoning is: rehabilitating the worst drunks cost about $13,000 per year. But if these folks aren’t given free food and stay and taken care of, they end up costing $50,000 to the system per year on average… because of the staggering costs of the detox vans, emergency rooms, hospital fees, cop interventions, prison charges etc that each of them racks up.

Its a lot cheaper to have a drunk spend the night in a nice home than in an E.R. or in prison!

Even though I’m a big proponent of “everything that is rewarded – grows” – this issue made me realize that rewarding the bottlenecks is sometimes necessary to create better efficiency for everyone else.

2. Punishing a City & Killing Efficiency

Mumbai traffic is absolutely mad. Especially traveling to-and-fro from the suburbs to the city. It takes 40 minutes to cover a 8km distance during peak hours.

But there is no more space to create more roads on land to connect the suburbs to the city. So the government makes a bold plan to build a 2km sea-link from Worli to Bandra. This sea-link would cut down traveling time by 1 hour for everyone during peak traffic hours!

The “planning” shows that the 2km Sea-link would cost Rs 300 crore ($60 million) to build. Ah… the best laid plans!

The Worli fisherfolks oppose the building of the Sea-link. It would disturb their fishing. And because of their opposition, the Sea-link has to be extended from 2km to 5.6km and the height of the bridge has to be increased. The end result is: the Rs 300 crore bridge costs more than Rs 1,800 crore ($360 million) and is delayed by more than a year (add the opportunity cost of 120,000 cars driving 1 hour more than required everyday – for more than a year because of the delay!)

Wouldn’t it just have been better to allocate Rs 300 crore to the Worli fisherfolks to make it easy for them to adapt – instead of adapting the bridge to work around them and increasing the cost by 6 times? Yes many of them fishermen would be inconvenienced. Many would have to move. But paying a few lakh to each of them would have taken care of their grievances. And saved Mumbai $250-300 million and a year of crazy traffic!

How To Start Your Own Private URL Shortening & Redirection Service (And Why Is It a Rocking Idea)

Friday, May 29th, 2009 | 11 Comments

I recently bought the domain name http://anke.sh for $72.80 per year. A .sh domain is 9 times more expensive than a .com domain. So why did I buy it?

1. Because its a very short URL. 4 character .com domain names aren’t available anymore.
2. The domain stands for my first name after all. So there is an inherent value to it.
3. Which makes it a very valuable domain name to start my own private URL redirection service on.

But Why Start A URL Redirection Service?

Micro blogging is becoming popular. Service like Twitter have a 140 character limit for messages. So you can’t use long URLs. The longer the URL’s you share, the less text you can write promoting it – hence killing its virality.

I can use http://anke.sh as a URL shortening and redirecting domain for all the links that I share with folks via social media and micro-blogging networks!

But Why Not Just Use Free URL Shortening & Redirecting Services Like TinyURL.com or Bit.ly?

Two reasons for that:

1. I’m promoting my own brand. Some of the folks who click through any of the redirected links – will be curious enough to visit http://anke.sh too (which is redirected to this post).
2. But more importantly – I get to make a presence on the traffic logs and analytic tools of all the websites I promote!

Website analytics tools don’t show who is sending traffic to your website – if that traffic comes from social media sites. But by using my own URL redirection service, http://anke.sh will show up on the people’s analytics tools if I link to them.

And hopefully that will open up a few doors for me. It will mean folks opening my emails if I’ve promoted them before – because now they’ll know that I’ve promoted them before!

So… How Can You Start Your Own URL Shortening & Redirecting Service?

1. Find a short domain name using http://domai.nr/

2. Install WordPress on that domain
2a. Activate pretty permalinks.

3. Install the Redirection plugin
3a. Go to “Options”. In the auto-generate URL field, enter: http://doma.in/$hex$ (where doma.in is the short domain you’ve bought.)

Thats it. You’re all set. Now every time you come across a link you want to share, instead of using tinyurl or bit.ly – use your own domain name.

Tips While Creating Redirected URLs Using The Redirection Plugin

i. Leave the source empty and a random URL will be auto-generated. You could add an easy-to-remember keyword in the source field too – if you desire that.

ii. Once the redirected URL is made, click on it – and change its HTTP to “302 – Found” option. SEO experts tell me that only by having a 302 redirect will your domain name show up in their analytics logs.