BlogSat

Warning: I was in bit of a ranting mood as I boarded a late-evening bus back to NYC when I started this post, but didn't get around to finishing it much later, so the tone may change a bit. :) There's an interesting interview with Mark Pincus., well.. there's an interview with Mark Pincus, in the NYTimes. Now Zynga is extremely successful right now, and Mark Pincus seems like a pretty smart guy. I was at a conference where Pincus was on a panel and he was by far the most interesting and opinionated person there, and clearly pretty sharp. But I have a problem with this article. I find the "everyone is a CEO" terminology annoying and condescending. Why on earth do people feel like they need to be told to be the CEOs of something to do their job well? The real problem I have with this: its seldom true. I appreciate the power of the words to inspire and the empowerment that people feel when you tell them this. For example, you're probably a lot more likely to t...

Hmmm....I'm a fan of good acting and good marketing and good advertisements...which is why everything is this ad from Microsoft makes me cringe. Its not a terrible idea in itself...I guess. Well, its a pretty terrible idea actually, but the execution is atrocious. The ad is badly conceived, horribly scripted, and the acting is so fake it makes the worst Bollywood melodramas seem understated. Yikes!

Oh well , More here. Now Oscar has no choice but to live in the garbage can. :( I grew up watching Sesame Street, and was surprised to see many of the same faces (people, not puppets! :)) when I caught a few clips on the Sesame Street YouTube channel recently. Here's my favorite kiddie song adaptation . :)

I knew it would finally take something incredibly dumb to get me blogging again....and so here's something incredibly dumb. :) An Israeli defense firm apparently commissioned the video below as part of a marketing strategy. Yikes...

It looks like I'm in the mood to complain today. I had to a pay a bill online and I was confronted with this! It escapes me why you wouldn't just label the textbox "Email ID:" instead of having the annoying little text underneath.

Back from a personally important, eventful and happy vacation. :) But I'll re-start bloggin with a rant! I was really annoyed by the sheer incompetence of the marketing team of a certain large consumer electronics company at CES. Imagine a high-profile presentation, thousands of people watching and you demo your latest technology. The demo is well-choreographed with your CEO on stage and two "users" of your technology talking about how the technology has improved their lives. One "user" shows a video of her infant daughter, talks about her hometown, how the technology is so impressive and has made her world a better place. The "users" are really polished and demo is very clearly canned, but still impressive. Applause all around. If it had ended there, I'd have been fine with it. Except that it didn't. A couple of hours later, I strolled over to the CES booth of the same company to show a demo of one of their technologies to a colleague. I imagi...

Another awards ceremony , except the winners here are the"favorite" companies/products of readers of four leading techblogs. I see why everyone is doing this, but still think its silly if this succeeds in the long-run: - The blogs' motivations are clear: they're growing and trying to diversify (conferences, events etc.) and this is part of it. With the sponsors and tickets, they will turn a profit on it, while raising their collective profiles further. - The companies motivations are clear: at least the winners: everyone likes the free marketing. - The audience: .... people like awards ceremonies? people like comparing things? Products should be reviewed and critiqued, and companies should be rewarded on the stock-market. This feel-good award-fest (while it may be fun) is questionable in value at best. Awards for the best CEO? Best business model? c'mon! And what the hell are the acceptance speeches going to be like? Are there people going to be there that actual...

Hunter Walk (Product Management, YouTube) has a couple of great posts on Product Management. He links to this post by Ken Norton (now at Google) on hiring PMs. The post is pretty great, but I had doubts about one point. " I usually ask an interview candidate a series of logic questions to gauge intelligence. " I 've had quite a few interviews where you spend some time on logic questions/brain teaser-type thingies, and have developed doubts about the effectiveness of this. There are two reasons for this: quick on your feet is great, but not if you're going to get up and start running in the wrong direction!! I 've been lucky enough to get to hang around a lot of smart people (often at a respectable distance:)). I 've also been around a lot of people that sounded smart. There is a difference, and I think "quick on their feet" favors that latter. It favors confidence and polish, over thoughtfullness and thoroughness. It favors quick frameworks o...

A couple of weeks ago, someone said something that sounded really smart. The idea seemed bold, incisive and very original....until I heard it again a little bit later from someone else... and then once more from yet another person. Each of these people seemed to imply they came up with the idea themselves. Now there are very few truly original ideas. Most of us come up with stuff by applying what we've learned in another domains to a new one, or by building on the work of others. The most "original" ideas and thoughts can come from the conscious or unconscious application of standard tools, patterns, and frameworks to new field and applications. (A professor I had once said" Convert every problem to a nail so that you can use this hammer that you have") So variance in ideas can come from either applying different tools and patterns, or learning from different sources. However, over time (especially in small groups where everyone gets really busy and everyone h...

I've decided some words are used far too frequently/loosely and have resolved to use them better in daily life. :) Startup: thrown around far too often because saying one works at a start-up sounds sexier than saying one works at a small company. So new rule: if you work at place that has been around for more than two years and/or has released the second version of their product, the place is no longer "starting up". You work at a small company, not a start-up and you should be fine with saying it.

Some random observations as I watched late-night TV Catching Tucker Carlson on Real Time right now. My suspicion when I saw him for the very first time on Jon Stewart's now-classic, Crossfire-canceling appearance is confirmed: his arguments generally don't make too much sense, he seems to whine a lot, seems a little mean, seems pretty immature and isn't as smart as he seems to think he is. Enjoy his discomfiture below. I prefer Craig Ferguson so much more than Conan , NBC should be worried about that "Late night leader"-tag especially with Leno's forced retirement coming. :) Everyday for years my routine was set: catch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart , switch to NBC for up Leno, and stay there about half-way through Conan before going to bed. Now I almost always switch channels and make sure I don't miss Ferguson's energetic opening monologue. Apparently, his strong accent isn't proving to be as big a hindrance to his ratings as people once...

Ok. I found something to rant about again.:) I'd thought about this when I read this TechDirt article as few weeks ago. Someone sued Google and Yahoo, because he claimed the names were based on Tanzanian tribe names....and somehow this was evil. The suit is a frivolous one, but as the article points out there are tons of startups whose names are essentially just Swahili words. Now, this would annoy me about any language. but the overuse of a language that I could once speak (I'm told that till age 5 it was the language I was most comfortable with) seems particularly egregious. The practice may have been interesting the first time, even the second, sometimes it can be still be witty and original...but at some point its just being unoriginal. I'm willing to bet that most people in these startups don't have a Tanzanian/East African connection of any sort, so its just one way to find a name that seems "cool"....either to them or an expensive naming consultant....

There was a time a long, long time ago when I cared very deeply about football (soccer, not American. Still don't care about real American football ; love it in the movies though .) I knew the teams, the players, the transfer prices, the rules, the leagues, the cups etc., etc. My interest started to wane mid-way through college, and has gone downhill since then. I still read soccer news on the web occasionally, but I haven't been able to recite the standings at the top of each league, like I once used to, for quite a while. But you don't need to be a soccer fan in the US to know that David Beckham has come to L.A. , to play for the L.A Galaxy (a team in the MLS .) The Posh and Becks show has been playing relentlessly on the US news, reality TV and dozens and dozens of magazines . Beckham is a pretty good football player (yeah, I'm going to call it football for the rest of this post.) There was a time when you could say he was the best footballer on the planet and ke...

... that is the question. The Grand Canton 's recent rant got me thinking. There's been no shortage of people losing job s, destroying friendships and even being threatened because of what they put on their blogs. On the other hand, I've had it drilled into my head on numerous occasions that the only truly effective writing, is that in which the writer is being completely honest. The most compelling blog posts I've read are unique because of the author's perspective, and honesty seems like a pre-requisite, or at least essential, to be able to do that. But what is the cost of that honesty? What the point of a blog is, even what constitutes a blog vs. a news/opinion website is a pretty complicated issue, so I'll skip that. But let's assume that most personal blogs are used to communicate personal opinions and experiences. I've often heard the analogy made that a blog post is a one-way conversation, or a speech. Now, that to me is extremely dangerous, be...

Sigh...yet another post, yet another excuse. I was pretty sick all of last week and it started exactly on last Monday. I could feel something coming on, but that didn't prevent me from over-doing it and going and watching a movie. Yes, I'm stupid like that. Apparently a sure way to be really sick, when you suspect you're going to be sick is to sleep even less. I averaged 3-4 hours between Sat and Mon, which meant my approach to valuing a company during my study group meeting on Tuesday was adding another $100 million for every degree above normal body temperature that I felt and just getting done with it. Cough and a cold followed the fever, and despite the required, moderate pill-popping to get me through the day by Friday I think it was officially the second time since I got to Chicago that I had no option but to spend the day all at home. Spent the weekend mostly bundled inside except for a study group meeting or two or three. Anyway enough complaining. Highlights of the...

... while I was supposed to be getting stuff done.:) I thought Tetris was the most addictive game around, then I found Snake , thanks to this post over at MobileCrunch . Also I didn't know who Sonu Kakkar was, until I realized she's the voice behind 2 of the three songs I can't get out of my head since yesterday. YouTube links below. Hope you get to em before the lawyers do.:) (BTW: Arguments for and against the Viacom lawsuit.) In case you're wondering, yes all it takes for me a like a song is a silly backbeat.:) Update: For some reason there's "adult content" warning on one of them though it played on Indian national TV, pretty much whenever.

Got to this story , via Alootechie (a site I'm partial to only cos it's name is so geekily silly:)) Apparently this was in response to "limited participation in social and cultural activity" by the students of (and because of a recent suicide at) IIT Bombay (incidentally why isn't it calling itself IIT Mumbai now that the city has been renamed? And why isn't there a IIT Chennai ? Think they're concerned about losing brand value? or will there be just too much work involved in changing web addresses?:)) Argh..I digress a lot. Anyway, the Dean of the School decided to ban Internet access in the hostel rooms from 11pm to 12:30pm. That's right: for more than half the day. I have a simple question. How can people in charge of the education of some of the smartest kids in a country (and arguably the world) do something so incredibly boneheaded? And how are they getting away with it? Seriously?:) What's next? Banning access to all books because some st...

Mondays are beginning to get a little rough. Last monday was bad (defined as interesting and tiring), but I wasn't expecting anything too eventful this week. Well, think again. My ability to create interesting situations for myself continues to amaze (and distressa) me. Let's just say assignments for this class (Macroeconomics) and this class (Going to Market) , combined with certain time-tested procrastination tools , meant that I just had 3 hours of sleep before completing the assignment for this class (Technology Strategy.) As always, the class was a lot of fun and I really enjoy discussing these topics. Headed straight after that to a talk by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. I'd read about the UN's millenium goals a while back and was really excited to see him in person, so it was a little strange that I started dozing off during his speech. Part of the problem was of course the sleep deprivation, but the other was..quite frankly...I don't think I was the audience for th...

One of the delights of giving up this gig , is that I have a little (just a little) more time to myself. While I manage to spend most of this extra time unproductively, I've managed to spend a little bit of it in a manner that leaves me very briefly proud of myself. I've been auditing this class with Prof. Davis , which means I get to sit in, but do none of the work.:) I really like the class: I don't know how much of it I'll be able to keep with me, but these are the kind of conversations I like to be part of... He made an observation in class that friends had brought up before in conversation. I don't remember the exact phrasing, but he said something to the effect: "I worry about the diversity of thought in organizations, for example McKinsey, where I have quite a few friends but they tend to hire people who think like them." Sounds familiar? I think that's part of it, but there's more to it than even that. It's not just that people in comp...

Alright, the NVC is kind of a big deal around here...well given that it's Chicago and entrepreneurship, its a surprisingly big deal. The reason I think it is the deal that it is, is (look ma..3 is's) the fantastic job the Polsky Center does of both organizing and marketing it. Now, as I look back upon what will have been my MBA education, what stands out is the suprising lack of what are the traditional "entrepreneurship" classes out here at the GSB. I mean didn't I come here wanting to be an entrepreneur? Then why did I just keep finding other classes more interesting? This guilted me into doing at least something entrepreneurial-ish before leaving here. Anyway, the entry form and initial "feasibility summary" (an introduction to the idea and some business model analysis) for the New Venture Challenge was due yesterday. Now, fortunately for anyone considering entering the competition next year, you can learn a lot from my experience over the last week...