I am reading the transcript of the conversations held by the Union Square Ventures, and reading a quote by Sir Ken Robinson (who is now fairly well known in the education circles for his TED Talk). In the talk, he quotes a note from the book “The Empty Space” by Peter Brooke. In a way of not breaking what he said, Let me quote him.

   There was a fantastic booklet a few years ago by a
   guy called Peter Brooke.  He’s a theater director,
   if you ever come across it.  He wrote a book called
   “The Empty Space.”  And he asked himself this
   question.  He was concerned most theater and is –
   loose entertainment — it’s not invigorating.  It’s
   like a passing time.

   His thing is theater as a vibrant,
   social and cultural force.  So, he also analyzed
   what goes wrong with the theater.  So, he asked
   himself this question.  He said, What is the heart
   of the theater?  What is it?  What is this thing we
   are talking about?  And to get to it, he started
   the process of subtraction.  He said, “What can you
   take away from it and still have it?”
  
   And he said, well, you can take away
   the stage.  Take away the script.  You can take
   away the lighting.  See what’s going on, you take
   away the curtains, and you can take away the
   building.  You can take away all the crew, and you
   can certainly take away the director.  All of that
   is very easy.  Take it all out.
  
   The only thing you cannot remove from
   theater is an actor in a space and somebody
   watching.  That’s the heart of it.  And if either
   of those parts is missing, there is no theater.
   You need a performer and an audience.  Theater is
   that relationship.
  
   And he said you should never add
   anything to that relationship unless it improves
   it.  If it gets in the way, if it encumbers it, if
   it makes it more difficult, you shouldn’t have it.
   And that’s his problem with theater.  Everything is
   a distraction from the main business.

More than once, and whenever you do find yourself trying to redefine an industry, change the way a system works, or maybe even build an ecosystem, these words are good to turn to. Define the basics of what makes that system work, and see how it can be re-tuned, rebuilt and made to work better. You have to go back to the basics, if you want to redefine.

Once life starts picking up the biggest problem for me seems to be managing time, and most of all trying to avoid the moments when I end up cross booking the time slot for two people – yep, that isnt an easy situation to get out of.

When I am at home, and during weekends, I manage my Calendar on my Nokia Handset with an hour reminder. When I am in Office, I use Outlook’s calendar to manage schedules. The biggest issue is the first few meetings on Monday mornings – there are times when something comes up and there is no way for me to check my schedule.

So here’s the solution I’ve gone with.

Using Google calendar exclusively to manage my entire data. I found to my pleasant surprise that Google has a small app that can syncronize your outlook calendars with Gcalendar.

Secondly, after trying a host of free, opensource and cant-seem-to-get-it-to-work apps, I found CalSyncS60 which works like a charm with my Nokia Phone to do a two-way sync with my schedule in Google Calendar.

As of now, life seems to be in order. The fine line between, work and personal line is blurred forever, but it should atleast save me from breaking people’s hearts by forgetting scheduled meets and keep me on time. That’s a fair tradeoff.

I remember listening to a very wise man once utter the words that … “Every Civilization that ever survived and flourished, all had a culture of Right to Passages”. I am not sure if I heard much of what was said after that. My mind had already raced to a truth that I’d known innately. We must earn our right to passage, if we are to get anymore as a nation, civilization and as a species.

There is a troubling trend though. There is much talk about Entrepreneurship becoming a lifestyle – I still disagree with the notion (You are either built and wired to think like an entrepreneur or not). But there something very slithery scammy about entire groups of people and organizations working to make life for an entrepreneur “easier”. Support is another thing all together.

There was an incident at the Delhi Edition of Proto.in, where Sanjay Anandaram raised the simple question to the audience as to what all they expect from an Investor – and what should be the right metrics. The answers went all the way from “Should help hiring potential partners” to the obvious funding, to getting clients, to providing strategic direction. I must get a clip of that conversation, but when I did jot them all down, they were just about every element of a startup mapped. Nothing left. Sanjay did take the shot and ask the question “So what the hell does the entrepreneur do?” And he was bang on.

In my definition, entrepreneurs are risk-takers. They create wealth faster than anyone else because they are legitimate con-artists who’ve figured out a flaw in the system and they know that they can make money off of it – or by fixing it. They are also people with this innate capability to look at everything they got and can make a rocket out of it and be there before NASA can even fathom a trip. They are the junkyard Gurus, and they are great in survival tactics. They just need to fix things, and without that they’d ruin the world – so its better that they have something to fix. That’s my entrepreneur. And in order to make such elite ones – and rightly so – stand out, we need to go through our rights of passages. Without it, we are just recruiting lazy bums to the army and giving our entire freedom in the hands of those who wouldn’t know what to do with it.

And handing out entrepreneurship in a spoon, ah, such a thing doesn’t exist. Entrepreneurship will never be a lifestyle. It’s who you are.

Its 10:13pm. I just came back from IITM, after listening to a talk by Nandita Das on “Cinema and Social Change”. I have to admit that until today, I knew that the name had something to do with the Cine world, but I had no other associations of it. This is the first one, and it probably will last that way – thanks to Today.

There is something good about being in a University campus, and working there. You sometimes feel younger beyond your years, and sometimes you just feel out of place. In either case, it provides you an alternate reality – not that I wish for it, but the difference in perspective in opinion and viewpoint is one that I thoroughly enjoy.

I overall liked the talk. It was simple, casual, touched upon personal lives – had a wee bit of self promotion – was optimistic, and the tone was real. But perhaps the message was exaggerated.

See, Gandhi said the words “Be the change that you want to see”. Quite powerful words, and one that finds itself many meanings, depending on what lens you are wearing. Nandita felt free to use those words to stir up a moment, and even an applause from an audience. I dont blame her, but I think its a very common mistake. Let me tell you why.

Those words are around sixty years old. Look around you and tell me what has changed. Probably a little. Thats what nobody tells us about. I think we have developed this over-romantic ideology of what “Change” is. It’s really the simple things, and the little steps really. India going from a country which was under an empire, to becoming self-governing, to actually being one of the “positive” news in the economic situation – That’s change. But none of it comes easily. And if you look at things from an individual standpoint, you probably wont even have much to talk about.

Societal changes take ages to come into being. I have almost come to the conclusion that people never change. Its nice to stand on stage and talk about not getting angry when we are insulted. But the man was right, man is social and we are animals. And the first instinct is to get angry. And those who do act differently are either insane or, saints – both of which takes some working internally. The masses simply don’t comply with those rules.

So why am I writing about this topic in a supposedly “Startup guy’s” perspective. Because I think change is at the essence of entrepreneurship. We all aspire for it. We would love for what we create to take the world by storm, but most of us will live to see that thats not true. The world in most cases will act quite indifferent to it – not even hate it, which is the worst part. My mentor raised me repeating those words as I was making my baby steps. That was his way of preparing me for the real world. I couldn’t thank him more for it.

So does radical change ever happen? Absolutely. It happens only twice. One, if people are chasing after something that they desperately want. Its the romantic change. People will go to hell and come out unscathed to get that girl, that house, that future for their child. And there is one other occassion when that beautiful transformation happens – when we are at the brink of extinction.

Tell the world now that we need to save energy, and preserve water, and take care of this planet. They wont. But when our own life is going to be threatened, we would shut down all of our gadgets in a heartbeat, and happily prefer to live in the forests, in an unconnected world, oh so easily. Drastic change does happen… yep, but when we are in the precipice of extinction. If you are a startup though, that’s probably not the scenario you want to aim for

Be the Change… inspiring words, but somehow I have a feeling that those words will be scribed in futuristic placards and placed in a museum eons from now, and we still wouldnt notice the changes around us… because we missed everything. Because the change really is in the smaller things. When you can raise the tolerance level amongst ourselves by a few seconds, when one atleast starts listening to another for his viewpoint, and simply when we start reaching out for our ancient trait – of being an argumentative Indian, I believe thats where change really takes place.

3G. WiMAX. There is an inevitable showdown waiting on that camp. That’s probably also the reason why the deployments of WiMAX hasnt picked up by much. If you ask me, there is credit to deploying the 3G – or a network that is based on the telecom network. Why? Reliability. Ever picked up a landline and missed the dialtone? Thats what I am talking about.

With the economy slowing down a little, I guess the 3G talk is going to be dampened a bit here in India. But I dont think it should be. The consumerist trend hasnt slowed down and Indians have woken up to enjoying the usage of digital media, devices and services, that 3G as a service could very much consolidate and bank on. This post is partly written with the knowledge I’ve gathered being on both sides of the camp, as part of the Telecom group (and the plans that they are making with IMS – IP Multimedia Subsystem) and where the web, and industry have evolved.

Lets start with a Picture.

Ubiquitous Computing, will not be just a term anymore. Centralized, easily accessible, and convergence. I think that’s the three keywords which are almost mantras in the new lifestyle that is emerging.

Trends:

Follow the numbers on the diagram with the explanations below.

1. Your mobile phone is not just a phone. Ask Nokia and they will tell you that. If we start with the way of 3G, its also the means to a broadband pipe, and 3G is just the beginning. HSDPA, LTE, and all the planned roadmap of the GSM Data Network, seems to be only getting faster and faster. Now, why would I advocate relying on my mobile’s data network as the crucial pipe for everything?

Simply because its personal. I wouldnt use most of these devices on this diagram, unless I was home. Secondly, the “Base” would have an inbuilt GSM device, that would continue the connection even when the device is removed. The Device, if inserted will enable the SIM card, and hence authenticating the user being “home”

2. There are already Cordless devices available from Siemens and the likes who allow you to “add” as many handsets as you want. I’d imagine that the Home Communications device would be something like that. When you come home and plugin your Communication Device into the base, that would configure the Home Telephony system to handle all your phone calls. I think this is where the beauty of Social networks come in. Do you realize why OpenSocial, and especially Dataportability makes a lot of sense? Partly cause of this. Spam. Imagine, you knowing someone and them knowing someone else. If Person C calls you, you might want to pick up the phone. If a random person who has no connection to you in your “Social Map” calls you, there is a high chance it might be a spam. The VoIP Gateway, will be smart enough to also have a routing engine, which will put such calls directly into the voicemail. When you are home, you wont be bringing work home, especially the calls. There will be provisions for different profiles – such as Busy, Family Time, Free and Available Etc, which will allow a person to configure their settings.

There will also be another capability for this system. Notice how there is more than one “Base” in the architecture? The extra bases are for other members in the family. If the spouse comes home and puts his/her PCD into the base, whenever he/she gets a call, the Home Telephone System would pick up the call, and do the same thing, except with his/her settings, and will ring with a distinct ring. Wouldn’t that be neat? No more running around the house searching for your mobile to pick up a call.

Note: Iotum used to have something named a relevance engine to do this. Servion, an Indian Company, has a product named UQE – Universal Queuing Engine which does call routing based on rules as well.

3. The Shared Media Server concept is already happening. I used to be working on a Smart home project sometime back, and the first and foremost thing was a shared Media Server. Sony, along with its Vaio range of products offers a software that can access shared resources. The Songs that you purchase, be it from iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere, will automatically reside on the shared media server. It will also have the podcasts that you are subscribed to, both video and audio, the Television Shows that you have bought from iTunes, the Movies that you have rented over the net from the likes of Netflicks or Bigflicks, and will also be the storage for your Slingbox, or time-place shifted Television programs.

4. Television. Its nothing more than a screen actually. The only difference is that it will have an IP input (most televisions are starting to ship with it), instead of a Cable, and it will have the capability to directly interface with the media server or go online. Another option to configure this would be to allow your Xbox, PS3, or Apple TV Box to do the IP interface and connect the output to the television and shift the intelligence to the Box. With most Gaming consoles coming with an IP interface to go “Live”, and all of them obviously eying for this space in the system, they most probably will make it there.

5. Gone are the days when one used to have clunky and huge music and entertainment systems. I doubt we’d be buying those huge devices which can play music in the masses. There will be a need for such specialized hardware, but if you have a portable device, that is most probably going to go into a dock that can amplify the sound. That’ll pretty much be the extend of the use for home theatres and music systems. The portable systems would have the ability to purchase, download, and navigate to the internet to initiate a purchase/rental download to the media server and some integration to access the media on the Media server.

6. Computers. You will most probably not feel a difference at all. The computer has been the most flexible sandbox as technologies have evolved. The interaction mechanisms obviously would evolve, as touch, voice based technologies mature and become mainstream.

Other Scopes:

We will soon have centralized speaker systems and controls that would allow us to listen to music all around the space, and also zone off areas where we want to listen. Wireless speaker systems will play a part in all this.

RFID controls will factor in somewhere. If I do set the control to “follow me”, the music should follow me whichever room that I go to. RFIDs will also be a basic element for Smart homes.

Smart homes are definitely on the way in. Biometric keys, computer controlled lighting,  automatic curtain open settings, burglar sensors, vacuum robots, Digital Picture Frames, etc are already available in the market, and it wont take long before they all go mainstream.

Smart Toys, such as the Nabaztag, the Chumby are going to get more and more in the face, until people start adapting them. These devices apart from giving the impression of a rich-spoilt-brat, will also be aids for older people, assisting them, taking voice commands and getting things done for them. In markets like Japan where the population is more old than the young will especially go for such products – which is also the reason why there is heavy investments into robots. I’d give it another ten to twelve years before this becomes mainstream. But the Geekery toys are on their way much sooner for sure.

If you look closely at this system, most of them are already around us in some form or the other. It just needs to evolve a step further to become a reality – and that too not too high of a step. That’s where there is a lot of opportunity for startups to focus on. Perhaps that will happen, and we wont look at 3G as just a fat pipe, and keep scratching our head for more Value Added Services to appear to make it viable. Since the Subscription for the services such as the Gaming Console “Live”, the Music Store, the Television, Internet Access can be authenticated using the SIM card, there is a scope for Mobile Phone operators to leverage that. That’d be the secret to the ROI dilemma, in my opinion.

Ofcourse, this is just the first draft. What are your thoughts?

Download: Higher Resolution Image of Diagram

This is a continuation to a Post that I had written Earlier.

“Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.”

For a company which has entrenched itself in the media space, managing advertisements networks i probably the holy grail. I wouldnt recommend that Yahoo give up that leverage. Instead of going head on with Google and losing out on that battle, all they need to do is leverage that asset in a different vertical.

I wrote about perhaps using advertising networks, especially multimedia (audio/video) ads in Radio and television networks. One could argue that the ad server requirements, the infrastructure requirement and cost of operations would significantly vary because of the medium. I’d agree to some extent. But there is also a way to deploy the already existing asset, as-is, into different verticals. Read on.

I am not sure how many of you are aware of the CSCs coming up. The Community Service Centres, or Common Service Centres, are essentially Internet kiosks, each fitted with a fairly decent hardware and broadband connectivity, and the idea is to utilize those as hubs to deliver services into Rural India. It could be anything from eGovernance, health, Banking, Telecommunications, etc etc. There are a lot of private bidders who have won the tenders for regions (so the service delivery will be upto par on standards), and organizations in the likes of 3i Infotech, Reliance, Comat etc have come into this.

So Whats the opportunity for Yahoo or Google in all this? Well, there is a computer and its connected to the internet. Find a way to build a lightweight application that acts as a screensaver, which would display advertisements – pulling it from the internet – when the computer is idling. The advertisement can be focused to the rural space, and there is everyone from the likes of HLL, to your Cellphone companies, dying to get the attention of that market share.

The reason why the operators would be open to this idea is simply because everyone is trying to figure out how to break even in this business. As you could imagine, Rural India and technology are like lotus leaves and water drops. They just dont have a history of blending so far. And there is going to be that initial adoption curve issue for these services to pick up. And as a means of ensuring that the Kiosk Operator has some viable means of keeping at it, advertisements, and complementary services begin to play a role.

I believe there is a company which recently started in this space, and got funded by Sequoia. But yep, its definitely a market to explore.

Its so easy to Microblog. Twibble on my Mobile. Twitter Fox on all Desktops and Laptops that I usually access. Its never been so easy to jot down your thoughts.

Unfortunately it does seem like its eating a lot into my blogging habits. Its not like I dont have stuff to write about. I have close to atleast 20 topics that I have jotted down that I want to write about and get your thoughts on… except that, it seems like some herculean task to login into wordpress and blog. I even installed Scribe to see if the barrier would seem smaller, but nope, no luck yet.

It might be that I might switch to a fullswing microblogging format soon. And this might be the longest post by that standards. I can almost hear a “Phew!” from out there.

So I know that there are a gazillion guys out there in the whole wide world, who have given “open” advise to Yahoo as to what they should do. I am neither an expert, nor am vested into the company to have such generosity towards them

A friend of mine and I, over some conversations were discussing about some of the bigger brands that we see around us and something along the topics of Return on Equity. Not sure if you are aware of, but Microsoft has a 52% return on equity. Yahoo has roughly about 7% and falling drastically and Google has one which stands at around 26% – and growing steadily. Whatever you may say, Microsoft has played this game with a whole new set of balls and one most people simply won’t understand. And if you ask me, they are a much better company in terms of strategy and products compared to Google, anyday.

Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.

But that’s not the focus of this post.

The conversation was that, if a company has Advertisement as its core strength and has built a competence in it, then its going to be very hard for the company to drop that and adapt the advertising network of its partner/rival. Well, for the case of survival they might, but since they do have the core competence, the resources and the minds that can think in that direction, what could they possibly do, was the question.

Fact: Yahoo makes most of its money via advertisement, and that too on banner ads.

This becomes an issue when you have so much internet portals and properties, but just simply have to fill them with advertisements in order to make them viable. And in this day and age of APIs, nobody might even come visit the site to get hit by the advertisement. You are forced to rethink in terms of strategically placing the advertisement within the content, but thats a very very hard thing.

My Take: I think this is probably the same route as making fiber out of rocks. There might be some way to do it, but whatever it is, its one rare, long process.

I’d say, flip the coin, and lets look out to the horizon. Go after other streams, television and Radio… to be precise.

So go down memory lane and you will remember how there was a time when all the internet properties used to have a sales team to go chase after advertisers and get them onboard and once the term was over the havoc began all over again. Most of them knew that they could make more money if they managed the deal directly with the advertisers, but the cost that went into chasing orders, and managing the clients was too much an ordeal that when the concept of advertisement networks came about, people were more than glad to give up a marginal cost to have these services “managed”.

It happened for the web medium, and it can happen for the television and Radio network as well. Because they face the very same problems.

If you don’t believe me, check out this company. There is a company named Spotrunner. What they do is that they build an inventory of ads that the local television operators, while doing the programming, can draw advertisements out of. I think thats a very neat bloody idea. I know of people who are running campaigns and they get the sweetest deals out of this television networks during “off seasons”. And when its off seasons, oh boy, the inventories are really bad that they’ll run just about anything to keep those media streams flowing. During rainy seasons, nobody wants to sell or buy cars, consumer goods etc, and that usually is what constitutes a large chunk of the advertisement revenue. So, they usually fill it up with fillers and Awareness Advertisements.

But imagine if… a centralized network would manage all the advertisements with vendors, create an inventory, and as broadcast partners sign up, all they would have to do is enter in the keywords for the show, and they’d see options of which ads they can play. They can pick, and queue it and go about their work. When the ad gets played, whatever amount was agreed upon with the vendor gets deducted from the advertising account – this could technically even be a prepaid account. Now this totally leverages the broadcaster, since he has options of playing an ad of a sponsor that they have, and use the flexibility of the ad inventory to fill whatever is required, and hence maximizing his revenue potential. If laziness is one to bet on, eventually they’ll scrap their sales force, and resort to doing programming with most of these advertisements running in.

This is also brilliant, cause imagine if there is a talk show happening and knowing how most programmers can flip through the show quickly, they can even generate keywords – manually, or there could be a simple app that extracts out the audio and picks up keywords, and can “suggest” advertisements that would make the most sense. THAT would be relevant advertising indeed.

I think television stations get away with it, by a little bit. But Radio stations really struggle. If you do the same for them, with just audio, they’d keeel (spelling intentional) over themselves for it. I have closely observed how some of these radio stations work, including the popular and well known ones and having friends in that circle, one only hears one thing over and over again – finding sponsors and advertisers is a tough job.

So you’d start with something like this, and move on to the second phase, and then there is even a third. That, we’ll talk about tomorrow.

But Yahoo, I really hope you’ll see this, and more so, I’d like you to come back to your former glory. I think my first email account ever was a yahoo one, and perhaps that bit of loyalty still runs.

If there is one vertical that you MUST follow if you want to see some drastic changes happening, its essentially the media world. The way “media” is distributed, consumed and monetized is going to such drastic morphism that its hard to predict how its going to look like at the end. Like all things natural, a few business models would evolve, but the path to that is going to be quite a bumpy one with such established heavy weights.

We’ll most certainly get into the juicy details about this vertical, partly cause I am very much interested in it, but this post is not about that.

There was once a man who said that if you are looking at change, then you must go back to the fundamentals, look at the system at its bare bone and then see how it should go from there. That’s quite a solid piece of advice actually.

So this is the irony. Whats the difference between a jingle and a track? Quite literally none. While costs money to get it “aired”, the other demands money for people to buy and listen to it. Aint that quite interesting…

It’s quite possible that I am just plain simply crazy, but if you bear with me and try to understand how my brain and thought process works, I think there is most certainly an idea here.

Energy is a Pressing Matter and Hot Topic in all Circles, but I think the basis of our problem isnt focused on.

So I was sitting through a Sustainability Conference in IIT Madras today and there was one talk on Energy Consumption. The talk essentially mentioned how we ascertain energy demands by our peak hours. The problem being we need that at the most, and at times when its not the peak, we have to “shed” the load, and it usually ends up being dumped into the grid, and thanks to our grids not being designed properly, it usually ends up overloading half of rural India. That’s a different story all together.

The hint was in a passing by comment that the problem with energy is that it has to be consumed as and when its produced. There is simply no way to store it. If you want to store it in batteries and such, its simply not viable for large quantities, since its very expensive.

I have no idea what happened for the rest of the talk, apart for when he showed graphs and numbers – which always catches my attention, but he also mentioned that they were not accurate, which made me go “bleh” and back to my thinking process.

The Idea:

So Energy. The basis is that all energy is created from one form or the other. So Lets accept that we cant break this rule and make newton roll over in his grave. Knowing limitations are a plus point.

Lets learn a little bit of inspiration from biology. We take food, we break it down into amino acids, the smallest and easily metabolic form of food, and then the system burns it into energy as per the demands of the body. Compare it with however it is that we create energy, saying that one form of energy – coal or whatever is converted into energy which is converted into electricity which is probably the simplest form of energy.

If you look at biology, the food that is intaken, if the broken down food is more than the “demand” of the system, then the system quickly converts them into FAT and stores them all around the body – which is what provides all those funky love handles that people put so much energy to get rid of. But quite strictly speaking, its just the systems way of saying that we are consuming more than we need, and it is storing it away for a rainy day. The first signs of starvation and thats the storage unit that the system starts feeding off of.

Whats the FAT version of electricity? That’s the question.

Now, I am thinking that there is a possibility here that one cannot go directly from coal into  free flowing electrons. And we are probably missing a middle step that might help us with efficiency.

Secondly, there must be a way to join these electrons to become something that is more passive and with a trigger break them down into simpler free flowing electrons again.

And you know what? If that is possible… you and I would never have to wait for ages for our phones or ipods t get charged. We can technically dump these “FAT” into our devices, and let the device trigger these substance into electrons so that we get a full charge. But the deal is that, just like it doesnt take the body more than a few enzymes to break down FAT back into Amino acids and use them, we have to have these in a form that the devices themselves can transform without elaborate machinery – aka. combustion chambers and engines.

I think it should be possible. These are days when I wish I was a physicist and a chemist put together. But if, and I think it can be, it is possible, then technically we should be able to catch “energy” as and when it happens – from the lightnings, to tornadoes, to cyclones, save up all the energy and use it for when we need it. We can harvest all of the Sunlight hitting the earth and probably setup plants that can fight some of the global warming, and probably use energy in a way that is not as harmful to the planet as our current barbaric ways are.