Blue Screen of Death: About failure,And to do nots

I am holding my breath and waiting to read the failure story of Jawwad a successful Karachi businessman. I have read the preview of the book and it is very interesting. He makes an interesting metaphor of the infamous Windows bluescreen with respect to startups. I am able to fully relate with what he is talking about. Both at personel level and at professional level. It is written in a witty style. You can read it just for that. Here is a sample from his promotion in his blog

At the business school orientation for new arrivals, a fellow student asked me why I was at Columbia. My response drew a look of confusion – “I always wanted to write a book, run the New York Marathon and do a play on Broadway, the MBA is just for cheap subsidized housing.”

This of course was January 1999. As of 22 April 2006, I am proud to report that I am too fat to run and that though there were multiple attempts to produce Harvey, a Mary Allen Chase Play about a six foot tall invisible rabbit, all were sabotaged by a six foot tall invisible rabbit.

On the book front there is good and bad news. The good news is that no trees were cut down or killed in the final production run of the ebook “Blue Screen of Death – A desi’s misadventure in the land of opportunity”. Initial reviews are promising (read: not as bad as I expected), encouraging (no multi million dollar advance offers, but there is always hope for that call from Oprah or Ellen) and detailed enough to provide material for my next book “The Blue Screen – Reloaded”

My interest goes beyond the usual wannabe’s interest. I’m also interested to know how IT startups are doing in Pakistan. They dont have the baggage of the outsourcing success stories of TCS, Infosys and Wipro.

It might be interesting to note that I came across Jawwad’s blog while playing at BlogShares a fantasy sharemarket for blogs – I dont play a lot. It was pure Serendipity.

I will read the full book and post a full review.
Here is the favourite cartoon as usual from Hugh that puts the post in context

Update: Sam Phillips of Society of Actuaries has an interesting coverage of the Blue Screen Book. You can purchase the e-book too!

Will miss BarCampBangalore

I will not be able to make it to BarCampBangalore. Too bad. Perhaps I will watch on the blogs as it comes alive. I am sure it will be bigger and bouncier than the earlier BarCamps due to the momentum. Live bloggers clue me in. Thanks.
As usual cartoon courtesy Hugh

Selling blogs to Dinos

An interesting cartoon by Hugh Titled Two questions

Two hypothetical questions:

1. “How do I use blogs to change the world?”

2. “How do I use blogs to preserve the status quo?”

I speak at a lot of blogging conferences and whatnot. Seems to me, as these gigs get more mainstream and corporate, I’m asked Question Two A LOT MORE than Question One.

Looks like there is a Civil War like situation here. Civil War sans violence or bloodshead. But will bleed the heck out of the status quo.
I am going to develop this civil war concept a little bit and try to offer answers to ‘Web2.0:What is the business model?’ Maybe I will call it Livic Flux reflecting the reversal of power( read attension) back to people.
The current popular models are a big joke like a corporate projection: There will be a huge demand for flags during a Civil War.
The dino analysts will miss the point of civil war as an opportunity to play Mahathma Gandhi of the era.

Blogging as opensource of ideas

I came across an interesting post by JP in his on going Four Pillars discussion.

If we accept that blogging is the opensourcing of ideas, then we need to expect returns from blogging that are consistent with opensource software. Let’s see how that plays out:

* Opensource models are open to inspection and are consequently better designed through criticism and error and modification; opensource ideas should similarly reflect learning through conversation
* Opensource models acquire best-of-breed characteristics through a democratised and intuitive “natural selection” process, a wisdom-of-crowds meets emergence and blink approach, learning through adaptation; opensource ideas should similarly reflect a mashing, a hybridisation, of different schools of thought
* Opensource models also provide some element of future-proofing, since non-hierarchical routes are used to set priorities and resolve conflict, and only non-hierarchical routes can avoid past-predicts-the-future innovator’s-dilemma tunnel-vision nonsense; learning through discovery of new things rather than rehashing of old, in ideas as much as in software

My take: there is a tricky mixup of abstract and the concrete. Idea is abstract. Open source artifacts( like code, docs, spec etc) are concrete.
First let me explain the abstract vs concrete mix up.
The relationship that binds blogges is ‘Hey your abstract and my abstract intersect! – let us keep in touch’. Whereas the relationship that binds the opensource project community is ‘We will join forces to make our lives easy- it makes sense to work as community rather than individuals’
And at a different level a mix up of individual vs collective.
Blogging is a celebration of individuality.
Whereas Open source is celebration of the collective. The processes are tuned to smoothen the individual qualities.

The post further goes on to say that

Control is The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone knows it’s not there but no one says it aloud. If you need to have it you will never have it.

I guess business are starting to reflect life more and more. There is more and more realization of the validity of probabilistic nature of things over the (outdated)deterministic model.

Cheers.

Zaads a cool social network for ….

I am hooked to Zaadz. It has lot of very interesting people with interest in spiritual exploration and changing the world.
I came to know about it by tracking down Sushil Kumar who I met at BarCampChennai. I am planning to attend BarCamp Bangalore too, just to say hi to folks.

BarCampChennai: un to hilt

When Ram and Beem from Delhi visit Chennai
They become Ram-un and Beem-un

We are famous for un ing even Ram and Krishna

When BarCamp came from Delhi to Chennai
It was an unconference

We did’nt un it – we raised the Bar

We added momentum to it with memorable moments
And sending it to Bangalore and Pune

With All Cheers to Rock loaded with un to hilt

PS: If you mistake it for poetry welcome to un-prose!

Cartoon thanks to Hugh.

Looking for Capital? 5 tips

There was an interesting talk on getting ventur funding for your startup by Karthikeyan at BarCampChennai. He was asking the interested to be clear on why you want the money and how much you want. He was saying that for a typical VC, the minimum they can invest is $2.5m which is big money for India. Thus touching the rich uncle at US is the option. If you dont have one, excite a person who has one.
You Must have a good business plan.
You Must have a elevator pitch.
Web2.0 is a bad thing with VCs. They have a painful memory of web1.0!

He closed the discussion with 5 tips:
Network
Network
Network
Network
Network

Kewl. He even suggested that you make a pitch to Sabeer Bhatia saying that you are from BITS etc. It might work, as he is investing in everything.

On the offline discussion he suggested that you raise above your south indian conservative attitude of not being outgoing. If you find 4 people talking, join in and check if you can exchange biz cards etc.

There is a interesting cartoon by Hugh at gapingvoid.com on this

Cheers.

Update:
From Meera Mohanty’s The Hindu article:

BarCamp wasn’t just a place to learn about setting up a successful Web product, mobile computing, entrepreneurship, python (not a reptile) or ruby (not a gem). If you attended venture capitalist Karthikeyan S’s talk, it was also about how to get smart ideas funded. Priceless advice: Network (get a guy on your team with a rich uncle in the U.S.), Network (study at BITS Pilani, IIT, or IIM and make use of the alumni), Network (get invited or gatecrash a TIE, and take your minute with Sabeer Bhatia), and Network.

Network- That is where you are going to get your partners/employees/funders, that is where you are going to make your products sell, make revenue!

BarCampChennai Day2: More lively & more networking

The second day of Barcamp was more lively. People were familiar to each other and there were laughs at every turn and pun. There is a very good coverage by others so I’m not going through the details. My lement on lack of gadget passion show was partially satisfied during the Beyond PC talk by Atul and the networking was much deeper and more involved.
Thanks Kriba and gang for the BarCamp at Chennai. Three Cheers and etc..

Hang Loose!
-Balaji S.

Gadget Fashion show at BarCampChennai – or the lack of it!

A whole lot of laptops and such gadgets were on display at the BarcampChennai. I was surprised by the lack of a gadget passion show at the BarCamp. Writing tablets and such handwritten stuff is what I expectd to see. Other BarCamp organizers can make it a small side show!

Scary things at BarCampChennai

Normally I am not the one to get scared about rapid march of technologies and the way it affects the society, but I was scared of couple of things that came up at the BarCamp unconferencing event here at Chennai. Ganesh of Rupya.com was discussing deep details of how to do Search Engine Optimization to get a decent place in search engine results. Looks like someone interested needs to spend part of their life playing the ‘wag-the-tail’ game with Google and friends. I can imagine what will happen to my freedom when Google gets to offer other kewl ‘Free’( Now you know there is no such thing like free lunch) services that you cannot live without. Governments we can live with by paying the taxes. Google and friends we have to pay with life?!
This fear was further amplified by a post by Amit Agarwal a full time blogger who came all the way from Agra to attend Barcamp. The post highlights the viled threat by Google to 10K hits per day sites. I dont understand the full details, yet I am scared of the digital age erosion into freedom.
The other sacry thing that came up was Vijay Anand was porposing a comprehinsive citizen information database That even records every possible transaction. The scariest thing is Vijay is embarked on it with no profit intentions – he is ready to deploy his millions to boot it up. If it is business driven, it will fail on its own weight. His intent is commendable, yet as they say, path to hell is paved with very good intentions!
On the rocking side, there was a kewl intro by Kiruba and friends. And an interesting intro to Web2.0 by Narain The lunch was excellent. With lot of networking opportunities. I came across Arun from Bangalore, who I touched base after 13 years or so.

More to come!

Cheers.