Green Enticements – tree for profile update

“We will plant a tree for that”

Chanced to look at AutoDesk’s website and found they they are promising to plant a tree for updating a profile. Very interesting enticement. I wish they share more info about the results of the program. BTW, I visited Autodesk site just to check their location based service offering and SDK. With so much interest in being Carbon Neutral, creating a database of trees in a locality along with a lot of additional information about the tree will be a good starting point for the Gen M to appreciate trees in their terms.

Project Green Hands is a mass tree planting initiative to increase the green cover of Tamil Nadu state by 33%. It is a people’s movement with involvement of children and youth. If anyone wants to offer the same enticement, Project Green Hands is the place to go.

Proto.in Serendipity Enhancer: RippleRap Conference Notes Sharing

While Proto.in via Secondlife featuring is to enhance participation and interaction for remote participants, RippleRap Conference notes sharing is to enhance sharing and serendipity for proto.in event attendees. RippleRap is based on tiddlywiki a browser based personal wiki. Agenda and basic information about participating startups will be preloaded in the tiddlywiki. During the presentation, the wiki will be very handy for notes taking. Interestingly, the notes will be synced up periodically with other tiddlywiki instances thereby effecting notes sharing.

Priming the tiddlywiki file with agenda, and startup information is the effort to be done prior to the event. Informing, educating and assiting the participants about RippleRap notes sharing is the effort to be undertaken during the event. The purpose of this post is to find volunteers that will help in this effort. Some data entry for typing in the agenda on to the tiddlywiki file is to be done.

RippleRap team, represented by Phil Whitehouse and others(Phil Hawksworth, Paul Downey, Osmosoft team) were kind enough to setup the sync server specially for proto. They really went out of their way to get RippleRap working for proto. A loud shoutout of cheers to them! He Ha!

Featuring Proto.in via SecondLife: As if Being There!

What does the old cliché, Location! Location! Location! translate into in an increasingly flat world? When there is problem of plenty( not exactly abundance) what is the single thing that makes or breaks? Is it not Serendipity? As I’d like to often say, When Geography is History, Serendipity is the New Geography.
A startup showcasing event like Proto.in remarkably increases the serendipity factor of a startup. While that happens, Proto.in event itself can do well with a few serendipity enhancers.

With that in mind, I’ve been advocating Featuring Proto.in via SecondLife. As you might be aware, SecondLife is a 3D virtual world – a game like environment with a mini-economy to boot and a lot of social networking features. Although game like, it is emerging as a valuable business tool, for instance, ScondLife as a travel free meeting place is collapsing geography for events. Featuring Proto.in via SecondLife is an attempt to reach out to a wider audience. The featuring will encourage remote participation and is expected to add vibrancy to the (startup) ecosystem. The idea of using SecondLife is to encourage interactivity especially by remote participants. In a nutshell, the audio and visual richness of SecondLife will serve as an interesting back-channel for the event.
Amazon Web Services, a pioneer in using SecondLife as a tech evangalism medium to reach out to startups, has gracefully offered the Amazon Developer Island Sim for the event. Thus, 2008 January edition of Proto.in is set to be featured in SecondLife at the Amazon Developer Island 1 a place with rich South American Amazonian ambiance frequented by Amazon Web Services developers. Each presentation at proto will be live cast via SecondLife such that a world wide audience could participate(as Avatars) and interact with the startups via text and voice chats.
We are not going to stop just with live casting the event out. It is going to be two way! During lunch networking time, an array of remote experts will join the conversation, offer their insights. Indeed, like corridor conversations in a conference, there is a lot of wisdom and networking opportunities at these back channels.

For assistance, teleport and in-world help contact Avatar: Startup Republic. For other discussions and clarifications contact me – Labsji Link( Balaji Sowmyanarayanan in real world). Enjoy Proto.in via SecondLife – as if being there, anytime, anywhere – almost!

Hat tip to Veodia.com for making the streaming to SecondLife effortless! I’ll blog about the setup adventure post-event stay tuned!

MMA: Wealth Management – Asset Allocation: Why, How.

Last week, I attended a Madras Management Association program series titled Personal Finance and Wealth Management Series. The first of the series was on Wealth Management and Financial Planning. ICICI Bank wealth management is the knowledge partner for the series. Vineet Dhar Business Head Wealth Management, ICICI Bank Wealth Management and Dhaval Kapadia Head Financial Planning Desk, Wealth Management and Private Banking made an interactive presentation. The Program was chaired by R Raghuttama Rao, Managing Director, ICRA Management Consulting Services Limited
The main theme of the presentation was,
Structured Investment is the way to go.

Structured Investment is based and systematic and scientific methods backed by research.

All aspects of individuals profile and outlook are to be taken into consideration

ICICI Bank’s wealth management and other wealth managers in the ‘industry’ will be more than willing to help anyone willing to take the structured investment route.

Key aspects covered in the first part of the series were guidance for profiling and discussion on Asset Allocation. The benefits of going through the process systematically and more importantly reviewing the progress against goals periodically and effecting course corrections and re-balancing were stressed. As can be expected, knowledgeable and helpful Wealth Managers form ICICI will be happy to help out with a smile and a spectrum of products are available to fit every type of investment need.
The Vineet and Dhaval were pretty scornful of conventional investment wisdom of using gold and real estate to build major portion of your wealth portfolio. The discourse leaning was towards institutionalized and well regulated forms of investments that fits well within their structured framework and tracked by their research radar. And there was extra extra stress in merits of investing in stocks. A clueless investment novice like me is able to see caveats in the discourse. My objections are simple – is there enough quality basic data to give credence to research based approach? This question becomes complex when you consider that much of the Indian economy is unorganized and thus cross verifiable data is hard to come by. And the role of black money in skewing data and research is another of my concern. The concept of well regulated is also a matter of my concern – regulation just means that ordinary folks cannot game the market, whereas the powerful and the mighty( especially the mega Manhattan players) can getaway with anything.

While the intent was to guide people to manage and grow their wealth, the content and presentation had a lot of shortcomings. For instance they started off with a good question, “What is the difference between an Investment and Savings” but never attempted to answer it.

Despite best effort by the Chair Raghuttama Rao to keep questions and discussion to the topic, there was a free run on to macro economics especially currency. The presenters were just feeding the digression rather than directing to the topic of personal finance.

The MMA evening events in the city thus far has always been about high level view of topic under discussion. The audience need to be settled into the ‘hands-on apply it in life’ mode to make the series effective. Perhaps some mocks and well designed games will do the trick.

I was surprised to note that the message the presenters were driving at is ‘Wealth Management is complex, leave it to (our) experts’ where as they must be telling ‘Wealth Management is fun if you know it, We are here to help. In the long run you will find it worth the while’ They were throwing jargons after jargons without any examples to relate. A typical customer outlining his profile and his investments in a simple well made video would go a long way. Made me wonder if ICICI is deviated from the path of reaching out to larger section of people via self service and automation.

Overall a very laudable initiative. And I look forward to the next session in the series and my sharing the abundance!

Bonus Links:
More MMA Events.
Another coverage by NrichSoft – a blog about personal finance.

FilmCamp at Mylapore Fest: Let us make a movie…

Sundaram Finance Mylapore Fest with all its vibrancy is adding FilmCamp to the festivities. The setting is very conducive for short film making especially with a Modern Meets Conservative Madras/Mylapore twist.

FilmCamp.TV is an organization that focuses on teaching, producing and screening new Indian cinema. As part of the teaching initiative, FilmCamp.TV conducts one-day workshops called ‘1:1 Filmmaking Workshop’. At these workshops, complete novices organized in groups, make one-minute films.

This is a unique filmmaking workshop in that participants collaboratively write scripts, storyboard it, shoot it (using cameras provided) and edit their films (using Mac computers also provided). The workshop is entirely hands-on for participants. Every stage of production is overseen by instructors. All films are completed in one day. Completed films are screened on HYPERLINK “http://www.filmcamp.tv” www.filmcamp.tv website and also at offline screenings.

The workshop is intended as media empowerment for the common man. With the advent of digital filmmaking, the associated tools have become more easily accessible. FilmCamp.TV aims to use these tools to demystify the filmmaking process and make it available to the common man. FilmCamp.TV has successfully conducted 7 such workshops in Bangalore, Chennai and Mysore in the last two months. Over a hundred participants from ages 13 to 60 have gone through these workshops. The 25 plus short films made so far at these workshops are testimony to its success. Visit www.filmcamp.tv to view these films.

In addition to the workshop, FilmCamp.TV has instituted a Grassroot Filmmakers Grant for participants of these workshops. The grant provides the budding filmmaker with equipment (camera) and editing facility to make their next film. The aim is to build communities of filmmakers that support one another in making films.

The following are details of the workshop:

Venue: Mylapore, Nageshwar Rao Park

Date: Saturday, 5th January: 8.00 am to 8.00 pm

Requirements: Open to ages 12 and above. Bring book, pen and bottle of water. All equipment provided. No food provided.

For more info visit: HYPERLINK “http://www.filmcamp.tv” www.filmcamp.tv or Call Raghu: 92434 22797 or Hari: 99013 04972

PS: Sorry for the earlier title that said it was for free. Hrish quickly adds that the workshop fee is Rs 1000.