Bjorno.licio.us

Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

I want to tell you today about two persons who have inspired me this past week.

Two very special persons who were not born privileged.

But dared to dream of a life beyond their early disadvantaged social statuses.

Succeeded and are now returning the favor a kind society had bestowed on them.

I am talking about Anousheh Ansari and Barack Obama;

Ansari because she had a dream beyond Earth, a dream I shared since 8, to reach for the skies beyond our planet. A dream she fulfilled this week.

Obama, who symbolises hope for a new generation in our current world that is increasingly polarized by political affiliations, race, religion and color.

From Ansari’s Spaceblog,

“All men have the stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You–you alone–will have the stars as no one else has them–””

From Obama’s 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention:

That is the true genius of America, a faith — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted — at least most of the time.

Our planet Earth has orbited once around the Sun since I started blogging and… I am feeling generous. =)

So I have decided to give a little back to my loyal dedicated readers, yea thats YOU.. who have given me so much back in terms of comments or just by reading it. When I first started writing this in late September last year, I never thought my 2nd attempt at blogging will last this long. Blogging has really helped crystallize my thoughts especially when I read some amazing article online that really spoke to me and I wanted to tell others about it.

My singular most effective form of motivation to write has been my blog traffic stats and though its nothing to shout about, I feel good knowing at least 50-60 people read it everyday. Who cares about quantity right? Small is the new Big when you have quality. And giving can sometimes be equally joyous as taking.

Here’s the deal:

Comment on this post by Sept 30, tell me which is your favourite article on my blog and why you liked it.

Best comment, chosen by me, will click away with the prize.

The Prize:

Your choice of any 3 songs from the iTunes Music Store (US).

My treat.

Oh, and everyone’s eligible. Thats the beauty of the Internet. Unlimited reach, free distribution costs. Anywhere in the world. Plus, I get to support my favorite company Apple.

” I rose halfway, leaned to the right, and cupped the object. I might as well have plucked volcanic lava from a crater. I could feel the flesh of my palm liquefying. Pain bolted up my arm like an electric current. In one fluid motion, I raised my right arm and started to throw the mass over the side of the vehicle, a short backhand toss. Then everything went dark.”

Words from a brave man who threw out a live grenade from an army truck in time to save his and many other lives in that Humvee. And he’s not even a soldier, but a Time magazine reporter.

His reward? A metallic right arm.

There’s been so many superhero films over the past 5 years. Besides the inane James Bond and Batman, we had the comic Superheroes of Spiderman, X-Men, Superman jostling for the cultural tag of modern day heroism.

But we forget some of the other heroes — real ordinary people like you and me in flesh and blood. And when we do extraordinary things, we suffer.. physically and mentally. Take this Times reporter for instance, he was merely there to do a job, interview some folks and get the hell out of danger’s abode in Iraq. He was unlucky, just once… Faced with a wholly alien concept of seeing a live grenade waiting to explode right before his eyes, and being the only one to detect mortal danger unravelling, he did the only rational and instinctive thing he could…

“Mostly, however, I was angry at myself for getting in the wrong Humvee, releasing the grenade too slowly, even grabbing it in the first place. Nothing would have happened if I hadn’t picked it up. Why had I been acting like a cowboy? Why hadn’t I just left the damn thing alone?”

Is he a hero?

Hollywood heroism concepts have evolved in recent years, to peel back the commercial sugar-coating and reality-distorting package of alpha-male icons who have boundless courage and abilities, kick ass, gets the babes and emerge totally unscathed, even from “nuclear armageddon” (did we really believe that?). From the cliched “with great power comes great responsibility” bullcrap of Spiderman to the Superman who turns green literally when faced with kryptonite, we now see more of the reluctance, the uncertainty, the moral dilemmas, the raw agony and personal sacrifices instead of a “feel-good” facade painted by shallow movie producers. The grim drawback of heroic deeds are truly stomach-churning stuff and faced by somewhat ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Their claim to heroism: Doing “the right thing”, at perhaps an inopportune time.

When I was young, I always pondered how tangible is heroism outside of that silly silver screen. But really, it is a highly ubiquitous concept we just fail to appreciate in our daily lives. Because true heroism is neither heart-thumping, nor attention-seeking. There is no media machine to hype it up as well. But it resides in every corner of society, people toiling away and doing the right things based on their sensible and rational thinking. And like the flickering light of a candle flame in the wind, heroic deeds only show up in the light of day during the darkest hours of our times. Like the ex-Marine who leapt into the furnace of the 911 rescue efforts:

““Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who,” he said. “I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘My city is in need.”‘

I’m not a hero. I’m far from a hero. Those men who ran up in there are the heroes, whether it be law enforcement guys, fire department guys or even volunteers and coworkers. Those are the heroes.”
Sergeant Jason Thomas
US Marine who helped find a pair of police officers buried in the rubble at the World Trade Center on 9-11.

The name of the Time magazine reporter? Michael Weisskopf. But it could easily be you.

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Post-blogging:
Do read the full Time article on this. Its very powerful. It made me wonder why we have to wait for personal tragedies or extremes in life to treasure it. It’s my mom’s 49th birthday today and I am in school blogging and writing my thesis instead of spending time with her. I sure ain’t gonna wait to lose before realizing what I had owned. I do hope you don’t too. =)

I found this off Digg a couple of days back. Another ridiculously time-wasting yet fun site to design your very own South park character within seconds.

Check  out my own creations: “Beer Bum” and the updated (psstt.. middle-aged) Princess Leia looking more like Jabba the Hutt than the sultry siren she was.. lolz..

I have officially become a Facebook junkie.. and stalker too, if you count the amount of times I have clicked on profiles and groups in order to identify patterns and behaviors for my thesis topic. Plus its an incredible time waster getting really distracted by cool stuff i find and not working on my thesis instead, thats the real killer.. I wonder how anyone doing research in this field can really do it without getting hooked eventually..

Maybe its not a good idea after all to write about about the web, cos I am really trapped in it now. =) But i’m luvin’ it. I also realize I am not an academic because all i can think of, while surfing Facebook, are not theoretical concepts but marketing ideas and revenue models.

My thesis topic is “Influence on Online Social Networks”. I am trying to investigate how information diffuses across virtual communities such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, by understanding individual motivations and also how social structure affects the desire to perform the action of passing along a meme. My goal is to work out a model for designing online marketing campaigns for online social networks. Particularly in the context of viral campaigns like the adidas world cup campaign on myspace that garnered thousands of “friends” within a week..

Such self-organized and organic evangelizing of memes hold massive potential for marketers. Being an avid user myself, I am  trying to think of a mechanism to ride on such trends as a marketer, but I cannot find a scientific way to re-create such viral behavior, much less find literature by academics who offer some insights. There are exceptions of course, Danah Boyd and Fred Stutzman. Which comes back to what I always believe in, only our own generation hold the key to the digital revolution. Online social networks are a slightly different ball game in terms of its sociological profile, they are not “real” and are only the “horizon” too what Fred calls the study of “socio-technical” behavior of web users on such networks. The disengagement of reality in some online interactions might just be turning some of us into cyborgs…

Back to the topic, some friends are asking me what I am writing about exactly. So here’s a draft abstract i crammed out of my confused mind:

In this dissertation, we will examine how ideas gain influence among members on online social networks (OSNs). An online social network is a virtual community of web users and is characterized by its consumer orientation and a platform that enables the creation and maintenance of web identities in addition to interactive features for the purpose of social exchanges between its members.

This computer-mediated form of communication is wildly popular among youths today. OSNs have been lauded for the swift propagation of recent pop culture trends due to the enhanced network effects offered by the internet form of information transmission. By studying the many interest groupings and movements in OSNs, we build a model that allows us to understand the diffusion of information. In particular, we seek to explore how network independent variables such as personality and network-dependent variables such as connectivity, social structure has an impact on the formation, growth and influence of web-based ideas/ memes. We compare the studies of such groups across some of the most popular networks today and attempt to apply these findings to the field of online marketing.

Some questions simmering at the back of my mind:

1. What causes an idea to spread in online social networks?
2. What is the “DNA” (genetic structure) of an influential/ viral idea on OSNs?
3. Is it the presence of “power connectors” or does the topology of a successful viral movement reveal how social structure helps in idea diffusion?

Think about this: why did you join a particular social network? You were not forced to by the company itself, no way. There’s no one who can command you to press a button and fill up a tedious form over the internet. Its your choice. And a conscious choice at that.

You were most likely influenced by your friends, people you trust who had sold you on the benefits of linking up on that network. It could be humor, could be voyeurism, gossip on friends, sharing interests, keeping in touch.. There’s an immense social blanket we wrap around us and an OSN membership might just help provide that extra comfort.

So we establish that a social network membership was obtained due to viral, peer to peer marketing. Most of your friends joined, and hence you join, and you move on to ask others to join. The cycle continues. No external influence, its all intra-community peer pressure plus maybe that self-initiated curiousity and desire.

But membership does not equate active participation. Some people never upload photos, nor leave testimonials, wall writings or update their profile. These activities are important in filtering the active members from the passive ones. Its a volitional/ conscious choice again. These people may just be passive consumers or voyeurs of your updates or they just fail to log on after that intial spike of interest. A social network has no value for any user nor marketer without constant activity. Hence, I postulate on the existence of an “effective social network”, one that creates and communicates social value, or what Malcolm Gladwell might call the mavens, connectors and salesmen.

These connectors are the true engine of a social network which thrives on content and media generated by its own users. They lubricate the entire operations of the network by contributing, publicizing, modifying, “stealing” and criticizing all this social content of their own, of friends or strangers. It is them which spark off “flame wars” or the next meme that will fuel a huge flurry of online activity that makes social network contribution so fun.

The focus of my thesis is on understanding the topology/ social structure of these social sub-networks, (the groups of users who have consciously rallied and engaged in activity around common memes) and the roles and importance of “influencers” (mavens, connectors, salesmen). I will also be attempting to create a link between how the process of meme propagation can be extended for application to consumer marketing campaigns in the form of memes.

It all sounds rather scattered now, lets hear what you can make of it.

I’ve been so preoccupied these days with E27, classes, my thesis-pondering (note its not writing, yet), my future career path that I neglected my blogging.

Here’s what I found from clicking around Facebook groups today while gathering data for my thesis.

I think the 4 points (see arrow) really helps to distinguish just what’s so special and different, in terms of skillsets and experience, between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs/ corporate climbers. I think of it as the difference between skydivers and bungee jumpers. Sadly, I have tried neither but spoken to enough who did to think that bungee jumpers undertake more risk than what skydivers can stomach.

The lack of that psychological safety net in bungee-jumping kinda makes you transcend your comfort zone to push your mental barriers to deal with the impossible challenges faced by entrepreneurs.

But I have something to add to the diagram.

• Cost consciousness (economical usage of resources)
• Sense of ownership (in addition to urgency)

Gratefully plagiarized off Garry’s blog whom he plagiarized from somewhere out there:

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers throughout the land.

Here are last year’s winners…

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. Read the rest of this entry »

Wish you could attend IMF like a VIP? Well, there’s E27 V3.0: Startup Republic. We promise to make you feel every bit as important. Singaporean delicacies complimentary. WIFI and power connections will be provided. Just BYOO (Bring Your Own Office). We will even make things more exciting - we’ll allow indoor protests! How’s all that sound?

RSVP here. More details on presenters found on our main blog here.

Oh, and do click on the posters we have created this time for the event. SOmething for all of us to get into “Major-conference” mode for next week when IMF and World Bank delegates descend upon our lil’ island nation. They might get chauffeured BMWs, we have our BMXs.

Update: Even Time Magazine wants a piece of this action.

Facebook, the No1 social networking site for college students, is undergoing massive internal turmoil among its online community.

The launch of 2 new features, “News Feed” and “Mini Feed”, which allows for real time updates and tracking of one’s online activitiy, (from new friends added, change in relationship status from attached to single, change in favorite movies etc..) has acquired Facebook the new and unsavory tag of “Stalkerbook”. This is sparking privacy concerns that used to be synonymous with MySpace and not Facebook which offers “exclusive” membership to only college students and certain corporations.

Here’s more about it from Scoble and Bitemarks, and here’s what I think:

People should understand an online social network is still a really “raw” innovation in terms of its impact on real people’s personal lives, or specifically, the self-realization of that impact by a social network user) Its one thing to want to expose your life on the web but another for everyone to know you are exposed. When you are dealing with real people and their lives, you should be sensitive, more so for Facebooking which is a major part of a college student’s social life. This is not about social networking anymore but social engineering when you try to meddle so much as to make everyone’s Facebook activity so transparent. Be subtle, make the new features opt-in, beta test it before a full public network-wide launch.. is what facebook sould have done.

Of course, there’s way more posts about this highly unpopular feature within the Facebook network, especially the proliferation of anti-Facebook groups, protests and boycotts, ironically within Facebook itself, showing the high dependency of Facebookers’ social life on the network and which had perhaps held the community at ransom to its founders.

There is even one Facebook group that calls itself the “Official Group for Petition” and has amassed more than 100,000 thousands members within one day, (update: it now has 591,888 members at Singapore time 135am , see pic)… UPDATE UPDATE: its up to 601,000+ members at S’pore time 230am) thanks to a new feature called “Global Groups” that enables Facebook-wide, non-college specific group formation.

Looks like Facebook is fast cultivating its reputation as the new “Evil Empire” or the “Old Microsoft”. Where’s their “Scoble”?

A Car Maniac’s Wet Dream.

Introducing the Tesla Roadster:

• 100% Electric
• 0 to 60 in 4 seconds
• 135mpg equivalent
• 250 miles/ 400 km per charge
• about 1cent per mile

There were MP3 players, and then.. iPod.

There were cars, and then.. Tesla.

Designed and manufactured by the New Ferrari for a Post-Petroleum Age: