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.. and the award goes to.. *drum roll* Victoria Junior College! And their 3 blogs at Cosiety, SecondLifeVJC and an unverified GeneralPaper.

Ok, i expect an uproar of controversy and conspiracies out there if I am wrong. Truth to be told, I read so much these days I hardly have time to explore every nook and cranny of the blogosphere. Hence, whenever I can connect the dots, I try to hail it as a “trend” and hope my readers or friends either validate it or debunk me.

Victoria Junior College (VJC for short) has had its student-run blog for a year now! Hurrah for the students who made this happen, their site “Cosiety” has improved by leaps and bound and you can see improvements made to the site design, useability and reader-oriented articles and coverage. I like their Subjectif section:

Subjectif is Victoria JC’s weblog of student opinion, mindless ramblings, colourful ideas and chic talk. It’s your finger on the pulse of the life of the college, and is updated weekly by irregular wits, specialist columnists, flowery tongues and sizeable speakers.

In terms of student participation, vibrancy of content and the authenticity of its bloggers, Cosiety beats any varsity-run online bulletin/ magazine , especially my alma mater’s Hooked, which is a sorry study of old-media-thinking transplanted forcibly on the internet platform. Sorry to its original founder and my friend Justin but more blogger-scrutiny might do it some good. Perhaps Justin could blog and shed some light separately..

SecondLifeVJC is really new and started its virgin post this month of April 2007. It taps on the enthusiasm of the local community’s growing Sl interest and our Lion City project inside and also appears to be aggregating relevant moves by local enterprises such as PR firm Text 100 in this area.GeneralPaper is much more established and also celebrates one year of blogging last month, same time as VJC’s cosiety. Their blogroll also gives prominence to SecondLifeVJC and you can see where my deductive skills is implying here. Helmed by an true educationer, Gimster aka Hoe Kim Yau, its intention to be a blog-based learning resource for General Paper (a test on English writing skills for the GCE A levels high school examination) students is clear. I think its a really cool idea to expose high school/ JC students to new ideas and concepts on the web and do it through a blog. I really wished I learnt this way during my time in JC too because I would definitely have learnt much more from my GP teachers.And there you have it, VJC leads the way in blogging, moving aggressively in entertainment (Cosiety), innovation (SecondLife incarnation of an actual VJC college in Lion City?) and education (GeneralPaper).Anyone contesting this claim?

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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.

Firstly, to my doubting friends, I played no part in the conception of the aforementioned ads. And saying this gives me no satisfaction at all for I am talking about my alma mater. But a line has to be drawn netween blind loyalty and rational criticism for the sake of betterment.

Secondly, I am highly disappointed in the storyboarding of this ad. I shall also avoid unconstructive criticism of this ad here because that has already been rehashed many times on the blogosphere.

But I always believe that transparency is key and I anticipate certain sensitivities may be broached by this post. However, if we are to be a world-class business school, we should expect every action and policy of ours to be scrutinized in a fair and open manner befitting a globalized, frontier-less business environment our graduates will face once they leave the confines of the college campus. The Internet is the best example of an open, inclusive channel for undiscriminated communication of diverse opinions.

Let me also say that I think the online community, and most importantly, my own NUS Business School admin, deserves to hear from a NUS Business student's mouth (albeit digitally) instead of outsiders.

From Straits Time June 4, 2006 article,

The dean, Mr Christopher Earley, who came up with the concept for the ad, said that a lot of the criticism was a product of Singaporean modesty.

This is not an excuse. We boast when we need to, but look at the context we were boasting with respect to: Wharton, University of Chicago and Sloan… My question: where's the justification?

To be fair, the commercial ranked high on the visibility factor. If the purpose was to get the name out and create the viral marketing effect, the commercial succeeded immensely. Recall rates must be immensely high for these commercials, not totally impossible if we really had primetime slots during TV ratings winners like Singapore Idol.

But to market well, the visibility is not the sole component. The rule that any publicity is good publicity DOES NOT apply to an incumbent, mature business school like NUS. Acting young and rejuvenating our staid, old image is fine. Pple will at least say we dare to change, although some will say this smacks of copycat behavior of SMU marketing. But gloating about our status and saying we r truly the best up there with the Ivy Leagues of Wharton in an effort to differentiate ourself was the wrong strategy. People know NUS is better than NTU and SMU in terms of world rankings. But to elevate our status artificially and inflating our status to "world-class" alongside world-renowned business schools is something that is better off as a buzzword on school prospectuses and not as taglines on mass-market TV commercials.

The messages sent out in our Suburban American commercial was wholly wrong. Through the role-playing of an American girl preferring to come to NUS Business School, we implicitly sent the message that local students should choose NUS because overseas students are doing so and they should learn from them, if not copy. This is derogatory. This form of persuasion is too blatant. Local viewers immediately see a brain-washing attempt here. Trivalizing the ad with "cute boys" was uproariously cheesy, and "chewing gum" makes me think this ad was actually targetted at overseas audiences as locals have already forgotten this foreign stereotype and connotation with Singapore.

Hence the question, why air this foreigner's perspective view of Singapore within Singapore. Wrong audience, dun ya think so?

I think this ad will better serve its purpose overseas, but even if shown overseas, it would have fallen flat on discerning audiences. Hey, college students-to-be ain't fools.

But if we apply the visibility factor above, this ad will succeed in increasing mindshare among foreign audiences and the viral marketing via word-of-mouth or the Youtube effect (which is already happening) would have been to the benefit (if somewhat dubious) of NUS.

Having said that, its still a tasteless ad.

As for the "Hometown Singaporean Boy and his Lil Brother" ad, "huh??" is the first response. Its a highly convoluted and confusing way to waste precious TV airtime when the only meaningful message was to tell viewers that "NUS is preferred by elites all over the world". What a wasteful way to spend our college tuition fees on an expensive TV ad. Again, visibility might be high here due to the strategic time slots of the TV ad placement, but the message fails to hit the sweet spot inside the viewers' mind.

It merely raises one question, why is the adult protagonist considered an "elite" in the first place and why "all over the world" when he's already in Singapore?

Suggestions:

1. Do not waste these commercials. NUS Business School should turn these commercials into teaching material for our marketing classes. Make them a valuable case study.
2. Self-sustenance. Use these commercials to connect with our students. In lectures and tutorials, the instructor should be saying: " Alrite, students, we screwed up. But beyond your snide critique which is easy to do, CAN YOU DO BETTER?" Issue this as a personal challenge and make this a project. Get students to create new storyboards on how they can design and conceptualize better ads and put together a proper marketign campaign with right positioning statements for NUS Business School. I think this has magnetic appeal. We develop ads by students for (new) students. No second-guessing by marketers with no feel or connection to our generation. THe students will have an incentive to do better than their own dean who came up with the current concepts. Now, that would make me respect the courage of the staff and administration, not to mention reaffirm my faith in the pedagogical objectives of our teaching stuff as opposed to them covering up valuable teaching material.
3. Implement Suggestions #1 & #2 next semester to maintain currency of content.
4. Focus Groups. I believe I do not speak for myself, but for most Bizad students, that we can contribute much better to future Business School adverts. Such cringe-worthy commercials cannot possibly escape the criticism in behavioral marketing labs.

If NUS Business School students are truly world-class, lets see what the students can come up with.

Related post(s) here by Vox Iuvenium, another great post here too by SG Entrepreneurs one more here by PortalofLife.

From Paul Graham's "Why Startups Condense in America": 

Singapore would face a similar problem. Singapore seems very aware of the importance of encouraging startups. But while energetic government intervention may be able to make a port run efficiently, it can't coax startups into existence.  A state that bans chewing gum has a long way to go before it could create a San Francisco.

 Well, of course, the statement in bold did look unfair if the context is not understood. What its saying, IMHO, is that Singapore's system of social disincentives has a indirect, subconscious impact on its citizen's mindsets and act as a strong downward pressure on people's willingness to take risks, to embrace uncertainties.

Translate these two traits to the context of innovation first, and secondly to think about startups as social enterprises that have direct impact on society after founding, we thus arrive at a hypothesis that Singapore's legalized social disincentives creates unadventurous social thinking which impacts innovation and hence decreases innovation capabilities. Paul Graham also mentions:

Imagination means having odd ideas, and it's hard to have odd ideas about technology without also having odd ideas about politics. And in any case, many technical ideas do have political implications. So if you squash dissent, the back pressure will propagate into technical fields.

Dangerous territory here to link technology to politics, especially in Singapore which explicitly has an unlevel political playing field. But its true, the lack of contrarian opinions in SIngapore starts from the political and extends to the media. This has created a society that dares not question. And the government wonders why? We are making progress in the educational policies today, I hope the govt does not clamp down on the burgeonings of free speech in classrooms, because such free speech reflects free, liberal thinking and it is important for the young today to take such free thinking out of the classroom to greater society when they grow up, to realms of not just economic, but social and naturally political too. Oddballs in Singapore has to be tolerated, we do not have such a tolerant culture now and this lack of diversity in opinions is stifling for creative dissonance.

 Here's a tip for governments that want to encourage startups: read the stories of existing startups, and then try to simulate what would have happened in your country. When you hit something that would have killed Apple, prune it off.

 Great tip here, hopefully those influencing entrepreneurial policies in Singapore are using the Apple founding case study as a yardstick in their feasibility studies. 

Compared to other industrialized countires the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. For example, in America people often don't decide to go to medical school till they've finished college. In Europe they generally decide in high school.

I was speaking to an Israeli MBA student yesterday who has been in Singapore for the past 6 months and all he had experienced was great. Highly efficient government, very receptive and embracing attitude towards technology in all levels of govt and society. But when I enlightened him on the less unsavory parts of Singapore, one of it was educational. Our streaming-based educational system from primary through pre-tertiary levels may appear structurally sound but have functionally created a class-based system that perpetuated social discrimination based on academic abilities. My new Israeli friend was shocked to learn that streaming started at Primary 4 during my time and that he considered himself very stupid at the age of 10 although he's an MBA now. This makes me wonder how many of our Singaporean local talent had suffered tremendous blows to their egos when they were streamed in the old Primary 7 and 8 systems, gone to EM3 and suffered social disgrace in front of their relatives and fatal blows to their egos and self-esteem. Our educational policies seem to lack something and the through-train programmes of today again, perpetuate another new class of elites. Yes, we might have gotten rid of the ranking system but separating the ACS, Raffles, Hwa Chong families from the rest makes the rest of the society perceive themselves as second-grade.

Are we both structurally and functionally unsound this time?? Is the educational policy today still too unforgiving towards late bloomers?

Educational authorities can argue themselves silly on the media but they should understand the best feedback comes from the ground, the actual rank-and-file students in the neighborhood school. Poll them and find out their ambition levels. If all they are aspiring for over the next 10-20 years is to find  a job and settle down and harbor no ambitions of becoming the next self-made millionaire, my "wayward" comments above do hold some weight. 

 To end off, I found this segment apt. Note I am not advocating we turn Singapore schools to crappy American models but that we should modify our system to one that is more forgiving towards late bloomers. 

Those worried about America's "competitiveness" often suggest spending more on public schools. But perhaps America's lousy public schools have a hidden advantage. Because they're so bad, the kids adopt an attitude of waiting for college. I did; I knew I was learning so little that I wasn't even learning what the choices were, let alone which to choose. This is demoralizing, but it does at least make you keep an open mind.

Certainly if I had to choose between bad high schools and good universities, like the US, and good high schools and bad universities, like most other industrialized countries, I'd take the US system. Better to make everyone feel like a late bloomer than a failed child prodigy.

Found this while surfing randomly.  Great for entry-level web developers, graphic designers, programmers, even those who want to learn Microsoft Office tools painlessly…

Click on the pic above for the link.

Update: If you are using Internet Explorer, this blog won't display well. Be Smart, Use Firefox. Download here.

Thought for quite a while before i penned this post. It will actually be easier if not for that Chinese firewall that oprevented my blogging as I had so much to write about during the trip. Now, I simply have so much thoughts floating ard I dunno what to write.
Since the internet is about democratization, and i blogged about democracy twice in my previous 3 posts, i thought i should walk the talk.

So I will be writing down several key topics I learnt about during this trip and let you guys, my dear readers decide what you want to read. I will choose the top 2 or 3 and write in detail about them. I cant promise what i write about will be great stuff but you have my word i will do my best. Having some specific topics actually helps narrow my scope and sharpen my limited memory abilities on the most interesting issues to you.

(in no order of importance)

1. The spirit of private enterprise in Zhejiang Province, a province neglected by the CCP of CHina since PRC's founding because of its proximity to Taiwan. How did this province rise from perennial under-investment by the Central Govt to become an economic hothouse today? Btw, CHiang Kai SHek is a Zhejiang native (Ningbo City if i am not mistaken)
2. My experience in Yiwu City - reputedly the world's Walmart for traders and distributors all over the world. This place is only a friggin 1100 square kilometres. Here, you can buy anything and everything, from socks, shoes, bags, clothes, electronics, TVs, key chains, pens, yougettheidea … I spent a day there and only explored 2 (out of a dozen) sections of 1 megamall there.
3. The entrepreneurial infrastructure in Zhejiang province. VCs, incubators, equity plans et al…
4. The role of government in enterprise and my own experiences socializing with them
5. Opportunities for young, entrepreneurial Singaporeans like myself in Zhejiang province. We are way behind the Taiwanese, Hongkongers, Koreans, Japanese in cracking this market.
6. Tourist attractions in Hangzhou
7. What the hell is this small Hangzhou city and why the hell should I pay attention to it? P.s. THey are building a maglev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, now ponder why they care spending billions of US$ linking these 2 cities..

Thats about it. Comments and votes from you guys please.. =)

Headed to the heart of the Asian Economy with NUS delegations.

Will be visiting Hongkong for 5 days and touring several universities (HK University and City University of HK), Bloomberg HK, Singtel HK, HK Monetary Authority, maybe Disneyland and Ocean Park too but to sit through conferences and presentations opposed to enjoying rides, taking pics and other touristy stuff..

Next up is to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, for a 2 week immersion in their local entrepreneurial climate. No detailed schedule yet but it looks to be lots of networking sessions, seminars by local professors at the local college (Zhejiang University)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Hangzhou,

As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities in China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most noteworthy location. The GDP per capita was (ca. US$4620), ranked no. 8 among 659 Chinese cities. The 2005 overall rank of Hangzhou among all the Chinese cities is No.5. In 2004, Forbes magazine ranked Hangzhou the number 1 city in China for business.
Hangzhou appears in the Chinese saying

Born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou.

Sister City: Boston, Massachusetts

(which is a prosperous touristic and cultural destination in the U.S., as Hangzhou is in China)

Great, I am visiting the "Boston" of China. It was a borefest in the real Boston when i visited, at least there was Cambridge the college town that was the saving grace. I can only hope the contrary is true in Hangzhou.

Wil try to blog more about my trips. This is my 2nd time to CHina, after my 2002 trip to the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. A pity I am lacking cash, or I would have embarked on a week-long hiatus in the mountains of Tibet in a sojourn for spiritual enlightenment. Ah well, perhaps next trip to China eh?

Almost as good as actually attending Berkeley…?

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