ZOSO

Wordle Version 2

zoso — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:21:15 +0000

I had previously checked the wordle of my blog about two years back. Here it is the critical version 2 :

Enneagram Type Eight

zoso — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:04:09 +0000

I took the Enneagram test today as a part of a training program. Apparently the technique was developed and used in ancient times in Middle East by the Sufi Saints.
Though I am wary of such tests, today the few people I knew in the class (and with whom I had spent considerable amount of working time) aptly fitted their personality type. And as the entire test consists of 3 seemingly disjointed tests, its difficult to tame/tweak the test.In fact, the Instructor pointed out their behavior in previous sessions and co-related with their personality type. There’s lots of literature available on the web. Strongly recommended, if you work in a team.I am a Type 8.

How true are these tests?

Update 1 : Discussion on Aardvark.

Is there a way to know all ?

zoso — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:14:51 +0000

So you have Wikipedia – the user contributed encyclopedia, Google – the generic search engine and Bing – the decision engine to find out instant answers and information. These are good sources to find out factual information like the weather, How-To’s etc. However, if you need an answer/pointer to a question that has no definitive answers, the seemingly non semantic search/information portals fail.So, recently after reading this article, I posted the following question on Twitter, Aardvark & the latest buzz Quora.

Question : When do you draw a line that a project is not ambitious anymore but foolhardy ?

Responses :

Twitter : Venkatesh Rao (check his acclaimed blog RibbonFarm ) replied about half an hour after I tweeted. But again, the response depends on seemingly arbitrary parameters like who’s logged into twitter, timelines, who are your followers, whether the question gets retweeted and so on. Not the best option unless you are aplusk.

Quora : Quora is a one stop portal for questions exactly like this. Various experts can opine and both the questions and the answers can be edited endlessly. I got a reply from a seasoned veteran about his experience and how he tried to resolve the situation. Very useful. But the problem was the question had already been re-drafted to

When should you stop working on a project that may be ambitious but has very little chance of success?

Aardvark : Aardvark is a social service that connects users to answer their questions. The reply was almost real time from a CXO level executive. When I posed a corollary, the reply was again almost instant. The site has nifty featured like asking questions through IM, email etc.

So next time you have such a question, try it on Aardvark.

Note : Though the comparison of the three services mentioned is like apples to oranges, the attempt was to reach out to the community and get a ‘satisfactory’ answer.

ProductCamp Pune

zoso — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:39:35 +0000

ProductCamps are held around the world to bring together Product Management and Marketing professionals to learn, teach to and network with their peers. ProductCamp Pune is on Aug 1 ,2010. Head over to the site for details of the event. Also, checkout the Google Groups where we discuss on organizing ProductCamps and other Product Management & Marketing Topics.

productcamppune

Visit this group

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Email Mktg

zoso — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:50:52 +0000

In spite of all the brouhaha over Social Media and Inbound marketing, email is still one of the first point of contacts to business(even in Twitter). So, the first impression has to be right, else people instead of looking at the content, would look for the “Leave Me Alone” button.

This is precisely the reason you test things out, especially if your job is customer facing. If you frequently conduct email campaigns or just send many emails, this email checklist might be of help.

On/Off Twitter

zoso — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:02:58 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve been on Twitter. I find it hard to genuinely “follow” and interact with those in my timeline after the count crosses a couple of hundreds. To differentiate my timelines from professional and personal, I had created another account totaling to 3 (used to maintain the official product account) . The third account sounded the death knell.

However Twitter is a cool way to connect and interact, I am back albeit a few set rules.

1] Twitter is a firehose of a firehose . To make it work now, I’ve trimmed my timeline by about 150.

2] Many use twitter as a group chat tool. To not (hopefully) miss their one-off good tweets, the list feature should come handy.

3] After playing around with all the available clients, I have zeroed on Opera Portal. The Twitter app has a cool feature to ‘Snooze’ someone trying to hack their way into otherstimelines.

The Art of Presentation

zoso — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:52:48 +0000

Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds is a wonderful guide for making more beautiful and less cluttered presentations.

The author uses many of the Japanese concepts like Kanso (Simplicity), Shizen(Naturalness), Shibumi ( Elegance), Wabi-Sabi ( Simplicity), Pecha Kucha and of course the philosophy of Zen . A must read if you are in Marketing/MarComm and frequently present.

There are also other methods such as the Takahashi method one or two words per slide) and the Lessig method (slides transitioning quickly). Another deck called “Death By Powerpoint” can be used as a checklist while finishing your powerpoint slides :

Death by PowerPoint

View more presentations from www.kapterev.com.

Focus & Product Oriented Culture

zoso — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:23:57 +0000

Came across this BW interview with Steve Jobs. His answer to the question on why Apple struggled to Innovate before he returned in 1997 :

You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together. Otherwise, you can get great pieces of technology all floating around the universe. But it doesn’t add up to much. That’s what was missing at Apple for a while. There were bits and pieces of interesting things floating around, but not that gravitational pull.

People always ask me why did Apple really fail for those years, and it’s easy to blame it on certain people or personalities. Certainly, there was some of that. But there’s a far more insightful way to think about it. Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That’s a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly.

But after that, the product people aren’t the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It’s the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what’s the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself?

So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they’re no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn’t.

Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) — who’s running Microsoft?

Can you have a ‘Code’ to Culture?

zoso — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:12:22 +0000

Apparently Yes. The author Clotaire Rapaille provides historic,socio economic and other factors to analyze the buying & spending patterns of various cultures with a focus on the American Culture. A goodread if you are interested in understanding consumer behavior.

Few excerpts :

“Americans champion entrepreneurs because they are our most aggressive identity seekers”

“America has never produced a world class classical composer, but has successfully exported rock,hip-hop and R & B – the music of adolescence-to every corner of the globe”

Image Credit.

Reworking

zoso — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:56:33 +0000

On the face of it Rework authored by Jason Fried and David Heinmeier is a typical business book – lots of how to’s and what to’s. Companies at the extremities are given as examples and most of solutions offered are uncommon but not necessarily practical.

If you read their wonderful blog or watched Jason’s

Update : Flipkart has a lower priced paperback .

Image Credit .