A Time for Storytelling

Maybe this is a time for storytellers.

Maybe they have never been out of fashion.

Can you tell empowering narratives for your country, company and for yourself?

Can you tell narratives that we can franchise and customize?

Can you use existing views as bridges to new and better ones? 

Do you have this flexibility of mind?

What is your story?

Earth Tunnelling, Air Tunnelling

Earth tunnelling makes me hot and bothered. But, boy, do I enjoy air tunnelling!

In a foreword to a book on the Yum Kippur war, an Israeli general remarked that future battle grounds are getting more and more "congested."

That kind of situation does call for air tunnelling. Tunnelling where there is noting to tunnel, nothing to dig, noting to shovel ... cool ...

office to office, office to office

June 30, 2014

 office to office, office to office, ... I never get used to this kind of movement. Now it is over. RELIEF and REGRET. Things could have been very different ...

Now, a new start

True Peace in the World for Small Business Owners - Part 1

Suppose Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese Emperor who built the Great Wall, and Hitler were alive and running fast food restaurant chains and were after your small fast food joint, I'd still ask you to relax.

True they had far better eyes and ears and spies.

True they had far better brains and advisers.

That's exactly there where the fun begins for you and me.

Qin Shi Huang knew every road and driver in his land, he knew very boat and boatman in his empire. He knew all about medicines, diseases, weather, and seasons. Still he'd go to the South China Sea and died.

Mr Hitler knew even Tibet and Myanmar. So he definitely also knew about Russia, her weather, her roads, rail lines and Russian tank production figures. Still he'd go to Russia in winter and fell.

They could not trust their own eyes and ears and spies and their own brains and advisers.There, the fun began in history and the fun begins for you and me at any point in history. They even used their hands in very similar ways, funny!
 

We're Having Fun -- The Competitions

We are having fun despite the numerous competitions. Conventional wisdom has it that when you are small, you choose what others can but will not do, and when your have grown big, you do what others cannot do. We are blurred about what others will or will not do. We are only clear that so many teams can easily do whatever we are planning to do. Encouraging?

We think so and we are having fun, right now.

A few 4 or 5 years back, I met a skinny, nerd-looking kid browsing the Computer book shelves in the Jurong East library, holding a big red book (Wrox Professional series) on PHP in his chest. I chatted up with him and learned that he's been doing some programming for his CCA, sort of hobby/club-like thing in primary and secondary schools in Singapore. Since then, I cannot count how many school kids I've seen with iPad programming,  iPhone programming, C, C++, Java, javascript, HTML5, Python etc.

A few 4 or 5 years back, I read in the newspapers about an app that an ITE team had done to win a competition. That app integrated so many different mobile technologies! To give a big picture for those outside Singapore, the pecking order of Education here in Singapore is like:

secondary schools -> ITE -> junior college or polytechnic --> university and so on
secondary schools ----------> junior college or polytechnic --> university and so on

The kids are a lot savvier than me about tech!!!

The same holds true for kids in Myanmar! Malaysia! Vietnam! Indonesia! Huh ...

They can easily do whatever we are planning to do. Encouraging?

Let's Consider Another "Friendlier" Competition

My son's English seems a lot better than mine in many aspects. He's a funny kid with interest in lots of things --- time machine, time travels included. His dad, I am funny in my own ways and with my own funny interests --- thought experiments included.

So let's put my son in our English major honors class about 20 years back. 20 years back, my English must have been really poor, my "cultural deficit"(one of our teachers' remark on my lack of knowledge about English songs and movies!) was about 99.99%, listening and speaking may be about 25% and so on.

So, what will be his total scores? I am a bit harsh, I gave him F+p9.

Our teachers, Professor Daw EJ Kangyi,  , Professor U Han Tin, , Professor U Thi Ha, Professor Daw Khin Lay Myint, and other lecturers are all noted for their "generosity of spirit". Still with their personal and professional integrity, they wouldn't give him more than F+p3 or F+p5.

"F+p5" means "Fail but with potential to pass in 5 years' time."

His English is good. But he won't understand why Othello was so prone to jealousy, why Mrs Bennett was so eager to marry off her girls to rich gents, why Milton lost and regained paradise, how so easily Mark Antony could turn a population against Caesar's assassins, why Lamb dreamed of "Dream Children," why langauge policy cannot be decided with Chomsky and Halliday and science alone, and so on.

In techno field too, we have apps to sort one's necktie collection, games where one tries to unroll a toilet roll faster than another player, apps which help you count how many pets you have and so on.

Just last month, we read in Harvard Business Review about Big Bang Disruption. Hey, this is in HBR, written and vetted mostly by business profs.

Are such disruptions so fast and furious?

At least Peter Drucker, Steve Jobs, and Amazon disagree. According to these bumpkins and simpletons and ignoramus, we have about 20 to 30 to wait till such disruptions catch up with us!

So, we are having fun. If we chose, we could even wait. We won't wait though ;-)

Even primary kids can do what we do better than us. To feel it really, take a foreign language class, and see that all native pree-teens and early teens talk far better than you do. But don't stretch your conversational topics beyond Girls Generation, Psy, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Halo, Crysis, Transformers etc. 

Mastery of a language means a lot more than fluency. Are all English men and women and girls and boys Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Arthur Conan Doyle or Bernard Shaw?

You get it now.

So, we are having fun.

We're Having Fun --- Meaningfully

We are having fun meaningfully. We are doing meaningful stuffs: meaningful for ourselves and meaningful for our customers. Please join us!

Millions of kids in the developing world (or the so-called emerging markets) do not use English well. They may not need English for literary, cultural, moral/character development purposes since their mother tongues can serve those purposes really well.

But they do need English to learn science, technology, business and to expand their social world.

We help them learn English better, faster, more cheaply --- online.

After English, when we have "earned" the right for expansion, we'll expand to other subjects crucial for their livelihood.

Isn't it noble to share or give away "tickets out of poverty" to these kids?

To those cynical folks, the book Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail: The 6 Enduring Principles of High Achievement  has confirmed my long-held suspicion that working without a purpose or meaning gives us a higher chance of developing Alzheimer's in our brains when we grow really old.

1. A brain with a meaning,
2. A life with a purpose,
3. A heart with a vision,
4. A spirit with generosity

... that's what we endow our co-workers with at our team!

We're Having Fun In Spite of and Because Of Serious Problems

We are having fun. We are doing fun stuffs: fun for us and fun for our customers. Join us!


You wonder: Why can you have so much fun? Don't you have serious problems? Are you geniuses?

We do and we still have fun. No, we are just plain normal average common folks!

You wonder: How much programming do you need to write a useful software?

Basically, we don't know.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to win a war?

We just have a clue. According some published documents, maybe for the Six Day War, the Egyptian command needed about 18 pages for instructions to their forces while the Israeli command needed about 3 pages. Actually, the Israeli command did not give instructions, they just talked about some "intent" which is about 6 or 10 words in English.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to win wars?

Maybe more than the Egyptian command and the Israeli command needed together.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to write about war?

Sun Tzu wrote on a bamboo scroll as shown below. The English translations, without commentaries, are all very short. So, the answer is, "It cannot be very much."

Conclusion

Deep thoughts or conscientious domain knowledge or customer insights do not need purple prose and complex language to express.

So we're having fun. With honesty, with confidence, with lots of love for our customers!

Programmers ,Please Come and Accept My Worship

November 2, 2011

Programmers in Singapore, please come.

Whatever your age, nationality, race, rank or religion,
Whatever your language(PHP or Python, Scala or Smalltalk, Ada or Assembly),
Please come, I want to worship you.

I am not being sarcastic. Maybe a bit desperate ;-)
There is no hidden agenda. The agenda is very open: I want you to work for me free for many months. ( As a bonus advantage, I may even allow you to worship me about once a week.)

There are many reasons you can be happy about my open agenda. Before I go into that, let me tell you why I am so happy to worship you.

Let's start with just 2 main reasons:

1. You are a creator.


2. You are a potentially big earner.

You Are a Creator

You can make a pile of plastic, rubber, wires and metal sheets walk, sweep, climb stairs, arrange dishes, play with kids, and so on. Robots.

You can make any fairy tale jump off the pages and sing, dance, move, quarrel, fight and entertain our kids. Games and animations.

You can sponge off and siphon off an experienced but very expensive physician's hard-won knowledge and wisdom, and make it come alive in our laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones. Expert systems for diagnostic purposes.

You can help people choose tailor-made financial products, insurance policies, travel packages, rooms and houses, even the right KG's, schools or colleges to attend.

You sit on the same floor as Picasso, Van Goh, Lennon but you sit a bit higher. Their works do not come alive for many types of people. But your works --- Google search, Facebook, Halo, Warcraft etc --- come to live for many kinds of people.

Books need to be read. Book-readers(doctors, lawyers, stock traders, teachers etc) need to be consulted. But your works, your programs, your softwares, your apps are in our fingers literally --- there to help us, guide us, comfort us 24/7 under any weather in any place.

Can you imagine life without an ATM, Google search engine, Yahoo/Google mail, Facebook friends, Monster job postings, craiglist, Amazon books, youtube clips? No ipod, iPhone? No Excel, no MS Office, no PowerPoint?

Can you run any business without Quicken, Access, MySQL, Oracle or some other database?

There are still many types and fields of knowledge that haven't been put into program, put into software. You decipher them, specify them and code them into something like Excel or Facebook or YouTube and the world will become a better place for you, for your spouse, for your family and friends and for us too.

Oh, come, accept my Worship, you Creators.

There are still many stories that haven't been told in software.
There are still many games that haven't been played in software.
There are still many services that haven't been rendered in software.

Tell them.
Play them.
Render them.

O you Creators, come, accept my Worship.

You can change the world, you can change its course of history. Even if you are not that ambitious, you can still make the world a better, safer, more beautiful, more abundant, more convenient, more hassle-free, more pleasant-to-live, more efficient place.

You Are a Potentially Big Earner.

I won't go into details here either as I haven't research this at all.
So, just help me answer some of these questions:

How much did Alibaba Employer No. 3 earn?
How much did Yahoo Employer No. 4 earn?
How much did Google Employer No. 5 earn?
How much did Microsoft Employer No. 6 earn?
How much did Facebook Employer No. 7 earn?
How much did Creative Technology Employer No. 8 earn? (When I was in NUS, one such guy came to lecture us. He told us that at one time, more than 2000 people reported to him. His MBA came years after his job. I suspect that the NUS MBA school won't even consider his application before he worked for Creative.)

You may not have been one of them. But you still have such chances almost every week in your software industry.

Why not come and accept our worship?

george and family

X#XX3
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Singapore 111ZZXX

Seasons of Life, on February 17, 2011

I travel a lot. On foot and by trains mostly.

Travelling on foot has a purpose, so no problem here.

Traveling by train has no purpose, no meaning, and therefore hard to understand.

Am I taking a train ride to Mandalay? A town I love so much, a town good for fun and music and nothing else for me? Or am I going to Yangon? A new place, a new town that invokes the fear of unknown as well as promises great expectations, challenges, exploits and opportunities?

I read a lot too. For no particular reasons.

Take a lot of notes, dump a lot of notes.

Learn a lot, see a lot, understand a lot. But write very little, even for my diary, let alone this blog or any other place.

For no particular reasons.

Summer vacation. Free, loaf, drift, read for fun, play for fun. Travel for curiosity, read for pure curiosity.

How long can the summer last? How many years have gone in this summer? How many more days will this last?

In my youth, the seasons go like, in Myanmar, Summer(Hot season), Rainy season, Winter(Cold season).

Summer is for loafing.

Rainy season means new/upper/higher class, new lessons, new teachers, new learnings, new understandings, and maybe new friends too.

Winter means long runs, long games, hard studies, exams and tests, prizes and awards, and achievements and recognition.

I didn't have any problem with any season. Neither do I now.

Sweet summer! Then, what?

In Life(or to be more accurate in moods), summer can be followed by winter or rains, or even a new summer!

My Summer is sweet. But it just feels too long. Can't be sustained. When will it be over?

I still want to ...
I still intend to ...
I still believe I can conquer the world somehow.

Good luck.

Some Reasons for Learning to Write Software

on August 6, 2011

This is a kind of brain-storming with myself, and thus they were jotted down in no particular order.

1. to express myself in products, rather than in poetry, paint, dancing moves or tune etc.


2. to father many a virtual world, where schools really behave like schools, kids behave like kids, lessons behave like lessons etc.


3. to exploit market opportunities, technological opportunities, etc


4. to get ease and speed in self-expression


5. to join the conversations and movements of fellow programmers


6. to do some research


7. to own something hard to take away from me


8. to reuse codes written by others


9. to save kids from bad e-learning. Recalls what Bill Gates said in "Road Ahead": Bad processes, when computerized, do more damage faster!

Oh, even that lowly robot is helpful and lovely, isn't it?

What Do You Want to Be Remembered For?

This is the late Peter Druckers' famous question.

I want to be remembered as someone who successfully digitized several aspects of teaching and learning, who has reduced wasteful learning of all kinds at all stages of life-long learning journey.

As Bill Gates once remarked, many people before us had tried and failed: radio, TV, CD, elearning, ecourses. A few years down the road, we may also add the recent phenomenon MOOCs(massive open online courses) to the list.

They were perhaps too ambitious.

If we aim for partial but useful solutions, focused micro-solutions, we can have a better chance.

Perhaps, we can find out many a sweet spot along the spectrum of teaching and learning. Perhaps, we just need a better business model, where incentives are better aligned.

As ever, I am optimistic. We may not come up with a Silver Bullet. Yet, small incremental improvements, when they compile, can make a real difference for all concerned: teachers. students, trainers, trainees, learners, parents and the society as a whole.

Product Strategy : Accidental Longevity of This Blog

In a previous post,I lament that

Our strategy&UX  campaign may be just a mere noise before it dies out.

I got that thought after reading "Agile Experience Design," that quotes  Sun Tzu on page-52.

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

That made me sad. My blog has already gone through at least 4 reinventions:

1. Testing-how-blogging-works stage
2. Personal diary stage
3. Personal Effectiveness or Life Coaching stage
4. Product Strategy and User Experience stage

I've nothing to say about Stage 1 and 2. They cost me nothing, and so perfectly natural and fine.

Stage 3 was done as an indirect approach. It went as intended but it remained "indirect" for far too long and its benefits are invisible to the readers/users/intended customers.

Stage 4 becomes more direct. It is just one step away from coding, where I am more likely to end up. Its benefits become more visible: in pictures, photos, screenshots, mockups, wireframes, flow charts, UML sequence diagrams, etc.

Still, I am getting impatient day by day. Ready and willing to code.However, this blog in this current thrust is to stay.

I can talk about lousy software product/service/applications for life.

I can talk about new, or better software product/service/applications we need to do for a long, long time.

This is not by design. It's more by instinct, by honesty, by innocence, or by pure luck.

Product Development : the Right Balance of Cowardice

Should You Design a New Browser?

No, unless you are Microsoft, Google, Baidu, Tencent, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, Adobe, Oracle etc.

On the other hand, if you are at that level, why not?
If you're Samsung, you should invent even a  new programming language, such as Bada.

Should You Design a New Facebook or Amazon?

No, unless yours is a big country like China, India, Brazil or Indonesia.
But we have Facebook clones in China, Korea, Japan, and even in Vietnam, right?

Reasons Not to Design

There are many valid business reasons: high upfront costs, long payback period, very high breakeven points etc.

Also, if your new features are not essential, mission-critical to users, if they are not decisively better than the incumbents. eg. Facebook doesn't allow embedding images inside text in many places; your app may be able to enable this features; but this alone won't enable you to dislodge Facebook. But what if you can design a better, far better advertising platform than that of Facebook?

Yeah, there can be many more valid reasons.

I just don't want you to give up so easily, so early.

From my own personal experience, what I hate most is naysayers with unbalanced cowardice. Such people display a lot of symptoms described in books on panic/anxiety attacks. They bow down to their own emotions too easily and never bother to examine their beliefs and assumptions behind their feelings. Let alone refute those beliefs and assumptions, as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would recommend.

Let's say, we are doing another Facebook. Instead of killing the idea outright, let's attack it semi-systemically or pseudo-systemically:

1. At prototype level, that is easy, An example here.
2. Do we have "killer" features, loads of them?
3. Can we scale it?
4. Can we promote it, market it?

Step 1: Many people don't know that even a single programmer/author can clone TinyURL, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook for fun. That's exactly what Chang Sau Sheong did in his nice book  Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby. And he did so with a relatively new, immature, and adventerous technology!

Step 2: Let's assume you have such features in mind. e.g.a far better advertising platform as I mentioned above.

Step 3: How far do you need to scale in the first days/ weeks/months/years? Do you know that even Zuckerberg kept Facebook's growth in check in its early and not so early years so that it can grow in a more stable manner? And if you are earning well, won't that earning pay for the need to scale?How many dozens of data centers are you going to need?

Step 4:  What else can be better promotions than demos and centuries-tested word of mouth?

Be fearful, but be balanced.

The more your faith grows,
the more you let things flow,
the more you love, with them,
to flow.

The Simpleton Strikes Back --- Part 2 of 2

To make a living, we need competence in at least or at most 6 fields, what Warren Buffet and Chralie Munger call "circles of competence."

Outside of these fields we are all outsiders, laymen, rookies, beginners, non-experts.

To run a car factory, you don't have to raise sheep for their skins for car seat leather, or to maintain grassland for those sheep to graze and so on. As the owner of the car factory, you are accountable for a steady supply of quality leather, but you don't have to become a vet, a rancher etc.

If you can and you want to, you may. Like Henry Ford did at one time. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel

But if you cannot or you don't want to, relax.

You already know how to satisfy your accountability without increasing your expertise. You have played the role of the beginner, the simpleton throughout your life successfully. And you can carry it to the next level and the next as much as you wish.

You want evidence? What about Richard Feynman of Quantum Physics, Mark Zuckerberg of FaceBook, Craig Newmark of Craiglist, and Andrew Carnegie of US Steel?

1. Richard Feynman chose Monte Carlo Simulations. To figure out the unknown part, he repeated parts he knew for thousands of times.
2. Mark Zuckerberg chose PHP, not Lisp, not Java, to implement Facebook.
3. Craig got the cool minimalist style for his site because he didn't know much iof web design but just knew how to keep things simple in general.
4. Andrew Carnegie told his friends that since they were not "practical men," they didn't know which one of 6 steel technologies to bet on. But then, he preached the value of putting all of one's eggs in one single basket.

You can also read about Buffet and Instgram as illustrations for the same principle. Also read about Steve Jobs's reliance on demos in decision-making.

Suppose I want to criticize Usain Bolt, I need to say "yes" to at least one of the following questions :

1. Can I run faster than him?
2. Can I train someone to run faster than him?
3. Can I point to someone running faster than him?
4. Can I point to someone who can train some one else to run faster than Bolt?

Can we outdo those four simpletons with our clever, sophisticated ways?

The Simpleton Strikes Back --- Part 1 of 2

Steven Spielberg was so impressed with the star recommendations of my acting that he sent me even three scripts to choose from. I cannot thank enough Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and Tom Cruise for reviewing my video clips and recommending me to Spielberg.

The first movie is titled , "Desert Eagles Attack." Spielberg wanted me to star as an Israeli air force commander on a mission to destroy the enemy radar sites in the first three days of the 6-Day War. But I told him I had a certain role in mind, in which I believe I can give a stellar performance, not even ruling out an Oscar.

The second movie is titled , "Theatre of Life" set in a Boston Hospital. I must star as a World-famous brain surgeon who got sued for malpractice on murky ethical grounds. But I told Spielberg that I had a certain role in mind, in which I believe I can give a stellar performance, not even ruling out an Oscar.

The third movie is titled , "True Grids" (no spelling error). Here I was to play an old world-weary one-time hacker, who came out of the shadows to save American energy grids from terrorist hackers. Again I told Spielberg that I have a certain role in mind, in which I believe I can give a stellar performance, not even ruling out an Oscar.

In each movie, I can act well if given that role. I won't even need auditions and rehearsals.

In the war movie, I can star asking, "How many planes do we have? How many sites are there? How far are they? How do we know, how soon do we know that we have knocked out a radar site? How is each site defended? How do we knock out site defence first? ... " and so on.

In the surgery movie, I can star asking, " What does this operation do? How do other surgeons perform such an operation? How did his operation deviate from the standard norm if there were such a norm? What would happen to the patient if the operation was not carried out? ... " and so on.

In the hacking movie, I can star asking, "How do we know a grid has been infiltrated/tainted? Can we reboot or revert a grid back to its pristine state? Is there a division, a barrier between a grid's ops and data? Can we silo a grid from all other grids? ... " and so on.

The Japanese saying goes: If you want something done, ask an amateur.

The role I will play, at least in life onwards, is that of the outsider, the non-initiated, the non-expert, the simpleton.

You don't have to be an expert to live, to do well, to get rich, etc. We will need 100 lives to master all the fields we encounter unless we learn to rule each field as a simpleton.

No doubt I will do well; I played this role rather well in my youth.

In the coming post, I will show how some other simpletons have fared: Richard Feynman and Monte Carlo simulations, Mark Zuckerberg and his choice of PHP to cerate Facebook, Craig Newmark of Craiglist and his use of style in the site, Andrew Carnegie and steel purification science and so on.

The Simpleton is striking back.

Helpfulness Advantage

Working hard is dumb. Working smart is a half-baked advice. We must work to our natural strengths, especially in this globalized, commoditized, very flat world. Michael Porter talks clusters. Seth Godin talks niches. Ries and Trout talks positioning.

How do you uncover your strengths that have paying customers?

I suggest helpfulness.

When I was young, I was very very dumb, short-sighted and narrow-focused. I charged everyone for my lessons, including my close friends, except my brothers and sisters.

However, even in those days, I helped free for short- term or one-off services. Any stranger could come into our Department and walk through my doors and  ask for my help. I had never turned them away.

When you can help someone for free:

1.  You prove to yourself that you are expert in this area.
2. You prove to the world that you can get customers for such services.
3. You increase your odds that you tie your wagon to young Carnegie, rising Sim Wong Hoo, or still poor Zuckerburg.

Choose:

1. Helping already rich people gets you good money. 
2. Helping soon-to-be rich people gets you great money.

Some programmers  may not have learned this lesson. Maybe they prefer working hard in poverty far too long.

Settling Old Scores for New Years, for New Lives

I have settled all these scores unconsciously many decades back.

If I Had Done Well in Medical College

Then I became a doctor. Then, I would gradually admire those who sell blood-purification herbal powders, balms, cough syrups, itching powders etc -- yes, there are solid reasons for this admiration -- and become a sort of chemist. Given our backwardness and isolation in my days, I may work like Ms Tu Youyou and unearth some "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeves."

Cracking medical recipes, understanding chemical compounds, testing ... THAT IS ALMOST IDENTICAL to what's I'm doing right now. Irony!

If I Had Taken Maths in the Regional College

Then I became an RIT engineer. That route would lead to my current destination even faster than the medical route.

If I Had Been Allowed to Study Chemistry in the Second Year

Then I became an IC(Industrial Chemistry) grad and then an RIT engineer. The same effect as Route 2.

If I Had Been Awarded Scholarship to Do a PhD in Theoretical Linguistics

Gazder? Terry Winograd?Fodor? The same effect as Route 2.

Delightful Irony

Medical Route. Maths Route.
Industrial Chemistry Route. Theoretical Linguistics Route
And the actually-happened Route.

They, like all roads, have actually led to Rome. Irony, but delightful irony,

Like Wreck and Jerry Yang's character in Hot Shot TV series.

All has been settled.

Good Luck to you all, and

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Vision for Our Business

In the middle of the 1990s, I started my IT career with the following visions. At that time, I was a greenhorn, a noobi, a rookie in IT matters.

1. Extract information and create knowledge from unstructured data.
2. Represent human beings in computer/virtual worlds, all in terms of BDI (beliefs, desires, intentions), model/world-views, and approaches."

Now they look too academic, too broad, too ambitious, too out of touch with real lives, real users, real problems, and real money.

It's as if I am setting up myself and my team for failure, by over-extending too far.

Can We Set Up Ourselves For Success?

1. We can divide each vision to dozens of small products, services or applications. Such a web application does not need many man-months, and such resources are not beyond our means.
2. Each such application must solve some real problems for some real users. For instance, blogging, tweeting, searching etc have proved useful to real lives. We are not doing such services here, I show them as examples only.
3. If we can go viral, we may not need a large budget for marketing and promoting our apps.
4. How many applications do we need to sacrifice, let others copy, before we make money, get big enough to fight back?

We are getting there.

Innovation Seminars --- 3 - My Credentials

January 16, 2012

I was very innovative in Myanmar.

But let's just say, "That doesn't count." I agree, it's a totally different planet and a totally different existence.

So, let's just talk about what I can easily show you evidence of. I will limit the evidence to Singapore and to where I failed. I choose those situations where I failed not because I lack things to boast about but because I don't want to sound boastful. If I innovate even in failures, just imagine what I would do where/when I do well.

1. I envisioned popular Wing Chun classes in Singapore. In 2001. That hasn't happened yet. It may take about another decade.
2. I envisioned Bitnami Stacks.
3. I envisioned XAMPP, WAMPP.
4. I envisioned Amazon Web Services(AWS). That hasn't happened yet. It may take about 3 or 4 more years.

For these claims, you can ask Wing Chun instructors in Singapore, and my former colleagues at Crimsonlogic and Firium Solutions (Asia-Pacific).

Most likely, they will say:

1. I was no visionary.
2. I expect or ask for help a lot.
3. I had difficulty in what was child play for them. Here is the key that will unlock your company's future riches. What I want you to do will be child play for you. BEAUTIFUL, isn't it? As I've said, I was innovating even in these failures!

I envisioned Bitnami

"zip", "tar", "jar", "war" ... I didn't know these terms when I arrived in Singapore in 2001.
"classpath", "WEB-INF" ... I didn't know them either.
To run any software that our company was developing, certain pieces must be in certain places on my development PC.

When these pieces and places became a few too many, I whined and asked around: "Can't you just send me a zip? ... I'll just unzip that into the 1 folder whatever you call, and everything works, right? ... Can you pack all pieces in 1 zip?"

It's a newbie's wailing. But it is also 100% description of Bitnami Stacks!

Bitnami Stacks works like this:

1. Download Bitnami Djangostack installer/zip.
2. Double click it. Unpack it into the "/opt" folder.
3. Everything works.

I envisioned XAMPP, WAMPP, LAMPP

It is the same with Bitnami. I hated downloading dozens or jars for Java XML development, installing dozens of gems for Ruby development.

Now, XAMPP/LAMPP works like this:

1. Download the XAMPP/LAMPP zip.
2. Double click it. Unpack it into the "/opt" folder.
3. Everything works.

I envisioned AWS

Is that as easy as Google App Engine?

Or are both of them as easy as FTP or as email?

It's going to take both Amazon and Google a few more years to get there.

I envisioned popular Wing Chun classes

Well, I rest my case.
You should partner with "difficult," "demanding", "sophisticated", (or, in my case,) "dumb" customers to innovate, some gurus say.

Many customers are using these services

"Rabbit feels the rage, tiger feels pity, dragon feels the pain,"(as usual, I am quoting a weird source). Google it yourself if you dare ;-)

Only does a wood dragon feel such pain?

The wood dragon is the most creative of dragons, it will find ways and means to (ah, not solve) bypass!

Other customers will vote with their feet as well as with their wallet.

This is the last of Innovation Seminar Series. "USD 10,000 per week" is extremely cheap. You have seen my credentials.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Innovation Seminars --- 1

December 2, 2011

In my days in Myanmar, modern business books were rare.

I was going abroad and learning programming. My intention was to work, to save and then start my own software business.

I needed a lot of courage. I was going into a new country, a new culture, a new corporate culture, a new profession, new technologies ... uh ... so many new and new stuffs.

I needed a lot of courage. Fortunately, during one of my visits to the US Embassy Library, I chanced upon a book about theoretical physics written for laymen, probably by Bohm.

There, he states that if there are 12 physicists, you get 12 definitions of atom!
What does that have to do with my need for courage to work as a programmer/coder in a foreign land?


The answer: A lot.


What does that have to do with my Innovation Seminars $ 10100 per Day?

The answer: A lot.


Let me counter such questions with more questions of my own.

How many Life Insurance Policy are there in the paper world?
How many Life Insurance Policy are there in the software/virtual world?

How do you define an exam paper?
How do you model an exam paper on paper, then in software?

Hilarious!

Not all definitions can be correct.
Not any definition can be correct at all times.
How do you decide, choose?

Traditional accountants define personal finance in a certain way.
Intuit defined personal finance in a certain different way.
Still, Mint defined personal finance in a certain still somewhat different way.

Don't hit your heads on the wall.
Don't rack your over-worked brains.

Just pay us the above-said fees(ie. $ 10100) and take a 3-hour lecture and a 2-hr Q/A.

Cassandra burned her books; we increase our fees.

It's cool, hilarious and fun!