Blog Shifted

Hi all, my blog has shifted over to http://blog.wonghongting.com. Do go check it out!
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Yellowstone Pictures

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Think the Opposite

Something I really liked on Slideshare (Click on the Play button to go to the next slide):

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Branding Practices Defined - Lessons from 1185 Design

An excellent brand is more than just a good logo. Use the following terms and definitions when evaluating the brands you find tonight.

Delivery on Promise
A good brand has a well-defined (either implicit or explicit) promise to its customers, and consistently delivers on that promise. For each brand you visit tonight, try and define what their promise is, and how they deliver.

Memorability/Ownability
The brand uses color, typography, logo and other design elements such as layout and dress of retail locations in a consistent manner. Creating distinctive elements and using them consistently not only makes a brand memorable, but keeps other companies from using the same elements.

Superior Offering or Service
The brand’s product or service works more consistently, tastes better, or provides a more satisfying experience than the competition.

Fulfills a Need/Innovates
The brand takes an existing product or service and elevates it to a new level by re-imaging, redesigning, or combining it with a new approach.
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John Wood, Room to Read

Do we dare to dream big?
Core belief: World CHange Starts With Educated Children
To reach Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal: 10 million children by 2010
70% of Nepal is illiterate, suffering from poverty of opportunity.
John rented Zag the yak to carry the library of books from one village to village.
GDP is linked with education.
Purchasing Power Parity (economy) is linked with education.
Infant mortality is linked with female literacy.
110 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.
880 million people around the world cannot read or write. 2/3 of these groups are girls and women.

SOLUTIONS:
To work with government to supply teachers
To enlist parents to build the school rooms
To build reading rooms - learn their own language and english
To publish local language books
Long-Term Girls Scholarship - funded by Don Valentine
"Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world" The World Bank
Room to Read fund raise.

BUSINESS MODEL:
1) Hire strong and entrepreneurial local teams - not to send volunteers or expat
2) Engage the Community - We call them "Challenge Grant" - catalyze creation of schools, give them ownership.
"You can only help ppl who wants to help themselves"
3) Be nimble and act quickly, no excuses - Team opened 39 schools in post-tsunami area in one year even though no present operations there.
4) Invest heavily in human capital - training teachers and librarians
5) Invest heavily in monitoring and evaluation - 84% Laos librarian is confident to train new librarian.
They published books in Hindi, Sinhala, Nepalese - 10,000copies per books. Authors include 10, 15-year-olds.
6) Have an Intense Focus on Results
"What gets measured, gets done"
7) Makes efficient use of donor's money - instituted no Land Rover policy - can't open 25 libraries, can't open 4 new schools in Nepal.

Run a social business:
Low overhead ensures the money goes where it's needed most
87% Program services
Rated 4 Star by Charity Navigator.

8) Create a World-wide movement of "Super Empowered Individuals"

"Go Big or Go Home!" on philantropy. Scale up
"If Starbucks can do it"

Low prices alllow everyone to "Be the change"

What is the most image can you imagine? - potential or kinetic - take action.
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TIEcon 2008 Panel: Future Trends for Social Platforms: Killer Apps, Niche Social Networks, What Next?

TiE Host: Ro Choy - Vice President of Business Development, RockYou
Moderator: Gus Tai - General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Panelists:
Anil Dharni - Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein - CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia - VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois - Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo - SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive

Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity - Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure - if you don't need to spend much and the product can still spread, you're addressing an important need
Most social platforms don't know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn't have pirated content.

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TIEcon 2008: Day 2 Morning Keynotes

Starting Keynote: Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors, Solar City & Space-X w Mike Malone
(Refer to the earlier post on Space-X and X-Foundation)
Forecasts: By 2030,
- Solar Powered
- Pure electric vehicles the dominant one
- Man on Mars

Lessons:
For large item purchases (e.g. Tesla Roadster), have a "lockout" period to maintain branding and make sure people don't start selling your item on eBay
Innovators' Dilemma again - Tesla took the market space that Toyota and Detroit manufacturers won't be moved to jump into the area

2nd Keynote: Sustaining Entrepreneurship in Biotech and Its Global Impact - John C. Martin, PhD, President and CEO, Gilead Sciences
- Biotech lies at the intersection of life sciences and technology: Health focused companies that capitalize on the increase in scientific understanding of biology and genetics
HL: "Don't be boring. Make Biotech as sexy as Tesla motors"
Healthcare Challenges and Opportunities:
- Globalization makes disease travel faster
- IP in developing world to attract investors

AIDS Developing World Challenges:
- More than 30 million infected
- 4.1 million new infections per year
- Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa: 47
- Without AIDS, life expectancy would be 62
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TiECON 2008 Keynote - You like me, You REALLY like me.. Now what?: Challenges After Hypergrowth

Keynote Panel - 4-5pm
Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Jia Shen, CTO & co-Founder, RockYou
Kent Lindstrom, President, Friendster
Derek Liu, CTO & co-Founder, Gaia

Lessons Learnt
Mathematic growth of huge market will allow for huge growth
Self-expression a need for human interaction
Dorm rooms still not producing quality apps. Slide and RockYou still key players.
Youtube app?
Huge applications might not be the key. Niche but high interaction would be more monetizable
Building applications onto platforms instead of building social network platform
Friendster facing "Innovators' Dilemma" that's why mySpace and Facebook got to take over despite Friendster's initial success
Agility to keep success of website over long period of time
CTR rates????

Monetization Models
Long tail model (Google) vs. Site target model (Yahoo) of advertising
Data Profile that each advert publisher "must buy" - e.g. if you want to meet college student you must buy Facebook ad, if you're launching movie must buy MySpace ad. This is actually still similar to buying ad during the relevant TV show
Fake cars, fake houses to impress real people =)
Microsoft Passport Model - Friends Connect, Facebook Connect; Expanding of Social Graph beyond the own website
Mobile - will grow from there
Micropayment systems in Asia
Ads as brand advertizers instead of cost per click model for people who want to drive traffice to their website
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NVC - Arijit Sengupta, Founder of Beyondcore on Pico-Coding

OperatorEvaluator.com cost $300+

Learning Points
Outsource – break up into small pieces so that nobody get the whole picture of what you are looking at
Definition:
Algomist – like Alchemist reversed, so build up the entire architecture
Pico-coding – break up into small pieces and code
“McDonaldize” the processes and in addition, try to let no one step affect the other step
Chunk it up until the context is gone. People don’t know what it actually iss
Be global from day 1

Positives of Pico-coding
Globalization – Global resources on your hand when you need it
Time to market
Lower cost of development
Make most use of the thinkers instead of spending time coding

Problems & Solutions of Pico-coding
What to do when you need upgrade? Throw away and buy a new one!!
Security of Code: How to ensure that its integrity?
1. Look at ratings – will go south with one entry
2. Code inspection – get someone you trust to do it
Can’t use this model when you are doing a pure innovation
Learning reduced
Core algorithm still has to do in-house
Enterprise software might have a problem because it can’t be fixed immediately
Information security requirements
IP – the coder is supposed to use unique code for everyone

Project Management vs. Global Outsourcing
Project Management starts with resource constrain, global outsourcing is planned with no constrain
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Mentorship Session with Sudha Jamthe - Startup to Launch in the Social Media World

Growing an Entrepreneur
Lessons:
1. Try, Fail, and Learn, Grow – Try Fry Cry
   a. Find Your Passion (What are you good at?)
   b. Hang on the edge of your comfort zone
   c. Failure Teaches Fast
2. Social Media use to network, build your identity and try out projects
   a. Facebook - Launch Tool, Events, Fan Pages, Podclass.com
   b. Twitter - Follow people in your field of learning
   c. Blogs - i) Start your own blog ii) RSS Feeds of people in your field iii) Find advisors
   d. Organize Local events - i) Meetup.com, barcamp.org, mobilemondays, wikiwednesdays, startupdinners ii) Volunteer for events to surround by smarter people where you can learn
3. People, People Technology
   a. Find your team
   b. Find your team style
   c. Find your team, Style your team likes
   d. Find your team, Style your team, Likes that breeds success

Info about Sudha
Ignorance to breed success. The first woman to raise venture capital in the New England states. 120 people and met in 40 days to get first million. She didn’t know about it, might have been scared off if she did.

Advices
When you think about what you don’t know, get to know it.
A milestone to live and die by – measurement of success.
Its about the people. An important milestone – find people.
The more you try, the luckier you get
When you know how to do something, get someone else to do it. Go find something else to do
Practice scaling and “doing business for others” as an exercise
Marketing to Students – Facebook Marketing
Hand around and find or create a group to network with people
Find local meetups to evangelize to people, these people have the local knowledge on the market
If you don’t ask busy people exactly what help you need, they can’t help you.
One Lesson: “Find Great People. Not just people who mean well, but GREAT people who can help”
Always be looking at the people, give a chance to people
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