The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

As an entity, Google keeps expanding its services and I am one of those who don’t bat an eyelid before trying them out. My friends think I am nuts about Google because I keep lecturing them about their cutting age innovation, how they induce trials and how they successfully build interdependencies on their products, and all so subtly.

Your confidence on all-that’s-free courtesy of Google starts to shake the moment you need their help. Last week, I requested for a migration of my Feedburner.com feeds to feedburner.google.com. It was executed overnight. Then I wanted to experiment ads in feeds and how they work and realized I need to move my blog feed to another account. There is a defined process for that, only that it failed to work, with the error message even suspecting if I really owned my own blog feed!

I tried an alternate one prescribed, that in effect said, release the feed link (URI) from one account and quickly recreate in the target account. I would never have done so myself, but this was Google saying so, to me it was God’s word.I tried, and it bombed. Now I am unable to claim my own feed back with the comment, this URI is take, please take another!

So, I searched for help, which took me to some discussion forums in which Google’s staff reportedly avatars itself to help panic stricken folks like me. After leaving multiple cries of help, I  am yet to see anyone avatar to help me out.  I am taking comfort in the fact that it has been only one working day since I made a help request, but what does not comfort me is the horror of other folks asking for help for about three or four weeks and hello, no avatars around to help.

It brings up a painful realization that there are no SLAs for free services. I have lost my RSS subscribers and praying some of them will again rediscover this blog. Is there anyone from Google reading this?

Update 1: Matt S from Google has responded, asking me to stand-by. There is hope.

Update 2: Matt S has restored the feed. Thanks Matt. The system works!

I noticed a rather interesting perspective of Mumbai and from Mumbai by Guy Kawasaki, one of the highly respected silicon valley names, who spoke at a conference. According to guy, the proof of God’s existence is the survival of Apple Computers, Mumbai’s dhobi ghat is the largest open laundry in the world, the guys selling books at traffic signals are India’s answer to Amazon! Here’s a must read post on Guy’s blog and a news report that captures his conference talk. Quite captivating and fresh perspective.

I remember attending Blogcamp 2006 in September in Chennai and getting amazed at the momentum around blogs when the term social media was not so much in currency. Blogger was the platform of choice and blogs on own domain meant you really had deep pockets. Wiki was synonymous with Wikipedia and certainly not heard of in corporate environment. Micro blogging platforms such as Twitter were perhaps taking baby steps – and I certainly had not heard of Facebook then.

Come 2008, and scenario changes completely. Blogging is no more an underground platform of expression of the immediate post teens but we now have people in different age groups adopting it. Wikis are slowly intruding into corporates as a collaboration platform. Platforms such as Facebook is a rage and Twitter has now not just got more mainstream, but even managed to acquire Summize. There are networking sites around all possible hobbies and activity groups and there is a fair amount of device convergence, such as moblogging, or mobile internet, or plain sms. Even staid corporations are adopting Blogs as means of conversation. While corporate websites cannot be replaced by the CEOs blog as a source of information, they serve separate purposes and establish different connects.

It has now become possible to build an information stream on a subject or your choice, in which you are not just receiving or sending cues target to specific audience groups, but respond and participate. It certainly makes the job of those in corporate communications, event management, brand management, even management communication within and outside the companies much more challenging and exciting, depending on what boat you are riding. My interest is in watching the possibilities less from a technology perspective but more to explore and possibly identify some learnings from a marketing angle. It is also worth noting that while Blog consultants are dime a dozen in this world, but all they do is to setup a Wordpress package for you with a glossy theme, or install MediaWiki! It remains my view that there are very few professionals who can advise on the content aspect social media. That is the opportunity.

Barcamp Chennai is here and hope to see you there.

Being in a slides driven environment has its challenges.Three years back we were having a coffee table discussion what about an(then and still) emergent phenomenon  called blogging(Sep 2005)!. I was all excited about it and the folks on the table senior in age were all cold and almost conveying me to keep quiet. Not willing to take it lying down, I made a slideshow and mailed it to them. I called it Blog 101. The challenge was to convey what I wanted to convey without giving a talk-over. I never heard from those folks and would have forgotten myself except this little discovery to see the same slides adorning another person’s screen (not sent by me) when I was crossing him few days later!

Recently while scrubbing my machine for old files to be destroyed, I came across this file too. Somehow did not feel like deleting it and though it does not look a great professionally done slide deck of the type I would run in the conference room, I uploaded it to Slideshare last evening. What’s interesting, it still appears fairly valid.

Tom Peters statement at recent INC conference saying “If you’re not blogging, you’re an idiot” maybe a little strong, but we all know what he means. Blogs as a medium of expression have evolved to create a completely new connect with the targeted stakeholders. Blogs not only bring in soft content such as product stories and legends, but can also enable a corporation to handle the hard part – public communication in the time of crisis. Marriott International Chairman Bill Marriott’s blog just stands out on this count, as the hotel chain battles to recover from destruction at its Pakistan property.

By posting a statement and details of the tragedy on the blog within few hours of the attack, Marriott management reached out directly to customers who would perhaps not read a press release by going to the Marriott corporate site. By providing for everyone to comment and express condolences on the site as well as offers to help, it allowed for a two way connect to be established between Marriott and its customers, something no other channel of communication would do so well.

“I am very sad to report a terrible tragedy at our Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan..”. Opening sentence of Bill Marriott’s blog post.

“Dear Mr. Marriott: Please accept my deepest sympathy to the loss of life that was beyond your control and that of your Staff in Pakistan.As an MVCI owner and a holder of Platinum status with Marriott, your company is more of a second home than just a place to stay….”Comment by a customer on this Bill Marriott’s post.

Bill Marriott’s blog generates confidence and brand experience continuity.For professionals in corporate expressions, this is a case study unfolding.

Corporate Blogs have proliferated like never before (The other day I noticed one of India’s unarguably iconic brand Amul, has a blog too). It is easy to find consultants who can lecture a company for hours on how to get started with a corporate blog and the virtues thereof. Very few such consultants can, with some degree of authority, can talk about some clear does and don’ts to keep the corporate blogs alive.

GM is a great company undergoing a painful time for last few years. It has some great brands and it has been early off the block on the corporate blogging block, perhaps innovation comes easy to them. Its Fast Lane team has identified some clear dos and don’ts on making corporate blogging work which should be read by any marketing professional initiating his/her corporation into Corporate Blogging. Read you must.

Feel free to modify the title and include business network as well and ask the question again.

The proliferation of social platforms on the net and the urge to be seen as connected has created a situation when one keeps on receiving invitations to connect from complete strangers. Many times I ask them back if we met somewhere or were part of any common group activity. Most of the time, there is no answer (indicating a non-serious request) or a bland ‘I saw you are connected to so and so and therefore I want to be connected to you’ or some equally incomprehensible response. And most of the time when you add a person to your network, you have nothing to do with them even for years. In other words, you neither write a mail, not exchange information, nor do any collaboration with them for anything meaningful -Unless taking a movie quiz means productive and meaningful collaboration to you. How are your 30 contacts worse than my 500 and ever growing? Maybe 500 contacts against my name looks good to me, gives me good self-esteem, ads to my prestige in the ’social’ network. And then?

What very few people understand is that quality, not quantity and focus, not diffusion matters. Seth Godin has a fairly straight take on this and I don’t see how you can disagree to this.

To be fair, social networking can be divided into personal social networking and business social networking both of which have so far served in helping people be loosely connected with each other. That essentially would mean that if I have a goal, I should be able to connect and collaborate with folks who can possibly contribute to that goal. That goal could be business(locating people who serve a certain business purpose), personal ( connecting with real friends and acquaintances- friends who you know in real life), pleasure (travel information, hobby groups). Will it be wrong in suggesting that spending extraordinary effort in growing network is like living life in a party all the time where we get to know and meet people. Or mindlessly adding to your contacts list is like trying to become friends with all people at an an airport or a train station! Most of the time one never meets people again. And certainly not all of them. When we go to conferences, usually we love to exhaust our business cards and bring back one full stack of them from people we met at the conference to really feel mission accomplished! (Most of the time we trash almost all of them immediately, or keep piling them on the desk for few weeks or days and then show them the trash-can!).

What is your social network?

(Post dedicated to Vishal Rana of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Vishal and I reconnected via Facebook recently, 19 years after graduating from school together and loosing contact. Vishal, your voice remains the same, and many thanks for the call this morning).

I have stayed away from this blog so long that I do not know where to resume. But I see that I have quite a few options.

Few gripes:

1. Chrome does not install on home PC: Nope, the installation system is not made for installs behind authenticated proxy. That’s true. Here’s Google’s humble admission. In 2008, Google forgets users in campus and corporate networks. Note: If you have also faced the same, please refer to this user provided solution. In my case, it worked. But after seeing Chrome for few days, I am wondering what the hype is about. Certainly, Firefox remains a browser of choice for me.
2. Symantec charges me wrongly: I have remained a Symantec (Norton Systemworks) customer for two years and this year despite me opting out of auto-renewal within the specified date, I found USD 49 charged to my card. What’s worse, the license provided did not work so I assumed they’ve corrected the transaction and invalidated the license. I manually purchased a renewal and am still struggling to recover my USD 49. Been about 4 weeks. The banks charged me its monthly interest as well, plus non payment penalty (since this was the only charge on this card and remained unpaid).Assumption as they is the mother of all …….
3. Car AC stopped working:Just as I believed that summer in Chennai is slowly giving way to relief, it has given a robust denial of such misplaced assumptions. And then, the car AC stops working while driving to work! With barely enough time on hand to visit the service station, I have been suffering a sweaty sultry car. Tomorrow I might decide to put a wet towel under the collar, unless it rains!
4. Reading a book on Steve Jobs. Its titled iCon. (Stay away if possible – an iPod tells you more about Steve Jobs than than this book)

Few good things:

1. Restarted my alumni blog. Still looking for partners.
2. Discount season at Landmark bookstore. I heard they are offering upto 50%. Thankfully, I did not visit them so I managed to save 100%. What a deal.
3. Noticed a nice site for ads with some finance content in leftover space. Check it out.
4. Found a star tortoise in the neighbourhood. 

Blocked the road with my car to make sure the cute fella crosses the road unharmed.

Few things to look forward to:

1. The festival season’s here!
2. Vacation planning’s starts now. School closes in exactly 90 days . Lots of places to go.  Train booking also opening tomorrow. Overnight must decide, wake up at 5 am , login to the site and keep trying till their ‘link’ works. If  you have done online ticket purchase on Indian Railways, you’d know exactly what the pain of ‘link down’ means. But wait, I am not starting yet another gripe now!

Take it easy, this is humour. At least attempted humour.

So many things are happening around banks these days.

The Placement In-charge of Jhumritiliya School of Management Education has reportedly gone to the press saying that in the light of the Lehman collapse, chances of all students getting placed could not be expected to reach cent per cent. No one has bothered to ask him if they ever managed to get few companies over.

Even the banks of the Kosi river broke four weeks before the banks in US went broke.

A leading politician of one of India’s eastern states famous for strikes has reportedly issued a statement that this collapse is due to the rigid and unfriendly stand of the state government. She and her followers have gone to her latest fast unto death. The state government has instead stated that this is American conspiracy against the people of the state. And no matter what, they would continue to maintain their people friendly policies for the ongoing growth of the state.

Dictators of Africa have already thanked their grandfathers for giving them the good sense of stashing their wealth in Swiss Banks. 

Dictators of South Asia, present and past, are already having hush-hush conferences, saying one should never bank on Americans. And they are kicking themselves for this – wishing they had realized before being thrown out of power.

Patrons of the blood bank are curiously trying to understand the meaning of the headline on the billboard outside the stock exchange that said Tokyo to New York,  there’s Bloodbath on the banks.

Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank got further worked up and issued a kilo-trillion currency note in anger.

The health minister of a foreign country is understood to have decreed that the sperm bank would not be called so, but now be known as Sperm Depository. Obviously, the minister does not want the citizens of the country to feel there is any shortage.

PJ of the day :Shopping Malls have renamed boards saying Elevator Bank to Elevator Station to make the patrons comfortable. Trigger: An old couple deciding to walk out of an elevator after seeing a made in USA sign. They had read somewhere that American banks are collapsing.

Before you begin reading, dispel the notion that anything social in 2008 need to be online.
I am sitting in the Tidel Park Conference room here in Chennai waiting for the CII Connect 2008 Unconference to begin. Though several biggies are expected here, including Ms Kanimozhi, Member of Parliament and several corporate honchos, the atmosphere here would devastate a conformist. The tables are arranged in U-shape, but instead of the central space being used for a speaker to stand, there are folks sitting with laptops. The audience is a mix of youth and experience, and truly, a flat format conference is about to begin.

The debate about to begin is on Technology for the Common Man

Hello, it is 5.30 PM and the event is on. The ‘VIPs’ are all there, but no Kingsize chairs, no elevated platforms.

For a change, it is the audience that is speaking and the guests are waiting for their turn. The mike does not come automatically to them, but only when they ask for it, and even then the time allotted to them is the same , which is one minute
Siddharth has an interesting Flickr stream here