Technology As Innovator

A. What happened, basically

Chip did a very nice coverage with her immediate post Twitter SaiGon 1st Gathering. Thanks a lot Chip, it wouldn’t never have been successful without you.

B. What happened in details

The detailed agenda included the normal information exchange and 3 main sections as listed below:

B. 1. E-Learner Platform 2.0

Two students, Mat and Hung, and starting to build their grand program on teaching children on an E-Learning environment which emphasizes Openness and Cost-saving and takes advantages of Web 2.0

Hung’s presentation immediately inspired many interesting debates. Apart from popular arguments on technology, costs and practicability of the tools, what impressed me most was that we brought the Willingness for Alternative Solutions on the table. We didn’t stop at the fad of new tools, we touched the heart of a Mindset issue.

For now, to avoid repeating Hung’s words duplicating Hung’s contents, I invite you to CLICK HERE to see their slide show for the program.

B. 2. BarCamp Saigon

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”

So why would you want to join the BarCamp in Saigon:

1. If you’re a geek, you know what you do
2. If you’re in the technology field, this is a chance for you to meet with people with similar interests love
3. It’s a learning opportunity
4. It’s not only for networking. It’s open and honest
5. It’s a chance for you to see, hear, touch and talk about new things fresh right out of people’s head
6. If you’re an analyst, come over here to this information goldmine
7. Even if you’re not in technology, you might want to come here and share the problems you have in your jobs and maybe someone with a technical expertise can help with a solution you’ve never thought of
8. Start-ups, meet people here!
9. Venture capitalists, all geek faces around the region are here
10. Please feel free to add your point here or with a comment below

Please simply put the date in your calendar: 15/11/2008

B. 3. Mentioning some web services

Google, Navigos’ Caravat and Yahoo! Portal clone Timnhanh. Only quickly through though; we didn’t dig deep down on each.

B. 4. An investment opportunity

…on technology, blogging and media… something that’s never been done in Vietnam.

You don’t want to miss the next part. I know you don’t want to miss the next gathering. Please CLICK HERE to subscribe, you’ll never miss the next good things.

C. My Key Observations

Obviously, the topics don’t want to go away from my mind so easily. There are some few things I’ve observed from our gathering that I’d like to share:

C. 1. CommunicatioN first, then media

The gathering is an evidence of “CommunicatioN, not CommunicationS“. Technology (Twitter) serves as a platform to build and strengthen the human quality of communicatioN.

C. 2. Synergistic power

Unlike networking functions I had previously attended/organized, the gathering was full of positive, creative and synergistic energy, thanks to the burning passion and rich ideas from each attendant.

In other words, it was networking not for the sake of sheer networking. It happens when the good comes first, rather than the goods come first.

How do you agree with me?

C. 3. The internet is so full & rich has it fully reached the users?

This exclamation came from N., a non-tech-savvy professional: “The internet is so rich. I only have a Facebook and a LinkedIn”. This brought 2 thoughts up on me:

1. It reminds me of “Way of a Scientist” that I was thinking hard on one year ago.

We (solution providers) want to keep users from the complexity of technology.

2. It’s a good excuse for me to bring this statistics on the table: 58% of people don’t know what social networking is.

How about Vietnamese users? What is the percentage do you think? I believe that analyzing my following suggestions would be useful:

1. The opportunities of expressing via more traditional channels. This should help justifying the love for blogging in many Vietnamese users
2. The willingness to look for alternatives. This should help explaining Yahoo! 360’s huge success in Vietnam
3. The amount of time an average Vietnamese spend on online activities as compared to their peers in some other countries such as US or Japan. This should help reasoning the growth of social networks.
4. Physical distance between Vietnamese mutual connection. This might help with analyzing micro-blogging.

C. 4. Globalization

Kevin gave us a compliment “This is the first time we mid expats and Vietnamese that works!” Thanks Kevin, I don’t know about others, but if I am to name one thing that pushes me on, it would be my conviction in being a “Global Villager”.

Hold your breath…

…the next event is coming soon…

I hereby model a message delivery as an article. If a conversation/talk/speech were an article, how differently would people communicate?

The sample article

Let’s take a random article as an example.

The Heading-only style

The communication from this style only conveys the headings of the article. The communicator possibly either doesn’t want to spend more time explaining in details or expects the audience to understand upon hearing the titles.

Advantages

• Time-saving

Disadvantages

• Huh? What next?

The Wiki style

Lambrusco

Some of you may have heard me preach of lambrusco, the foaming, almost purple sparkling wine from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

No, not the semi-sweet fizzy stuff that was so popular in the 1970s, but the real, dry, earthy lambrusco, from producers like Medici Ermete, Vini, Vittorio Graziano and Villa di Carlo. Served icy cold, it’s wonderful with just about any simple dish, be it fried chicken or pizza or burgers.

But you say you want a real wine (as if lambrusco weren’t real enough)? You say you want an American wine because it is, after all, practically the Fourth of July?

Description

This style is exactly like a wiki page. The communicator mentions keywords of the article, with or without priority order. Each of the keyword then links to a whole concept from other sources.

For example, when the speaker mentions “organizational behavior”, s/he could point to a book on the topic and recommend her/his audience to read the book.

Advantages

• Inter-connections of information
• From the spoken conversation, the receivers can then search for the more details with the keywords from the message

Disadvantages

• Some audience who have not known the concepts might lose track of the information mid-way

The Ad-hoc style

The communicator randomly picks paragraphs from the article and give full details of the paragraphs without or with limited conclusion.

Next time: full details of another random paragraph.

Advantages

• The audience might extract the right information in details if asking the right question.

Disadvantages

• Very hard to assemble the comprehensive but scattered information into a complete article.

The Bottom-up style

Throw the conclusion on first, then explain if questioned.

Advantages

• Just straight to the point. Exceeding time doesn’t impact much as the audience has already caught (if so) what they need.

Disadvantages

• Surprise for unprepared audience

The Full-article style

Section by section, paragraph by paragraph, word by word till the end.

Advantages

• Every full details

Disadvantages

• Time consumption

Conclusion

What is your style?

What other styles do you add to this list?

What style do you choose for which situation?

Reference

The sample article is taken from The New York Times’ Reds on Ice? It’s Not Heresy

Using Mind Map to synthesize my knowledge on Cognitive Psychology.

Please click on the image for the full version.