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Earlier today, I interviewed South Asia expert Howard B. Schaffer on America’s role in the aftermath of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Howard B. Schaffer has spent much of his 36-year career dealing with U.S. relations with South Asia, including a stint as ambassador to Bangladesh. He has recently finished writing a book on America’s role in Kashmir, titled ‘The Limits of Influence’, which will be published by the Brookings Institute early next year. He is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
In a 23 minute interview, we spoke about the history of America’s role in the Indian sub-continent and how it is likely to change in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack.
Ambassador Schaffer believes that we will have a replay of the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan we saw in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament. However, given the transitional government in United States, a weak government in Pakistan, and an end of term government in India, no decisive action is likely to be taken by any of the three governments.
Many of you may know that I record and upload my vidcasts exclusively from my Nokia E71 smartphone. I also use my E71 almost exclusively for reading my e-mail and 150 feeds, and accessing the only four social networks I am really active on — YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. If you add to that my compulsive calendering and my total reliance on GPS even to navigate two blocks, you can imagine how big a role my E71 is playing in my life right now. In fact, I would say that the E71 has been my main computer for the last two weeks. For the most part, it has been great and I totally love it.
However, a phone is as good as the app ecosystem around it and there is no app ecosystem around the Nokia E71. It comes with half a dozen pre-installed apps and apart from the mainstream web services like GMail/ GoogleReader/ GoogleMaps/ YouTube/ Yahoo/ Flickr/ Twitter/ Facebook, pretty much nothing else works on it. As much as I love the E71, I can’t see it getting traction against the iPhone unless Nokia gets developers to write apps for it.
As many of you know, I am in month six of my year long off consumption experiment. The experiment involves buying only the bare necessities, and nothing but the necessities, for an entire year, with the intent of immersing myself into the subculture of people who have chosen to define their identities by means other than buying or owning things.
As many of you know, I have been recording my experiences during the year in a blog called ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, because, well, I am the marketer who went off consumption.
I have decided now that it’s time to say goodbye to the marketer who went off consumption and focus on other stories, on other people who have stepped off the work-watch-spend treadmill, or asked themselves difficult questions about identity, or chosen to define themselves by means other than buying or owning things.
So, I’ll continue to write the blog, and I’ll continue to tell my own stories, but the blog won’t be about me anymore. The focus of the blog will shift away from reality TV mode to immersive journalism or ethnography mode.
I have no patience for the stuff in the dead zone, the items that are too slick to be real, but not slick enough to be a marvel.
Seth Godin’s advice is that if you can’t make it really slick, you should make it really simple.
My advice is that even if you can make it really slick, you should make it really simple.
First, let me say that I agree with Seth Godin — it only works if it’s really slick or really simple; all the in-between stuff is mostly mediocre. So, yes, if you can’t make it really slick, you should make it really simple.
However, it takes more time and effort to make things really slick than to make them really simple, and if both really simple and really slick have the same effectiveness, why not go with really simple?
I am a big believer in this thinking and you will notice that both my website template and my daily vidcast are so simple that they are perhaps too simple.
My young friend Harshil Karia — who has recently started social media agency Foxymoron — recently asked me if there is too much content out there, if we have become so focused on creating (often duplicate) content that we have forgotten how to listen.
Well, I’m someone who believe that there can never be too much content. It’s a god things that so many of us are creating so much content, and here are three reasons why –
- The Wisdom of Crowds: The more people link to, vote on, tag, or share a piece of content, the more visible it becomes. When we engage with content online, we endorse it, make it easier for others to discover it. So, in fact, every click does count.
- The Value of Mashups: There is as much value in creating connections between existing pieces of content, mashing them up, as in creating totally original content. When we create mashups, we reveal underlying layers of understanding that were not visible before.
I recently announced that I’ll be spending some serious time this year working on MobiChange, a social entrepreneurship venture that will leverage mobile social networking for mobilizing social change.
I have been doing some research on how to use social media for social change and I believe that a truly powerful social 2.0 initiative needs to be –
1. Mobile, because most of the developing world still doesn’t have access to computers.
2. Scalable, because standalone events/ initiatives can only have limited localized impact.
3. Self-sustainable, because it won’t last unless it pays for itself.
As an individual, I was tired of being targeted by commercial messages from the brands-media-retail triumvirate. As a marketer, I loved the art and science of marketing, adored brands, and was hardwired into the idea of capitalist free markets driven by consumerism.
My endeavor to reconcile these two parts… led to my interest in social media, because, at its best, social media allows brands and consumers to connect as equals, even as people (and brands are people too).
– but that’s not the full story.
At its best, social media enables us to transform ourselves as individuals, transform marketplaces and transform society.
Social media gives us the tools to create meaning (via both content and relationships) in ways that was not possible before, allows us to realize our full potential both as creative individuals and social beings.
Social media also enables brands and consumers to engage as equals, even connect as people (because, as I have said before, brands are people too).
I haven’t done a vidcast so far because I didn’t have the right camera, the right microphone, the right editing software, the right studioesque setting. It’s a little ironic, then, that I’m finally doing my vidcast when I don’t even have a laptop, or a room I don’t have to share with someone.
I record my vidcast on my Nokia E71 mobile phone, during the few moments I have the room to myself either at my office, or my hostel. Then I upload it to YouTube from my mobile phone itself, whenever I have access to a fast enough wi-fi connection.
I see my vidcast as a lesson. To do something we really want to do — write a book, make a movie, start a business, travel the world — we need fewer resources — time, money, energy, gadgets — than we think we do.
So, what is it that you really want to do? What is stopping you from doing it? Think about it. Maybe, you already have everything that you need.
The interesting twist is that I’ll record, edit and upload my vidcasts exclusively from my Nokia E71 smartphone. So, the vidcast is also an experiment in what is possible and what is not possible with mobile technology. Stay tuned.
