Gauravonomics Blog

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I’ll be speaking about my off consumption experiment at the Mandala NYC event on October 16th.

Mandala seeks to –

transform the cultural conversation to one that has meaning and depth

– by organizing “performance parties” that provide the context for meaningful conversations.

Do read about the previous Mandala events in August and September and do check out the profiles of fellow speakers — relationship coach Michael Jascz, artist Steven Hirsch and green energy guy Jonathan Colby.

By the way, my belief in serendipity was reinforced when organizer David Friedlader invited me to speak at the event. I’m attending another event in NYC on the same day — The Feast Social Innovation Conference –

The Feast will gather 150 of the world’s leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world. Anchored in innovative ideas with a focus on action, The Feast will take a cross-disciplinary look at digital answers to global problems, social design solutions and successful triple-bottom line business models.

If you are in NYC on October 16th, do drop in to one or both of the events.

I spoke at the Interesting New York conference yesterday and I totally loved it.

Here’s the final version of the slides I used for my talk –

– and here’s a transcript of my talk –

[SLIDE 1] Good afternoon! My name is Gaurav Mishra and I’m the marketer who went off consumption. I know… I know… it’s weird enough to say “off” and “consumption” in the same sentence and if you add “marketer” to the mix, it become so strange that it’s almost sublime.

Well, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to explain it all to a twelve year old girl the other day and I all I could do was to talk about dolls.

[SLIDE 2] So, let’s start with a story about dolls. But, first, let me ask all the lovely women in the audience: how many of you have owned a doll? [most women raise their hands] Great! How many of you have owned a hundred dolls? [one or two giggles] Come on, don’t be shy, raise your hand. [one woman raises her hand] Great! Wow! A hundred dolls!

I’m speaking at the Interesting New York conference on September 13 about my off-consumption experiment.

I had earlier decided to speak without any visual aids, but finally succumbed to the temptation of using slides. Clearly, the marketer who went off consumption still hasn’t gone off Powerpoint.

Here are the slides I’ll be using for my talk at Interesting New York –

If you are in New York on 13th, do come (tickets are $35 only). Some of the other speakers at Interesting New York are really interesting.

I’ll be speaking about my off consumption experiment at the Interesting New York conference on September 13.

I’m looking forward to meet a bunch of really interesting fellow speakers at the conference.

Here’s the final schedule of the three sessions. For some reason, I am bunched with some serious heavyweights like Faris Yakob, Noah Brier, Nick Parish and Grant McCraken and I’m suddenly afraid that I’ll totally underwhelm the audience.

Confirmed Speakers
10:00 - 12:30
Mark Baltazar: How to get run over by a Metro North Train and Live
Aaron Dignan: The game of life. How a generation approaches nearly every aspect of life as a game.
Alex Rosu: Credo Quia Absurdum Est. Romanian Political Street Art (webcast from Romania)
Allan Benamer & Jeff Tuller: Valuing Social Change: Towards a Better World With Numbers
Irving Slesar: Understanding Dreams
Amber Finlay & Bud Melman: Embracing Bastardization: what your reaction to Fan Fiction culture says about you
Joel Johnson: I am my own Grandpa! The good, the bad and the ugly in reclaiming family history online.
Dipti Bramhandkar: Is Reader’s Digest right? Is laughter really the best medicine?
Hillel Cooperman: Cheese, wine, and software? How software is crossing the artisanal divide
Kevin Slavin: Dollhouse Earth - A survey of building on Earth as if someone?s watching from space.

(Cross-posted at my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies)

Kentaro Toyama, who leads the Technology for Emerging Markets research group at Microsoft Research India, writes a precise introduction to ICT for development as a guest editor for IEEE’s Computer June 2008 edition (via James Utzschneider) –

On a planet with 1.2 billion Internet users, a far less fortunate 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. The same technology that has transformed our lives—the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet—remains out of reach and irrelevant for the poorest.

Often dubbed “information and communication technologies for development” and abbreviated ICTD or ICT4D, this field involves multiple sectors—governments, academia, small start-ups, large corporations, intergovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—and draws interest from multiple disciplines: anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, design, engineering, and computer science to name a few.

(Cross-posted on my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies)

I believe that the most powerful application of social media is to help citizens self-organize themselves into virtual communities to work towards social change. In BRIC countries, where mobile penetration is much higher than PC penetration, such communities will need to be designed in an “access agnostic” manner, which means that the content/ community exists in the “cloud” and can be accessed by multiple mediums including websites, RSS feeds, voice portals and even text messages.

So, when I attend Microsoft’s ICT for Development Conference (see agenda) in Washington DC on September 22-23 2008, I’ll be interested to find out if development agency leaders, private sector practitioners, non-profits and activists share my enthusiasm for the use of social media for social change. The conference is free, but there are limited seats, so you need to register in advance at DevEx, a community for “professionals working in international development, global health, and foreign assistance”.

Incidentally, Microsoft runs some interesting initiatives under its Unlimited Potential program and James Utzschneider runs a cool blog on “Microsoft’s commitment to create sustained social and economic opportunity for the next 5 billion”.