Events on Nick Wang

Meeting Dopplr's co-founder Marko Ahtisaari

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:30:37 +0000

Heard about this event at the last minute from Thomas Crampton. I like to travel, or better yet, I love to live in different places. So when I heard about Dopplr a few years ago, I immediately signed up, but as with a lot of the recent web 2.0 social sharing sites, I don’t do much with them after the sign up. The problem with Dopplr for me was that I simply don’t travel enough. Still, I like traveling and so, I couldn’t give up the chance to meet one of Dopplr’s co-founders, Mr. Marko Ahtisaari yesterday. I’m glad I went! Marko is a great guy and after hearing him talk about Dopplr, I can tell Dopplr is different from other mindless social copy cat sites. What Dopplr boils down to is “Declaring travel intention, and shows coincidences”. They find value in user generated data, not content. Since it’s personal information about future plans, they are very careful with privacy and creates a layer of “fuzziness” between your data and the anonymous web. I liked how he’s very clear about Dopplr strategic position and holds a high moral value with the privacy issues so they would rather forgo higher profits for our privacy, this makes them the opposite of the greedy “sell your DNA and copy all the good ideas from other social sites” Facebook. I also like the way he’s handling the eco thing. On Dopplr, one of your navigation tabs is “Your carbon”, and if you allow it, Dopplr will send your travel data (anonymously) to AMEE to calculate your travel’s carbon footprint. Well, I’m all about being eco-friendly and minimalist and shit, so I asked him whether or not he’s trying to push this eco thing as a main selling point on Dopplr, or is it sort of an added value kind of thing. I already knew the answer but it was still nice to hear Marko explains it. Eco friendliness is not a key point, they don’t provide the means to help travelers be green, but they do provide the data to make people be mindful of their impact. I think that’s the right way to do it. I’ve also been trying to create an “eco-friendly restaurant listings” type of site, but I realize that I have to find a bigger draw so that the service itself can become popular… and my “eco-friendly” agenda will be sneaked in there to shape people’s habits. Another topic was the validity of the data, Dopplr is only a small team of 7, it’s impossible to check everybody’s submission onto the system. But there are basic algorithm and moderation to check things, e.g. Places are not listed publicly until a few comments have been made by others. Then, we move on to the future of Dopplr, they had actually just submitted their iPhone app yesterday, it’ll be free and usable by non registered users as a city guide. Their plan is to concentrate on people and create a social atlas. One of the products that they’re trying to roll out is a printed guide. Dopplr online is a highly personalized social experience, but the print guides are compiled using anonymous aggregate of travelers, e.g. Where do Londoners eat in NY? I think Marko realizes that the guide isn’t good enough in this form, so he added a personal touch to it - highlighting one place and one person’s choices. Some people asked Marko what his Dopplr guide has to offer that other traditional guide books don’t, and Marko said “Fresh data”, but I think the problem is deeper than that! Personally, I think a guide about a place based on other travellers’ recommendation, is NOT a good guide. When I travel, I would much rather listen to the local’s recommendations. Who cares if Steve Jobs ate at this restaurant in Paris, WTF does he know? And I was right. Marko said they actually have “hosts” and “travelers” roles, and there is algorithm to weight hosts’ recommendation heavier than travelers. Marko went on to talk about allowing us to create a personalized “My Place” guide, so when our friends come to visit and ask us where should they go, we can just give them our guides! This is the BEST idea!! It encourages users to submit data about their local town / city! AND, based on our local recommendations, Dopplr can create more personalized foreign guides for each of us!!! Some people asked for features to import their personal recommendations from other services like Google Maps or Calendars, but here we have a big “ETL” type of problem (Extract, Transform, Load), ‘coz everybody does it differently. Finally, Marko talked about B2B deals with big travel corporations like the Star Alliance, who can really use Dopplr’s “future travel intent” data. And they are trying to go mobile but not doing it like most other location aware mobile apps ‘coz he thinks most people already have the intention to go to a specific place. All in all, it was a great talk. Marko was very open about everything, the only thing is, I got this feeling that they’re still not very certain on how to evolve Dopplr. Personally, I think that B2B deal is closer to their core ideology than the paper guide thing… unless the guides are personalized like I said above, using our local recommendations. But Marko said they can’t do it right now. ‘Coz once we go down the personalization road, it’s un-ending. Well, I think they WILL do it, may be they’re just lacking in human resources right now. :)

Comments

John Britton — 2009-06-27 11:17:53

Sounds awesome, I really love Dopplr. I just wish it would allow me to be more nomadic. It doesn’t let me change my living location as part of my plan so it thinks all of my trips are from my ‘home’ which is hard for me to define.

cloneofsnake — 2009-06-29 00:37:57

Well, I agree… but talking with Marko, you’ll realize that “Future Travel Intentions” is their main point. Dopplr knows where u are NOW so u have to log in from different places for Dopplr to know where you traveled to and from, and the value of their data is “in the future”. But I know what you mean, why does it allow us to “add past trips” but doesn’t give us a choice to pick where we traveled from?!

CUUSOO Hong Kong 1st meeting 空想香港

Tue, 26 May 2009 11:32:48 +0000

Created the first HK meetup for CUUSOO fans on facebook. I didn’t do much advertising this time around coz I came down with the flu and it killed me! Seriously! I was sick for a whole week! Anyway, I’m all good now… didn’t gain no super powers, but I have been turned into a zombie. :)

0524 03 cuusoo hk 1st meet (by cloneofsnake)

It was raining cats and dogs on Sunday, I sent out a message to the CUUSOO HK group in the morning to tell everyone that I’ll still be there. It was nice to see Ca-Phun, his friend William, Charlotte, her friend Alan braved the rain to come learn about what we’re doing to bring CUUSOO to Hong Kong. Charlotte in particular gave it some thoughts and invited her friend Alan, who’s a local Product Designer! Alan was very interested in CUUSOO’s idea. I showed them my presentation (I’ll post it up later), basically, after the Design and Innovation Forum event, Kohei and I had a few long discussions about lots of things, in the end, Kohei suggested that we start from small - get ONE design - the Kayla Tote Bag - up on CUUSOO.com and go through the complete life-cycle, once proven that CUUSOO system works in Hong Kong, we can start to duplicate - work with users on CUUSOO, creating multiple designs. If we look ahead into the future, our entire line of designs can be sold as a complete business! (sold to MUJI for example) The whole thing will go down in history and become a case study. In this case, CUUSOO will become a platform for designers to launch their “micro business”. Right now, what we can do from Hong Kong is to participate in the Kayla Tote Bag’s design process (by commenting), and to help promote it on blogs and facebook and other social media venues. We had a good, long discussions about lots of things. A few of the major questions were:

What does CUUSOO provide if we already do everything from design to market to produce the products? (My answer: That’s just the beginning stage in HK, where we’ll have to take on the roles of designer + marketer + manufacturer! Eventually, each role only does its own thing and manufacturers will come to CUUSOO to pick up businesses.)
If most investors are only willing to pay $50 for the product, but a few are willing to pay as much as $1000… does that pull up the curve? In other words, does the product still get made - and some people pay more than others? (My answer: Probably not… :P but that’s a good question, I’ll ask Kohei. :P )
How is CUUSOO gonna secure its designers’ Intellectual Properties? It works in Japan because they all respect IP… but here in HK and in China… you post a design online… they can just take your design and make it themselves! (My answer: True ~ I can think of 2 things - 1 - CUUSOO as the platform has to take on the legal responsibility… so it may have to sue the people who infringe our IP. 2 - but personally, I like to be more ideal, think when the eco-system is more mature on CUUSOO, I hope the businesses will want to come on CUUSOO and establish a reputation. Basically, customers will want to give their money to reputable, ethical and moral businesses - and that in turn will make the manufactures want to be good.)
The language problem - the website is all Japanese, are they going to make a English site? (My answer: Yes, it’s a big problem, and Yes, we’re working on it.)

Another interesting thing we talked about was “Trust”… Charlotte actually works for a local web development company, and she had to be careful to not let the company owner knows about CUUSOO, because “the biz owner is a typical Hong Kong businessman who only looks at the $dollar sign. If we tell him about this system, he’ll simply take it and build it as his own business! I said this is definitely very typical “Hong Kong”! But also, it is where Hong Kong fails!! I’ve said it before, people who only look at money and profits are too short-sighted… they don’t see the big picture. This is a perfect example! Since typical Hong Kong people and business think only about short-term profits, they rarely produce IPs and brands that are long-term, or become world renowned. This becomes a downward death spiral! Say if Charlotte’s boss really decided to steal CUUSOO’s system and build the exact same platform for Hong Kong. Do you think designers will trust that website with their designs? The site itself disrespects IP and stole the business model from CUUSOO, why would anyone give it their trust? When a worldwide company like LEGO or MUJI choose to partner with a company, do you think they will choose such a company?

Comments

Peggy Chu — 2009-05-27 06:46:17

That’s very cool. Too bad I couldn’t make it to the meeting as I’m in the US~but do let me know about what can I do for the comic/story to present how CUUSOO works to HK. :)

HK Design Innovation Forum Photo Report

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:22:07 +0000

After getting the confirmation from Kohei Nishiyama, founder of Japanese user innovation company cuusoo.com, I had little more than a month’s time to prepare and organize this “HK International Design & Innovation Forum” event. You can read about the reason why I wanted to create this event in my previous post. I wanted to do something meaningful for the local design and technology communities, yet during the preparation stages, I encountered quite a few disappointments. For example, Youth.gov.hk, I sent them an info email like the one I wrote in my previous blog post, and all I got in response was this:

From: “enquiry@youth.gov.hk” To: Nick Wang@ Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2009 9:44:14 AM Subject: Re: Design and Innovation Event Dear Mr Wang, We are sorry that the forwarded message has been send to us by mistake. Youth.gov.hk

orz

And then there was the events & marketing department of the Polytechnic University School of Design. I blasted multiple emails to sdmktg@polyu.edu.hk, but never got any replies. Then, through the help of CCHK Creative Common’s Haggen So, I got in contact with one of the professors inside the School of Design, I dropped off a stack of posters for him to post at the school but when I returned a few days before the event, I found that none of my posters were posted! I really wanted the speakers to be able to share their experience and inspire young design students… so I barged into one of the classroom and spoke directly to the students inside, invited them to check out the event web page and spread the news to their friends! (I was one step short of kidnapping the students and dragging them to the event :P )

0427_06A LEGO hirng (by cloneofsnake)

Besides blogging about the event, creating a web page, a directions page and an event sign up form, making sure my event page pops up as #1 in both Yahoo and Google search, I also tried my hands on some guerrilla marketing, like the job hiring posters above and a Youtube video! That was a first for me, kinda fun.

▶ YouTube video

Finally, come the day of the event, picked up Kohei and had a quick dim sum lunch in TST, rushed to the JCCAC at 2, met up with Thomas and Douglas as they arrive, none of us prepared anything to talk about, the guests were relying on Thomas to lead them into different topics. I briefly explained to them one more time about the reason why I created this event, (to inspire the youths) and off I went on stage to start the talks. (Deep breath~~)

0502 02 HK Design Innovation Forum (by cloneofsnake)

While I was all nervous talking on stage, looks like the guest speakers were quite tensed as well.

0502 06 HK Design Innovation Forum (by cloneofsnake)

The talk was great, Douglas gave us a glimpse into their design process as a team within G.O.D. How he realized Hong Kong’s unique cultural importance, and later on, he spoke with Kohei about how G.O.D. could use cuusoo.com’s system to harness user innovations in Hong Kong.

hkdesigninnovationforum (by mancjew)

As expected, there were lots of interests in cuusoo.com’s user innovations and designers collaborations model. The audience asked questions about “how cuusoo.com retain its users”, “how much cuusoo.com reward its users”, “how do you protect the artists’ IP? (Intellectual Properties)”… etc etc. The “protecting artists’ assets” is a typical concern for all artists and designers all over the world. I’ve heard the same concern when I was in New York. “Trust” is a big problem on the internet, I had a few long conversations with Kohei in regards to that in the days after. This is a personal interests of mine, solving this “trust” problem, and I’m continuing to work on a solution(s).

Douglas Young, Kohei Nishiyama, Thomas Crampton, Nicholas Wang (by 黛Daisy)

Questions were predominantly business and money related, I was hoping Douglas and Kohei would talk about how they started out and how they struggled, ‘coz I think stories of unrelenting spirits are great motivations for people. One audience did ask Kohei about his decision to leave McKinsey & Co. to start his own biz. That was a good question. Kohei recounted that it was like social suicide! His colleagues all told him to think twice, as he wouldn’t be allowed back! The business was only in its most infancy stage, Kohei saw the potential (far into the future!), and took the leap of faith. The reward is that he has been doing what he loves for the past 10 years, and he’s happy to continue doing it till the end! I guess this is the kind of message I want the youngsters to have. Don’t just look at jobs that pay the most amount of money. Find your passion, follow it, don’t be afraid of failures and tough it out!!

After the event, we spread into small group discussions. That was cool, got to meet quite a few new people.

0502 33 HK Design Innovation Forum (by cloneofsnake)

After both Thomas and Douglas had left, Kohei stayed behind and discussed with a group of really enthusiastic folks.

0502 42 HK Design Innovation Forum (by cloneofsnake)

Kohei said he’s really impressed with the amount of interests and talents in Hong Kong. We are currently working on the details of a “first international project” on cuusoo.com. I’ll be posting the details up here later.

0502 45 HK Design Innovation Forum (by cloneofsnake)

Once again, I would like to thank G.O.D. and Douglas Young for helping to make this event come true, Thomas Crampton for moderating, Kohei Nishiyama for taking time out of his busy schedule to come spend an entire afternoon with us, and everyone who came and participated in the event! Thank you!

Comments

遺失了的記事：2009年5月 | Daisy’s Digital Anthology — 2009-09-06 12:53:04

[…] I Die – 香港國際設計創意研討會 Hong Kong International Design and Innovation Forum Before I Die – HK Design Innovation Forum Photo Report HODUCKYEE DesignIdeas – Hong Kong International Design and Innovation Forum […]

Nice Yahoo Search Marketing photos | SHT ADVERTISING — 2011-04-10 12:09:19

[…] 香港國際設計創意研討會 – Yahoo! Search Results_1241105182567 Image by cloneofsnake Photo report – cloneofsnake.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/hk-design-innovatio… […]

HK International Design and Innovation Forum

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:41:09 +0000

香港國際設計創意研討會 HK International Design and Innovation Forum 你都可以設計俾住好D，無印良品，LEGO You can design for GOD, MUJI and LEGO too!

Thank you for coming and making this a great event!

Please share your photos on Flickr tagged with “hkdesigninnovationforum” before Sunday night. Wacom is giving away 3 Bamboo Fun S drawing tablets and we will announce the winners here on Monday. And the winner is…..

So what was the process I used and what was I looking for? I looked through the photos with Flickr Slideshow on all photos tagged with “hkdesigninnovationforum”. What I was looking for was not just beautiful portraits of the speakers, but a sense of “users participation”. After all, this was a “User Generated” event - so it is about “the people”, and that’s what I looked for in the winning photo. So, congratulations to se_ea, you’ll be contacted through Flickr mail about the prize. Thanks to everyone who share photos on Flickr. It is the best platform to share information from a photo to the world. (Facebook is only good for sharing photos with your “friends”, so it is not ideal to pool together photos for public events.) Finally, I’ve just created a cuusoo.com 空想生活 Hong Kong Group for those of you interested in design, user innovation and user generated products to stay connected with Kohei and cuusoo.com in Japan! Any other suggestions?? Let me know! Date: May 2nd, 2009 Time: 2:00pm - 5:00pm (Discussions begin at 2:30pm) **Address:**Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre 30 pak tin street, shek kip mei kowloon, hong kong

HKDUG’s Nicholas Wang is proud to have the opportunity to gather two leading luminaries of Asian design to share their experiences with you. Kohei Nishiyama, founder of the Tokyo-based online design company cuusoo.com and Douglas Young, founder of Hong Kong design-based retailer G.O.D. Both Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Young have been hard at work pushing the design and innovation envelope for over 10 years, you will be able to hear about their experiences and what drives them to success. HKDUG的Nicholas Wang有幸邀請到亞洲設計界兩位傑出權威者將其經歷與大家分享。第一位是日本東京網上設計公司cuusoo.com的創辦人, 西山浩平先生。第二位是香港本土生活品味店「住好D」的創辦人, 楊志超先生。兩位大師致力推動並革新創意設計的界限已有逾十年經驗, 大家將可諦聽兩位的歷程及成功心得。 RSVP here! Kohei Nishiyama

Since 1997, long before the Web 2.0 trend toward co-creation, Kohei Nishiyama has been running an innovative online product development community. The system, used by the design-centric Japanese retailer MUJI and soon to be rolled out globally by LEGO, has manufacturers working with consumers to design products - from inception to manufacturing. Started off as an ideal to make “people’s wishes come true”, cuusoo.com is now synonymous with crowdsourcing. Mr. Nishiyama will be sharing with us how massive online collaboration can create sophisticated design products. 西山浩平 遠於Web 2.0成為”共同創造”概念大趨勢前的1997年起, 西山浩平早已引入一個極具創意的網上產品發展社群平台。以設計為核心的日本零售店「無印良品」以及即將全球性推行採用此方式的LEGO集團, 讓製造商從始到末與消費者共同設計產品。由最初「想令每一個人也能實現所想」的理念, 至現今的cuusoo.com已成了「群眾外包」設計的俵俵者。西山先生將與大家分享如何透過網上協作創出精緻產品。 Douglas Young

Douglas Young launched the Hong Kong-based homeware and accessories company Goods of Desire (GOD) in 1996 with a mission to bring better homegrown design into people’s lives. G.O.D., the acronym which sounds like “to live better” in Cantonese, started out by capturing Hong Kong’s icons and turning them into art forms and retail objects to be appreciated as affordable art. Mr. Young’s designs are inspired by Hong Kong’s unique cultural identity, they’re often iconic but with a twist, so people of Hong Kong can immediately identify with them, while putting a smile on their faces. Mr. Young has the foresight to begin collecting items of cultural significance more than 20 years ago, their G.O.D. Street Culture Museum is now a database for current and future designers to draw inspirations on. When Mr. Young learned of this meaningful event, he graciously accepted the invite and lend us a venue to make this happen. 楊志超 楊志超先生於1996年創辦本土生活品味店「G..O.D」的宗旨是要將優質本土設計引進港人的生活。G..O.D, 廣東話俚語即「住好啲」, 意思就是要提升生活質素, 最初將一些香港代表物融入產品, 變為讓大眾可欣賞的廉價藝術品。楊先生的設計靈感源於香港獨特的文化身份, 往往以一些大家熟悉, 而加進了鬼馬元素的設計為材, 讓港人能即時發出會心微笑。早有遠見的楊先生在20多年前已開始蒐集具文化價值的物品, 住好啲石硤HEA街頭文化館現已成為各設計師攝取靈感的資料庫。身為本地設計界權威, 楊先生得悉此活動後, 慷慨地接受邀請並騰出場地以舉行是次項目。 Thomas Crampton

One of Asia’s most influential bloggers and a career correspondent at New York Times and International Herald Tribune. Now Asia-Pacific director of Digital Influence at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Thomas draws deep experience from both the old and new media world. You can read his blog at http://www.thomascrampton.com. Thomas will lead Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Young in panel discussion in the first half of the event. All attendees will be invited to join in on discussions in the second half. 亞洲其中一位最具影響力的網誌人兼國際先驅導報及紐約時報記者, 現任奧美公共關係國際集團360 Digital Influence的亞太總監。Thomas Crampton先生是新舊傳媒界的資深人士。大家可到www.thomascrampton.com細閱其網路日誌。Thomas Crampton先生將會於活動時間的首半節主持有西山先生及楊先生發表意見的專題討論, 然後於後半節邀請在場參加者一起投入討論。 Nicholas Wang

The organizer behind this event, Nick is an Internet and Social Media expert with experience at some of the largest Internet companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft MSN.com. Having spent half of his life living and working in the US, he envisions the loss of Hong Kong’s competitive edge if the people of Hong Kong continue to abandon long term investments in creative designs and I.T. expertise. Nick is now actively involved in the HKDUG - Hong Kong Drupal User Group, social media communities, and founded Sharingan Consulting as a mean to pursue his vision of a digital future of Hong Kong. 負責是次活動的節目統籌。Nicholas Wang是曾任職雅虎及微軟MSN.com等網絡鉅子的網絡科技與社會媒體專家。主要於美國生活的他預料香港人若繼續漠視創意設計和資訊科技這些長線投資便會失掉競爭優勢。Nicholas Wang現致力實現其對香港數碼未來的願景, 並活躍於香港Drupal User Group及其他社群媒體。 Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160525385437 Thomas Crampton’s Blog Entry: http://www.thomascrampton.com/hong-kong/meet-2-great-asian-designers-in-hong-kong/ Nick’s Blog Entry: http://cloneofsnake.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/hong-kong-international-design-and-innovation-forum

Twitter tag hkdesigninnovationforum

Comments

遺失了的記事：2009年5月 | Daisy’s Digital Anthology — 2009-09-06 12:50:58

[…] Before I Die – 香港國際設計創意研討會 Hong Kong International Design and Innovation… Before I Die – HK Design Innovation Forum Photo Report HODUCKYEE DesignIdeas – Hong […]

香港國際設計創意研討會 Hong Kong International Design and Innovation Forum

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:44:45 +0000

香港國際設計創意研討會 Hong Kong International Design and Innovation Forum - Please visit the official site and RSVP here.

Picture of Kohei Nishiyama, founder of cuusoo.com and creator of the Design-to-Order process. (Taken by Joi Ito shared on Flickr) (This is actually an email I sent out to my comrades, posting it on this blog to help spread the word.) Dear all, A friend of mine, Mr. Kohei Nishiyama, is coming to HK in the last week of April and I’m trying to create a “Design and Innovation” event on Saturday, May 2nd, so that he can make a speech and share his experience with the people of HK. Kohei is the founder of cuusoo.com, where consumers, designers and manufacturers are pulled together to make “wishes come true”! Users submit their “wishes”, designers transform these “wishes” into concrete designs and manufactures turn the designs into real products! They have partnerships with internationally well known brands like MUJI and LEGO. Thomas Crampton is a former NY Times reporter and he had recently interviewed Kohei while in Switzerland. I met with Tom on Sunday and he told me he has been trying to get Kohei to come to HK too, so he’s happy about the news and has offered to help me with the event. Check out his interview: http://www.thomascrampton.com/internet/kohei-nishiyama-co-creation-at-muji-and-lego/

▶ YouTube video

For more info on Mr. Nishiyama, check out:

US - Japan Innovators network - Kohei Nishiyama (西山浩平) - CEO & Founder, elephant design co., ltd.
cuusoo.com Personally, I am disappointed to see that while Hong Kong does not lack design talents, the society itself and the business communities don’t seem to value these people very much. The same goes for technology and innovation. In creating an international Design and Innovation event, I hope to help change the mindset of HK people and businesses, to put more emphasis back in “Creativity and Innovation”, and open their eyes to see the long term benefits of having a healthy creative industry in HK. So, if you’re also passionate about design and innovation, please don’t hesitate to contact me at nicholas.wangyahoo{period or dot or full stop}com or simply leave a comment here. Be it sponsors or venue choices, speakers or promoters, I need all the help I need in order to successfully pull this off in such a short period of time! Thank you, -Nicholas Wang

Comments

HK Design Innovation Forum Photo Report « Before I Die — 2009-05-06 11:13:05

[…] Preparation and Result of my Monbukagakusho ApplicationTravel Blog - 2006/03/28 - Hakone, Japan香港國際設計創意研討會 Hong Kong International Design and Innovation ForumManagement Problems in Hong Kong (and generally in Asian Companies)Monbukagakusho - the reason why I […]

Reverse the pecking order and Rectify the unjust banking structure

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:16:31 +0000

Just came back to Seattle and saw this on the news:

Merrill Lynch exec, Peter Kraus, got paid a $25 million bonus for what amount to a few weeks of work. This is after Bank of America had bought out Merrill Lynch and received a $25 billion cash infusion from the US government’s bailout plan. Peter Kraus just bought a $37 million, 5 bedrooms co-op apartment in NYC’s Upper East Side, at 720 Park Avenue.

I have a big problem with things like this and those greedy CEOs getting multi-million dollar salary / bonus while the average Joe can barely survive from paycheck to paycheck! I guess it’s due to my background, my father is an engineer and I also worked as an engineer at Microsoft and Yahoo! People like us are “creators”, we develop, implement & maintain things so that businesses can run, produce and earn money. To engineers and scientists, there’s more to a job than just monetary compensation, we also look for that sense of accomplishment when we create meaningful things for the world!!! We take pride in our work based on our achievements and meaning, more than how much money we make!!

I’ve always had a hard time understanding finance and the stock market. Why are these people simply trading papers and can make a shitload of money while producing no quantifiable products for the world? Why are we letting these people control our money??! Anybody else think that this is seriously fucked up?!! I wish someone would enlighten me and may be we can find solutions to fix this social unjust, reverse the pecking order, and take back the control of our hard earned money from the evil banks. Speaking of evil, I’m reading “The Google Story” and one chapter is about Google’s process to IPO. What these guys had done really impressed me! Excerpts from the book:

Larry and Sergey knew about the scandals - some criminal, some unethical, all evil - where Wall Street underpriced IPOs and then let favored clients profit by dumping the stock on day one, after the price skyrocketed. The guys wanted no part of what seemed to be a corrupt and rotten system. Google used an egalitarian method for distributing stock to the public, this means anyone can participate, and would overcome the Wall Street bias toward underpricing. Brin and Page resented what they viewed as a Wall Street monopoly when it came to fees. All the firms charged the same exorbitant fees for handling IPOs - 7%; in a $2 billion public offering, they would earn $140 million. … They decided they would compensate Wall Street at less than half of the usual and prevailing fees, and if the brokerage houses didn’t like it, they didn’t have to participate in the deal. Furthermore, they developed detailed plans to wrest control over the unfair pricing and allocation of shares, and reserved the right to cancel the deal at the last moment if they changed their minds. To put it mildly, the Google Guys were sending a “drop-dead” message to Wall Street. Larry and Sergey were advised by their outside lawyers that once they filed IPO documents with the SEC, they would enter something know as the “quiet period”, when they would have to make sure they said nothing to tout the value of Google stock. As populists, it made no sense to Brin and Page that the quiet period permitted something called a road show, where they would meet behind closed doors with big money people, the institutinal investros and heavyweights of Wall Street, to give presentations and answer questions. Why did it make sense to give those big insiders an advantage at road shows gatherings, leaving outsiders and small investors to fend for themselves? This seemed like a typical self-serving Wall Street tradition, and they aimed to break it, or at least bend it, in the process of going public. They would say little or nothing new at the road shows, and give everyone access to the same additional data about Google by posting it on the Internet.

Finally, another excerpt from the same chapter that talks about engineers and good and evil:

Many of the best engineers had a strong sense of the deeper philosophical issues of right and wrong, and of good and evil. Technology, in and of itself, could be a force of light or darkness. By instinct, talented technologists were attracted to a company that had appealing values and virtues that went beyond maximizing profits and market share.

A little too exaggerating, may be. But all the same, a lot of my colleagues at Yahoo! felt the same way back then. (though we certainly didn’t mind when our stock options kept shooting up either.) :P

Comments

Jason Khanlar — 2009-02-09 01:06:47

I agree wholeheartedly. :3 Interesting blog!

Open Everything HK 2008 - Photo Review

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:50:42 +0000

IMG_2655 (by johndbritton)

2 days after the Open Everything Hong Kong event, I’ve finally recovered the usage of my brain! :D Last week, besides working with my pals from Hong Kong Drupal User Group on rebuilding our venue provider, SOHOlife’s website, I also had to prepare a presentation about it (and just Drupal in general), and another presentation on Flickr, I want to help spread Flickr in the HK Chinese community. (Also caught a bad cold too, but took antibiotics immediate to fix it before Saturday hits.) The venue was a big headache for us too! Originally, I hooked up SOHOlife with HKDUG so we can have a place to hold physical monthly meetings and a free online space to put up a Drupal “sandbox”, in return, we’ll rebuild their website with Drupal for free. John volunteered to help if SOHOlife can also host his Open Everything event, so I talked to my friend at SOHOlife again, brought John to check out the place on the next Monday and got the whole deal rolling. There was only 3 weeks left to the event so it was a huge win! Unfortunately, the next week when a few of us went to work on the website at SOHOlife’s office, we realized that their rooms were kinda small and the internet connection was kinda slow!

HKDUG working at SOHOlife’s Office (by cloneofsnake)

That raised an alarm for John and he started looking for alternatives. We were still checking out other possibilities on the Thursday - 2 days before the event. We went to the University of Hong Kong, where Creative Common HK’s Haggen So helped provided 3 separated classrooms in 2 buildings. With more than 50 people signed up for the event, John thought it was necessary to move the event to HKU. In the end however, it proved too hard to change a venue in the last minute! We were pretty worried in the morning of the event! As 20 more people signed up in the last minute! But here’re some tips for you if you’re planning an event.

Not everyone who signed up will come - expect 50 ~ 70% turn out rate.
It’s OK to have a smaller venue and be slightly overcrowded, people can manage sitting on the floor and standing outside the door. This is better than having a big venue but not be able to fill it up, that would look bad.
It’s important to “trap” your guests, it’s best to have a lounge area connecting the rooms and the exit. When people gathers, it makes them less likely to leave.
Location must be easy to get to, food and drinks must be provided so they don’t have to go out when hungry.

Image00096 (by johndbritton)

the great debate - guilty or not guilty? (by caphun)

Then Friday night, with my 2 presentations still unfinished, John took me and my friend Piet to a unicycle hockey thing that they do every Friday! My 1st time trying unicycling… was a lot harder than I’d imagine!! I had a blast but I kicked the inside of my ankle real bad, I was limping the whole Saturday!

Hong Kong // 2008 (by pietdef)

So, people slowly trickled in around 10 am, and we began with John giving an opening speech and CCHK’s Haggen spoke about “Why open is good”. We only had around 20’ish people at that time and John was a little disappointed at the turn out, but more people and more people came in as time goes by. The planning session was rather quick and the spots were filled out fairly quickly.

Image00011 (by johndbritton)

Image00047 (by johndbritton)

All the talks were video / audio recorded by Open Radio HK, I’ll update this post with their links when they’re available. Ideally, the wiki should also have details about each sessions. Like me, I live-blogged about Couch Surfing and Retrospectives (an Agile Management method by Agile HK’s Conrad Benham).

IMG_2630 (by johndbritton)

Image00053 (by johndbritton)

Then I did my talk on Flickr, it was kinda sad… only 5 people came to listen at first, I think a couple more came in mid presentation), but it was still nice… I prepared to present it in Cantonese so the recordings can be listened to by the locals online, the slides are also shared from my GDocs account, so hopefully, it will help teach some people how to easily manage their photos with Picasa + picasa2flickr + Flickr + Firefox (specially using Greasemonkey to extend flickr).

Open Everything HK 2008 (by cloneofsnake)

Image00060 (by johndbritton)

flickr swags (by caphun)

The few that came already were avid users of Flickr and were quite interested in learning about extending Flickr with Greasemonkey. After the session, they came to ask me for more tips and other add-ons that I use. They also gave a few complaints mainly in regards to the low limits on free accounts and difficulty with tagging. I told them to post on the Hong Kong group and Emily, our Flickr contact, will address them. I also gave away all my Flickr swags, the badges and lens cleaning cloths were really popular, I only have some stickers left now. Presentation slides on using Flickr, Picasa and Firefox to manage you photos easily. Lunch time! Thanks for CCHK for providing lunch!

IMG_2641 (by johndbritton)

IMG_2644 (by johndbritton)

Then it’s our HKDUG’s presentation on Drupal and the rebuilding of SOHOlife.hk. This had more turn out than my Flickr one, it went rather smoothly except for the little mishap with my Firefox “awesome bar”… let’s just say I didn’t feel too awesome at that moment… LOL :P (so here’s another tip, if u’re doing a presentation, remember to clear your history before hooking up to the big projector!) ;) Presentation slides on Drupal - how HKDUG rebuilt SOHOlife.hk (Thanks caphun for all the photos.)

new Soholife website built on Drupal (by caphun)

HKDUG talk (by caphun)

cloneofsnake presenting Drupal (by caphun)

HKDUG members (by caphun)

The highlight of the event for me was Val’s talk on Open Public Information. Val brought to our attention a little known fact that public information collected by the Hong Kong government, supposedly free for all HK citizens, are actually NOT freely available to the Hong Kong public. So, HK people can submit requests for such data, but if the government decided that they don’t want to release the info, they legally don’t have to and the people can do nothing about it! This is an outrage! It should be a citizen’s right to access such data that were gathered by the government using the taxpayers’ money! What’s more outrageous is that not only the typical European countries all open their info, Taiwan, which is known for their openness, and even mainland China had signed on to open up government info! The ignorance of the typical HK citizen in regards to their rights is rather appalling.

IMG_2652 (by johndbritton)

IMG_2650 (by johndbritton)

What I found really ironic though, was that during the same session, in the last minute, someone had started a session out in the lounge area called “Financial Crisis”… I’m not sure how this related to “Open Everything”, but it proved very popular among the local HK’ers. (In fact, this spanned 2 sessions!) I don’t know if anything positive or productive came out of their session, but I think this is a good example of Hong Kong’s overly heavy dependency on the Financial industry, and Hong Kong people’s typical shortsightedness on “business and money”. Val had given some great examples on how European and Taiwanese governments, by opening and putting their cultural and governmental data online, people are able to identify gaps in their societies and create new businesses to fill in these gaps, thus creating a new economy and new jobs. Arrgh!! I have to stop… these kind of issues really get my blood boiling!!! FV$K!!!! Anyway, I think this also illustrates one thing. When we were in the organizing stages of this event, we had a goal of promoting openness, spreading knowledge and hoping to motivate people into action. We were expecting talks about education, art and technology… but it turns out political issues are probably the hottest topic in openness. (So things that you didn’t know and never expected would come into sight as you walk a new path.) This goes to show that as you aim to do good in this world, you begin to meet new people and learn new things… eventually, new opportunities open up in front of your eyes that you would’ve NEVER known if you just narrowly live your lives, earning a salary from a job or struggling to run a tiny business hoping to get rich. The event ended with a video conference with Open Everything Berlin, and then headed for a drink + dinner at an Irish pub.

▶ YouTube video

My leg was hurting too much so I opted out and went home, turned off my brain, took a shower and watched the movie “Jumper”. (Perfect movie to watch when you have no brain activities!) :) PS. Remember to tag your photos with “openeverythinghk” !!

Image00091 (by johndbritton)

IMG_2665 (by johndbritton)

Comments

John Britton — 2008-12-08 04:56:22

Really great writeup Nick, thanks for taking the time to record.

Rex Chung — 2008-12-09 03:16:47

Hi Nick, How did I miss talking to you. I was just standing behind you in the group photos. Great write up too. Rex.

Open Everything Hong Kong 2008

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:32:28 +0000

Open Everything Hong Kong 2008 (by 黛)

Next Saturday, Dec. 6th, my friend John Britton has organized the first “Open Everything” event in Hong Kong - http://openeverything.hk/2008/. Main event starts at 10am, (registration starts at 9) at SOHOLife Office - Guangdong Investment Tower 1/F - 148 Connaught Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong (MTR exit C, turn left and walk one block West). Follow us on Twitter and facebook I’m not going to repeat the official event info, you can read that at the OpenEverythingHK site. I’m hoping to do a presentation on a good photo management process - from your camera to Picasa to Flickr online. I’ll do this in Chinese and put it on youtube, so hopefully more locals will know how easy it is to share photos on Flickr instead of Facebook. :P See you there! Remember to register!!

Comments

ryanne — 2008-11-30 05:13:16

a talk on flickr! that’s cool will try my best to attend :D

Creative Commons Hong Kong Launch

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:08:26 +0000

Joi Ito and me (by cloneofsnake)

Went to last Saturday’s Creative Commons launch event in Hong Kong, my knowledge of CC stemmed from my fanboy-ism toward Flickr. I think I had probably heard some Yahoo internal talks about Flickr that included a briefing of this “CC” license thing. So, the presentation from CC founder Prof. Lawr ence Lessig and CEO Joichi Ito were both eye openers for me! OK, so my knowledge of CC is basically what’s listed in Flickr’s Creative Commons page, and Prof. Lessig presented a much more detailed & updated version of it. The parts that I picked up (and remembered) are: CC0 - no law, waive, assert, public domain, social norm - honor - keep it free CC+ - beyond CC, license to buy, for profit CC Networks - SENSE / RESPECT For more info on Prof. Lessig, check out this TutSearch result of “Lawrence Lessig”. (Will watch those videos later when I have time.) While Lawrence Lessig came from a law background and talked about law and licensing. Joi Ito talked about tech & science. Most of it relates to the scientific communities, how researchers could use CC to ease their processes of trading information w/o worrying about the lawyers. My take-away: Science Commons Provider (Designer / Creator) –> Bank (keeps track of use of your creation) –> Users (Re-design, Consume) For a better summary, check out Ryanne’s blog on the event. It was too bad that the Q&A session was too short, ‘coz as soon as I heard about CC0 and public domain, a weird question came up in my mind. If CC0 would’ve existed 20+ years ago, would it have killed the Mario Brothers? :D Let me explain. Mario is the plumber in Donkey Kong! Donkey Kong was a massively successful video game! Nintendo made a shit load of money off of it. Then, Universal Studios sued Nintendo for infringing their King Kong character. Nintendo of America’s CEO back in the days was Howard Lincoln - a lawyer by trade. He looked it up. Went to court. Had the whole case threw out b’coz Universal Studios had registered King Kong under the public domain. So… if CC0 had existed back then… no Donkey Kong –> no Mario Bros. ??! Possible??? Actually, a more serious question would be how they view Chinese and Asians in general, ‘coz to me (as with a lot of others), Chinese are viewed as selfish and likes to “take” but doesn’t “share”. (And in the worst cases, stealing and profiting from counterfeits / pirated goods.) I think it would’ve been beneficial if Lessig & Ito could give a few examples of other countries with similar issues and how CC had helped. I really wanted to talk to them afterwards but they both escaped quite fast, I was only able to hunt down Joi Ito! I told him about my projects and also my move to Tokyo in January to work for Cuusoo.com. It’s pretty obvious how CC could help small time designers and artists, but what about an established corporation - like Muji or Lego? Turns out Joi knows about cuusoo too, he remembers it as Elephant-Design, he said he needs to get back to their lawyers as they are not using CC yet, but he thinks that’s only because their lawyers don’t fully comprehend the CC license. He said may be I should explain to Nishiyama-san about the CC license as well! :P … and may be he’ll see me in Japan. All in all, it was a good day! Learned a lot, pumped me up and gave me new ideas, met up w/ my Flickr and Drupal and Microsoft pals, organized a follow up meeting w/ the Drupal dudes to discuss the usage of CC. I have a feeling that those of us who are working with open source and CC will lead and become “paradigm shifters” in HK (and perhaps even Asia). Links given during the presentation: TED Talks - Ideas Worth Spreading. - “Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers” fotonauts - Images for Humanity. - “fotonauts’ mission is to enable the creation of the definitive pool of images for everyone to contribute to, discover, use and enjoy, covering all areas of human interest.”

Comments

m3media blog » Blog Archive » Living Vicariously Through Others — 2008-10-28 00:58:14

[…] know I promised a write-up on my Tokyo trip, but in light of all the wonderful articles written by my friends, and this monumental event which I unfortunately happen to have missed, I decided to make a brief […]

Kenneth Law — 2008-10-28 01:13:09

Hey there. I’m Ken. I think I’ve seen you around (BarCamp, Agile - Toy vs. Software). Just wanted to say great blog! very interesting articles. heartfelt and genuine. wish i could have been at the CC launch. incidentally, i was in tokyo last friday so I couldn’t make it. thanks for letting me live vicariously through your blog.

Making Toys Vs. Developing Software - Agile Hong Kong

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:54:02 +0000

Toys vs. Software - Agile Hong Kong (by cloneofsnake)

I almost missed Tuesday night’s Agile Hong Kong event - Toys vs. Software, Fight! Had to check the address and the map at a public terminal in MTR at the last minute! Jonathan Buford, Managing and Technical Director at Advanced Design Labs, was there to talk about his experience in the toys development process… and how it’s similar / different from software development. He showed us a few of his past designs, one of which I’ve seen on TV commercials in the US. He also has a product that has just finished development and is being manufactured for the coming Chirstmas season. It was pretty interesting to learn about the specifics in creating new toys. In fact, it was so interesting that we kept asking questions about making toys and Jonathan had to ditched the entire 2nd half of his speech on software development! :) This shouldn’t be surprising, as most of the people attending Agile’s events should have IT backgrounds and understand software development processes and project management. So we all had a good grasp on Jonathan’s explanation on the “critical path” in product development. What really interested me was about the risks - R&D can completely go down the tube if no one is buying the idea. So, to minimize risk, they develop lots and create prototypes quickly. He mentioned Rapid Prototyping machines, saying that eventually users will be able to design and make the prototypes themselves. This is related to crowdsourcing and Cuusoo.com, so I asked him what was his take on “crowdsourcing toys design”. Jonathan thinks that we are heading toward the direction of “user generated products”, there are just 2 factors holding us back - 1) the design tools that Jonathan uses is quite advanced and the general public just don’t have the kind of access to these tools. He mentioned that Google SketchUp is pretty good, and may be some day soon, people can use that to design & make models. 2) is the manufacturing part - how do normal people connect to manufacturers? Obviously, he doesn’t know about Cuusoo.com, it has the entire 2nd part covered! I have heard about SketchUp when it was first bought by Google, I guess it is time for me to pay a visit and see if we can integrate its tools for crowdsourcing design.

Comments

cloneofsnake — 2009-02-01 15:34:48

hmm… I can imagine this happening in Hong Kong, tiny shops open up in every shopping arcade, a Rapid-Prototype machine makes individualized casings for standardized hardware - like netbooks or may be cell phones… The problem here is economy of scale… how well can this model work for the mass market… or even just the local market. I think this will give rise to many profitable small businesses in city like Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York… but it can’t become a behemoth of a business like Nokia or Toyota. Not that it need to though… that’s the whole point of individualized items. :)

Jonathan Buford — 2009-01-31 22:52:24

Hi, thanks for coming to the talk, I’m glad that you found it interesting. Looking over cuusooo.com, I think this is still just a step in the direction that I was talking about. Of course there are outlets like this that allow for something that mimics the mass production that is currently popular, but where I think things will go is something much more personal. One-off items that are made just for that user. I think that it will be a merging of making the design tools more simple with rapid prototyping costs coming down. Currently, a rapid prototype model cost is still too high and the machines are still not accessible enough that they would fit this, but it is heading in that direction with projects like http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome Just like the current generation of netbooks having a fairly common hardware spec, I think the electronics will become more integrated and modularized, so that it is just a matter of picking the modules and designing a case around it.

BarCamp Hong Kong 2008

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:51:45 +0000

Startup Lighting Talks (by 黛)

Comrades at Hong Kong’s Drupal group reminded me about BarCamp Hong Kong 2008, it was my first time and I got a really good impression of it. It’s probably fair to say I won’t be the only one who wishes we can have BarCamps more often. I loved it! Check out all the photos at flickr and a general write up about it on LaiHiu’s blog and another insightful one at Ca Phun Ung’s yelotofu. Personally, it felt great to be able to immerse once again in an open, knowledge-sharing environment. We have lots of these events in the US, and they are great for networking. I was able to meet with a few great people and also organized more regular offline meetings after BarCamp. I listened to iPhone apps development (& finding it more and more amazing how Apple can become so popular and “cool” while maintaining their unfriendly, “closed door” stance.) An Open Education open-mic with John Britton (half of it), then jumped over to Microsoft’s OSS session. The lead developer of one of the best online Rich Text Editor - FCKeditor. A Drupal theming session where John Britton informed us about the Knight Drupal Initiative, and we organized what will hopefully become regular offline meetings for HK Drupalers. Finally, there’s the Start-up Lightning talks where I presented my “Environmentally Conscious Restaurant / Food directory” idea. Hopefully, I can connect with a few kindred souls in the 200+ attendants to help spread the site. (Probably gonna use this “currystar” domain.) Finally, met a young entrepreneur, Alvin, who’s still in studying at Stanford… he was working hard networking and spoke with me about having connections to VC in the US. It’s good to know someone who’s so young and passionate! Saw a couple of Yahoo HK developers, I asked one of them how he felt about Yahoo in HK, and he said it’s too “revenue oriented”. I think this is a typical problem with companies that have grown big and also for small HK companies. As a general observation, I think companies (and people) who are “revenue oriented” are often too short-sighted. Because of that, nothing truly revolutionary will come out of them. At the other end of the spectrum, we have visionaries who dream of producing something that will change the way everybody do things, they might create that revolutionary product, everybody loves them, but then they don’t know how to make money out of it. (The classic Slashdot joke: “Create genius product -> Everybody loves it -> ??? -> PROFIT!!) LOL. Rarely do we see phenomenon like Google ~ where a revolutionary idea also crosses over well into a revenue generating model. Generally speaking though, I am supportive of the latter crowd. Take Google for example, they have tons of talented developers but very little managers (they found that managers were killing innovations, so they fired a majority of them in 2001!), everyone is encouraged to spent some of their work hours to work on their own projects! I think most of their products are not making them any money ~ Gmail, Apps, Docs, Reader… etc, but with so many people converging on their platform, something good must come out of it. (Sort of reminds me of how Yahoo was before the bust.) Now, as an ex-Yahoo, (and more importantly, a shareholder!) I really hope Yahoo can produce something “good for the people” rather than “something that helps the bottom line.” I think in the long run, this will help Yahoo gets back on track. For example, Yahoo Hong Kong is the most visited website in Hong Kong, there are so much more they can do to help the locals, so why aren’t they standing at the forefront of it, but rather they are copying local success like OpenRice.com? At BarCamp, one of the guys is creating a mass transit info site - passionately named it whereismybusrightnowdude.com.hk :P As a returning expat, I am like a foreigner who doesn’t know how to get around HK except for the MTR! Other major cities like Tokyo and London already have something like that, people CANNOT live without these services! Why haven’t Yahoo! HK done something similar?

Comments

BarCamp Hong Kong 2008, A Great Event Experience! « Digital Anthology — 2008-09-13 00:30:13

[…] This one time, at BarCamp… An Expat Educator in Asia - Barcamp HK 2008: Well worth the time. My Journey to Japan - BarCamp Hong Kong 2008 belleliu.com - Reflections on BarCamp Hong Kong 2008 Tags: “BarCamp Hong Kong 2008”, BarCamp, […]

caphun — 2008-09-08 02:57:53

Great write-up. You started off slow but ended with a passionate speech. Visionaries and Geniuses very rarely make money because, as great as their ideas are, it is usually ahead of their time. By the time their visions take shape they are either dead, too old or someone else has taken it and marketed better. Though I totally feel your sentiments :)

Designing the Future: Japan’s Tech Revolution - Panel Discussions on Technology & Design

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:50:33 +0000

0609 03 Kohei Nishiyama - Future of Lifestyle with Design, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

First of all, who thought it was a good idea to host an event at 10am on a Saturday morning? Seriously! Who wakes up earlier than 10 on the weekends? I had to set my alarm to wake up early on June 9th. Managed to leave the house way early, but when you need to go somewhere on time, leave it to MTA to fuck it up for you!! There were constructions near Queensboro Plaza on my N,W line, I had to ride the train backwards to Astoria Blvd, and then the outbound train was stuck right before we got to Queensboro Plaza because they were using one platform for both directions! So I ended up being late! Mr. Nishiyama was the first one to present, so I missed some of his speech.

Kohei Nishiyama, inventor of Design to Order (DTO) system and founder of elephant-design and cuusoo.com. The DTO system reduces the risk of new products development by allowing manufacturers to wait until the number of orders for a product reaches the break-even point. One interesting tidbit, Nishiyama-san grew up in South America. He lived there until age 19. He’s a graduate of the University of Tokyo. So… naturally, I wondered if he had applied to UT as a foreigner. I think he should have some good advice for me in that department.

Unlike the companies that presented yesterday, Kohei Nishiyama’s company is truely “Customer Driven”. What elephant-design and cuusoo.com do is they invite users to submit their ideas (or dreams), other users who shares the same ideas can join in and provide inputs. Then, the “designers” within the cummunity can put the ideas into reality. Mr. Nishiyama summarized the business into 3 basic steps:

share a problem to make a community \
Invite designers to brush up innovation \
gather reserveration until break even point \

One of the key points that Mr. Nishiyama brought up was that “Users’ wishes to collarborate with designers can be viewed as assets”. This idea is similar to what Professor Karim Lakhani had said in his speech the day before, which was “companies need to adjust to the changing market where users are now active producers”. elephant-design is at the forefront of this so called “crowd sourcing”. People are just beginning to realize this potential as Web 2.0 rolls along. The amazing thing is, Mr. Nishiyama started elephant-design in 1997! That’s before the Web 1.0 bubble had burst! It has taken 10 years for the web to mature to the point where communities can finally be leveraged as an asset.

After the speech was a Q&A session, the moderator, Nick Thompson started it off by asking some tough questions like:\

How do you motivate or reward the wish makers?\
Who owns the IP of a design?

I was pretty interested in elephant-design’s concept, so I had a few questions of my own, like one that’s IP related (which is very important for a designer) - has any designer or manufacturer stole ideas from cuusoo?

The question that I asked was this. First, I revisited someone else’s comment the day before, which was “a user cannot be a designer”. In my personal experience as a developer, I realize that users don’t really know what they want! It takes a special talent of a designer to understand the needs of a user, and a designer has to possess the “eye” to see into the future, to create the “next thing”. That being said, I understand the user’s urge to share their wishes with the designers, so I applaud the creation of a system like elephant-design and cuusoo.com, to bring the users and designers together. I think it was ingenious. Now, regarding the “break even point”, Mr. Nishiyama said that currently, they have 20 thousand members, and when a design is made, they gather “reservations” until the number of people that are going to purchase the product reaches the manufacturer’s break even point. I questioned whether or not the company had thought about corporate sponsors. (It isn’t uncommon that when companies first introduce a new product, they have to incurr some losses before the market catches on and they start to make a profit.) I guess because my question was too long, Mr. Nishiyama didn’t get to the corporate sponsor part. He pointed out that he agrees with the statement that “users cannot be designers”, but that doesn’t mean users cannot participate in the designing process.

It was unfortunate that Mr. Nishiyama had to run off and head to Boston right after his speech, I would’ve liked to have a chance to speak with him more in depth about his company. I touched base with Ray before he and Mr. Nishiyama left Japan Society, then I went back inside the auditorium to listen to the next speech.

Afterwards, I chatted with a few industrial designers who came to listen to Mr. Nishiyama’s company, all of them came in later than me so they missed out a lot. From what I gathered, their main concerns were 1) I.P. and 2) finding a trust worthy manufacturer. They all seemed to be very interested in Mr. Nishiyama’s company and wanted to know more. I offered to get their contact info and get back to them when I find out more info. So Mr. Nishiyama please! Let me talk to you! :)

Comments

Melina — 2007-12-20 12:34:57

very interesting. i’m adding in RSS Reader

Designing the Future: Japan’s Tech Revolution - A Customer-Driven Corporate Perspective

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:12:59 +0000

0608 02 Karim Lakhani at Japan Society Tech Epoch, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

“It’s not about what you know, but who you know.” Networking is important in almost all aspects of life, not just when you’re job hunting.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister told me about a U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium event at the Japan Society in New York. You can read about my thoughts on the event from the link above, but on this blog, I want to concentrate on “going to grad school in Japan”, and one of the most important factor is networking. The event turned out to be very enjoyable, and most importantly, I got to meet the lovely Fumiko-san at Japan Society. The next week, I sent an email to her telling her that I’m looking for info on going to grad school in Japan, and she helped me by forwarding my email to one of her contacts who went to the University of Tokyo from France. She also invited me to come back to their “2-DAY SYMPOSIUM Designing the Future: Japan’s Tech Revolution” event.

I decided to go to Friday’s Corporate Luncheon - Designing the Future: A Customer-Driven Corporate Perspective, unfortunately, it would seem that big companies such as Toyota and Panasonic are just not as “customer-driven” as I would like to see. Their speeches were all about their design ideology. I would say they are more “traditionally customer focused” than “customer driven”.

The event started with moderator Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School giving a short intro. Karim is an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in the management of technological innovation and product development. He spoke of the blurring of the line between consumer and producers and gave youtube.com as an example in which a company shifted the production of “products” to the hands of the consumers. As a result, companies need to re-think how to adjust to the changing market where users are now active producers.

The rest of the speeches from Naoaki Nunogaki of Toyota, Naomi Hirose of Tokyo Electric Company and Toyoyuki Uematsu of Panasonic were, like I said, heavily self-centered on their company’s design ideology and had very little to do with being “customer-driven”. The meat came at the end during the Q&A session. Some of the key points that were raised during the Q&A were:

A major part of customer driven design is “understanding you customer”, gathering “customer feedback”.
“Extreme Users” now appear online to share user information that are not released by the corporations. These users collaborate to share knowledge in order to achieve their goals. e.g. to save money by sharing spending details.
From Mr. Uematsu: “It’s important for designers to protect their intellectual property”. (This is a major concern for any designers.)
From Mr. Nunogaki: “Customers cannot foresee the future needs for themselves.”
Users cannot be Designers. A designer must be a participant of the society, and be inspired and possess that special talent to design “what’s next”.

Afterwards, we were treated to a free lunch. I chatted with an industrial designer and then I met Ray Hatoyama, fellow student of Karim Lakhani at Harvard Business School and Vice President of elephant-design, US Operations. elephant-design and 空想生活 cuusoo.com are truly inspirational companies with a revolutionary idea made into a business. I learned that the founder - Mr. Kohei Nishiyama, was having a speech at the Panel Discussions the next day, so I decided to come back again to learn more about his companies. I’ll write about that in the next post.

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