Networking on Nick Wang

Private: Tokyo U Studies is Fail, but Work in Tokyo is Go

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:36:34 +0000

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Denial Letter from Todai :(, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

This is the letter I got back from the University of Tokyo. Yes, after months of research and preparation and writing that long ass research proposal, this simple 2 liners is what I got. “Sorry, you didn’t pass.” As I’ve noted before, I found out that they had removed the English info page for the foreign research student program in December. That already gave me a signal that they really are not ready to accept anyone… except may be the Monbusho scholarship receivers. So, I’m not too surprised. That was back in end of December. After that, I moved on to plan B, moved to Hong Kong to work with a couple of my college schoolmates on a web business. Also trying my hands on the local HK job market, but HK is a strange place… it values nothing other than Finance. My choices here are either work at an investment bank’s IT department and make tons of money but be bored to death, or go on my own starting a business. There is very little to choose from in between, there isn’t any large Internet companies that value high level IT folks and willing to pay a fair amount for them. (I guess everyone can easily get cheaper IT people in China.)

However, the good news for me is, back in February, I was contacted by one of friends whom I had met in New York, and whom had helped me tremendously with my applications to Monbusho and Todai. It turns out, his company is preparing to expand to the US / English market and he’s in the process of recruiting experienced IT professionals like myself. This is why networking is so important folks! Throughout the years, I’ve enjoying knowing and working with a lot of talented people. I am always interested in knowing what they do, what are their personalities, what are they good at? Because I know, one day, I’ll need their help or I’ll know someone that’s looking for someone with some specific skills, and I can hook them up. This is professional networking. For example, in this instance, my friend here found me, and I’m already looking at my list of professional friends… whose skills will I need? There’s an Associate Manager of Strategic Partner Development at Google, who used to be a Business Operations Analyst at Yahoo. She was extremely good at explaining to our customers how our business was helping them. (using data that I provided her.) She can really help out on communications. There’s an experienced Marketing Director who used to work for Microsoft and has since moved on to greener pastures. She can surely give us good advices in marketing. There’s an advertisement editor at Google/Youtube who could help on the ins and outs of advertising. A long time friend of mine who went to Cal Tech, and is now a Senior Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineer at General Motors. A manager of Corporate Social Responsibility at Burberry, who knows a lot of people and is definitely a good person to have in the current “environmentally conscious” corporate world. A multi talented designer from France. An I.T. security expert. Numerous talented developers and engineers…. etc. All of these people play a part in my plan for the future of the US expansion of this Japanese company! Really looking forward to this challenge! Next time, will update this blog on my recent studies on Drupal and web development.

Comments

admin — 2008-04-10 09:53:21

Azad!!! Whassup bro?!!! Congrats on the planned marriage! LOL… (wonder how lil’ bro is doing w/ his kid…) Man! Your biz is doing good enough for u to move to Hawaii huh?! That’s awesome! Dude, I have so much to talk to u about! I’ve lined up this opportunity in Tokyo, I’ll manage their expansion into the US market! May reach out to you if the owner is interested in the Latin America market. I’m really excited about this opportunity! His business is revolutionary! And my goal is to help it become a household name!!! Also been working with new web marketing firms in HK and Japan, I’ve been thinking how I can connect you to them… Let’s talk about the details over the phone! Jose IM’ed me last month, not sure how he’s doing though. Dude, how much tax u have to pay for last year? I paid that shit load for my Yahoo stock options, but could only get $7000 back from uncle Sam… Shit! LOL

AZ from Yahoo!NY — 2008-04-10 00:59:58

Hey there Nicky-James, wow, so this is what you have been up too, hiding in HK huh! Man, I miss you bro and all your old nintendo games. How’s life in HK? I still live in NY and business is doing great. Never went back to 9-5. Actually, my gf and I are looking into getting married and may be moving to Hawaii. I’m just waiting to settle a few biz stuff. Heard from Jose? How are your wife n family doing? Email me. Peace and Prosperity

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

Last Day at Yahoo! Farewell email from my manager

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:50:46 +0000

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04 My Yahoo Cubicle, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

Last Friday was my entire team’s last day at Yahoo! It has been a fun ride… My professional life has grown exponentially during my 5+ years of service there, and the main reason why I was able to achieve so much was because I was lucky enough to report to Phil Eisenberg for the first 3 years I was there. I’m forever grateful for having the opportunity to work with him.

On Friday, Phil came over to chat with us and also to me individually. (We had kept in contact over the past 2 years even if we weren’t working together anymore.) Before I left for the day, I sent out my farewell email to the remaining few old timers that still remain, and Phil replied with something that I thought would be great reference material to put on my LinkedIn profile.

\

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Phillip Eisenberg
To: Nicholas Wang
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 6:19:23 PM
Subject: RE: Farewell

Nick,

Thank you for all your contributions through the years. You certainly made me look good as we grew the data quality department and made my job easier and many others as well. I hope you got as much out of the experience of working together as I did.

Good luck with your future endeavors and don’t be shy about going after what you want. I have worked with many talented folks over the years and you are very high on that list, so never doubt your abilities.

Keep in touch and let me know if you ever need anything.

Regards,

Phil\

I have to write something back as a token of appreciation. Fortunately, it will be very easy, as I had started documenting a list called “Management 101” during my days reporting to Phil. He is like a “wise old man” that leads by example, except he’s not old. :) I filled 3 pages of the word document with things I’ve learned from him!! I’ll be using that to write him a recommendation on LinkedIn.

I guess I’ll post that document here too, so check back later for “Management 101 from Phil”! :)

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.