Awareness

I got a little excited days before when Jon told me one of his idea. Frankly, it is so nice to know someone else out there is on the similar thought process, and did better!

The idea is simple but powerful - using OCR to feed image data (containing text) captured by camera into a TTS engine (via translator optionally), then render it out to audio - a nice neat application on Android Magic. We both agree that there is a set of very good use cases for this application which empower blind to read, illiterate to understand and automatic language translation. Admittedly, I was also working on ideas to utilise TTS engine on mobile platform but could not be convinced so far about the use cases I came out. I am sure you will find this app on Android market very soon but before then, for privacy reason I am not going to expand on the implementation. What matters here is my expectation on the awareness has changed.

It is easy to assume that to write couple of hundreds lines of code using existing APIs will not carry enough weight as far as innovation is concerned, at least that is what I thought so. For this reason, I started to cast my eyes on those where some ground-breaking concepts could possibly be generated. That's the reason I spent many years of my professional career in fundamental research. Having said this, the dilemma is in areas where domain specific knowledge is required for making such breakthrough, scarcely we would see great product just come straight out. As a matter of fact, many of great products took a different path - good understand of people's needs, a piece of requirement, a set of good use cases (existing or brand new while justified ones). We have iPhone, iPod, Wii, Blackberry, Search engines, Google Maps, Netbooks, Hadoop, Google wave and so many more. To maintain a high awareness level, ability to identify the problems and consequently establish links between problems and known techniques is certainly a good start to be innovative, so congratulate to Jon, who is on the right path. Next step, I think is to be brave, and think big, get out of our comfortable zone.

This blog is inspired by Jonanthan's work, to whom the credit goes.

Real time search, angel or evil

Twitter is hardly a technology breakthrough in any sense whatsoever, fairly speaking, I think that is a general opinion. Evan Williams, however, has taken the second position in "Top 100 most influential people in tech", right after Sergey & Larry.

One of my colleagues says, "too much twittering makes a twat".

So, what is the big deal? 140 characters a time (for ASCII, Unicode you only get half the amount), one would wonder what the importance that would carry, unavoidably. On another hand, there is no rules or regulations for anyone to register an account as yet. Although rumour says that Twitter will introduce premier account to avoid people stole celebrities' identities. So, what's the catch?

My stand is very clear - I love twitter, not because it is a new gadget, in my opinion, Twitter has achieved two things, firstly, Twitter has provided a platform and encourage fidelity in Internet communication; secondly, Twitter is building up an ideal personalised direct marketing channel, which could potentially has very high hit rate. Some has categorised, wrongly, Twitter as a networking or community tool in my opinion. The most significant difference Twitter has made is it does nothing else other than provide a channel, means, not content.

Twitter has 45 millions registered users, numerous third party connectors and clients interfaces. Many, not just individuals, have started to realise the benefit of reaching to audiences and potential customers (in commercial sense) through this channel. It is on the way of no longer being a virtual identity in Second Life. The fidelity it has introduced and the initiatives subscribers have taken, has been essential to allow others to learn and adopt this model elsewhere. There are some early adaptors exploring the opportunity in real time search domain - mostly linking the keyword from tweets to prepared advertisement. Of course I will still block the spammers without a slight hesitance, the trend is looking good.

if-then reward

Dan Pink has given a very interesting presentation on the surprising science of motivation. Contradict to what we believed that incentives will motivate people hence much better performance, evidence has proved that for certain tasks, those require much creativity, commitment, outside-of-box thinking work, higher incentives will have negative effects. Dan quoted Candle problem created by a psychologist named Karl Duncker in 1945. You can find the details of this experiment on wiki.

This experiment has demonstrated our behavioural response under incentives will not always help us to achieve better performance, especially for those results can not be pre-determinated, e.g. creative tasks. Instead, traditional incentive-driven approach will narrow people's mind and sight, focus on what is not there yet, rather than keeping eyes and ears open, radar has been tuned to very limited frequency bands. What comes out from that would only be ok at best. Unfortunately, for these tasks, ok is simply not enough; ok means failure.

There are already many 21st century companies (just for you know, there are way too many last century ones around!) have already started to notice this discrepancy between 'common-sense' and what is really happening. Introducing 20% time for engineers to do whatever is not their daily jobs, breaking down hierarchical structure into small team with autonomous operation ability, motivating people by exposing information and searching for purpose which is bigger than individuals, these have been giving us surprisingly good returns. Most of Google's popular products stemmed from 20% time. Organisations start to realise the huge difference in a bunch of motivated people and what they can achieve - something not in the 'plan', something generates new revenue, channels, models.

"if you do this", "then you will get this and that amount" does not apply anymore. If you really look into it, you will realise work requiring self-motivation does not generally come from financial benefits, not anymore. Financial concerns will only play its part to a certain level, in clear defined target, or in Dan's word - tasks for dummies.

Upgrade!

Hoopla!

Close my Chrome, switch off laptop, get on my bike, get home, switch laptop on, open up Chrome, bang, there it is, updated Chrome with cool GUI layout, improved features and importantly, not at all strange. Everything sits where it belongs. Yes, IT IS THAT SIMPLE!

No update warning, no sudden change of style, no blue status bar for downloading, not even a click. This is what I am talking about! If you want something appears as elegant as this, no compromise is to be made (do the job for users, rather than pushing difficult parts for user to 'configure').

Transparency and secretiveness

I had this discussion in a professional manager gathering couple of years ago. The importance of keeping transparency in an organisation is vital to its success. On the contrary to this seemingly chorused agreement, the reality shows us there are more than enough managers who love secretiveness, to maintain a secure position within the organisation, in essence. However, you would find yourself being blamed as making sweeping comments - 100% transparency is dangerous. Is it really? For me, with sound justifications, a group of people is generally capable of identifying the boundary of usage of certain information. Consequently, you have your domain-of-transparency.

How transparency would jeopardise some managers' position in an organisation? It is not difficult to see that transparency will certainly remove the requirement of the existence of message passengers as a start; secondly, as plan and information flowing openly throughout, there is a much shorter hence efficient bi-directional path for communications, especially those need buy-in or general support; in the meantime, the variety of information interpretation will be minimised which leads accurate decisions; transparency also helps to build trust relationships among team members; ultimately, transparency makes life simpler as you will save all your time from thinking and remembering all the different stories and persons, trying to keep them consistent with all possibilities for combination and permutation.

So why do we still love the secretiveness?

Feeling special is nice. One of best way for normal people to feel special is to exclusively hold certain information, especially when these information carry great deal of gravity to make things happen or fail. Unfortunately, importance of information has been now very much appreciated by this generation. To take advantage of the holding privilege, it is not entirely surprising to see some managers decide to utilise the selection of coterie to build up connections upon which they would consider as special bond or empowering. The safe assumption made was that the chosen ones have the similar standard of feeling special and important. Till this point, it is not too hard to see how this would start a vicious loop effect on the organisation culture. One of the key evidence you would easily identify in an empire building exercise is nothing else, but the secretiveness.

You have got to ask yourself, "do I love being secretive, or just I have to rely on it to survive?" As I have said in the beginning of this post, it is not even about being honest or not, keeping transparency is simple, easy and good for those who want to have a life :-). We do not have to bury us in the middle of all sorts versions of the same story.

Comfortable zone

Comfortable zone as a keyword has turned up in various conversations in the last few weeks. It means spiritually or consciously, domains which we will feel confident, have the ability to put things under control. It is always a nice position to be in terms of stress level or pressure. Subconsciously, we have a tendency to get close to this zone as much as possible, where we have senses of belonging and not feel lost.

Opposing to get to comfortable zone as soon and as close as possible, some of us deliberately choose the other way, which we call exploration. Why?

Being in one's comfortable zone often often means that no or very little efforts is required for one to sustain his position and assume superiority (not necessary in ranking terms). This could easily lead to a lost of sight and also motivations to develop. I also believe that this would nurture arrogance, false and even illusive belief in himself or things and people around. Since there is limited amount of challenges, the only way to get out is a break from where is too cozy for a fighting spirit, hoping to explore new colonies and build up new comfortable zones, some would argue. Surely to do this, extraordinary courage and confidence are needed as the uncertainty within uncomfortable zones will come with greater risks. Continuously jumping out from one's comfortable zone requires tenacious mind and superb capability (to secure new skills).

Some says that there are people skipping through all sorts of stuff without achieving anything for real. Indeed, we have to differentiate the intention of to move out from comfortable zone from the one to always look for way out or shortcut. In fact you would find there wasn't a comfortable zone established in the first place.

While I was discussing product ideas with one of my friends, we both realised that most of the time we have cast our eyes on those with which we are quite comfortable. So instead of looking for real problems and potentially profitable solutions, our starting point has been mostly from where we think it's easy and quick for us to come up with something. Admittedly, early wins need demonstrability and all that. Somewhere along the line, we have already lost our sights because clinching to where we are comfortable. Those which are too risky or too strange to us will be dismissed at subconscious level straightaway. Whereas in fact, greater the risk, bigger the reward. It seems to make sense we should start thinking about this problem with slightly different angle.

Fossil evidence shows dinosaurs extinct from earth after the catastrophic changes in the atmosphere and temperature (which some indicate causing by extraneous effects). However, mammals survive as they have the ability to adapt to the unfamiliar environment and prosper in this planet eventually. Sometimes moving out from comfortable zone is not only nice to do, but absolutely necessary, living or death - we all know how the frog fails to save itself by staying warm cozy water which gets boiling hot in the end.

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem

Once in a while, I ask myself, whether I am now part of the solution, or simply being assimilated and become part of the problem.

It is interesting to see how a group of people to build up a structure or defacto standards, or implicit criteria for their behaviour. I have tried to convince myself before that this differs in cultures and background. Of course this effort is in vain. What I want to say is that a group of people will form a way to work together. This very way will be changed, modified or strengthened upon new joiners or leavers to the group. The odds of survival or thrival of a group in its living environment is almost entirely decided by this way formed, in my opinion. This is the fundamental reason that I always refer back to, the quality of the people you have in a group, an organisation, is the key to everything and anything else.

Based on the fitness model, if a group is to survive, it has to be able to adapt to whatever other groups and things happening around it, make full use them and develop itself further - to be able to attract more individuals who are able to transform the existing structure to a better, healthier one. This will be a continuously, brute process. As the established acts will unlikely just fade out peacefully. New blood will be tested during the struggles. No one stands better ground than others in determining what is beneficial elements to take in. So if there is to be proof, nothing beats a good fight. It's worth noting that weaker the group is, worse it is likely going to get. This will consequently lead to the cul-de-sac of the group eventually.

Naturally, the shape and belief of the group will be affected by the new blood, either positively, or negatively (in contrast to the rest of the environment, as it means nothing by stating good or evil in a plain background). New blood tends to bring better quality than previous ones (as they have proved so in the entry). However, detrimental effects could also happen that all energy has been consumed in the conflicts between those beliefs comes with new blood and those in existing system. If there is no compromise can be found, the group is over. Every group have opportunities to improve (survive), which leads to the constant requirement of taking or swapping individuals.

I guess there is this inertia thing which makes us tend to swim with the stream, darker the stream, stronger the power. Maybe it is not as dramatic as it sounds. What I mean is that more often I see people joining a new environment, full of passions and energy, as well as ambitions, determined to make contributions. It does not need too long for some to realise the difficulties and real challenges to which they are facing. Unfortunately, those unsustainable merits (passion, energetic, ambitious) will fade out just as quick as they come. Often easy routes will be taken, either join or leave the party. As far as the group is concerned, it is a double failure - they did not become a part of solution, they are now part of the problem.

Examples:

1. Should I write code as fast as possible to prove what I am capable of first or get necessary good practice in place for the sake of long term quality this team lacks of?

2. Should I introduce new ways to improve productivity or to improve my popularity and make as many allies as possible?

3. Should I focus in getting things done or making people happy?

4. Am I here to make a change or to support a decision?

5. Should I just join in the party to find someone else to blame or should I focus on the area which simply isn't good enough?

There are no easy answers to any of above questions, depending on circumstances. Thus I constantly ask myself where I am in the group, which role I am playing and whether I have given up and decide to take on the easy route to be part of the problem. Or am I looking at the wrong problem? As casual as it might sound, this is a tough exercise.

This is also my reason that the most important quality I look for in people are tenacious and honest.