• Indian Blog Directory
  New Indian Blog Directory set up by Amrit Hallan of Writing Cave
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  I want!!! Can do workouts, ski, yoga ….
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  8 suggestions for better brainstorming and idea generation in groups
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• Edge 238 - Social Networks are like the Eye
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  (tags: smscampaigns sms socialmedia mytoday smsmarketing)

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• YouTube - 12 Days of Christmas
  this is absolutely hilarious!!!!!!!!
  (tags: india humour indianculture christmas desi)

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Am off to London today .. will be there 6th - 12th, en route to New York where I’m participating in the Open Society Institute Information Programme Sub-Board meeting (I’m one of the new sub-board members).  It’s going to be so cold - packing’s been a nightmare - had to go buy a larger bag!!!!

London’s just a holiday … let me know if you’re free to meet up!

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Hmmm. Was just chatting with Rajesh of Blogworks about working together on a potential social media project. We were trying to work out areas of competence between his company and ours. He made this observation and used a fine phrase to describe Mosoci - he said it is the Future of Research.

I think I like :):). What do you feel about it as a tagline???

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Rob Paterson alerts me to Jeremiah Owyang’s social media experiment in a comment at my post a few days ago on Twitter for Ethnography:

From Rob’s post at the Fast Forward blog:

This is how Jeremiah framed it:

I’ve created MicroMedia events before, this time, I want to frame it as an overlay to the multi million dollar advertising event, the Superbowl.

[TwitterBowl is a real-time social experiment where the audience rates million dollar advertisements in real time using Twitter]

Are you a superbowl ad critic? Of course you are, everyone is. Even if you don’t watch the superbowl, those pervasive ads will end up in YouTube, Digg, and your cousins blog and your best friends Facebook profile. Tired of others choosing which one was the funniest/stupidist/biggest waste of time? Well this year, you can rate your own superbowl ads using Twitter, and see what everyone else in Twitter thinks too.

How did it go?

Check out the results here. Please also look at the comments - they tell us even more.

Josh Bernoff, another Forrester analyst has compiled and analyzed the responses to ads during the SuperBowl Jeremiah helped evoke.

Very very cool!    A good example and validation of my thoughts on Twitter for Ethnography on Feb 1, a couple of days before the SuperBowl

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• Why Use Twitter When You Can Make Your Own Microblogging Network With Wordpress Prologue? | Gauravonomics Blog
  Wordpress Prologue - Gaurav shares his experience in setting up his own private Microblog. A Twitter alternative? Interesting set of RSS feeds from Twitter on the right panel
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• ‘if’ .. Dancing Freely
  beautiful imagery from Raymon in this little poem
  (tags: poetry raymondmontalbetti if)
• International Journal of Design
  Published and available free online - 3 issues of Volume 1 (2007). Also, call for papers - Cultural Aspects of Interaction Design. Full paper due on Feb 28
  (tags: design designresearch usability research journal)
• Scenarios For the Future - EPO
  “The project was meant to consider what the patent system might look like in 20 years time, in order to gain greater clarity about the threats and opportunities the future might present. “
  (tags: epo scenarios future patent)

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Mahatma Gandhi once said: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

My recent experience with the Learning Journey we organised for Clients actually reinforced to me that given the right balance of content with experiential immersions and a focus on ‘how’ learning would take place, learning-to-be can begin even with just a week’s exposure.

One of the instances that brings such a smile on my face is the sight of youngsters lighting up one cigarette after another, while chatting with 13 older persons who were all non-smokers from North America all in an enclosed area in a coffee and hookah bar! And not one of my clients complained or even minded, although I was so conscious that this could potentially be quite uncomfortable for them!!! You can keep talking about how the youth is confident, irreverent, etc, you can build models based on consumer insights and on all sorts of qualitative and quantitative data, but when you actually observe their manner of ‘being’ and they actually draw you into their world into which you walk in openly and begin sharing yourself, how much easier and more effective it is to understand and learn!

So many other experiences ….

we’re all observers together

lunch cooked by a family in a village on a traditional stove over firewood.

new best friends from the village

with dabbawallas understanding how grassroots self-organising systems work

renovation underway

a variety of food!

with bloggers

[pictures from Flickr group and Elena’s flickr page]

This comment from a senior member of the group actually reinforces how a Learning Journey can really create a ‘we participate therefore we are” learning framework:

Each of our Team members has been changed for life as a result of our experiences – and we are most grateful. The experiences of our recent Learning Journey has been woven into the very fabric of my soul. More than ever I understand more personally that we are all citizens of the globe bonded together by the common threads of our humanness. Many thanks, again, Dina, to both you and Shubhangi for shaping experiences that touched our lives so profoundly.

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vs

Great piece on Social Learning titled Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler. The supercool text illustrations are by Susan E. Haviland.

Some snippets I really enjoyed:

What do we mean by “social learning”? Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.

There is a second, perhaps even more significant, aspect of social learning. Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field.

In a traditional Cartesian educational system, students may spend years learning about a subject; only after amassing sufficient (explicit) knowledge are they expected to start acquiring the (tacit) knowledge or practice of how to be an active practitioner/professional in a field.⁹ But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field. This encourages the practice of what John Dewey called “productive inquiry”—that is, the process of seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.

Although this article has been written in the context of education, there are some great learnings for researchers, ethnographers and for business too. One of the greatest challenges and often a dilemma is how to leverage social tools into research and marketing that would create a shift from a much hyped must-do model based on explicit learning (yeah - lets go build a social network or lets start a Facebook community for our brand) to a more intuitive method grounded in tacit knowledge and real experience.

One reason why we believe researchers experimenting with these tools should immerse themselves in using them first, one reason why we believe all brand managers should build their own social media toolkits through actual experience! One of the problems with this is the time commitments required for these personal explorations, which could then morph into professional insights. I cannot emphasise more the importance of being touched at a personal level for developing a learning-to-be mindset. That’s what good Learning Journeys can accomplish.

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There’s a discussion on at the anthrodesign group around how best to approach a diary project. An excerpt from the initial query:

“We’ll be fielding a diary study trying to understand people’s initial experiences with a new mobile phone, particularly understanding the set up experience and the first few days of use. We are interested in what they are doing, barriers/successes, feelings during the process. “

There have been some thoughts and ideas around using voicemail, online diaries, digital voice-recording. Voicemail and digital voice-recording may present problems in analysis I feel. Also, would the participants be comfortable with it?

Something I feel that could work, and here’s what I sent:

Have you thought of using something like Twitter for this? You could set up a private group or channel there - where you could ask participants to send in short (140 character) messages. These updates could be either via SMS from phone, IM, or web-based. Advantages - you would capture feedback in real time as it happens, if youth is your target group then you’re enabling them to utilise their own culture of use (sms/IM) and hence a more natural and spontaneous capture and flow of responses. A few times a day you could send out specific questions. Here’s a link to a hack for this.

Likewise, if you need visual representation too - a private Flickr group could be set up too - and there are tools like Shozu to upload pics straight from your phone onto Flickr with one click!

An alternative to this is an SMS/MMS to Blog option, which is more controlled - where you could set categories like cribs/delights etc. Send out short questions over the week to participants - their responses come into a blog site via SMS or MMS. You could also consider a more detailed QOD - Question of the Day - if required, where they log into the blog and post their responses.

Last year, we had set up a prototype for an SMS-Blog system for trends research - unfortunately, the client - a youth TV channel wasn’t quite ready to run with it at that point in time. I’d have loved to have used Twitter itself even then, however, we didn’t have a short code for India specifically and hence, would have been too expensive for users. Now we do, and am eager to test it out as a research tool!

Check this post by Leisa Reichelt - Guerrilla Techniques - Does inexpensive research have to be ‘quick & dirty’ where she raises a “whole lotta questions” about using tools such as Twitter for research - my favourite question there is “Are we getting to the point where, perhaps, we can do better research outside of the lab than inside it?”

Any thoughts on how we could refine our research methods and the social tools available today for more formal research? I don’t think it’s really about being ‘quick and dirty’ - the real value is in being able to use these tools to set up long-term and robust research solutions that encourage participation in real-life and real-time situations. This is one of our key areas of focus at Mosoci and we keep experimenting!

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• YouTube - Google Maps
  Nice one from Vacationeers - more google big brother paranoia - is fun!
  (tags: googlemaps google youtube humor vacationeers)
• Beauty Blogs Come of Age: Swag, Please! - New York Times
  as more women turn to blogs for advice on bronzers or facial scrubs, and magazines like Allure and Glamour have started their own beauty blogs, the cosmetics industry has stopped seeing bloggers as bottom feeders.
  (tags: blogging bloggerrelations beautyblogs beauty)
• Silobreaker: Welcome
  Looks interesting - search and news engine. I like the visualizations in ‘Trends’
  (tags: journalism media News search searchengine aggregator visualization)
• The Kala Ghoda Gazette » Events
  9-day arts festival in Mumbai - gallery & pavement shows, exhibitions, literary events, film screenings, music concerts, dance, theatre, workshops, heritage walks, a food fiesta, & a buzzing street festival. Peter and gang are liveblogging
  (tags: kalaghoda kalaghodafestival caferati blog)

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Aaah finally …. a Twitter shortcode for India which means we don’t pay international SMS charges! Nice. Thanks to Moksh Juneja for pointing this out. The shortcode is 5566511.

“Twitter asks you to verify your phone so we know that you’re you. You’ll never be signed up for mobile updates unless you really want to be. To get mobile updates, add your phone number to your Twitter settings page, and verify your number. Here’s how:

1. Log in to Twitter.
2. Click the Settings link in the top navigation bar.
3. Click Phone&IM.
4. Enter your phone number in the field provided.
5. Wait for the verification code to pop up and text it to Twitter at 5566511 (for India). In the US, use 40404. In Canada, use 21212. Anywhere else, use +44 7624 801423

Bonus Tip:

Also know that you can shut text messages from Twitter off at anytime by replying with “off” (and back on by sending “on”). And you can even specify that it turn off automatically at night.

More ideas on what you can do with Twitter at the Big Juicy Twitter Guide and at Mashable’s Top 12 Twitter Apps on your Phone.

So I tried it out - sent the sms - I see it on my twitter homepage on the web. However, I got this strange sms back from “55665 Reply cntr.defined” which says “This service is not yet enabled” - what gives???

Other thoughts - given recent Twitter outages and timelags, I wonder what’s going to happen when about 240 mn Indian mobile phone users start using this! Also, anyone know how much each SMS will cost?

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• 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
  Research tool, reinforce & expand personal brand, promote content, extend audience, network, preview ideas, speedlinking, story-gathering, get honest views& feedback, Apart from Speedlinking which i personally find annoying, a great list of benefits.
  (tags: twitter socialmedia socialnetworking community blogging research problogger)
• The Next Evolution of Social Media Measurement
  John Bell of OglivyPR talks of the need for an ad equivalency model in measuring social media marketing activities. One of the key problems is how to factor in qualitative measures which are perhaps more powerful in this medium than any other.
  (tags: measurement socialmedia metrics marketing advertising web2.0 johnbell)

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• peterme.com :: Personas 99% Bad?
  So on the morning of the second day we dove into a discussion of personas — those archetypal users of the product. We had three personas (Casey, Jessica, and Eric), and we talked about (and occasionally argued about) them for quite a while, until we arr
  (tags: design archetypes personas petermerholtz)

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I am just back from a week-long Learning Journey my colleague Shubhangi and I organised for a group of 10 very senior health-care professionals from the US who are on a Futures Task Force … it was intensive, immersive and really very rewarding. It’s been a Learning Journey for all of us - we formed a community of open minds and hearts, in our journey to shared understanding, and we learned so much from each other as a result.

The objective was to immerse them into a culture and people that provide such a wide range of healing traditions, and to understand models, not just in healthcare but otherwise too, that are serving a diverse population of more than a billion people in India. Some of the areas we covered:

• base-of-the-pyramid and top-of-the-pyramid models
• community projects in slums and rural areas - health, education, microfinance, govt and non-govt - the concept of self-help groups and decentralized bottom-up projects that empower women and other communities to understand and solve their own problems given societal pressures
• holistic approaches to healthcare
• innovations in telemedicine and ICT
• healthcare immersions at several levels - urban elite including medical tourism, urban poor, rural areas
• culture, religion and history
• immersions, conversations and screenings of films which let us view notions of Indian-ness and of a global India through different lenses: business, politics, society, culture, economics, environment, time, space …
• deep dives into villages and slums
• Indian healing traditions
• conversations around pop culture, including Bollywood
• youth and technology - the leapfrog generation perspective
• social media which is being used for collective action

It was really exciting, although fairly exhausting on the organizing of content and logistics for a group this size. Our greatest challenge was to balance real immersion and free-flowing conversations with more formal content; to get them to experience as much of the real India as they could within a week, in all the dizzying contradictions it presents - and not one side of the coin that is often presented in Western media - that of urban India shining.

In Shubhangi’s own words, which I echo fully:

“I think I experienced such ‘dizzying contrasts’, met so many wonderful people, listened to experts in different fields and soooo much more in those 7 days that I’m still quite overwhelmed and it will take time to come to grips with everything I learned.”

I know our clients feel the same. Most of all, we had a lot of fun, and we were really blessed to have a group with us that was so open to all experiences, so humble, despite being CEO’s, CTO’s, Medical Directors, Board Members of several hospitals in the developed world, and who didn’t wince once when we got them to have a meal cooked by villagers or walk through the narrow alleys of Dharavi slum, or sit on bumpy cycle-rickshaws in Chandni Chowk.

Somehow I felt there was a soul connection with those they touched during the week - one of collective hope and renewal that is so empowering and essential for action. It’s difficult to articulate - how can one explain that warm smile right from the heart, that respect and humbleness they showed and which was returned everytime in full and more, from their hosts in India who were so gracious and open and honest in sharing parts of their lives with them. Blowing all our stereotypes about divides and differences to bits! Images that stay in my mind are of the group chatting with villagers - despite language barriers - of children giving them big hugs while sending them off as if they were old friends! Thank you to my Clients and to all the folks from India who shared with each other so freely and openly. [Pic: one of Shubhangi’s many wonderful pictures at Flickr].

It’s been fantastic too and such a privilege to have worked with Nicole-Anne Boyer of Adaptive Edge, a friend from my Worldchanging days who is really the Learning Journey expert [pdf file] and is leading this project. I loved the way she let us loose and yet micro-managed the project when required! We learnt so much about the processes, and most of all about the presence of mind and the heart that’s required in the balancing of provocation with gentle guidance, of surprise within a tightly scheduled itinerary, of energy with silent presence, of taking them to the edge of chaos and allowing them to guide themselves back gently, of experiencing groundedness with visions of the future. Thank you Nicole for trusting in us, and allowing us this immense experience together with you.

Thank you too Shubhangi, my colleague at Explore Research and Consultancy, and good friend over the last 12 years, for her quiet support and amazing patience with me when I was losing it, for all the work running up to the Learning Journey and during it, taking care that the content was just right, for plodding through all the planning, for the warmth and guidance she displayed towards our visitors - always with a smile on her face, and without once showing any annoyance at me even when I was at my bossy best!!

What a journey! I should be tired, but I feel such energy and hope. I’ve done several modules of immersions and deep dives and learning journeys as part of qualitative research and ethnography projects before - this was the first time we did such a comprehensive one - with just the one objective. I am now convinced that this is one of the most powerful ways of getting groups out of their comfort zones and into really deep reflections in reframing value, innovation and when considering their own future in a very real and human way. It’s something we have to do more often, even at Mosoci - its so good for the soul!

Will put up pictures and images from this in later posts - well over a thousand pictures taken by the group thru the week.

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• A Wishlist For 2008 - The India Uncut Blog - India Uncut
  A super collection of articles, and the cover story of Pragati - 17 Ways in Which India Can be a Better Country by Amit Varma
  (tags: india politics writing economy amitvarma indiauncut)

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• HOW CHINA IS EATING THE WORLD | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com
  about half of the world’s economic growth this year will be accounted for by Brazil, Russia, India and China - the BRICs. India, staggeringly, is contributing more growth to the world economy than the United States, but China is by far the most powerful e
  (tags: economy india china BRIC)

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• apophenia: Pew on teen social media practices (with interesting bits on class)
  danah shares some findings from the latest Pew report on Teens and Social Media. Interesting finding and not surprising to me - youth who are most active online, are also highly active offline. So much for those who believe that the online world makes for
  (tags: danahboyd pewinternet pew teens youth blogging facebook myspace)

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• Cool Hunting: The Synchronicity Project
  Jun asks people all over the world to take a picture of what they are doing at a pre-determined moment in time. These pictures, along with a brief explanation of the time and place they are taken, are then displayed on the Synchronicity website as a portr
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• Marc, the Man Who Cried More Open Social - GigaOM
  That’s Marc !!
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  Marc again - featured in the Times of India. Way to go!
  (tags: marccanter socialnetworking digitallifestyleaggregator peopleaggregator)
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  What proof of the effectiveness of social media are you providing businesses? How do you measure ROI? Let’s continue the conversation.
  (tags: analytics blogging blogs communications measurement media metrics socialmedia socialnetworking web2.0)
• UPDATED: Mobile pictures - Benazir was defintely shot dead before the Blast : Teeth Maestro
  Additional Bhutto assassination pics on Teeth Maestro
  (tags: benazirbhutto assassination teethmaestro)

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I have a group of 13 clients coming in from the US, Mexico and France, early-Jan, on a Learning Journey .  Naturally, they have concerns after yesterday’s events, with a lot of the western media talking of Al Qaeda and unrest and potential violence in the entire region.  I hope Pakistan stays calm and looks to a better tomorrow, once the grieving is over.

Sharing my perspective, from India … it’s what I sent them:

“Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has been a real shock to us.  It’s really sad because democracy will have to wait again, and Pakistan will take a while to get back on the road to democracy. In India, the response has been one of shock and disappointment that the democratic process which is also seen as a way to get peace in the region, has been set back. India is a strong and resilient country and we don’t expect a backlash here in any way.  This is being seen as purely an internal affair for Pakistan, with no role of India in the assassination. The only alert we have on here today is at the Indo-Pak border  - which is far away from where the group is going. Indian media is strongly suggesting that it was Musharraf’s govt and the Military that did this, based on interviews with Human Rights Groups, Supreme Court Lawyers and other folks from Pakistan, and not really the extremists (although the military in Pakistan is seen as fundamentalist and extremist) or Al Qaida, as the Western media and Mr. Musharraf’s government have been projecting.  In fact, as I write this note, on the morning after the assassination, Indian TV is back to regular programming and we are now running some retrospectives on Ms. Bhutto. It’s off the ‘breaking news’ charts, and there have been absolutely no reports of any tension or violence in India, as a result of this tragic event.

For more news from the region, check these links:
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/default.aspx
http://timesnow.tv/

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I’m tweeting reactions from India as reported on English TV news channels around Benazir Bhutto’s brazen assassination. Follow the updates here, if you’re interested. Updates so far:

- Musharraf says political parties should be united against terrorists. Feeling here … how convenient blaming terrorists. 7 minutes ago
- Musharraf on TV now: This is the work of terrorist we have been fighting so long. Will not rest till we punish the guilty. Appeals for peac 9 minutes ago
- “PPP likely to boycott elections” - Matiullah Jan, Reuters reporter live from Islamabad. 13 minutes ago from web
- Bush .. We urge them to honour Benazir’s memory by contributing to the peace process === meaning …. elections must go on in Pakistan?? 14 minutes ago from web
- George Bush speaking now 16 minutes ago from web
- Not much been spoken of in Indian media about Islam or extremists - all fingers seem to point to Military rule in Pak. 18 minutes ago from web
- NDTV 24/7: No official reaction still from Washington. Much talk of US-reflection of Indians being upset at US for supporting Musharraf. 20 minutes ago from web
- She says: this military will not allow any democratic govt. [on NDTV 24/7]. Says we are all in danger. Need a national govt minus military 42 minutes ago from web
- Asma Jehangir, Human Rights Comm Pak,distraught. Reiterates what Nawaz Sharif said- Govt & Military responsible. Not religious extremists 44 minutes ago from web
- Lots of talk on English TV channels in India on America’s reaction to Benazir’s death. Upset about America having supported Mushar so long about 1 hour ago from web
- Nawaz Sharif tells PPP supporters : I will be fighting your war now. Source: CNN-IBN about 1 hour ago from web
- on NDTV: Bhutto’s husband says to a TV channel: its the work of the government. Violence breaking out now. Shops & petrol pumps closed about 1 hour ago from web
- senior diplomats here say america will go for stability first and then democracy. short term - greater dependence on musharraf about 1 hour ago from web
- @robpatrob: Extremists supported by the Army. On Indian TV: couldn’t have happened without Army & ISI’s involvement. Hope no 1914! about 1 hour ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: quite a shame for america’s alleged control over pakistan. now open allegations against musharraf as responsib on indian tv. about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: its not my perception. she was stronger than any man in many ways. she transcended gender issues typical to this region. about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: no official comments out yet here apart from shock. fear about pakistan really spinning out of control now. fear for stability about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: she was one of the leading pol parties fighting for democracy. and had committed herself to it. we feel the loss as much about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- benazir bhutto has been assassinated in pakistan about 3 hours ago from im

[Image - TimesReporter: Moments before her death]

Pakistan blogworld reacts: Global Voices Online.

More blog reactions at TimesOnline.

Blog reactions aggregated here.

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