What Matters the Most
Nov 24, 2008 Events
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Over the past week, I’ve been attending a lot of events, as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2008 Singapore.
Thinking back on the week, though, one thing struck me. The session that I enjoyed the most, and gained the most out of, in my opinion, wasn’t the talks. It wasn’t listening to experts, etc. It was the networking session - just interacting with other people who are passionate about the subject.
At the end of it all, that’s what I think matters the most - the people. Not “experts” or concepts or anything. Yes, those are important. But what’s the most important is the people (to me, at least).
What matters the most to you?
Tags: community, Global Entrepreneurship Week, People, singapore
SpeedNetwork the Globe 2008
Nov 17, 2008 Announcements, Events
This Saturday, I’ll be hosting a breakfast at SpeedNetwork the Globe 2008, a part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week@Singapore.
I think SpeedNetwork the Globe seems to be a really interesting event, and I’m very excited to be able to be a part of it. It’s a whole day event taking place concurrently in Singapore, Stockholm and Silicon Valley. There will be speakers at each location, and there will be live video streams and online discussions taking place.
It’s essentially one event in 3 locations - and a true demonstration of how technology has broken down boundaries and made it easy to connect with anyone.
Sounds cool? I think it is. I’m really looking forward to it, and I hope to see you there. You can sign up here.
Tags: boundaries, conference, connect, entrepreneur, Global Entrepreneurship Week, video stream
The #1 Way to Build a Community
Image via Wikipedia
Over the weekend I attended a few sessions at Podcamp Singapore and the Digital Media Festival. The one thing that struck me the most was the idea of going where the people are.
At DM Fest, the topic came up when I was talking to someone just after a session about communities. I was asking his opinion about whether it made more sense to use your own logins if you’re trying to build a community, or to try and leverage technologies like OpenID so people can use other accounts to join. The answer was a pretty obvious one.
At Podcamp Singapore, the topic came up in both the sessions I attended. Coleman talked about choosing the right medium - text, audio or video. As you can imagine, one of the main factors discussed was about audience preference.
The other session I attended was by Amsie from Curious Foodie, who shared her journey on blogging. During the session, the discussion went on a very nice (in my opinion) tangent when the owner of fourcardflush, a poker blog, asked for advice on how to build the local online poker community - the poker community in Singapore is largely unseen online. The suggestions? To go out into the offline community, take part in the games, and build from there.
3 very different sessions, with different focuses and applications. But the common general theme is quite prevalent.
The easiest way to build a community is to go where the people are. Don’t just try to pull them to where you are. Go to where they are, join them, and build relationships first. Then do you thing, and they will follow.
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Tags: audience, blog, community, OpenID, podcamp singapore, singapore
When Common Advice Isn’t Useful
I just attended The Start Conference today. It was a really good experience, meeting intelligent people, and hearing about new websites and services I didn’t know about. It was also really cool being able to hear the likes of Evan Williams and Matt Mullenweg share their stories, and talk to the likes of Merlin Mann.
I was thinking about what went on during the conference, and something stuck to me. If you ask any start-up consultant or anything, most of the time you’ll get similar advice. 2 parts of this advice you’ll probably get is, 1) how important an elevator pitch is (or the ‘escalator pitch’), and 2) that it’s not just about how cool your idea is, it’s about the need for it (this second one was something that Marc Hedlund from Wesabe.com mentioned today).
And in most cases, these are really good suggestions. Elevator pitches are important. And having a market for your idea is really what’s important, of course.
But there are some cases when it’s hard to think about things like this - when you are doing something truly revolutionary. When you are opening up a new market, doing something that has really never been done before.
Take Twitter, for example. Anyone who uses Twitter has probably tried (and failed) to explain it to others. It just can’t be done as an elevator pitch. And if you ask around, most people who haven’t used Twitter won’t see why such a tool would be useful.
Twitter would have failed in coming up with a good elevator pitch. I still haven’t seen a good elevator pitch for Twitter. And if you think about it, there wasn’t really a market or need for a service like Twitter. Nobody knew or thought they needed something like Twitter. No market research or anything would have revealed a need for Twitter. It was only through trying it out that they found out that there indeed was a market for it.
That’s just one example, but it demonstrates my point quite well, I think. Yes, there are standard tips and suggestions that we should all think about. Not only in starting a company, but whatever you’re doing, there’s always going to be standard suggestions and tips and advice from others. And that advice works 95% of the time.
But when you’re doing something revolutionary, standard advice and procedure just doesn’t cut it.
More often than not, you can’t do something revolutionary by following common advice.
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