hiatus

I’m taking a break on this blog.

Will be hanging around more at my personal blog

Words Done Write: Why are you following me? You’re freaking me out!

Words Done Write: Why are you following me? You’re freaking me out!.

This is another great post of Ms. Amber Avines besides the one I’ve just mentioned here in MyIdealComp.

Generally, I think follow is not a word that bares an exact meaning of the activity. Maybe stalk would be a better word? Haha .. sorry, I’m just kidding. Any better/other funny idea?

Traditional beliefs in digital era

Asia countries are well-known for their rich cultures with featuring beliefs. We believe in karma, in avoidance of certain things would prevent us from encountering troubles or bad luck. We believe that people live spiritually somewhere far away when they die and they are still connected with alive people. We believe that moneys and luck would be wiped off if we sweep the floor on the first day of the lunar new year. And so on …

And connecting with those beliefs, we have some physical items to express them. For instance, we make altars and worship the pass-aways; we have red packet to give lucky money on weddings or lunar new year since we believe that would bring luck and happiness and all the good things to the receivers and we make paper items and burn it with the belief that we are giving those things in our beloved in their place when they are dead. And that goes one …

Not a long time ago, my colleague passed me a link of an iPhone application where people could burn hell-money for dead people. We were almost bust out laughing randomly during office hour. I was really amazed by firstly the application writer’s creativity and secondly his/her crankiness. That application gives me a question. Would traditional beliefs are transforming to be digital in practice? Instead of burning hell dollars in reality, people can now do it with a few clicks and slides on iPhone. That would save time (to buy and burn) and environment too (no real fire means no smoke and no carbon emission). Interesting right?

I have no idea if that transformation would really take place and how long until it becomes a real practice but I must say, I see a high tendency that it WILL occur. The nowadays generations are busy and practical. Being tech-savvy is their strong point which help them to get more things done rapidly and properly. That is no doubt. In the matrix of my own thoughts and imagination, i see people sending lucky money through virtual banks, people login to cyber alter everyday and light up incense, people joins social temples and pagodas to pay worships to their Gods… That is quite a funny scenario. But what if some certain traditional beliefs could transform into such digital forms for the sake of humanitarianism and environment.

As I mentioned before, burning incense and hell dollars cause an increase in carbon emission to the environment. However, I’m sure that is not such a big deal compared to THIS. Please take a look for yourself. I could not be sure how many percent of reality this is. But it sounds real. I mean, everyone knows that cannibalism exists and so many people have been eaten. Imagine if cannibalism takes place in digital form. It’s just simply like a game. How wonderful that will be…

Location-independence

The term Location-independence somehow speaks for its own meaning. Being location-independent means you can live yet do what you want to do at anywhere on this earth. It doesn’t matter where you sit at, what you wear, how you look, how you smell etc. As long as you have the work done and communicate with people, you are location-independent.

I have learnt about this concept not long ago and find it quite exciting. I think it’s really cool to be location-independent due to some following reasons.

1. You don’t know how your tomorrow is gonna be. Getting away with the boring nine-to-five office hours with all the familiar stressed faces and tight formal clothes, you work at where you like. You can be working in a quiet library on a happening day, on the green grass on a sunny day, in a cafe in a rainy day, at your bed with loads of comfy pillows around. As long as there is Wifi/Internet connection which connects you to the world, you hit it.

2.  You meet interesting (sometimes, irritating people) everyday. Being in different places everyday, you run into all kinds of people who could bring you the inspiration of the day or better, connect you to the right people. I know this is not happening to everyone but some random people can turn out to be your important ones. What you need to do? Be open with strangers, smile with everyone, offer help and initiate the conversation when you feel like. Who knows someday a random guy standing in front of you in the Starbucks and holding a nice key chain can be your future business partner. You never know man!

3. You save seriously a lot of time for travelling, waiting time (to board the train, to buy lunch, to queue for newspaper?) or another incidents that you might encounter.

4. You save seriously a lot of money for travelling, dressing, getting handsome in front of everyone and other spendings that you might encounter while on the street.

However, being location-independent is not for everyone. You need a good plan and schedule to guide you through the day plus a strong will to follow it strictly. Otherwise, you will never get your work done properly and timely. You have to resist yourself from temptation of other distractions like your kids, TVs, pretty girls on the street, shopping discounts during sale seasons. You would also need to be prepared for all the incidents that could happen to you randomly. At the end of the day, you are working on your own and your boss is not there to protect you or your HR manager is not there to rescue you from conflicts.

There are many resources on the Internet which discuss about location-independence and free tools/guides to help you become one location-independent professional. Speaking for the future, I guess (guess only!) it would be a trendy choice that everyone is picking up, especially with the help of advanced technologies. Telecommunicating has never been easier.

Viral Marketing & Social Media workshop

Viral Marketing & Social Media workshop

Last week I attended a complimentary workshop offered by Mind Kinesis. The topic was about Social Media and Viral Marketing which really attracted my attention by its name.

The workshop contained 3 parts:

-          Introduction about Social Media

-          How to make money with Facebook

-          Viral marketing

The first part “Introduction about Social Media” was supposed to be for newbies who haven’t had any idea about social media I guess. The speaker showed a few videos of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO), Social Media stats and stuffs… which were to persuade the audience that social media now is not exactly a trend anymore; it’s a real thing that people are pursuing and mastering it. For me, I didn’t really need this first section since I have been watched almost all the videos and I consciously know that Social Media now is conquering the battle.

The second part was all about Facebook. The speaker – Cayden Chang claimed that he earned 6-digit figure revenue from Facebook only(!) which was why he wanted to openly shared his methods and experience. He explained detailed steps from choosing a profile image, how to find and add friends, creating social awareness on his business and how to engage prospects etc. From my personal point of view, I see this part just a crash course for those who want to know about Facebook and how to apply it in business running, but not about social media in general. Some of the practices can be applied on Facebook but not on others. Furthermore, the speaker had just covered those so-called technical fields of Facebook where I believe I can get the information anywhere else either on Facebook itself or on the Internet. I would be more interested in those workshops which can identify general rules or regulations of common social media and social networking.

The later part somehow misled me with the word “viral marketing” in the title. He came to mention about Viral marketing where there is a formula “Reach + Creditability = Rich”. Early in the workshop, there was a participant who argued that there’s no creditability in social media (especially in blogging world) since the information can be given by anyone and the source is not verified. Even Wiki or Facebook has a wide spread which can reach to a large range of audience or customers of the public, the information is all contributed by its user and content can be changed at any point of time. Hence, those social platforms need creditability which could be obtained by some of the following methods: be featured on the press or be mentioned and highly-appreciated on authorized place which is monitored by professionals etc. Up to this point, creditability came under the form of viral marketing. For example: let’s say nobody knows who you are but if you and your product are featured with all good reviews on the press which can spread its reach to vast readers,  it’s a default perception that you and your product are good. To close the presentation, the speaker offered us a way to publicize our business (if any of us is having). That is to pay a sum of money (which is called “investment”) in order to be featured in his book. The book will be written by him and another author who already had two hot-selling books. I can say I was kind of turned off by this offer, just like a natural feeling when I meet any salesman.

To sum-up, the workshop didn’t meet my expectation to an extent. It didn’t cover the whole concept and practice of social media in general but only focused on Facebook. It should be good for some newbies who have no idea of what facebook is and would like to start exploring it. For me, I would look for more advanced tactics and methods of how to use general social media to understand the customers, engage them and get them to buy the products or subscribe to my sites.

‘Till next time, take care.

P/S: Happy Lunar New Year/Tet/Chinese New Year

White Wave? What?

I have no idea how many blogs I have. Each time I get a new blog, it will be because of either:

1. I want to have a place with a name I like. Each place is dedicated to a certain thing that I would like to jot down my thoughts and my views about it.

or

2. I want to try new service. When Hui Ting just told me about Blogger 6 years ago, I immediately tried it. I created a place for myself and a blog for the class. I remember at the time, Blogger hadn’t provided multiple blogs yet,  meaning with one username, you can just create 1 blog. Now, with the blooming growth of blogging services like WordPress, Livejournal, Xanga .. I put my name on almost every domains to reserve a place for me.

After getting so many blogs for myself, I have realized:

1. I don’t blog a lot. I used to do it on Yahoo360; however when it closed down, my blogging work also stopped. The reason could be

a. I’m busy with other things

b. I have nothing to write about

c. I have no supporters and sometimes I don’t write for those I don’t like to read it.

d. Others

2. If I do, my blog content is very personal. The good thing about it is the blog captures my journal along the way and I can always go back to where, when, how, who, what, whenever I need to. However, the not-so-good thing is I’m afraid to face the fact/myself/my fear/my failure sometimes AND i don’t want to expose my personal life too much on the Internet. You know, media-once it’s created, it’s there forever. The trace is hardly to be erased.

However, as time goes by, my mind changes. And recently together with the development of social media, I took an initiative to learn about it and figure out that blogging can bring to me a lot of things. My reasons are exactly align with these of this guy. Besides those, I’d like to add one more reason for my the coming blogging I force myself to make

16. Blogging is to communicate my multi-inner-selves, finding out what I’m really comfortable/uncomfortable with. It is there for me to systematize my thoughts, question the frequent set of 5W1H and finally achieve a solution.

17. For a non-native English speaker like me, blogging definitely helps me to improve my English and writing skills.

18. Blogging is freedom, yet within the boundaries of legality.

So those are the reasons for this White Wave. Let’s check this song out before we continue

Moving forward to putting serious commitment for this blog, I need to

1. Write! Anytime, anywhere when I need to. The excuses of “ok, will write it later”, “argh, damn busy now, how to write?”, “hmm, how to start?” … should never be taken up. Again!
2. Read! For more information, more stories, more ideas and motivations to write. I do a lot of reading in fact; however whenever I want to reflect my views upon anything, I took at least one excuse from point 1.
3. Write properly! This should NOT be treated as my personal blog where I crapped about stuffs, complained and rambled about life whenever i was stressed. In this blog:
a. Writing are to be proofread carefully before published.
b. Views are to be fair, unbiased.
c. Critical thinking and analysis is to be stressed on.

I won’t be putting non-achievable targets for myself so that would be 3 initial requirements I set for this blog. For a more practical KPI, I would say:at least one post each week and the post has to be properly written.

I hope The White Wave would gradually build up a its name, win its own readers and most importantly of all, makes an impact on them (whichever kind of impact it might be).

About The White Wave and the person behind it, please >>>clickhere<<<