Nerd Vs World

NZ Decision 2014, What happened...

2014-09-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

So the election result was out, National won with enough votes to form a government on its own, all the debates, the campaigning and finger pointing by the other parties got no where at the end, if anything it strengthened the position of the national government significantly.

At a time when we had opposition leaders saying that this is it for National, that the current National government is ruining our country they are abusing their powers etc. they (National) simply remained focused and objective for the most part and at the end that played out in their favor, significantly.

The people of New Zealand have made their voice clear, the majority of them are happy to keep the current government in power that is simply a reflection of how the people feel and you know what, that is fine.

I personally was hoping for a change, I was hoping that we would see a coalition government that would eventually plant the seed for a progressive and inclusive government, one which employs science, data and technology to improve the quality and lower the cost of living for the people of New Zealand.

That of course did not happen, not to say that we're heading towards a doom and gloom by tomorrow! We are however living a world which seems to be changing rapidly on many levels and so far the way the current government has been operating has not really changed much over the years, in other words the way the country is being managed could be damaging to it's health in the long term.

To elaborate, the cost of living is increasing, the divide by the haves and have nots is growing,the environment is being damaged, assets are being sold, more people are falling into poverty, our social systems are not catching up to the fact that things are going from bad to worse which is starting to create a vicious feedback loop, granted we won't see the full effect of that for a while but by the time we do , it is already too late.

#Decision2014 had the potential to change that, the opposition parties had a number of policies which if implemented could have reversed some of the negative elements above, for example ensuring we have clear rivers, community based Urban Farms, solar-panels on every roof-top, providing low income citizens with ways to feed themselves and their kids, no kids going hungry to school, free tertiary education etc.

A lot of these policies sound wonderful on paper, assuming that the parties putting these policies forward had a plan to implement them successfully one would wonder then why didn't these other parties (mostly left aligned) get more votes?

Well, lets just say that this election was a mess, there was a lot of chaos, a lot of hostility, accusations, side shows and finger pointing, while everyone was doing that, the incumbent party simply kept to itself and moved forward, this resonated with the voters and showed that the National Party of New Zealand was focused and knew what it was doing and that earned it the votes of the majority of the population.

So now what? what should the other parties do? Well for next time, I think that each party should workout what it actually stands for and stick with that, instead of attacking others for sake of doing so the party should stick to its principles and to its goals.

Another thing to consider is the end goal, what is it really? it is not to get an ideology driven party to power, the end goal is ensuring that the people of New Zealand live in a peaceful country with a high standard of living, it is about ensuring that no one is below the poverty line (or even close to it), it is about ensuring that everyone has access to their basic needs easily.

So lets keep that in mind for next time, I personally have realized that for a system to change it is easier to implement said change by making another system which makes the first one obsolete (as Bucky puts it) instead of trying to change the existing system from the inside.

So maybe none of this will matter at the end, maybe we will see the rise of government 2.0 with decentralized systems becoming more and more popular by the day and maybe then we can move on with advancing our country and the rest of the human civilization using a version of governance that doesn't happen to be more than 2000 years old.

On Decentralization and the future

2014-09-13T20:34:00.001-07:00

Today we live in a mostly centralized world, for example our utility networks, financial systems and production facilities are all centralized, we have central banks, we have central power stations, we have "central" factories which produce goods and services.

We as consumers rely on these centralized systems to go about our day to day activities, in a decentralized environment however the consumer can also become the producers, for example consider power production, a decentralized system can include roof top solar power generators on top of every home, these solar panels will collect enough electricity to power a house hold and could distribute the excess energy to the grid for someone else to consume or store.

The centralized systems we have used to date have worked, they have gotten us to where we are today, things are starting to change though and we are starting to see the emergence of decentralized systems as a viable (eventually superior) alternative.

centralized systems do have some issues which in turn affect those who rely on them, for example one of the main issues with a centralized system is the concentration of power in the hands of a small group of people, in the case of a financial system, the majority end up giving far too much power to those who control the financial system (e.g. Banks) and as we've seen in recent history, the decisions made by the banks do not always have the interest of the majority in mind.

In the past it was hard for decentralized systems to compete mainly due to technical limitations and the lack of access to knowledge & resources, these days however with the explosion of digital communications and the accelerating advances of technology these barriers to entry are being eroded.

Currently there are 4 areas where we are starting to see the emergence of decentralized systems:

Decentralized media sharing networks. (Bit-Torrent)
Decentralized energy systems. (Roof top solar, decentralized energy storage etc.)
Decentralized Manufacturing. (3D Printing centers , home based micro-manufacturing)
Decentralized Financial systems (Bitcoin and the likes).

Speaking of decentralized financial systems which have been a hot topic over the last few years , for the last two centuries we have relied heavily on central banks to maintain the flow of money and to ensure that our economic systems are working.

The problem with that however is that control over our economic system and ultimately our lives ended up being concentrated in the hands of very few individuals and as we've seen over the last few years some (many?) of these individuals are out looking for themselves at the expense of others.

The same applies to access to utilities (e.g. electricity) and goods (via manufacturing) , we always have the same issue where those who decide when and how to provide access to these resources have far too much power over the rest who do not have the means to produce the goods and resources they need.

Decentralized systems are supposed to fix this by simply distributing the tools and systems necessary to facilitate access to what we need, in doing so we no longer have to rely on a relatively small number of people to make decisions that could effect the lives of the rest of us, instead we can all work together towards achieving our goals.

Another point to consider is that decentralized systems are far more fault tolerant out of the box than our traditional centralized systems, for example if you take a power network, if the power lines connecting a city block fail then the entire block would be out of power.

In a decentralized scenario however, where every building generates and stores its electricity , knocking out a power line will have little to no effect.

Picture this scenario, a world where every house hold generates its own electricity with the means to store excess power for use later, every neighborhood having its own vertical hydroponic farm to produce fresh food locally thereby eliminating the costs associated with transport and distribution, a digital currency system which can be used to implement an economy where people are given what they need to survive without having to work for a living, all of this can become possible with the adoption of decentralized systems.

Technology is racing ahead to make the above scenario a reality, it is only a matter of time before we can replace our centralized systems with the decentralized counterparts and as a result we can create a world which offers a very high quality of life for everyone with no exceptions.

When the Social Safety Net Fails

2014-08-31T23:21:00.001-07:00

There were a few very unfortunate developments today at a number of Work & Income Offices in New Zealand, the worst of all resulted in the tragic death of two staff members and the serious injury of another.

These incidents have one thing in common, people desperately trying to get access to their basic needs, in other words people who are unable to get work trying to get money to pay for food, shelter and other necessities but unfortunately they were unable to obtain access to money and out of desperation they resorted to crime and violence in order to get access to what they need.

We live in a world where resources are available in abundance (physically speaking) but access to said resources is becoming harder and harder to an ever growing segment of the population, what boggles the mind (for me anyways) is that we are technically capable of providing access to the basic needs to everyone yet here we have a growing number of people who are falling rapidly beneath the poverty line and the social safety net we have in place is really in-adequate in catching these people.

From where I stand I see this trend growing unless our governments start to realize that it is time to change how we do things, it is time to look at how we can make access to the basic needs available to everyone for Free (or the absolute lowest cost possible), we have the technology and the know how to make this happen so why don't we?

It is time we started looking at implementing a Basic Income system, it is time that we started thinking about giving everyone access to what they need, it is time to end poverty.

So what can a techno progressive government do to raise the quality of life for its people?

2014-04-14T23:22:00.001-07:00

When I look at how the politics game is played these I days I cannot help but wonder how different things could be if we had an acting government which embraced science & Technology and used the scientific method to make its decisions etc.

I figured that it is time that I made a post which describes how such a government could improve the infrastructure and policies of a given country in order to improve the quality of life for the citizens of said country.

Before we start lets make some assumptions:

One of the fundamental goals of this government is to improve the quality of life for all citizens by using Science and Technology.
The leadership is not burdened with old style political thinking, it is more like a successful technology start-up: agile, proactive, transparent and very streamlined.
The technologies used are those which are currently available or will be available in the very near future.

While there are many issues and challenges to tackle I will focus on a few points here to keep this post manageable, one of the many challenges a techno progressive leadership can tackle is the generation of resources, mainly energy (electricity in this case) and food supply.

When you think about it, these two resources are very important and are critical for the well functioning of a society, being able to generate these resources in abundance (read: making them available at an extremely low price to the consumer) will make it so that spending power for the citizens is increased since they don't need to allocate some of hard earned cash to pay for said resources, this in turn could have a positive effect on the economy and so on.

So how can a government implement a solution to provide an abundant supply of electricity and food? Well, its easy!

Vertical Urban farming can be utilized to provide high quality produce right next to where it is most needed, therefore cutting down on transport costs, pollution and by selling direct to the consumer the costs can be driven down even further.

As for energy, it is possible to build a decentralized energy system were each residence is equipped with Solar-panels, wind-turbines and batteries to generate and store power, a distributed grid network can be built so that energy is shared and with more nodes (read: houses and buildings equipped to generate electricity) the capacity of the distributed grid can grow.

Current technologies are advanced enough to allow for the above to happen there is no excuse as to why it is not possible to adopt such systems to provides electricity and food in abundance. In fact we are starting to see initiatives which aim to implement the above solutions pop up all over the world.

With regards to energy generation using decentralized renewable energy collectors (roof top solar panels and wind-turbines) , the cost for producing high quality and highly efficient solar panels and wind-turbines has been dropping quickly over the last 2 years, some even suggest that we are about to get to a point were energy generated from renewable sources will be cheaper than conventional coal plant generated energy.

Now think about this for a moment, when it is possible to generate these two resources in abundance, people will no longer have to worry about having to pay for them which in turn will mean that the money which used to be set aside to pay for said resources can now be utilized to pay for something else (e.g. mortgages, credit card debts, higher education etc.)

Now what if this government went even a step further? What if we applied the same concepts to provide free (or close to free) unlimited internet access? that would be another less thing for people to worry about paying for, the above paragraph will still hold true.

Technology is now at the stage where it is becoming possible to provide an increasing number of resources in abundance, it is time for the world's leaders to consider utilizing technology to end scarcity once and for all, but while the technology is there the government with the attitude, the out of the box thinking and leadership required to utilize these technology is no where to be seen, for now at least.

The Internet party and positive political disruption.

2014-04-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

This post is in regards to the recent launch of the Internet Party in New Zealand and my thoughts on why the Internet party could cause a wave of positive disruption in NZ's political scene.

For the most part of my adult life I cared very little for politics, while I've voted on occasion I have generally paid little attention to the happenings of the political scene. I've cared very little about which party stood for what , why they're pushing for their agenda or why does party X have an ideology that is different from party Y etc.

I believe that there are many people out there who share the same view, mainly due the belief that these people subconsciously feel that a lot of what happens in the political world is outside of the average person's control. while those who play the traditional politics game would disagree I would ask them to take notice of what is happening around the world, we have plenty of upset people demanding for a better quality of life but the response from the politicians is almost laughable.

Simply put, we have a very slow moving, slow reacting political parties who are extremely out of touch with reality and very inefficient when it comes to dealing with the issues of a very fast moving world.

Before I move on, consider this: In my world (the land of IT and software development) we refer to such bodies as legacy systems, the reference is generally made to systems which were built a long time ago and have firmly been entrenched within the enterprise world. They are usually viewed as being relatively slow, expensive and inflexible when compared to their modern counterparts.

Around the beginning of this century the IT industry entered an accelerating continuous improvement cycle spurred into being by advancements in technology, as a result we started to see disruption on a massive scale, overtime this disruption gave us the world we currently live in, to me this world is far better than the one we lived in 10 - 20 years ago and you know what this is just the very tip of the iceberg!

Now where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about politics. Around last year I started getting interested in the idea of government and politics 2.0 , a modern political scene where we would have a system of government which is lean, proactive , open and engaging. We would also have politicians who are not only good at talking but also with a very good understanding of the world, its complex systems and its ever changing nature. In my mind I wondered what life could be like if we had a leading political party which utilized technology to its fullest to continuously reinvent itself and improve the quality of life for the people it served.

Alas, I looked around and couldn't find any, while the current political bodies have some elements which I support none of them seemed to have enough elements that would make me give them my full support.

I wondered that if there will ever come a time where we would have political parties which would be the equivalent of software start-ups, small but with big ideas and an excellent can do attitude with the potential to be life changers.

Interestingly I didn't have to wait long before someone announced their intention to bring the above idea to life. +Kim Dotcom announced his intention to launch a political party in New Zealand sometime last year, fast forward to a couple of days ago and the party has officially gone public!

Looking at their vision section on their website one would notice that the party intends to build a government which is modern and potentially capable of changing life as we know it.

While it is still very early days one cannot say anything with certainty, however! the mere fact that such a party has burst into the scene and within a very short time frame (few days) has gathered such massive support indicates that the world has been waiting for someone to come in and change politics as we know it.

I have personally decided to offer my full support to the Internet party and I do hope that they will be able to eventually make their vision come true.

I would consider myself to be one of the many potential voters who for so long have been disengaged with the political scene. Now if these guys have managed to get my attention I then I suspect that others are paying attention as well so it is likely that when election time comes the internet party will have far more support than most pundits think, one can only speculate on what will happen next.

In short I would say that what is currently happening in New Zealand's political scene is worth keeping an eye on. If the Internet Party succeeds and eventually ends up being the leading party in New Zealand then the world as we know it could very well change forever.

Politicians of the Future

2013-10-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask any politician today the following questions:

How to end poverty?
How to eliminate (or greatly reduce) crime?
How to free the world from dependence on fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy?
How to create an abundance of resources without harming the planet we call home?
How to improve the quality of life for everyone on the planet and not just for a select few?
Can we achieve all of the above in our lifetime?

What would you expect the answer to be?

Would you A) expect that you will get a straight and detailed answer? would you expect any politician to talk to you about possible options? feasibility studies? Computer Models ? Research Data and Simulations that could help us achieve the above?

Or would you B) expect something along the lines of a generic answer which sounds vaguely optimistic but doesn't really tell you anything , or worse yet a pessimistic one which makes you think that there is no cure for the problems our world faces these days?

It is sad to say but what I currently expect from our leaders would be an answer that falls under category B , as I look at the world I see that our politicians have been failing us over and over again. In my mind the human race has reached a level where we can start solving the problems that face us immediately and achieve an outcome in a relatively short period of time.

To do so however would require some outside the box thinking , fully embracing science & technology , realizing the TRUE costs and benefits of what needs to be done (hint: its not money!) and would also require someone who is not afraid to change the rules of the game, alas the current generation of politicians doesn't seem to fall in this category.

So this makes me wonder, is it time for Politics 2.0 ? Is it time for a new breed of politicians to rise? Politicians who are not just good at talking but also have the ability to reason, to think logically and to use science & technology to debate, argue and use data , statistics and the scientific method make their decisions instead of basing their decisions on ideologies? Is it time that we elected politicians who are on with the times?

Being the optimist that I am, I am currently hoping that we will start to see new entrants into the political scene, I'd compare them to the current disruptors of the technology world , I would expect that these new entrants would give the incumbents a run for their money and for people's votes!

As I travel through our digital world I see that more and more people are becoming frustrated with the way our political leaders are dealing with the issues that face us, this frustration is still building up but I wonder how long it will be before it reaches critical mass? Once that happens , change will follow but change can be painful at times so one would have to wonder are our existing political leaders capable of managing such change?

Thoughts?

What the looming US Government Shutdown Teaches us

2013-09-30T20:49:00.001-07:00

Unless you have been living under a rock lately chances are you have at least heard about what is currently happening in the US and the likely imminent partial government shutdown.

I won't bother you with the details as to why this is happening since many other sources have done an excellent job of providing up to the minute updates to what has been going on.

Instead I'd like to provide an outsider's point of view to these events in hopes that my view will give others some insight into how an average person such as myself sees this event. In writing this post I will try and not take any sides here but rather give my opinion on what all of this means to someone such as myself.

First, all I see is that there are two rival groups who due to the way the system is setup have been forced to compete for the support of the general public.

In theory this system is supposed to keep each party on its toes so that it can do its best to govern the country in the best way it can which in turn would give the governing party more support which will then ensure that said party will stay in power etc which would then push the second party to outdo the first and as a result the public would benefit.

In practice however this system has instilled a survival instinct which pushes each party to do whatever it can to cling to power staying in power becomes the #1 goal while everything else is an afterthought.

As a result when the two parties clash over ideas, the fight becomes fulled by party ideology rather than reason, survival instincts take precedence over everything else while science , facts , data & peer reviews take a back seat.

Which brings me to my second point, we live in an age where we have the technology and the expertise to model extremely complex scenarios, variations on these scenarios , workout the most likely outcome and make an informed decision based on that. The data we collect , the processes we use can be peer reviewed by others and once all concerned parties have reached an agreement a solution can be implemented.

This practice is commonly followed these days by businesses , research institutes etc. Why cant politicians use these methodologies which have been proven to work time and time again? why insist on putting ideology first and if any scientific research is done then these parties would skew the numbers / facts so that they agree with the party's ideology?

Do politicians not realize that in looking after themselves first they could very well be harming the people who supported them in the first place?

I think an increasing number of politicians have lost touch with the needs of the common man, I also think that we as voters have given too much leeway to politicians and that our apathy has allowed them to get away with many things that should have instead caused the voters to put their foot down and say "No you are not doing what we elected you to do, get out!"

I also think that the types of governing systems we use these days are starting to become outdated and that it is time that these systems got reviewed, updated or even replaced all together.

As for politicians, I think they need to be reminded that they exist to serve the people, the people being the majority of the population and not a small fraction of it, politicians should also be forced to adopt scientific methods and recognize that facts, data and logic should prevail over ideology all the time.

So where two from here? Maybe it is time that we as citizens of our respective countries started engaging actively in the political process, maybe it is time that we started making sure that our voices and opinions are heard and maybe it is about time we started holding those in power accountable for their decisions.

What do you think?

Waiting for the Singularity

2013-09-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

If there was mounting evidence suggesting that a technological revolution will change life as you know it within the next 15-30 years and if this revolution will impact what you do on every day basis, will you continue living life the same way you do now?

Few months ago I became very interested in the subjects of the Technological Singularity & Transhumanism, since then I have been researching these subjects and pondering their impacts on life as we know it.

Knowing what I know now and assuming that the current Tech trends will continue for years to come, one can see that a Technological Singularity could very well become a reality within the next 15-30 years.

Before I go on I think we should start with some definitions.

One definition of the Technological Singularity is that it is a point in time where technology advances so much at an exceptionally fast rate that it becomes impossible for us to predict what will happen next.

As for Transhumanism , you can think of it as the use of technology (silicon or bio) to enhance and augment the human experience , think intelligence augmentation , radical life extension etc.

It is currently projected that sometime between 2030 - 2050 technology would've advanced enough to where we start to see these two ideas become a reality, in theory by the time we get to that point many things will (or should) take place along the way, for example there could be some tremendous advances in the fields of AI , Robotics , Bio-Technology, Manufacturing & Energy Generation / Storage.

These advances will radically impact the world we currently live in, an example would be the introduction of self-driving cars to the consumer market or the use of Robots in every day life scenarios or the use of Intelligent Agents (think AI software which are capable of human level language processing) to take on customer service / support tasks and even creative tasks such as writing articles with an opinion!

But wait , there is more. advances in 3D Printing, Energy research & Synthetic Biology could theoretically allow anyone to grow / create whatever they need at very low cost, in other words these emerging technologies can drastically lower the cost of living and disrupt the way we currently do things.

Sounds like something out of a Sci-Fi book doesn't it? That was what I thought on first look but after doing a little bit of research I started to see some evidence suggesting that we are currently heading in this direction and the chances of our current generation witnessing such events are increasing by the day.

Looking at the very near future (1-5 years) we are about to enter an era where wearable computing becomes the norm, affordable 3d printers can be obtained by almost anyone, robots will be everywhere (they're already invading the workplace) , driver-less cars will be taking people all over the place, many breakthroughs are happening in the fields of Biology , Energy , Engineering etc and the rate by which these breakthroughs is happening is getting faster and faster and there is no sign that this acceleration is slowing down, if anything it is getting faster.

As a result our economic , political and social systems will be disrupted on a very large scale, this will of course affect almost every one of us.

Assuming a lot of the above will happen, should we just continue doing what we do now while we wait or should we consider changing how we live our lives?

For example if you were a taxi driver and you knew that in 3 years time , your job will disappear will you continue being a taxi driver until the moment your job is gone? The same goes for Factory workers , if you knew that a robot will be used to replace you in the near future, If you were a software developer and you knew that in the near future there will be programs intelligent enough that they can write other programs! Will you start thinking about other career options?

This is something which I have been thinking about for a while now, knowing that technology can and will affect the way we work and the way we live life in general, if such a huge change is coming down the line, do we just wait for it to happen? Or should we do something about it?

For now I really haven't thought about what to do but it is something which I should start thinking about sooner rather than later.

The Dreamer's Dilemma

2013-07-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Right so before you dive into this post please keep in mind the two points below:

I am not a psychologist, I have no experience in being one, everything written below is based on my own observations and my own personal experience, your own experiences may very well vary.

Most of what is written below will probably not make much sense unless you're familiar with Carl Jung's personality theories, you can fill one of many online questionnaires like this one to get your personality type and then you can read more about what these personality types mean here.

With that out of the way lets get to into this post shall we?

Imagine this scenario, a person who experiences our physical reality like everyone else, they have a job, a family, pets etc. for a typical observer this person is as normal as anyone else, they just get on with life as we know it.

However; inside this person's mind there is a never ending stream of thoughts, possibilities , alternate life scenarios etc. this stream never stops, it is constantly flowing, always presenting new ideas, always re-playing alternate scenarios of real life events and always predicting what might happen if one of many possible outcomes where acted upon in a moment's notice.

Welcome to the life of an INFP, myself and others (estimated to be around or less than 1% of the total planet's population), INFPs are referred to as the idealist dreamers, they're usually the type of people who are thought of as having their heads in the clouds, usually considered shy or anti-social due to them preferring the sanctuary of their own minds over interacting with people around them.

So what makes these guys so special and why am I writing this post? Well one of the INFPs traits is their desire to make life better for all of mankind, their creative minds can often see solutions to problems where others fail, their drive to help others pushes them to come up with all sorts of ideas on how to make the world a better place.

Yet at the same time this powerful gift is more often than not their greatest weakness. Why you ask? Well for an INFP their "feeling" side is so in tune with themselves that when an INFP pictures a scenario in their mind they tend to experience that scenario as if it was the real thing (even though they know that they're just thinking of something, unlike a crazy person!...a subtle difference I know but it needs to be stated).

So what does that do, as a result most INFPs never act upon their ideas and all these potentially life changing ideas (whether they're personal ones or one that affect the whole world) end up being locked in their creators mind never to see the light of day and as a result nothing happens.

You often come across this in movies / stories etc where someone says "We need a doer not a thinker", I have personally come to realize that there is a great truth in that phrase, no matter what a thinker can come up with, if their ideas remain locked in their heads then as far as the world is concerned they're as good as nothing, which I've come to realize is a great waste to everyone, including the person coming up with the ideas.

In my next post I will talk about some possible options where these ideas can be unlocked and brought to life, feel free to share your thoughts on the above, look forward to your comments.

Have Farm, Will Grow Tech

2012-11-19T22:01:00.000-08:00

If you've been following the recent news surrounding Pacific Fibre & Kim DotCom lately then no doubt you have heard of Kim's attempts to revive the now all but dead Pacific Fibre project.

Putting aside what you think of Kim's character and his business idea(s) for a moment, lets think about what he is proposing shall we?

By building the pacific fibre link, NZ suddenly has the capacity to transmit and receive tons (terabytes?) more data, so what does that mean? Well, this means a number of things:

Web users in NZ will get closer to the rest of the world in terms of consumer and business web access (think higher speed, more bandwidth to consume etc).
We get redundancy; if the current Southern Cross link dies we won't be disconnected from the rest of the world.
With #1 in mind, we can CREATE A NEW INDUSTRY / REVENUE MODEL for the country. I am talking about the Data storage and Warehousing businesses here.
Faster Web access going both ways means people who work in the tech industry can work more efficiently, which can result in higher productivity.

Now I'd expect that all of the above would be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the current state of the Tech World, if not then I'd expect you've heard about some of it at least since many major blogs and online news sites have talked about it but all of that can take a back seat to a point that Kim raised on top of the above, which is the idea of transforming NZ into a Technology producing country.

Now I'd like to spend a bit of time talking about this as I feel that this is an extremely important point. NZ is a small country, it is also relatively far away form the rest of the world. Our resources although relatively plenty, still pale in comparison to what other nations have on reserve. We do however have the ability to produce something in droves and that is Good Tech Talent.

I personally know many people who excel in the IT/Technology field; I also know that many of these same people have decided to leave NZ in order to work somewhere else where the grass is greener. Now imagine this, what if such talent was cultivated and supported better in NZ by providing resources for technology minded entrepreneurs and supporting the start-up culture in NZ? What if NZ became a Tech Exporter?

There are many talented technology personnel in NZ, there is an entrepreneurial spirit without a doubt, with proper support and with the right vision NZ can become a world leader in providing technology solutions which in turn can generate millions or even billions of dollars for the country.

Lets put it this way, If I (in what little spare time I have) could build a fully working Social Web 2.0 SaaS app while juggling a full-time job and being fully committed to a family of 4 (plus pets!) then just imagine what a fully dedicated team of developers can do!

The software industry has a huge potential (just look at the billions of dollars being thrown at all sorts of ideas in the Valley). It also has a relatively low start-up costs. By turning the country into a Technology exporter a lot of revenue can be generated as a result, and it should stand without a doubt that technology is what is changing the world at the moment and it is also what will keep on changing the world for years and years to come.

So what does all of this have to do with Pacific Fiber and Kim DotCom? You know the topic that I started this post about? Well one of Kim's ideas is to use the revenues from his Mega.co.nz website to fund Pacific Fiber and to provide Free Broadband access to the population of NZ. Now lets think about this for a moment; if (and this is a big if) one idea has the potential to generate enough money to provide people in NZ with Free Broadband access then what could possibly happen if we had 3-4 more ideas with the same potential? What if we had 20 such ideas? Wouldn't make sense to at least consider the idea of turning this country to a major tech exporter instead of losing more and more skilled talent to other countries?

Is it time for World 2.0?

2012-03-06T19:43:00.003-08:00

Summary

Why can't our political systems & governments take a page from technology and the software industry? Why can't humans as a whole advance culturally and work towards creating an interconnected society where a lot of the none sense that is keeping us from moving forward can be left behind?

TLDR version;

I come from a software systems background , part of my job involves designing and building business systems that talk to each other , exchange information and work together to serve the end user , I look at the software world and then at our society and see a lot of similarities.

We have a lot of countries , cultures and sub-cultures which can be can be thought of as systems on their own , these cultures are supported by their own governments , political systems , laws e.t.c. just like software systems do these days some countries and governments "try" to work together for the betterment of the human race as a whole.

There is one major difference however; Since the conception of the software world our software engineers & architects have spent considerable amounts of time improving , revising and even in some cases re-inventing the software industry, this has become so common that our industry practically re-invents itself every few months!

the result of that is what you see today in Social Media sites , On-line Search , Collaboration , Mobile and Connectivity software, just over 10 years ago a lot of what you see today was deemed a dream by many.

Now take a look at our world and the mess its in right now, we still have some governments who apply laws from hundreds of years ago , we have various beliefs that no longer make sense in this day and age , technology and the web has brought everyone closer together but we're all still separated by imaginary borders.

It is as if we live in two worlds, in the digital world everyone is connected , information & resources are available to almost everyone (when they're not censored or blocked due to politics) , people work together from all across the world to bring ideas to life and make the world a better place.

But in the physical world things are different, there are many barriers imposed on us by archaic systems and rules which should have been changed or removed along time ago.

What if that could happen, what if governments and countries around the world were treated like computer systems, what if you could get a group of people in every country to work on optimizing and re-factoring our political , financial and legal systems , what if we could upgrade to World 2.0?

Can this happen overnight? highly unlikely , would it be a perfect change? probably not , would it be better? I think so!

So what do you think?

A Happy software developer is a productive software developer

2012-02-15T19:28:00.000-08:00

Picture this , a junior software developer sitting in a corner , sharing an office with sales reps , marketing staff and everyone else, he is writing code feverishly on a PC that is few years old , its slow but what can he do about it , the managers view IT as an expense yet they keep demanding that this little guy produce apps and reports to keep the business wheel turning.

Our friend here finds it difficult to focus , there is too much noise, the phone keeps ringing , people around him are always discussing things , he keeps on getting interrupted with silly questions and enquiries into how he is progressing.

His frustration builds up , his productivity drops , his managers question this "How come you haven't finished building this report yet?" , "You said you were going to get this system patch applied a week ago!" , our little guy looks at his boss not knowing how to respond , he knows that he could make a stand and tell his boss that if the work conditions don't improve then he will leave Or he could keep his mouth shut and pray that things will be better tomorrow.

Does the above sound familiar? I'm sure it does to some , unfortunately there are many young software developers who have / are in such position, not knowing any better they end up working for companies were management have no idea on how to create a suitable working environment for software developers , many of these managers think that a software developer can be productive while trying to focus on their work in the middle of a football field.

If you are a software developer working in a job with similar conditions to what was described then keep reading.

In order for software developers to be at their best few conditions need to be met:

Software developers require long un-interrupted periods of time for them to do their work
Outside distractions need to be eliminated or at least greatly minimized
They need to be managed by someone who is a programmer or was a programmer or has some experience in the software industry , general managers usually fail to grasp what is needed to keep a software development team happy.
On that note, you need a software development team to maximise outcomes , lone developers cannot be expected to do it all by themselves!
Software development managers need to realize that their role should be more of a protector / enabler than a controller , these managers should listen to their developers and do their best to help make their working environment to be as productive as possible.
The 9-5 rule does not always apply, Sometimes devs need to take time off during the day to un-wind so that they can get back to their job and spend the hours needed to get a job done!

There is more to the above and many others have written about that, some have even gone all the way to start software development houses which were designed from the ground up to be the best working environments for programmers , a prime example of that would be Fog Creek Software , You can check their Working at Fog Creek video to see how great it can be to work in a company built for software developers by software developers!

Are you a software developer? Do you have any stories to share about your working environment? if so then let us know!

Nimble Social CRM, a review

2011-09-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer:
the following is my own personal review of Nimble . This review is based on my personal experience, all opinions expressed in this post are my own.

For those who don't know Nimble is a web based social CRM system which has been attracting slot of attention lately, before we begin I think we should clarify a few points for those who are new to the CRM and SCRM scenes.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, the term is used to describe CRM as a software and as a business process, successful CRM project implementations cover both of these parts equally. For more information about what CRM is you can read one of my blog posts on my work blog which can be found Here

So if that is CRM then what is social CRM? well, social CRM takes the classic CRM elements and integrates social media into the mix, again this is both in terms of process and software, one of the key additions in Social CRM is the utilization of social media to manage customer relationships by monitoring and engaging with customers & prospects within the existing social media channels.

Nimble takes this concept to heart and it is built using these principles. I first heard of Nimble few months ago over twitter, at the time the term social CRM was a new buzz word for most but once I did my research I could see how powerful it can be for those who know how to utilize it.

Fast forward to a week ago and I decided that it is time for me to try out Nimble and see what it has to offer, visiting www.Nimble.com and registering an account was my first step.

From that point I was impressed by the clean and simple interface, I didn't have to fill out pages and pages of forms to create an account, I entered a few details and before you know it I was good to go!

From there I was directed to a page where an introductory video played highlighting the basics of Nimble, this was a nice touch as it provides first time users with an idea of what to expect, which is very helpful in my opinion.

After the video I was asked to setup Nimble, the setup process is very simple as well (simple is good) , since it is a social CRM system, Nimble relies on integration with social media , so you can connect to your Twitter, Linked In & Facebook accounts and Nimble will pull your contacts lists so that you can access them from one place.

My understanding the above steps are optional and you can still enter contacts manually if you choose to.

In terms of features Nimble seems to cover the basics and as part of the overall design everything is simple and very clean which makes for a very nice working environment, within Nimble you can find the following:

A Contacts list, where you can manage your contacts etc.
A Companies list for managing companies,
A Calendar
A Deals area for managing Sales & Opportunities etc.

For anyone looking to get into adopting CRM as part of their business the above list is ideal, since the basics are covered new users can get familiar with the system very quickly and they shouldn't be overwhelmed with a multitude of features which don't get used most of the time (again simple is good).

I personally like the overall design of the system as it is very modern and very user friendly, since its web-based that means there is no software to install which means there is no time spent trying to troubleshoot faulty installs or issues related to operating systems or hardware which is a very big plus in my book, this also means that the system is portable so you can use it on your desktop , Smart Phone and tablet with no worries!

I had a minor issue when I tried to use the system for the first time where I couldn't edit the details of the contacts which were imported but it seems that this is no longer the case so I'm not sure if this was a bug in the system or if an import process was still running behind the scenes and the ability to edit contacts was not available during import.

For veteran CRM users Nimble might seem to be very light on features but from what I can tell it has an API and there is a 3rd party developers program so I think in time 3rd party developers will be able to step in and fill the gap within any features, I also think that the core design of Nimble will allow it to extend its feature set by integrating with other service provides on the web.

Overall, I am Impressed with Nimble and I think it is a product which is at least worth a try for business owners who would like to implement a CRM system.

Is Technology alone enough to change our lives?

2011-09-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt our lives have changed a lot over the last hundred years or so, much of these changes are the result of the technological improvements which have taken place during that time.

Along the same lines, humanity as a whole has changed as well both on a personal level and on a social level. That in mind, it seems that recently technology has been advancing so quickly that a lot of people are finding it hard to catch up and make use of the many advantages we've got available to us.

As an example, today it has become very easy for us to communicate and collaborate no matter where we are, communication is no longer restricted to voice, thanks to technology we can collaborate on a level that was previously unheard of and we can do that without having to pay an arm & a leg for it!

Thanks to that, a lot of people can do business anytime , anywhere without the need to be physically present in the same location. However, most people still choose not to utilize this.

Does this scenario sound familiar? wake-up early in the morning, spend an hour or so scrambling all over the place to get ready for work, jump into your car, get stuck in traffic for over an hour, get to work, get stuck in-front of a computer screen for 8 hours because doing otherwise means that you are not working hard enough, jump in the car again, get stuck in traffic for another hour. Finally you get back home only to realize that most of the day is now gone and you're exhausted beyond belief so you crash and wake-up the next day and what do you know, the same cycle starts all over again.

For many people, the above scenario doesn't have to be the case (at least not all the time), these days a lot of us can work from home. we can communicate, collaborate, research, develop all while still wearing pajamas!

Lets think about this for a moment shall we, on average you can get stuck in traffic for an hour each way, so that is 2 hours of your life wasted 5 days a week, lets say it costs you $50 a week to fill up your car with gas.

What if you were to work from home for two days a week? so every week you save 4 hours and $20. But wait, there is more. With your car being off the road for these two hours you have also contributed to reducing traffic AND reducing the amount of green-house gases being emitted.

Now imagine if a 1000 people in your area did the same thing as well, now what if a million people did that? you do the maths.

So, if we can utilize technology to save time, money and help the environment by working from home for a couple of days a week, why aren't a lot of people doing this? why do we still have traffic jams (which get worse every day) , why do we still waste hours upon hours of our time being stuck in a box with four wheels?

The answer is simple really, technology alone is not enough, you can have the best tech in the world but if people don't adopt it then it is as good as if it was non-existent.

Also there are other factors which contribute to our unwillingness to change:

We are creatures of habit, once we get used to doing things in a certain way it is hard to change.
It is the social norm, people are expected to drive to work, they're expected to be stuck in an office for 8 hours a day.

So what does that mean? Can we force a change? or is this how things will be forever?

I personally think that over time more and more people will start to realize that they can do things differently, I also think that there needs to be individuals who should push for such changes, people who can act as leaders who can help the world shift its way of thinking and doing things.

I believe that technology can do wonderful things for us but by itself it is not enough to change our lives.

What are your thoughts on this?

Have you saved a tree today?

2011-09-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

Technology these days has done some wonderful things for us, whether its in the field of communication, business or the way we live in general. Thanks to technology the way we live and interact with each other has been transformed dramatically.

That said, it seems there are still some areas where technology has yet to make an impact, one example is the habit of businesses consuming enormous amounts of paper each year.

Back in the days when your phone and fax lines were your best buddies, when only the CEO had a 16 colour monitor and when snail mail ruled the world, business people were used to communicating through paper.

"I want a 50 page report on my desk by end of day today!" , "Print this Sales Order and Fax it to dispatch!" , "Print this invoice and mail it to the customer tomorrow!" , sounds familiar? I'm sure it does to some.

In this day and age all businesses should be able to communicate without the need to print a single piece of paper. However, the reality is that a lot of businesses still seem to be stuck in doing things the same way they used to 20 years ago!

Did you know that saving 3 feet of stacked paper can be the equivalent of saving a tree (Google seems to think so!) , I know of some businesses whose reps print piles upon piles of paper every day just so that the manager can read some reports, reports which are already available to the manager on the screen!

that said, I know that there are some businesses who have set a goal to become paperless by the end of year X or they at least strive to consume less paper but I also know of many other businesses who seem to be killing more and more trees by the day.

Take your good old Yellow pages phone directory or your printed News papers, businesses who do these things should have gotten on with the times ages ago and focused on providing electronic alternatives (I know that they do but usually these alternatives are considered secondary).

I had a door to door sales rep come to my place the other day trying to sell me News-paper subscriptions, when I said am not interested he asked "Why?" so I answered by saying that I read all the news that interest me online, I don't have any interest in reading the news on a piece of paper and I much prefer to save a tree or two by using the web to read my news, being a sales person his immediate response was "But if you subscribe you get in a draw to win a prize!!" , it figures that he'd completely miss the point...at the end of our conversation I simply said that am happy with reading my news on the interwebz thank you very much!

So, do you think your business consumes a lot of paper? if so do you think it is possible for your business to become paperless in the near future? if not then why?

It's called an Investment you #$@$@!!

2011-09-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

"$350! Wow....that's too much for a piece of software, you guys are too expensive, thank you and have a good day!"

This is a not so un-common response which I've come across from time to time when dealing with Small businesses, it seems that for some the idea of having to spend money to purchase a product or a service hinges on the cost and cost alone, if a product or a service costs more than expected then the customer (or prospect in this case) will decide that spending their money is not the way to go and that's the end of that.

The above is a classic example of the short term thinking mentality which plagues a lot of SMBs , often business owners don't spend the time doing their research to see if a product or a service would have a Return On Investment after the initial purchase is made, the focus seems to be on the cost only!

This is WRONG and it is one of the reasons why small businesses struggle to grow and compete in today's markets even though they have access to so many products and services at a fraction of the cost of what the big guys have to spend.

Now I'm no business guru or anything, I'm just a simple software developer who deals a lot with the small business world, so I'd like to think that I know a thing or two =) , here is my take on the above.

Small business owners need to learn how differentiate between straight out expenses and investments, in this case I'm talking about investments in technology , process and training, often the ROI requires a bit of work to measure and it sometimes happens over a long period of time, sometimes there are a lot of variables involved in the picture, that said considering cost alone is ALWAYS the wrong idea when going on about this.

Here is a simple example with some good old napkin math:

Imagine you run a business with 3 sales people, things are going good you get a good number of leads and your sales people get to work to convert these leads to actual customers.

Your sales people however have their data all over the place, they need to get their pricing information from a spreadsheet somewhere, they keep their Emails in Outlook, they record the outcomes of phone calls in a diary , things are all over the place.

As a result the sales reps spend a lot of time doing admin work and organising what needs to be done, since there is no system in place to keep things sorted , it is uncommon for a sales rep to miss out on a possible lead or an opportunity, lets say on average your reps miss out on $1000 dollars worth of business each month, so 3K in total.

Now , what if there was a system that could help your sales rep get organized and never miss out on a sales opportunity?

lets say that implementing the system would cost around $500 dollars per user with another $700 for training and data import etc. so $1200 in total per user which means $3600 in total.

Within two months time your staff are now very proficient at using the new system, nothing falls between the cracks any more, your reps manage to get these lost sales back so each one of them is making that lost 1k worth of sales back , in two months time you have paid for the initial investment per rep and then some.

Furthermore your sales reps are now much better organized and they are able to use that saved time to chase even more leads which can result in an extra sale or two a month , this is business that was not possible before because your reps simply didn't have the time to do the required work!

In addition, the new system can generate accurate performance reports since everything is stored in one place so for you the manager you get up to the minute reports on how your business is doing, you have a much better idea of where your business is and thus you can make informed decisions on how to move forward.

But wait, there is more! Now that your business is growing, adding more reps is easier since you've already invested in process and training your new reps will take less time to get up to speed therefore reducing the amount of money needed to invest in their initial training and setup!

So to summarize, cost alone should never be the deciding factor on whether you should purchase a product or a service you must always workout the return on investment when spending money. In the business world this is very important and believe it or not many small business owners don't seem to consider this at all!

Do you run a business? what is your take on this? Do you spend some time thinking about making business related investments that will make your life and that of your staff better?

What do you mean I have to pay a monthly fee!

2011-08-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

Often I get asked by prospective clients "Does your product have a monthly fee?" , the answer most of them are expecting is no , it seems that a lot of existing SMBs still have some reservations about utilizing SaaS solutions for their business.

The reasons for that can vary from the fear of having their data reside outside their office, to reliability to not knowing who you're dealing with at the other end. That said it seems that the most consistent objection to going with SaaS is the notion of having to pay a monthly fee!

Now , before we go any further let me state my opinion on this matter, I believe that SaaS is the obvious solution for most businesses that want to go forward in today's market, I also believe that a lot of business owners are not as informed as they should be with regards to how a SaaS model can improve their bottom line.

That said, I also believe that a SaaS model is not always perfect, there can be some hiccups or issues experienced every now and then but in the long term I think the benefits of using SaaS far outweigh these issues.

So lets see if SaaS is the way to go for a small business, here is a bit of analysis based on my personal experience and a bit of napkin math, I won't say that this is 100% accurate but it should give you a good indicator of which option is best when choosing between a SaaS or an installed product.

Lets take a typical piece of business software that is common in today's businesses, a CRM system , we'll compare desktop based versions of these products with their SaaS counterparts, lets get started shall we?

Assumptions:

Both SaaS and installed solutions offer similar features
We're going with a setup for a typical small business of 5 users

Note: I will be using $NZD as the currency in these examples as this is what am familiar with, feel free to alter the numbers based on your knowledge of the products / solutions offered in your region.

License Costs:

A typical Desktop CRM system would cost around $420 per user.
A typical SaaS CRM system would cost around $45 per user per month

Setup Costs:

It would take about an hour's worth of time for an IT professional to install your CRM system on each user's machine, an average IT Professional would charge around $180 per hour
It takes $0 to install a SaaS CRM , all you need to do is log-on to your account

From the above, we can see that you will need to use a SaaS solution for over 13 months to have spent the same amount of dollars on the license costs for the desktop counterpart, by that time your Desktop product has reached the stage where it needs to be upgraded , usually upgrade costs are about %60 of the original product price.

You will also need to involve your IT admin to take care of the upgrade so add another hour of their time to that (every year).

For a SaaS solution, upgrades happen in the background you do not pay for any extra to receive upgrades, you get them are part of the whole package.

From this alone you can see that your initial investment with a SaaS product is far lower than that with a desktop product, over time the numbers average out to be almost the same but as far as initial investment is concerned SaaS always wins, Keep in mind that this first chart is only comparing license and setup costs!

So over a 2 year period, the costs initially seem to be the same, however this is not the end of the story.

Backup and Maintainence costs:

SaaS products have backup running behind the scenes , so there is no need to spend any money on backup.
Desktop products require specialised backup software and Hardware , the cost for a simple backup product is around $175 , add to that the time taken to install and configure the product (an hour at least) Plus the cost for the backup hardware (say a $100 for a simple external HD).

Infrastructure:

With SaaS you do not need to worry about infrastructure , it is already taken care of for you.
For an on premise solution you need to invest in infrastructure, an entry level server would cost about $2000

Mobility:

SaaS solutions are mobile by default, meaning you can access your data on the go independent of the device.
With desktop products you more than likely need to use a 3rd party solution for mobile access , this is paid for and a the price for a typically decent 3rd party access solution is around $30 per device per month.

So with all of that out of the way, let us revisit our chart again with the updated costs:

One look at this and you can tell which option is the way to go, if there is a SaaS product on the market that can meet your business needs then it is highly likely that choosing that option will reduce your operational costs greatly over an extended period of time.

So now that we got the numbers out of the way, let us try and tackle some of the other fears / misconceptions about SaaS.

"My data is in the cloud hackers can get to it and steal it! " , I chuckle every time I hear this, believe it or not most SaaS providers operate data centres that are far more secure than the back room in your office where your server resides, these people have invested a lot of money to maintain a secure and a reliable infrastructure , chances are you have not.
"I don't want to transmit sensitive information outside of the office!" , most of these systems run over secure connections , if you already do on-line banking and buy things through on-line retails stores then you have no right to complain about this =)
"Someone might get access to my personal details!", Do you use the internet at all? if so then chances are your personal information is already all over the place whether you realise it or not!
"What happens when the internet goes down!?", this one is legitimate , without internet access you cannot use a SaaS product, that said it is not very likely that you will be having internet issues all the time , over a long period of time the savings you make from running SaaS will more than even out the costs incurred to the loss of internet connectivity!

So there you have it , SaaS is the way to go in this man's humble opinion , it might not be the ideal solution for everyone but it is more than suitable for the majority of businesses these days.

Remember , the figures listed in here are somewhat rough so if you wan't to investigate this any further for your business then I suggest that you do more research!

I'd be very interested to hear from people who use SaaS or on premise software to get their feedback.

Its good to be small

2011-08-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

The small business world, a fascinating environment with so many things happening all over the place, I spend the majority of my working time dealing with clients who are considered to be small. I find the small business world to be very interesting, especially in this day and age.

From my point of view small businesses these days have a lot going for them, mainly in terms of technical tools and resources, as a result the playing field is now more even between the little guys and the big guys.

You see back in the days you had two types of businesses (with some variations in between) , there was (and still is) the large corporate giants who had lots of money and staff with their multiple departments, business units, all sorts of weird corporate hierarchies and voodo politics.

These guys could afford to spend the money to make themselves known, they could afford to spend millions of dollars on marketing plus more on systems, infrastructure and anything you can think of to get a business going.

On the other hand you had the little guys, the mum & pop types of business or the casual business owner who decided to break away from the 9-5 game and get something going, these are usually one man bands, family owned businesses or small enterprises. Back in the days small businesses tended to be lower on resources and cash-flow, usually there wasn't much in the budget in terms of terms of investing into technology, communication or marketing etc.

Fast forward to today, the world has changes a lot , technology has invaded our lives , online communication and collaboration is now the norm, what used to be out of reach for small businesses is now readily available, the game has changed... a lot.

One thing to notice is that being small in the business world has a tremendous advantage and that my friends is called agility! small businesses can be very agile, they can re-act to changes around them at a much faster rate than their big business counterparts , whereas a big business will need to go through scores of meetings & numerous legal sign-off processes to implement a small change, a small business can make fundamental decisions and start implementing them overnight.

Now why is this important?

If you take the advantages of being a small business and couple that with the easily accessible cloud based business systems (sometimes freely available) you end up with business that has a very low operational cost (relative to a bigger business). This is huge as taking the costs out of the picture helps small business owners to focus on getting their businesses going (i.e. getting more clients and focusing on growth) , finally small businesses can go head to head with the big guys and make a difference!

Whether it is a document management solution , Email and communication solutions, E-Marketing , CRM or accounting software, all of these tools are now obtainable online for a very low subscription costs (more on this later).

Some examples of readily available online business solutions:

Gmail and Google docs , for communication and document management.
Highrise and Basecamp for CRM and project management.
Xero , for online accounting.
Plus much much more!

(The above are just provided as examples, many other systems are available online, you just need to find the ones that will work for you!)

A small business can be put together and launched with very little infrastructure investment these days, all that is needed is for business owners to realise that everything they need is merely a google away =)

Rebirth

2011-08-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

Rebirth, Re-incarnation, call it whatever you want , the term can be used in many contexts. Within the context of this post I'll be talking about the re-launching of this blog for the 3rd (or possibly 4th, I stopped counting ages ago) time.

This is mostly a rant and a collection of some random thoughts that somehow have managed to form together, the gist of this post is that we often start working on new ideas / projects but at some stage and due to any number of reasons we leave our work un-finished, sometimes we manage to get back to it and pick-up the pieces but more often than not we tend to just forget (loose interest) about it all together and move on.

Personally I've come to realize that sometimes I need to breathe a new life to the incomplete projects I've started in the past, in doing so my simple mind becomes interested in the job all over again, it is as if one little change can make a huge difference.

In this case, simply changing the name of the blog has got me interested in writing all over again, in the past my blogs have tended to be somewhat dull and too politically correct (read boring!) , but now I have a feeling that this is about to change =)

So, Am interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject, how many of you get started on new projects and how many of you actually see these projects to completion, if you do then what is your secret? If you don't then what do you think is stopping you?

Nerd out!

How to save the world in 3 Steps

2011-01-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

This post would be considered by many as the point of view of an idealist, in a way it is. That in mind , views as such can sometimes give us a goal to aspire to and in turn help us make a change to the better.

Our world is dying, with the way things are going you could call this a fact. Most of us are aware of it but very few of us are doing anything about it. authorities on the matter claim that we are consuming resources at a rate which is faster than what our planet can replenish, if that is true then at some stage in the future the world's resources will be fully depleted!

One has to wonder, when the above scenario happens what are we going to do? Is the bulk of the human population going to wait to the very last minute to do anything? Wouldn't that be a little too late?

There are many ways to reverse or at the very least slow down the rate at which our world's resources are depleted, to achieve that however I believe that every capable person should take responsibility and do their part to help ensure that future generations will have a place that they can call home.

In my humble opinion (the opinion of an idealist if I might add) I think that there are some things which humanity can do to help preserve our world, no doubt many people would know or have at least heard about what I'm going to mention below, still. adding another voice to the choir might help in attracting new listeners =)

So in no particular order I present to you my thoughts on what we can do to ensure a prosper future for our future generations:

Ensure our population grows gracefully

Lets face it, our population is increasing rapidly as it does so does our resource consumption, so what if we were able to ensure (in a very reasonable and fair manner) that the human population does not go way above and beyond what the planet can handle, rather it would be kept within a set limit that ensures whatever resources we consume get replenished at a reasonable rate.

The above is perhaps very difficult to implement, one should keep in mind that there are cultures that pride themselves on the size of their family, some need to have a large family in order to manage their day to day lives, all in all it is not something as cut and dry as saying "Hey! parents should only have one or two children max!" , a lot of thought and consideration would need to be put forth prior to working out how the Earth doesn't end up being overpopulated by man kind.

Educate everyone
This one is a given, current and future generations need to be educated on how humanity is impacting our blue planet and what can each and every individual do to help ensure that what our world has to offer is available for many generations to come.

It is true that the above is being taught in schools and the media is spreading the notion that our current life style is doing a lot of harm to the world however, I believe that more can be done to ensure that current and future generations can adjust their life style to one that is more environmentally friendly, perhaps by passing laws or providing incentives to encourage people to change their way of life while at the same time highlighting the benefits of such changes.

Use renewable energy and technology

Again, another idea that comes to mind when someone is asked about what we could do to help save our world, as it stands it seems that using solar power, wind power etc is not viable on a grand scale, hopefully technological advances will make it so the opposite is true, the use of solar cells is a somewhat expensive these days and your mileage may vary depending on whether your live in an area that is always exposed to sun light as opposed to one that hardly sees the sun.

On the above note, what if it was possible to setup a solar cells field somewhere in the middle of a dessert and then have the energy generated diverted to a near by city or even transport it between countries if necessary, what if it was possible for everyone to have solar cells constructed on top of the roofs of houses and buildings, how much energy would we be able to collect by doing just that?

Regarding the use of technology, these days it is almost a given that everyone can be connected to the world no matter where they are (thanks to the Internet!) , what if the idea of having virtual offices and companies became more popular and people's need to commute to work became less and less important, cutting down on wasted time in traffic as well as the costs of fuel in addition to reducing pollution, Imagine if 50000 cars in one city stayed parked for a week, how much money would that save? and how much CO2 will be prevented from leaking into the atmosphere?

In closing, I'd like to say that doing the above is by no means beyond the capability of us as humans, it all comes down to our willingness to look after our planet and to our ability to take responsibility for our actions, I do hope that what we have right now will still be there for our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren.

Momentum

2011-01-07T12:03:00.000-08:00

During the last moments of every year and as the world was counting to midnight, many people out there (myself included) were talking about their new year's resolution, as you know already every year many of us set a few goals in mind and hope to achieve them before year's end. However, we all know that in reality very few of us manage to even get to get started!

Often those who manage to kick start their new year's resolutions manage to keep going for a short period of time before putting everything on the back burner and resuming life as normal, for many this is the end of whatever they had in mind, come next year and the same cycle repeats itself over and over again.

Without a doubt anyone who states that they intend to accomplish a goal is interested in getting things done and achieving what they have set themselves to do. So why do many of us simply quit shortly after getting started?

When you think about it, whenever we start a new project or set ourselves to accomplish a new goal we tend to feel very excited and motivated at the start, for a while everything feels in place and everything seems to be in motion but once the initial excitement fades away so does our momentum and that's where we come to a full stop.

So the million dollar question is, how can we keep going after we've lost that initial burst of energy, how can we maintain our momentum?

As mentioned at the start I myself have been one of those who tend to set new goals from time to time, get them started but never finish them. Over the years I have read many articles, books and have heard all sorts of advices from a lot of people out there, reflecting back on past experiences few things come to mind which can help us see things through from start to finish.

Make a conscious commitment to do your best in order to achieve your goals, keep reminding yourself of this as often as you can so that your goals are always at the top of your to-do list.
Be clear about what you want to achieve, workout the specifics (e.g. I want to increase my salary by 10% in 6 months time), think about why you would like to achieve these goals, write all of this down somewhere and make sure to remind yourself of why you want to accomplish your goals.
Create a plan, your plan should cover the why , the how and the when, use it to help you stay on track, keep in mind however that plans do change from time to time so your plans should be flexible enough so that you can adjust them if / when needed.
If you're working on something that requires a set amount of time per day etc then use a calendar to organize your day to day activities and block the time required for your to work on what you need to do. Setting time aside in advance helps you in working on what needs to be done.
Turn your actions into a habit, if you manage to do something consistently over a period of time then chances are it will become a habit, when that happens it will be easier for your to get into the "zone" and work on your goals since your mind has gotten used to working in a certain pattern.
Set milestones and make sure to celebrate your achievements, celebrating milestones can help in giving you a boost of energy to keep you going.
Ask for help from friends or family, you can ask someone to check on you from time to time to see your progress and remind you of what you need to do.

So where to from here? personally one of my goals has been to get things done, I seem to be capable of doing that at work but on a personal level that rarely happens. This blog is my attempt at trying to get something started and keeping it going for as long as possible, I myself will try and keep this goal from getting buried underneath everything else that demands my attention and hopefully this blog will keep on going for sometime.

What are you trying to accomplish? and how do you get about getting things done??

Making time, can we still set time aside to do what we want to do?

2010-12-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

If you were to take a snapshot of the life of an average person today and compare it with that of another person from 50 years ago you'd undoubtedly notice a huge difference in how both people spend their time and how much "Free time" each one of them has.

In today's world there seems to be no shortage of things to do, thanks to advancements in technology and media over the last two decades we have become connected to everyone we know and we are constantly bombarded with information from every direction, add to that our need to connect and share our thoughts and feelings with the world and you can instantly see that we are always doing something.

So with all of the above in mind, if one was to ask how much time does an average person have to spare these days? do people have too much time on their hands today? or do they have hardly any?

With everything around us these days demanding our attention how much time have we got left for ourselves? there are 24 hours in a day and that never changes, an average person sleeps for 7 hours, an average working day is 8 hours , most people spend 2 hours getting to / from work, an hour or two to eat , 2 hours watching TV , possibly 2 hours online a day.

That leaves an average person with 1-2 hours a day to spare and that time could possibly get gobbled up somewhere else. Some people are aware of such patterns in their lives and they're OK with it which is completely fine , there are others however who might want to do other things and find it difficult to set time aside to do what they want whether its a personal project, a hobby or simply time to just relax and do nothing.

So what can we do to create time? obviously a day will never have more than 24 hours so the next best thing is to re-organize our lives so that there is more time for us to do what we want to do.

First we need to take a look at our daily routine, identify what activities are critical and which ones are not, from there we can work on eliminating or minimizing these activities so that we free up more time, instead of watching TV for 2 hours a day we can minimize that to 1 hour, instead of spending 3 hours online a day we can minimize that to 2.

One other thing to do is to organize our life using a calendar, it does not have to be accurate to the minute but it needs to be fairly consistent and we need to make a commitment to stick to it as best as we can.

Making changes to our life style does not happen overnight, changes to the way we live should be gradual and we should give ourselves the opportunity to adjust to a set of changes before going ahead and making even more changes.

Ultimately what anyone does with their spare time is up to them, the thing to keep in mind is that we can make time if we need to, we need to realize that at any point in our lives we can consciously make a decision to change our daily habits to better suit our needs and hopefully these changes will give us the positive results we seek.

How do you spend your time? Do you wish you could make more time to do what you want to do?

Procrastination, the mother of all obstacles

2010-12-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

Thought it would be appropriate to talk about procrastination in my very first blog post since it has been years since I decided to put together a website and start blogging / showing some of my work to the world, I have been putting off this project for a very long time, thankfully I have managed to get past that little obstacle and have finally put a site together, so lets see if this is going to be a project will be alive for the next few years.

Where I come from we have a saying which roughly translates to "Do Not put off today's work till tomorrow" , pretty much procrastination summed up in a sentence, although I am almost certain that most people are aware of the negative effects of procrastination they dont tend to realize that they're procrastinating until its too late.

Time flies, or so they say....If you are the kind of person with a number of goals in mind, goals which you want to achieve at "some" stage in your life then the obvious thing to do is to list your goals, assign priorities to each, workout a plan, setup a deadline and get stuck into it.

Yet for those who tend to procrastinate the above rarely happens, it sometimes takes a dramatic event of some sort or a drastic change in character for someone to realize that it is time to stop putting things off, until that happens though a lot of time has been wasted already, time is a precious resource, for us mere mortals its quantity is unknown yet we are certain that it is finite, with that in mind one would have absolutely no doubt that at some stage they will run out of time, once that happens you can pretty much say goodbye to all of your unaccomplished goals.

Funny thing though is that knowing when you are going to run out of time might work as an incentive to push you to start getting things done, just writing this makes me realize the importance of having a deadline! when I think about it, not having a deadline leaves everything open and gives the false sense that there is always time to do what needs to be done when in fact this is not true, since time is finite for human beings.

I think that one would get to a stage where he or she realizes that if they dont start working towards achieving their goals then they will miss the boat and will never get to accomplish the things they always wanted to do, If a goal or an idea is important then its definitely worth achieving and pursuing, if not then there is no point of having that goal on your list of things to do.

So Where to from here? Well for starters I believe that we need to keep a few things in mind:

Procrastination in anything but small doses can have some serious negative effects on ones life.
Procrastination and its effects need to be recognized and it needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.
Having a list of prioritized goals a plan and a deadline can help in getting things done.
For us, time is a finite resource, at some stage we will run out of time, we should be aware of that fact all the time.
If a goal is important then its worth doing!

On a personal level, the 3rd item in the list above strikes true for me, generally I tend to have a number of random ideas about projects / things to do etc floating in my head at any given time, on one hand that means that I can always come up with something to do on the other hand, it means that it is very hard for me to decided on what to do first and if I don't make a decision then nothing will get done. With that in mind one would think the being able to prioritize ideas and to-dos would be the way to go, maybe that is something to tackle in the future.