From A to Zain

New Years & Christmas: In Photos

2012-01-09T18:35:00.000-05:00

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I had a pretty good holiday break, with two trips to diametrically opposite climates. I took a lot of pictures, and some of them were too great not to share. You will find two sets of pictures below, so make sure to go all the way to the bottom. Some of the best pictures are towards the end.

The pictures from Lake Tahoe are my favorite. I have never seen a more beautiful place. There wasn't much snow though, which is very uncharacteristic for this time of year. Nevertheless, it was an amazing experience.

Make sure to comment if you like anything in particular. Depending on the interest, I might start a "posts-in-pictures" series to showcase more photographs. Also, check out my photography page for links to even more pictures.

Trip 1 - Christmas on a Boat - Caribbean Cruise

View from the hotel room before the cruise

The Bahamas

Cruise Show Set Before the Christmas Performance

The Beach

Trip 2 - New Years in Lake Tahoe (note: all of the pictures below were taken with an iPhone)

Near the Tahoe Rim Trail

First View of Lake Tahoe

The water is VERY clear

Different side of the Lake

Diamond Peak Ski Resort - Chair Lift View

Sun Reflecting on the Lake

Roger Federer: Five Reasons Federer Won't Make it to the 2012 Australian Open Final

2012-01-08T22:25:00.001-05:00

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With his last win in Australia coming in 2010, and no Grand Slam titles since then, can we reasonably expect Roger Federer to make it to the Australian Open finals? Federer's last finals appearance at a Grand Slam tournament was at Roland Garros 2011; he lost in the semi-finals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2011.

While no one can doubt that Federer is among the greatest tennis players to have ever played the game, there are five important reasons that he will probably not make the finals of the first Grand Slam of 2012.

Read the rest of the article at The Bleacher Report

Brand Influence? Warm Metrics?

2011-11-01T20:28:00.001-04:00

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Amy Jo Martin, principal at Digital Royalty wrote an article in Sports Business Daily about how she thinks brands can "turn the art of social media into a science." With a great title, and a nice list of media recognition to accompany it, Ms. Martin gets our attention. But here's the issue: I'm not so sure the 925 words she wrote actually said anything useful. In fact, some it downright doesn't make sense.

Let's take a look. Ms. Martin touts a metric she calls "Return on Influence," which supposedly captures the different ways in which brands influence. For Ms. Martin, different sports franchises have different influence levels, particularly when it comes to generating transactions. But, like a good scientist, Ms. Martin recognized that "she had to prove it."

Her solution? "Warm Metrics", which Ms. Martin claims she could use to prove that fans like a particular brand. What's more, Ms. Martin says that these can be tracked to demonstrate accountability for actual transactions resulting from brand influence.

In fact, according to Ms. Martin

"My findings, with brands varying from sports teams to individual athletes, show there’s a direct correlation between return on influence and revenue available per fan and follower. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship: influence increases, and subsequently revenue follows"

Unfortunately, after looking through all the "case studies" and media coverage listed on Digital Royalty's website, I didn't find a single piece of information that indicated how Ms. Martin and Digital Royalty were able to turn brand influence into a science. Even the article in Sports Business Daily that this post addresses, doesn't provide a single piece of evidence that suggests Ms. Martin was able to accurately measure return on influence.

What's more, Ms. Martin's claim in the quote above doesn't make any sense. She says that there is a correlation between return on influence and revenue available per fan and follower. She also claims in the very next sentence that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between influence and revenue. This is a classic--and elementary--mistake of confusing correlation with causation.

Absent establishing any sort of causal pathway from brand influence to revenue generation Ms. Martin should be hard-pressed to argue that her correlation between influence and revenue is in fact causal. Even the most advanced econometric models can't make that claim because determinism is dubious--and probably unachievable--in social media. Just as political scientists, psychologists and economists are cautious of their language, Ms. Martin should be as well. Obviously this was not the case, but you get the point.

But even if Ms. Martin gave us a causal pathway, I don't think she would be justified in her determinism that incremental growth in influence causes revenue growth. This is because Ms. Martin would have to prove the counterfactual that without a brand's social media influence, the consumer would not have transacted with a brand or its partners. That's tough, and we have no reason to believe she has an answer.

That said, I'd love to hear Ms. Martin's response, but it can't be "divide total revenue generated by social efforts by number of fans"; this doesn't prove that fans wouldn't have transacted absent the influence of the brand. Ms. Martin needs to show a comparative transaction level return on influence. I even challenge her to step outside of established brands like Shaq and "The Rock" to prove her...theory?

Until then, I'm not convinced.

-ZP

Klout Matters, but to a Certain Extent

2011-11-01T11:47:00.003-04:00

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Why do we care so much about our Klout scores? Some social media experts ask this question almost daily, arguing that Klout doesn't mean much outside of the social media savvy community because we don't actually know how Klout scores and styles are determined. What's more, according to some experts like Aliza Sherman, obsession with Klout may actually be distracting social media users from creating substantive and meaningful relationships within the communities they frequent.

While I agree with Aliza that in an ideal world, we shouldn't really care about influence metrics and should be more concerned about what we are saying, and more importantly about what people are saying about what we are saying, in reality we can't entirely disassociate ourselves from influence metrics. Yes, influential people in the real world such as celebrities and business leaders aren't using Klout to to augment their brand, but that's because the marginal benefit of a high Klout score is minimal to them; they are already important.

For the average social media user however, Klout can make the difference between getting a retweet and being ignored entirely. A person can talk about his retweets, mentions and clicks all day long, but unless he has some baseline credibility that people can easily understand, he will have a hard time getting anyone to pay attention. This is where Klout comes in.

Klout doesn't rely on science to convince people that it is useful. In fact, I don't think any sort of metric in social media even gets close to approximating the precision needed to be called a science. Instead, Klout caters to society's obsession with rankings and aggregated scores (think U.S. News, Forbes Lists, etc.) to convince people that there is some ordinal measure of relative Internet influence. Once Klout gains a critical mass of users who buy into the idea of Klout, the culture becomes self-sustaining.

And its working. As more people "feel terrible" that their Klout scores are going down, the better Klout is doing as a company. They are convincing people that Klout matters to their public image and Internet credibility.

Don't believe me? Ask someone trying to build their public brand around their core area of expertise. For them, a Klout score probably matters quite a bit. Everyone from up-and-coming executives to those who work in the companies that contribute to an individual's Klout score probably care to some degree about what people think of them.

I therefore want to tweak Aliza's call to action:

"So get on with your life and work and do meaningful things. Stop giving creedence to some arbitrary scoring game like Klout that oversimplifies HOW we matter in this world and in social media. Do really good work from the heart, add value, be kind to others, and you get an "A" in my book."

I don't think we can get on with life without regard to our Internet influence, or simply focus on doing awesome heartfelt work. While getting an A in your book, Aliza, would be awesome, we need to be a bit more pragmatic. Care about your Klout score, and do the things you need to build your brand, but also make sure to remain engaged in communities.

Use your Klout as a proxy of how engaging you are, and who you're reaching, but don't let it determine your self-worth. Eventually, as you build your brand and become the style of influencer you want to be, focus more on cultivating the communities you have. Through this combined approach, I think we can find a happy place in the world and get an 'A' in everyone's book.

-ZP

There is no candy in Hell!

2011-10-31T11:23:00.000-04:00

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A few Liberty, Missouri locals decided to protest Halloween by arguing "God Hates Halloween" and that "there is no candy in He**" Not sure about you guys, but Halloween was always about candy for me. Where did God come into this? I think these are the same people who argue Harry Potter--a fictional character--is going to He**, and that J.K. Rowling is a witch. But in all seriousness, enjoy trick-or-treating folks. Be safe, and make sure your kids don't eat too much candy. Tonight is a school night.

Protecting Yourself Against Internet Indiscretion

2011-10-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

I was recently reminded of an unfortunate reality of the “Internet Age”—despite being part of arguably the most technology savvy generation in history, today’s college students really don't know what they should put on the Internet. This issue is not new. In fact, it is so prominent that scholars and journalists have given it a name—The Privacy Paradox. According to the paradox, despite caring about their privacy, people behave recklessly when it comes to their personal information and talking about their private activities

For example, an older Cornell Daily Sun article (“Four Loko Maker to Halt New York State Deliveries by Friday” by Jeff Stein) quoted several students admitting (at least implicitly) to the purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The interesting part about this story is not that students were quoted admitting to the consumption of alcohol, but rather that some of them were underage. Not surprisingly, a simple Facebook search of those students' names validated their ages; the whole thing took about a minute of my time, my laptop and the poor excuse for an Internet connection in my apartment

These students’ indiscretion is not limited to instances of quotation oversight in popular media. Rather, current students and recent college graduates recklessly post pictures of themselves in compromising situations on their Facebook profiles, write tweets of questionable character and display a generally nonchalant attitude when it comes to their online presence. For example, one recent Cornell graduate used very “colorful” language that included the f-word in a public tweet discussing his non-verbal, visual interactions with a woman at the gym. This student happens to be in his first year of graduate school at NYU and will probably be looking for a full-time job in the coming years.

All of this is to say, there is a problem. Most people would cast this as an issue of Internet privacy, but while privacy may be a relevant concern, the more fundamental problem is poor judgment—specifically of college-aged students. In a world of online media, web crawlers, and Google, large amounts of information is easily and quickly accessible, which necessitates increased discretion and good judgment from curren college students and recent college graduates.

To be sure, lets consider a hypothetical scenario. What if a potential employer does a simple background search on a prospective employee? It wouldn't take more than 10 minutes and an Internet connection to find incriminating evidence against a student who has been quoted in a popular news outlet that frequents the top of the search listings; with services like Spokeo, which aggregate a person’s online presence into one easily accessible page, the process of finding indiscretions becomes even simpler than using Google. The consequences of this for a student's job search or graduate school application are akin to those of more significant crimes.

This last statement deserves qualification. While I am not saying that posting a Halloween picture of yourself looking like you forgot to get dressed in the morning is the same as robbing a bank, I think in the job search and grad school domain the consequences are the same.

Indeed, a student’s indiscretions don’t even have to be criminal. With employers looking for reasons to narrow down their applicant pool, profanity, vulgar statements and even slang in a public outlet like an online newspaper or a Twitter post can reflect poorly on a student's character; all of that time spent portraying yourself as a mature professional won’t matter in a world where your online presence suggests the opposite.

As you can probably tell, I am astounded that students are seemingly incapable of exercising discretion, particularly Ivy League students who are competing for hyper-competitive jobs, fellowships and placements in graduate programs. Don’t we already have a hard enough time getting recruiters to talk to us, which is why we spend hours preparing for interviews and fine-tuning our resumes? Is it a lack of judgment or a lack of knowledge?

To me, it’s a combination of both. Students are ignorant about the realities of the Internet and at the same time they are also careless. It may even be the case that students’ ignorance results in their carelessness. Regardless there are three simple steps that we can take to begin remedying this problem:

Students should educate themselves on how information is processed, organized and ascertained in the age of Web 2.0, digital media, and massive information stores. Facebook and Twitter are not as secure as students think they are. 
Students should think about three Ws before they say anything in public that can potentially show up online. Who they say something to, where they are saying it, and what they are saying. Indeed, with the advent of smart phones, YouTube and Social Media it is very easy to say something embarrassing in a split second of poor judgment that can haunt you for the rest of your life. 
College newspapers should have controls in place to filter out oversights by the students they interview. While newspapers are entitled to report what they learn, a college newspaper should first and foremost look out for the well being of its affiliated institution and that institution’s students.

While these steps are by no means a panacea to the pervasive issue of Internet indiscretion, they are a good starting point. If students can be more careful about the way they handle themselves online, just as they do in the physical world, they can save themselves from some potential future hardship.

Free VIP Membership to Chill Social Video Service

2011-10-26T20:10:00.002-04:00

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Do you want exclusive access to online concerts and video premiers? Do you want to be a VIP? I can give 5 people free memberships to Chill, a new service for early and exclusive access to online content.

Click the link below:

Free Chill VIP Perk from Klout

Remember there are only 5.

UPDATE: B-53 Dismantlement; Arms Control Wonk

2011-10-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

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Jeffery Lewis over at Arms Control Wonk (a blog I follow), posted today about the B-53 dismantlement. As usual, his post was insightful, and provided great information about an important subject. Despite this, ironically, it was an aside in his post that really caught my attention because I wrote a post making a similar argument several hours earlier.

Specifically, Lewis wrote:

There is a whole bunch of insipid commentary about this dismantlement being part of the “Prague Agenda,” whether for good or ill. The dismantlement of the B53 has nothing to do with the Prague Agenda, Global Zero, or anything else. The weapons was retired in 1997 because it was unsafe. Whether you think the US should have zero, 1000, or 10,000 nuclear weapons, no one thinks the United States should have B53s.

Yes! The dismantlement of the B-53 means nothing for Global Zero, the Prague Agenda, or for Ronald Reagan's vision of a nuclear free world. Thomas D'Agostino and some of his colleagues need to realize this.

Dismantling the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal? Yeah Right.

2011-10-26T13:01:00.000-04:00

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I refuse to believe Thomas D’Agostino’s claim that the dismantlement of the B-53 is a significant step towards fulfilling President Obama’s security agenda.

“The elimination of the B53 is a significant milestone in our efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and implement President Obama’s nuclear security agenda,”

While I agree that the move to eliminate the largest nuclear weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal is symbolic, it should not be considered anything more than a strategic public relations move.

The core issue here is that journalists and security analysts are equating “largest” with “most useful.” These are two very different properties, particularly in the context of nuclear weapons. To be sure, with the U.S. nuclear strategy based around counter-force targeting and strategic nuclear weapons, the B-53 is not very useful. The B-53 is a product of the 1960s and has been replaced by other more advanced weapons bunker busting weapons.

I view the dismantlement of the B-53 as nothing more than an effort to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, under which the U.S. is reducing the aggregate size—but not the capability—of its nuclear weapons. To be sure of this distinction, we need only look at the Russia. While the Russians have more nuclear warheads than the U.S., you would be hard-pressed to find someone who believes their arsenal is more capable than the U.S's. For the U.S. then, the elimination of a "large" nuclear weapon should not necessarily be seen as a reduction of nuclear capability.

Let me reiterate however, that I believe the move to dismantle the B-53 is symbolic and should certainly be viewed in a positive light. But I disagree with claims that it is a significant step towards accomplishing President Ronald Reagan’s vision of a nuclear free world. Indeed, to make significant progress towards what President Reagan envisioned so many years ago will require much more than the dismantlement of a single virtually obsolete nuclear weapon.

The U.S. must diminish the prominence of nuclear weapons in its defense strategy by not only reducing the amount and capability of warheads it possesses, but also by making credible commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons and elimination of counter-force targeting strategies. Only then can we even think to start raving about making significant progress towards Global Zero.

So You Didn't Eradicate Poverty? Too Bad.

2011-10-21T16:35:00.001-04:00

I came across an article in an Indian publication called "Daily News & Analysis." Aside from its totally original title, this publication clearly has to rework its editorial process. I say this because of a particularly troubling piece that argued against Steve Jobs's greatness.

At the outset, the author of the piece -- I withhold his name for fear of accidentally giving him credibility in the search rankings -- rhetorically asks, with an obviously sarcastic undertone..

What defines Steve Jobs? The fact that he could make people go crazy about his company’s products?

Later on, continuing his display of brilliance, the author argues:

Jobs did not even eradicate poverty with the immense wealth he accumulated by selling his so-called great products, invented by scientists who worked in his company.

Steve Jobs, A Great Mind

In a nutshell, the author thinks that Job's failure to eradicate poverty means that he doesn't qualify among the great minds in history. Seriously? Let's assume what the author says is true, that is, eradicating poverty is a necessary condition for greatness. Keeping in mind the definition of eradicate--putting an end to; to eliminate--no one in history can be considered great; not even the inventor of the polio vaccine. Such an unreachable threshold for greatness makes zero sense to me.

That said, there are some more substantive issues at hand. Foremost, the article is built on a straw person. No one has argued that Steve Jobs is the greatest person to have ever lived--which the article implicitly assumes. Rather, people compliment Jobs for his contributions to product design and his influence on their daily lives. To be sure, think about the Pixar movies that we watch, the smart phones we talk to our friends on, and the computers we use for almost everything. Each has benefited from Jobs's genius in a positive and meaningful way.

The author also argues that Jobs's greatness is merely a product of his wealth. To me, this confuses the issue. Under the author's theory, every Forbe's billionaire should be held in the same esteem as Steve Jobs was--which is obviously not the case. The more sensible explanation then is that the qualities that made Steve Jobs great--his savvy for product design, commitment to his art, and acute sense of what consumers want--also made him rich. Indeed, what the author understands as society's obsession with wealth, is merely his misunderstanding of co-linearity.

I commend the author for TRYING to offer a dissenting perspective on an admittedly popular topic, but I think he needs to go back to the computer. Or he could have Siri write his piece for him.

-ZP
Follow me on Twitter @kritikalace2011

EuroTrip 2011: Photo Tour

2011-09-19T21:17:00.002-04:00

Some pictures from EuroTrip 2011. These ones are from Rome and Vatican City. Let me know what you think. More to come from Barcelona and Paris.

Acts of Faith: The Future Story of Cornell

2011-02-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

My recently published Op-Ed in the Cornell Daily Sun, which encourages students to engage in interfaith cooperation initiatives at Cornell and in their broader communities. This piece was inspired by a lunch conversation with esteemed social entrepreneur Eboo Patel.

Article Excerpt

This Monday, I had the privilege of eating lunch with Dr. Eboo Patel — a Rhodes Scholar, an Ashoka Fellow and author of the book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. After spending nearly two hours at lunch discussing interfaith cooperation at Cornell and abroad, and hearing Patel speak later that night about interfaith cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement at his Martin Luther King Commemorative Lecture, I can confidently say that he is one of the most inspiring individuals that I have ever had the privilege of meeting...read more

Let me know what you think.

Ensuring Africana and Cornell University

2011-01-31T17:27:00.000-05:00

Just published my article regarding the Africana Center controversy at Cornell University. Read it at The Cornell Daily Sun.

Oh Michigan...

2010-11-16T13:39:00.015-05:00

Michigan

I'm not a fan of Michigan. Its cold, relatively unexciting, and apparently they have weird policies when it comes to teachers' rights.

I read an interesting piece today about a teacher who was suspended for removing two students from his classroom. Why did he remove them? The students were fighting and disrupting the classroom environment. Normally, one would think the teacher's actions were reasonable, but I guess some Michigan administrators don't see it that way.

Read the full story here, and let me know what you think.

Indo-Sino Relations: A New Age?

2010-11-11T14:39:00.003-05:00

This whole Indian security council thing is making the rounds in the popular national media outlets, as well as on college campuses. One particularly interesting take on the debate can be found in the Cornell Daily Sun, where a student writer relates Indian emergence in world politics to Cornell's increased interest in recruiting Indian students.

On the question of Indian emergence, there is no doubt that India has rapidly become a leading competitor in the world economy and a desired region for foreign investment.
With several individuals on the Forbe's billionaires list, India has certainly become a lucrative playing ground for corporations and individuals alike.

What's not so clear however, is the reception India will receive from other states. For example, although China has not opposed India's bid for permanent status on the security council, it has also not outwardly supported it. In my opinion, China will probably use India's bid as a bargaining chip for other issues that have plagued Indo-Sino relations for some time.

With that said, it would be nice to see the South Asian giant take a leading role in world politics, particularly after its leadership in the Doha Free Trade Negotiations and international economic development.

What are your thoughts?

Related Articles

Crunch Time!

2010-10-14T14:35:00.002-04:00

A lot of work to do between now and the end of next week. Currently, I'm exploring the intellectual history of John Mearsheimer. For those of you that have not heard of JM, he is one of the preeminent international relations scholars of our day, and is credited with developing the offensive variation of Realism.

His particularly, dark, and pessimistic take on world politics assumes that states advanced their own agendas at the expense of those other.

I have to put all of this into a 12 page paper. Should be a blast.

-Z

Something to Pass the Time...

2010-10-13T23:23:00.004-04:00

My new website. It is still a work in progress, but should be up soon, once I find the time to transition from my old site to this new one.

In the mean time, take a look at some of my photography

Union Square, Summer 2010

Union Square (Dramatic), Summer 2010

Same Picture as Above


Some Building in Union Square

Hopefully these are interesting to look at. I'll add more pictures as I get them edited.

-Z