When I pitched Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, April Armstrong, Julie Anixter, Marcia Hart and dozens of other big thinkers on contributing to a book that was designed to change the way organizations dealt with being remarkable, they all said yes. No hesitation, just yes." Seth Godin

There are a lot of unworthy business book and by god, I've read bazillion of them (thanks to the excellent Chicago Public Library network) and have forgotten more than I can remember. Seth Godin however is one of those interesting and sharp business book author that really teach you something and forces you think about your perception about business, especially marketing. His latest book will be his last traditional business book and is consisted of writings from some well know and successful business writers. You should check it out.

That statement would have been unthinkable a few years ago. In 2000, sales of educational software for home computers reached $498 million, and it was conventional wisdom among investors and educators that learning programs for PC's would be a booming growth market.

Yet in less than five years, that entire market has come undone. By 2004, sales of educational software - a category that includes programs teaching math, reading and other subjects as well as reference works like encyclopedias - had plummeted to $152 million, according to the NPD Group, a market research concern.

..What happened was an explosion of new, often free technologies competing to entertain and teach children. Young children have long been a primary audience for computer learning games. But with free games and learning sites now available all over the Internet, parents are finding that they do not need to buy software that can teach the A B C's. And the spread of broadband connections has made playing online games far easier  (NYTimes)

The web does the darnest thing. Take a look at Encyclopedia Britannica as another example on how the web change and completely obliterates the encyclopedia business. Who refers to that book anymore? Now everyone is linking to wikipedia, a 3 year old effort to create online and free encyclopedia. 200 years of heritage is trumped by a baby old effort.

French philosopher and journalist Benrad-Henry Levy wrote a seminal book on forgotten wars titled "War, evil and the end of history", chronicling his various travel to the low intesity war around the world (SriLanka, Angola, Burundi, Colombia, and more) where the vision of hell is turned to reality.

An American writer Robert Young Pelton write "The Hunter, the hammer and heaven: Journeys to the world gone mad" travelled to aftermath of Sierra Leone, to the midst of second Russian invasion to Checnya, and the post Executive Outcome scandal in Bougenville, Papua New Guinea.

I very much recommend you to read these two books about these conflicts that are still raging for decades and constantly consume any vision of hope for peace in their region. What both books bring is a horiffic and vivid description of "we are in worse shit than we thought" concept and why the good intention of peace process and diplomacy might looks good on paper and newspaper headline, but simply doesn't matter to the parties involved on the ground, locked in a dance of death and distruction that lasts for generations, so long that most people involved have forgotten why the conflict started in the first place. War is simply what you do.

Excerpts from "War, Evil and End of history"

"And the Muslim engineer who tells about the impossible situation of his community, the third group on the island and, perhaps, the most threatened: "we speak Tamil, but we are not Tamil, and even are we Tigesr - they see us as false friends, they hate us, rob us" Muslims as excluded outsiders? Islam caught in the crossfire of Buddhism and Hiduism?" (On Sri Lanka Tamil Tiger conflict - the innovator of sucide bombers)

"The second camp came after a year. It was a training camp still in the Wanni. They taught the women who, like me, were not virgins to spend a day with a grenade in our vagina. They put replicas of the suicde-vest on our backs-those big heavy vests, stuffed with dynamite, with a detonator, a cable , and stell balls, which the Leader himself had conceived of after seeing them at the cinema in a Rambo movie" (from a repentant Tiger Tamil female suicide bomber trainee)

"I ended up simply asking a taxi to drive me south, and teh driver replied yes, okay, the roads are good in Burundi- but on one condition, and only one, which he clung to quite adamantly: that we make teh journey on a Saturday.

"Why Saturday? Because the "genocidal attackers," the Hutus of the FNL (National Liberation Front) the images of whose abominal crimes the entir country keep replaying over and over again--that priest whome they forced to eat his own penis before they crucified him.... those babies burried alive... those children impaled, sprinkled with gas and burned, in their schoo, by the principal himself...-- are also excellend Christians, generally of the Adventist persuasion, who don't smoke, don't drink, arrive in the villages singing humns at the top of their voices, and they consider Saturday a sacred day, devoted to prayer, on which one must above all not shed blood (On Burundi)"

"Who kills better? A fascit or a Marxist guerilla? The peasants of Querbrad Nain are still debating about it. A month ago the former arrived in the village, the "paramilitaries" of the drug lord Carlos Castano, and killed twenty people suspected of "collaboration" with the Marxist guerilla movement. Egith days later, people from the guerilla movement turned up, the one called FARC, and on the pretext that the survivors hadn't resisted enough, on the pretex that they might even have fraternized with the enemy, killed ten more of the villagers (On Colombia lost map)

After you are done with these two books, you will see why "war is never an answer" slogan simply rings hollow. Violence happens, and most of the time an overwhelming force and decisive victories are more merficul to the alternative of prolonged misery of attrition and tiring conflicts;where they last so long, it's simply become part of the country reality, and with sufficient numbers, became a reality of the regions. Take a look at Central Africa; will you be surprised to hear another armed conflict in that region?

These low intensity conflicts are the cancer of humanity, happening under our awareness, draining bloods by the gallons;not by rivers, because it will be stopped if it reaches that level.

What the world community have set is an unacknowledged acceptable level of bloodshed; a gruesome calculation of body counts and victims per day or per month; and somehow by twisted logic, it somehow makes more sense to kill many many more so that intervention will finally arrive; please horrify us to spring to action.

The young guard, however, had a set of surrogate parents: the Israelis. Palestinians in territories may have learned occupation from Israel, but they were also exposed to Israel's democratic system of government.

"We learned democracy from Israel," one Palestinian woman told me. "If you discount Israel's treatment of the Arab Israelis (who are subjected to a great deal of de facto, and a certain amount of de jure, discrimination), they still have regular elections, parties, a working parliament. Even when we were under occupation we saw this."" (Salon)

The first intifada was started and innovated by the current young guard of the Palestinian people. The PLO was in exile Tunisia at the time. Compare the success of the first Intifada (which resulted in 1992 Oslo agreement and outpouring sympathy from the world to the cause of Palestinian people;with image of group of youth throwing stones at Israel tanks burned in the world concsiousness) to the murderous Arafat approved second Intifada which turns the world against Palestine.

We will see peace in between Palestine and Israel in our lifetime.

The big news of today: Microsoft acquires Groove Networks.

Groove is known for its excellent yet sometimes cumbersome peer to peer group collaboration software. This purchase signify Microsoft interest in ad-hoc remote team collaboration (Groove software doesn't need any server installation).

This make sense. We are just in the beginning of a distributed, loosely connected, creative, ad-hoc, decentralized teams that operates in different physical location, time zones and accross language and cultural barrier.

There is no place in the world that are not connected to the Internet. (a slight exaggeration, but will be less so as time advances)

If you think outsourcing is amazing, you should see the next trend of “cell” oriented collaboration networks. The technology is catching up and the practice is being experimented globally in business or any other legal or illegal human endevours. You already can send money anywhere in the world for a long time, through multiple means.

New Management practices will rise on the face of this beginning trend. This phenomena will impact on how your project are managed, decision created, budget created and concensus reached.

Where you are will matter less and less because you can always go anywhere, work with anyone and settle at any place.

This vision is nothing new, but before it was just a vision, soon enough, we will see more of this trend to accept it as reality.

Welcome to the age of the modern nomads.

“An Israeli government spokesman, Gideon Meir, said the bombing proved the need for the Palestinian Authority to "dismantle terror groups" rather than try to persuade them to accept a formal truce, Reuters reported. Israel's public security minister, Gideon Ezra, said, "We will have to see where we can tighten the screws and the Palestinian Authority has to tighten its screws."  (NYTimes)

We barely done witnessing the promising Sharm El Sheikh  peace conference and now we have this attack on Israel.

It's time for the new PLO leadership to stop negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah  and start a violent showdown with these terrorist organizations.

The time for internal diplomacy has ended. Let's not have the crime of a few again sabotage the dreams of millions.

“An Israeli government spokesman, Gideon Meir, said the bombing proved the need for the Palestinian Authority to "dismantle terror groups" rather than try to persuade them to accept a formal truce, Reuters reported. Israel's public security minister, Gideon Ezra, said, "We will have to see where we can tighten the screws and the Palestinian Authority has to tighten its screws."  (NYTimes)

We barely done witnessing the promising Sharm El Sheikh  peace conference and now we have this attack on Israel.

It's time for the new PLO leadership to stop negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah  and start a violent showdown with these terrorist organizations.

The time for internal diplomacy has ended. Let's not have the crime of a few again sabotage the dreams of millions.

Jon Stewart's Daily News coverage on Blogs vs Media. It's really funny.

True innovation requires creating something new, something that wasn't never successfully done before, something that is different from the status quo.

In doing so, you must be aware of things that comes from the status quo. Some of them are the enemy of your innovation because by its nature, your innovation will try to replace them.

And there is no way to do it without a healthy dose of confidence. It's never worked or been done before. Others have failed, why do you think you will be the one that make it happen. You will get so much negative energy from the environment because you are introducing something new. It can't be done, it's been tried before and didn't work, it didn't make sense, we didn't need it, etc. The only way you can proceed and blow through these annoyances is to say “fuck'em”.

It's you and your team.

You can be wrong and they can be right but fuck 'em. The only defeat is not giving your ideas and innovation a chance. Everything else that gets in the way, fuck'em. There is no middle ground. Either make it work or die trying.

fuck'em.

I'm currently reading a business book called “hardball : are you playing to play or play to win”.

Essentially the book says that American businesses have gone soft and lost its hard driven competitiveness.

“use every legitimate resource and strategy available to them to gain advantage over their competitors...[and by doing so] attract more customers, gain market share, boost profits, reward their employees, and weaken their competitors' positions." “

It implores businesses to be ruthless to their competitors. If your competitor left an opening, drive a stake through it. Step on them while they are down. Fuck'em. Let them bleed and die and sell their carcases.

No sympathy for the enemy.

I have no problem with the book but I rather concentrate on building our own markets and our customers than worrying about our competitors. They have plenty of opportunities to shoot themselves on the foot. As Digs quipped in his blog “As though more proof was needed that Dody doesn't have a soul!”

I know how it feels to finally be able to vote in a fairly free election. It happened to me back in June 1999, the first fair election in Indonesian history after maybe 40 years.

Yeah, we had election every 5 years under the Suharto regime, but the results are pretty much pre-determined. It's all voting in action, not in meaning.

Anyway, Iraq still have a long rough road to go through. Election is not the free cure all to all their problems, but it's a damn great start.

”sure i pray (or at least wish well) for anyone who takes the courage to vote tomorrow or to make the vote happen. it is an achievement for the world (and the Iraqi peoples) to have come so far ... the path was rough, the approach was wrong, things could have gone better and should look different, but at least the direction is right.

now, i hope we will all learn from our mistakes. we ALL made some.” (comment in alfunspun)

Save Social Security.

” It seems to me that if we are to reduce abortions to an absolute minimum (and who, exactly, opposes that objective?), then Clinton's formula is the most practical. Her key sentences: "We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. ... The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place." (TNR)

“Not this time. Abortion is "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," said Clinton. Then she went further: "There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances."”(Slate)

Safe, legal, really rare.

”Our nightly bombing of Fallujah illustrates another important point about 4GW: to call it “terrorism” is a misnomer. In fact, terrorism is merely a technique, and we use it too when we think it will benefit us. In Madam Albright’s boutique war on Serbia, when the bombing campaign against the Serbian Army in Kosovo failed, we resorted to terror bombing of civilian targets in Serbia proper. Now, we are using terror bombing on Fallujah.” (William S. Lind)

Terrorism as a technique..hmm..interesting..

This weblog is listed on the second place for Aiesec Community on google, linked to my Aiesec Weblog Community Version 2.0 piece.

That idea is about to become reality.

”Denny, also a U.S. educated scholar, acknowledged that Susilo's presidential office would adopt the U.S. administrative system.

In the U.S., the president is assisted by two strong teams: the Cabinet, which deals with day-to-day state activities and policies, and the so-called White House structure, which tackles various issues, including the presidential office's administration, public liaison, cabinet affairs, intergovernmental affairs and protocol matters. “

(The Jakarta Post)

Starting a new little project t'day.

our distinct personality, The Discoverer, might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. Your overriding goal is to go where no one else has ever gone before. Regardless of the number of available natural problems to be solved, it is not unusual for you to continually challenge yourself with new situations or obstacles that you have created. You are an insatiable explorer of people, places, things and ideas. You thrive on constant change and anything new or different. On the positive side, you can be creatively rational as well as open minded and just. On the negative side, you might be an impractical and indecisive procrastinator. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms.

(take your own survey)

”Well ladies, the good news is that those days are over.
   New York City — home of Michael Milken, Donald Trump, and the fictional Gordon Gekko — has been taken over by a new generation of men who are decidedly not hot for work. The faded economy, coupled with distance from the anthropological notion that men are supposed to provide anything for anyone, has played havoc with expectations for vigorous masculinity. These days, a pride of twenty- and thirty-something young lions emerge from their dens each day, stretch their sinewy backs and shoulders, give a mighty roar, nip out for a coffee, and then return to curl up and snooze for the rest of the day.” (Nerve.com)

Work is not the point. I want to build a lot of things and if that takes work, then fine. If it takes play, fab. Either way, I get to build.

”Indonesia and Iraq are both Muslim countries that endured years of brutal dictatorship. Indonesia kicked out Gen. Suharto in 1998 and next week will directly elect a president for the first time in its history.

Indonesia has been cited as a rare example of a functioning Islamic democracy - something the Iraqi politicians said could also be replicated in their own nation, which is surrounded by authoritarian regimes.“

”To remedy the problems, he said, Intel is focusing on making sure different divisions are better coordinated and doing a better job of delivering products on schedule. “ (San Francisco Chronicle)

Project management problems causes delay in Intel's delivery of 4 Ghz Pentium. If an admired company such as Intel still fumbles now and then in project planning and deliveries, there is little hope for the rest of us, unless we rethink the way we manage our projects. And in order to do that we will have to go back to basic and rethink the nature of task.

”Traditional Office programs helped enhance productivity by allowing workers to easily create and modify digital documents. The aim of the new initiative is to increase productivity with new tools for collaboration, communications, planning and document handling. “ (ecommercetimes)

Can you see that Microsoft is moving to small team/project oriented mindset?

In our social life, we do a lot collaboration with our friends (setting up dinners, arranging camping), yet I couldn't find any tools or website on the web that help people to accomplish social life projects easily.

Hmm.

Just a brain dump based on today's thinking

• Do things in sequence.
• Write a plan, execute, revise the plan as you go.

A task is consisted of

• A completion parameter to be used to determine answer to the question, is it done or not? Yes and No answer only. Not Maybe. Binary decision.
• A guesstimate on how long it will take.
• List of obstacles to be removed.
• An actual time it take to do, in terms of sequence of days, not hours. If you start today and finish in in 20 days, but in the meantime also doing other things, the task takes 20 days to complete, not the 20 hours total you spend on performing the task. Why? because the cost of the task not completed is 20 days, not 20 hours.

”Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell presented their original paper The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete at PMI's bi-annual Research Conference July 2002. A number of people have asked me to comment on it. I'm struck by how persuasive Lauri and Greg are. It takes them just 12 pages to evaluate the anomalies and argue for a reform to project management. My comments will attend to Lauri's and Greg's paper. Download your copy. Read ahead. And please join me in discussion with your comments and questions. “ (Reforming Project Management)

The conversation about project management and task management were the main conversation I had with Adam for most of the day today. As both silverkey and techangels are expanding their respective businesses, the more management challenges will appear and we decided to step off the mainstream approach for managing people, which in parts, touches a lot of project management and task management issues.

In our conversation I emphasize that management is a support function, it's not the main purpose of a company. It's a very important principle to remember. The purpose of a company is to deliver value, anything that doesn't directly contribute to that goal is an overhead, and should be done at the level it is required, not more. A lot of management techniques and tools are designed to make the life of the manager easy but making life's hell for the people being managed. All those reports, useless metrics and meetings.

Management should be designed and executed to make the life of 'managee' easier and more productive in their respective roles. That's where the whole point of management must be.

At the end of our conversation, I think we come with a certain approach that we are going to use for this time forward and we are investing in it (building the practice and tools).

“It is no exaggeration to claim that project management as a discipline is in crisis, and that a paradigm change, long overdue, has to be realized. The thrust of this paper is not in presenting a new theory of project management. However, the novel theories, found to be more powerful than the implicit underlying theories or complementary to them, provide pointers to a new theoretical foundation, and they can be used for the renewal of the project management methodology (Exhibit 2). Progress may be achieved through two routes. Firstly, based on new theories on operations management, new project management methods may be developed and tried out. Secondly, advanced practice (which deviates from the present doctrine) may be consolidated and explained theoretically, which leads to new understanding and possibly to further refinement of that practice.”  the conclusion from The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete.

about deep and insightful analysis on the new form of warfare and global security issues for the new century, check out John Robb's brilliant weblog at Global Guerrillas.

I'm a dumbass in any military issues, but building global loosely coordinated networks and dealing with cells  of people  in disparate geographical area working in parallel  is the essence of my day job. And here's one thing about self-surviving/replicating network, you cannot deal with it in a centralized manner.

I like John Robb's approach and his way of thinking (been reading his writing since 2001). His refreshing analysis coupled with his background in SpecOps (NightStalker I think) and diverse business backgrounds makes him a person to listen to in this troubled world.

I've been spending so much time lately figuring out a new way of managing projects done distributedly, connecting people in different geographical areas, sometimes connected, with different motivation, with different level of knoweldge, enabling “good enough” details on most aspect of the project while keeping everybody that's interested in the loop. And at the same time, make people that involve in the project ENJOY using the system/method (I've been subjected to many methods of project management and honestly I hate all of them. Most are created to benefits the manager, instead helping the person subjected to it to organize properly and become more productive).

Well, last night, I gave up on trying to mold the existing project management methodology and software into our structure and decided to start do away from existing paradigm.

 Rethinking project management. It is a scary thing to do, thinking that you have better ideas than all those practictioners that have been spending their whole lives doing it. I could be totally wrong in this but well, that's what I'm gonna do.

later: Yeah, I've read VSTS description alright. Nope, I hate the project management part of the system.

”Why is it so hard for Arabs to act together to solve the region’s manifold problems, from the humanitarian crisis in Sudan to the turmoil in Iraq and Palestine?”(Economist)

”Sudan won help from Arab countries yesterday in its attempt to head off sanctions the UN has threatened to impose if it fails to rein in militias accused of atrocities in the Darfur region.

In a statement released after an emergency meeting in Cairo, the Arab League said last night that Sudan needed more time to end the crisis and that sanctions would "only result in negative effects for the whole Sudanese people and complicate the crisis in Darfur".

The UN security council has set a deadline of August 29 for Sudan to show it is serious about disarming nomadic Arab militias engaged in a 15-month conflict with black African farmers that has killed at least 50,000 people and displaced more than a million, according to UN estimates.

Khartoum has portrayed sanctions as western meddling - an argument that resonates with Arab public opinion. “ (Guardian)

Complicate the crisis in Darfur ?!! We have a wholesale human slaughter here goddamit and it gotta stop. What's complicated about it?

If the UN Security Council fails to act decisively this time, they are dead to me. What kind of role are they playing in this world if they are allowing genocide every fucking decade (Rwanda was 1994. As scheduled, Darfur 2004. Neat 10 years period).

”All I can say regarding the corporate world is boy, they sure make it easy for you to sell out,

Spent the whole day working in the room where Tom Cruise lived for 6 months while they filmed "Last Samurai."

Japanese food definitely tastes better in Japan.”(Digidy)

Ha..ha, it's OK to sell out. Being an idealist is overrated. Just make sure the price is right :) 

This is how idealist revolutionaries slowly become dictators when they reach the peak of power in their country. The seduction of money, luxury and status.

Good on ya.

A company is just an imaginary place where people agree to work and collaborate to create stuff, regardless of race, sex, culture and geography.

Money is just the side effects.

If we are in heaven right now (yes, complete with the 72 virgins or raisins) where money is meaningless, we will still be setting up companies (or teams) to do something productive. Create, build and invent stuff, translating the ideas in our minds and transforming it to reality, ideally with other people that we like and respect. Because hey, in a company, it's the company of others that counts.

This is why silverkey is being set up around the world. I happen to like and enjoy working with a lot of people that somehow enjoy living somewhere else. Heck, work consumes at least at third of your working life, may as well craft it to your own liking.

That is why I always have a “no jerk” clause in hiring/recruiting people. We don't have to be fuzzy buddy buddy, but heck, “jerk” and “brilliance” are not opposing values.

Burning the candle on midnight train.

It's mid summer and time is ripe for doing something rockin' that *will* make a difference.

Continued..

So Gaigi and I met again, in a coffee shop, after almost 2 years from that defining day in the fall of 2002 in Calgary, Canada; the epoch of Salaam program; the founding day.

He'll be working full time for Salaam next year, 6 months in the US and 6 months in the Middle East;jetsetting between three different continents.

And he throw a couple of names that I barely remember, of many people that currently being involved in the program; full time or part time.

A friend who was also with us told me “look what kind of monster you created”. I just grinned stupidly. Yes, this thing is a kind of monster, the nice one.

I'm glad to see so many people are positively benefited from this program (directly or indirectly), long after the starting point. Good for them. For me, I have the quiet satisfaction of holding that rare distinction being the “founder of Salaam“, sharing it with Gaigi and Digidy. That should be enough.

But that's my past. Next after being founder of SilverKey last year, I think there's a new “version 1.0” thing coming this year.

”

THERE is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,—
At once is mute again.	5
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away.	10
Wherever runs the breathless sun,
Wherever roams the day,
There is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!
Behold the keenest marksman!	15
The most accomplished shot!
Time’s sublimest target
Is a soul “forgot”!

“

(E.D.)

This was supposed to be out two weeks ago. I sent a link to this to Emir.

Hi,

My name is Dody and I was the one that introduced the concept of blogging to the broader Aiesec community back in 2002.

I'm writing this in response to some concerns being raised by several talented webloggers at aiesec.ws (FYI, ws = western Samoa).

The success of the community (having grown from a couple of pioneering weblogs (Dig's, Adam's, Sarah's, Steph's, Kristie Ko's and others who will hate me for forgetting to mention them) to whatever it is now) is a credit to mostly others and the Achilles heels mine alone. These words are not cliché as I will explain it to you further.

In late winter 2002, the weblog concept is barely about 3 years old and still at its infancy. It was still a cutting-edge thing to do. Many of the weblog sites you see now barely existed back then. I had been experimenting with blogging for about 15 months (on and off) after purchasing a software called Manila (a great blogging software capable doing other stuff as well), in late 2000, for 299 bucks. The price of a pack of Cigarette in New York City nowadays. What a great deal.

I tinkered and messed around with Manila and use the software in starting the World Discovery program. The year was 2000 and Florida hadn't fumbled on voting. And I had my first weblog, in an outside server. Time passed by and my thick skull didn't realize the potential of having a weblog community for a global, diverse and young organization like Aiesec. What a dumbass. Then 9/11 happened. I was in Indonesia at the time. I created http://911.aiesec.ws as a clearing house in covering the outpouring support and reaction from Aiesecer's around the world.

My friend, that is the first weblog on aiesec.ws. 911.aiesec.ws, created on September 11, 2001.

It took a tragedy of that magnitude to force me understand the value of having a weblog communities inside Aiesec. It took several months more before I managed to persuade several people to start a weblog. 2002, Bush barely in office for 2 months, late winter and I was back in New York Office. The pioneering weblogs started appearing. What took me 15 months to realize, took them an instant to understand. The buzz started spreading, and more people signed up. There were some apprehension within the office of what weblogs will bring to Aiesec (Branding, legal, image, a laundry list of real concern), but to their credit, everybody took the leap of faith and said "go for it". da Queen boss, Suzanne, gave full support.

And things were out of my hand now.

The pioneers took over, gave ideas, and play with the concept. They championed it, blogged it and evangelized it. This was still 2002, Spring time.

We formally introduced and encouraged Aiesec US members, alumni and trainees to start blogging in the Aiesec Summer Conference in Dallas, 2002 (and Aiesec US pushed it in IC 2002 in Switzerland). It's official baby. All the way. Aiesec was among the first organization to openly encourage its members in the US and around the world to blog openly (paid by Aiesec US).

That was cool and innovative at the same time. Some people took notice.

August 2002.

"Dody Gunawinata has set up a Manila/Radio community for his organization: AIESEC. Nice. (John Robb) - COO of Userland at the time.

“This also brings up another note I saw recently from Dody Gunawinata. He is running a K-Logging vertical community for AIESEC (an organization of 50,000 members devoted to cultural exchange through global internships). He is using a mix of Manila hosted sites -- and -- Radio sites published from the desktop. This allows people to select the type of tool they feel most comfortable with. You can see his community here:

http://www.aiesec.ws/  (K-Logs community)“

“Why is this important to AIESEC?..““(Phill Woffs - Aiesec Alumni and Weblog Community Thought leaders)

It spread like wildfire. And the rest is history.

It's time to die.

Coulda, shouda, wouda. The decision I made back in 2002 has become the Achilles heels of the community right now. The software I chose to become the base to host aiesec.ws community is not scalable enough for the growth of the community. It has tons of virtues like being dirt cheap, easy to set up and packed with great feature. In 2002, it's the best blogging platform around (and in certain aspect, it's still is). But it cannot grow along with the growth of the community. This major shortsightedness is mine alone.

Aiesec weblog community success kills.

The more it grows, the more expensive and complicated it becomes for Aiesec US to maintain.

How do we solve this problem soon?

1. Pour more money into it (either by raising funds or having people to pay)

2. Get another weblog software.

3. Preparing eulogy for the concept of aiesec.ws as it is now. It lived, changed the Aiesec world and it's time to die. And let the Phoenix rises from the ashes.

Option one and two are straightforward (including sponsorship, advertising, co-payment, etc). I will elaborate on option three.

Phoenix Redemption.

Cat has similar idea in spirit.

Let's reinvent the concept of aiesec.ws

Flaws:

1. Aiesec.ws is a single point of failure.

2. The costs grow proportionately with the growth of the community.

Fact:

1. There are so many free and paid weblog hostings now.

2. They come with different feature, styles and target audience.

3. The community is the connection between Aiesec webloggers, not the address or the hosting or the software (although these has their own benefits).

Potential:

We can grow and maintain a vibrant Aiesec Weblog Community to the hundreds of thousands, sustainable over a decade or more, without incurring much cost. We can even more capable in connecting Alumni, Trainees, Membership, Families and Leadership of Aiesecers around the world.

How:

1. Change aiesec.ws from a weblog hosting service for Aiesec members to a weblog tracking service. This tracking service will track the updates of Aiesec members weblog (hosted in myriad of weblog service). So you go to aiesec.ws to see who's been updating, read highlights and check out new weblogs.

2. Add and maintain an automated and extensive list of Aiesec Community weblogs around the world (with multiple categories and search methods).

3. Become THE PLACE to advocate, promote and evangelize weblogs to more corners in the Aiesec network.

4. Become THE PLACE for Aiesecer's who wants to start a weblog (available in hundreds of weblog hosting sites) to learn and get help.

5. If needed, Aiesec can offer a web hosting service for specific purposes (record traineeship experience for 5 months, etc)

6. Help existing weblog content to migrate to another weblog system and redirect the current weblog address to point to a new one.

7. Promote free hosting buddies extensively on the site. Hosting buddies are Aiesecers (current or alumni) who are willing to host some weblogs for free.

Aiesec Weblog Community is Aiesec in public, open to the world, with its flaws, gritty details and greatness. Our voice loud and clear. Let them see our failings and glories as we are youth of the world. This is Aiesec, a bunch of die hard idealists insisting in changing the world for the better, impatiently waiting for this world to blink first. "Never say die" flows in our veins, in multiple languages, in every single living continent on Earth. We smashed that Aiesec-behind-the-wall barrier two years ago. Now let's make sure it's not back up, ever again.

Save Aiesec Weblogs.

A friend and I had a conversation the other day and she told me she knew who I am. She started writing a list of all the nouns to describe who I am and gave it to me. A gift of friendship, she said. It is very interesting to see yourself from the eyes of others.

• Thinker.
• Chef.
• Traveller.
• Clown
• Writer.
• Poet.
• Musician.
• Lover.
• Friend.
• Photographer.
• Philosopher.
• Businessman.
• Programmer.
• Designer.
• Builder.
• Nurse.
• Runner.
• Swimmer.
• Cyclist.
• Linguist.
• Leader.
• Innovator.
• Teacher.
• Mentor.
• Student.
• Fool.

”Its a damn shame that AIESEC United States have decided to limit new blogs on the AIESEC.ws stystem to US members and trainees. One one hand, I can understand - if by lowering the amount of blogs they can make the system more stable and acessible all day round (important when you have people reading and writing from all around the world in multiple time zones, not just US time) then this will be a good thing for the system. And because they are the ones paying for it, its only fair that it should be US members/trainees given priority. “ (Tom)

The house I (not singlehandedly mind you) built is apparently under fire. It doesn't have to end this way. More later (I know one bit or two about weblog communities).

A new Irish phrase stuck in my mind.

Here's a peek what I'll be doing this summer.

1. Attending Henry George School of Social Science (starts 6/18)
2. Hanging out with folks at Diamond Way Buddhist Center (met Juan from the center at a meetup last week) on some Mondays.
3. Taking my Arabic Classes in at least once every two weeks.
4. 40 miles and 400 laps a week.
5. Doing Sidewalk Sessions, my duo project with Jose, playing guitars and singing on the street of Chicago.
6. Work like a dog.
7. Helping the LakeViewPantry with cooking. Making consideration for starting Dody's Kitchen.
8. Attending at least one of Common Ground  lecture.
9. Do two more visit to the Museum of Art.
10. Going to 3rd Annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival. See “Writers on the Borders : a Journey to Palestine + Visit Iraq + Samir Abdallah“ this Sunday (6/13).
11. Check out  Instituto Cervantes Chicago
12. Hang out at the Illinois Humanities Council
13. Check out the movies at Facets Multimedia, especially “2nd Annual African Diaspora Film Festival“ (6/11 - 6/17)
14. Check out DuSable Museum of African American History.
15. 6/26/04
    12:15pm - 1:00pm
    Chicago
    Chicago Taiko Legacy
16. Hang out at the Newberry Library
17. Check out Well Street Art Festival (6/11-6/12) . Done. Photos.
18. Check out Chicago Blues Festival (6/11 - 6/12)
19. Check out Lincoln Park Festival (6/19 - 6/20)
20. Join Public Square's Cafe Society.
21. Check out Taste of Chicago (June 25 - July 24)
22. Take one class at The Wodden Spoon.
23. Teach Vipassanna meditation to a friend.
24. Apply to WoodSmyth's woodworking classses.
25. Chicago Summer Dance baby. (6/17 - Flamenco Rumba)
26. Do Kayak Chicago.
27. Get a bike.
28. Check out Rhythm
29. Finish “Defender of Islam ..“

”Here's a little secret. You always have a choice in what to feel. You cannot control the initial emotional impulses because those impulses happen to you, but you do have a total control in the duration and the impact of those emotions.”  read more

“''The third is called 'open presence.' It is a state of being acutely aware of whatever thought, emotion or sensation is present, without reacting to it. They describe it as pure awareness.'' read more

“Hope is a dangerous thing” .. read more

Dear Dody,

Hear the buzz before the book. Bill Clinton's speech before a packed house at this
year's BookExpo America is now available at http://www.audible.com/emails/billclinton/  

Download it now at no charge, and keep checking our home page for the imminent 
release of Mr. Clinton's mammoth memoir. (We'll have it for you as soon as it is 
available.)

You may also share this e-mail with your friends. Let them know that Audible 
is allowing everyone to download the speech at no charge.

Sincerely,

The Audible Team

”This is far from a case of a fine cabinet official undone by the actions of a few obscure bad apples in the military police. Donald Rumsfeld has morphed, over the last two years, from a man of supreme confidence to arrogance, then to almost willful blindness. With the approval of the president, he sent American troops into a place whose nature and dangers he had apparently never bothered to examine.” (NYTimes Editorial Board)

August 28, Syria.

August 18, Tibet + Guangzhou.

July 14, South Africa.

June 4, Peru.

Anyway I can.

Kristof Responds : a weblog by Nicholas Kristof, the famed NY Times Columnist.

My Birthday Pantone : African Violet (imaginative, emotional, hard working)

From NYTimes : ”In their pleas, the executives depicted a broad conspiracy at the company during the last two years to lie to prosecutors and Computer Associates' own lawyers about the company's past practice of backdating sales to meet Wall Street forecasts for its revenue and profit.”

From NY Times :”Mr. Bush told Mr. Woodward that he did not ask the secretary's opinion on whether to go to war because he thought he knew what that opinion would be: "no."”

I found myself spending more time thinking nowadays especially the disconnect between good ideas and good implementation.

Here's the curiousity. Our logic allows us to determine which one makes sense and good for us, however, there are very few follow up on those logics.

Take a look as an example of bad habit. You know one of your habit is bad for you and logic dictates that changing that habit will bring an improvement to you. However, most of the time we are keeping those bad habits. Smoking comes to mind (the obvious one), or eating junk food or exercising less.

This is one of the most fundamental problem we as human being need to ably solve in order to progress. Some people I suspect have nailed this down and had great success  in their lives.

A synchronization between good ideas and good execution. Our behaviour do not directly corellate with our mind as if our 'self' is out of control or our mind is powerless to control our impulses.

Are we so powerless in getting stuck in our pattern that we are unable to get ourselve to change and follow what our rational logic demand?

Is it a question of discipline? Or are we a creature of survivor so we won't change until we are threatened?

This fundamental weakness translate to business as well. The fundamental logic in a business demands that you know the state of your business at any time. The bottom line.

Have you been in a company that has their financial bookkeeping in order?

I am more and more incline to believe that behavioral pattern change is critical in terms of realising the good ideas we have in our mind.

The critical thing is how do you go about changing our pattern? The highest goal will be to have this pattern change be done as painless as possible in the most transparent way.

Changing your pattern without realizing it.

Evolution of behavioral pattern. Evolution, not revolution.

Shifting of behavioral pattern. Shift, not pursuit.

Blazing the path for new behavioral pattern. Blazing/mold, not follow.

Sensory thinking.

Have dozens even hundreds of little feedback to nudge and transform our pattern into a new one, on a daily basis. Relentless and unpredictable micro increments.

Stretch our fixed mind. Pursue flexibility.

Nudge. Pull. Break.

Fit it to our natural tendency to preserve energy (survival).

The ultimate goal lies in transform ourserlve so that constant change is our comfort zone (which is our natural state;we are getting older by the second).

http://asianamericanfilm.com/boards/dcforum/DCForumID5/269.html

Let's the mud slinging begins. Me opinione : I find it funny.

” 
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
”

Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope

A beautiful, echanting, clever, charming romance movie.

A sample from Noam Chomsky's weblog

”The IMF is hardly more than a branch of the Treasury Department. Economist Jagdish Bhagwati, no radical, refers to the IMF- Treasury-Wall St complex that is a core part of de facto world government. The Treasury Department is part of the US government. If we had anything remotely resembling a democratic culture, actions of the government would be under the control of citizens, which would mean that citizens have to at the very least know something about them. And beyond that, we would have mechanisms to engage in political action. And in a more democratic society the third component, Wall St., would not exist in anything remotely like its present form, and what would exist would be under popular democratic control. “

I'm probably gonna regred this, but as a reminder, dont' make out with a 18 freshman college girl again although she's Italian and beautiful. Mamma mia.

Is the crucifiction of Jesus Christ the most prominent example of religious prosecution?

”Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
And I'd still be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet
”

Through Scoble

”Amazing performance at TED conference

From Doc  : ”Somewhere around here I have Peter Drucker's Post-Capitalist Society. I don't know if it was in that book, or somewhere else, that Drucker talks about the end of the "modern corporation," which he said was only one and a quarter centuries old. For most of that period, Drucker said, the largest corporations possessed advantages exclusive to size: access to capital, international reach, publishing clout, the ability to confer health and retirement benefits. In the last decade the first three of those ceased to be exclusive, and the fourth was reduced extensively. At the same time, the downdrift of those advatages to companies of every size has had endless positive effects. The thresholds of creation, innovation and just about everything else have been reduced to surmountable levels for companies of all sizes. This is not a bad thing.”

SilverKey VC is The Office of Personal Credit Cards. And that's probably the last VC we'll ever use.  

Here's to those Credit Card Funded enterprises. Cheers.

“Here is my own experience with offshoring. I am programmer working for Russian company located in Novosibirsk.  I am participating in a long run ousourcing project (it lasts more than for 3 years now). Our company does software design and implementation while our counterpart do marketing, sales, high level pecifications and provides feedback from users. It looks like successfull project (we have already released several versions of our software) and our partners are satisfied with it. In short our case supports opinion of Dody Gunawinata that in order to not to run into miscellaneous weird problems you have to have YOUR team you outsource to. Only difference is that we had already  been mature development team before the project started. Not everything here is cloudless of course.”

From Joel on Software: ”We will not be "offshoring" our software development because you don't outsource your core competency. I'm not a software broker, I'm a software developer.
”

You can reach SilverKey India at (312) 242 - 1754.

Yes, that's a Chicago area code. How? We are using Voice Over IP baby. So anyone in the US can contact SilverKey India for a cost of local phone call.

From The Grey Lady : ”While women have long been involved in the sex industry as providers and consumers, their participation now has become more of an economic phenomenon, largely because of the Internet. In fact, experts say, the Internet has been a major factor in unleashing women's interest in all things sexual. Surveys by Nielsen/NetRatings, which measures Internet audiences, have found that women account for more than a quarter of all visitors to sites with adult content, with more than 10 million women logging on to such sites in December alone”

From Joshua :

“So, what paybacks am I talking about? well, last month the media people decided to publicly humiliate the people's choice for a candidate, and instead substitute their choice. I'll vote for him because I have no choice, really. A vote for Bush is a vote against my interest, and so I'll go Kerry, I won't shoot myself in the foot by boycotting him. But there is no question that the press engineered Dean's destruction. Dean may have made it easier, but there wasn't even lip service to the concept of equal time.

So what we have to do is pick one of theirs, someone conspicuous, well connected (so that all of the right people take notice), and destroy them. This is utterly disgusting, but it is how politics is played. It's diplomacy. It happens. Anyone here ever see a Star Trek TOS episode called "Balance of Terror"? If the Romulan ship makes it home alive, we have a war on our hands. So it must not get home alive.

So, I hereby nominate Diane Sawyer and her senior staff for sacrifice. “

http://trif.technologyreview.com/bk/index.htmlPlay Innovation Futures by MIT.

I proposed similar  idea to Aiesec (Exchange Futures) at the end of 2002 although apparently that went nowhere after I left.

Paul Graham wrote a wonderful essay about free thinking and in the process present an idea on how to do free thinking without falling trigerring punishment mechanism from the common norms of society. The essay is quite long so give yourself a favour, print it out and read it over coffee as it is a thoughful essay that will require some quiet thinking to digest and gain meaning from it.

“(This essay is about heresy: how to think forbidden thoughts, and what to do with them. The latter was till recently something only a small elite had to think about. Now we all have to, because the Web has made us all publishers.)”