Showing posts with label Adam Carson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam Carson. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Discovering LinkedIn In 2019

I discovered Twitter in 2009, and JP Rangaswami was a big reason why. His blog Confused Of Calcutta that a friend pointed out to had many posts where he shared his enthusiasm for Twitter. I got infected. Within a year I became a top followed in NYC on Twitter. And I was no Ashton Kutcher. I worked hard at it.

It is not like I had not heard of Twitter. I had. But at first, I thought it was ridiculous. (I was also in attendance at the NY Tech MeetUp where FourSquare first presented, and I was unimpressed with what the two Founders called "check-in") I had been an avid blogger for years. And I thought Twitter was for people who can compose full sentences, but full paragraphs are beyond their reach. I was not going to stoop down.

LinkedIn I signed up for not long after it was launched. I have been a keen reader of tech news since the late 1990s, and so I seldom missed developments. But until this year, I never really used LinkedIn. I updated my profile and kept it current, but that was just because.

This year LinkedIn has become my favorite social network. I have become an avid user. I have been using it for hours a day. It keeps running in the background. It has become more like an Operating System.

When I was living in the city (now I live 90 minutes out, more depending on your mode of transportation) I went to numerous tech events. And often you exchanged business cards. The idea would be to try and connect with those people online.

Now I realize I was doing it in reverse and wasting a lot of precious time. You meet people online. You try to connect with them. They might, they might not reciprocate. Which begs the question, did you have a good enough reason to connect, did you write a relevant enough first email?

After you connect, you can have so much communication online. LinkedIn messaging might not be the best messaging out there, but it works fine. And if you connect with someone enough, you might even want to meet. But that is a rather high threshold. What will you talk in person that you can not over email and voice chat? Especially when a meeting is so hard to arrange. For both parties.

I continue to use Twitter and Facebook, pretty much daily. And although I don't blog as regularly as I used to, my blogs are still active. Now I also blog on LinkedIn itself. But that is deliberately few and far between. If people decide to read my articles, let them be few enough that they might actually read them. That is what I have thought.

The LinkedIn profile is an excellent format. If you have only a few minutes to get to know me, reading my LinkedIn profile might be how you ought to spend your time. The kind of work people have done over the years gives you a pretty good picture of who someone is as a person. Even if your interest in them might not be work-related.

And so I have been networking on LinkedIn like crazy. I don't miss the city. I quite like the clean air around where I live. And I don't much miss the networking tech events either. LinkedIn is far superior an experience.

It feels like for the first time I am building a company (two, actually) in earnest. And LinkedIn is the Operating System I am happily using.

LinkedIn trending topics has also become my favorite place online to go for news. Although I go many places on a daily basis.

And to say I have actually seen Reid Hoffman in person. Mike Bloomberg threw a party. I don't know how I got invited. But that is where I got to meet and know Arianna Huffington also. Hoffman was the featured speaker.





Friday, October 22, 2010

Reverend, What Do You Do?

Jesse Jackson Member of Omega Psi Phi Fraterni...Image via Wikipedia
A black comic once asked Jesse Jackson on national television, "But, Reverend, what exactly it is that you do!"
Let me try and answer that question for my well wishers.

Me and my small team are exploring the idea of a microfinance tech startup, one a microfinance junkie currently at Wharton, another a techie. Clean tech, bio tech, nano tech, microfinance: microfinance might be at the bottom of that sexy ladder in some ways, but I believe it is in the same league. It is one of the next big things. And it is very real. Education, health, credit: all of humanity deserves to have access to those three things. The term computer has not meant the same thing year after year, decade after decade. The term microfinance is not stagnant either.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ignite, Set It On Fire

I almost missed out Social Media Week, but I got in a few days late, and I was not able to go to some choice events I would have liked to go to. I bumped into its webpage through social media browsing. You know how you go from people to people, link to link, update to update. And I am so glad I was able to do 14 events during Social Media Week. (Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever)

And now I am being introduced to Ignite. My friend Adam Carson (@adamkcarson) sent me an email a few days back. He forwarded me this blog post: Global Ignite Week: Starts Monday with 65 Cities, 6 Continents, 500 Speakers over 5 Days. If he figured I might like it, he figured right.

This guy said somewhere online he was 30,000 miles above ground and the update went viral, looks like. Virgin Galactic anyone? He meant 30,000 feet. He was so psyched about having wifi up there, he went from feet to miles. To the @ and # symbols, Twitter should add emoticons. So less people get carried away.

Adam is a good friend of Mark Peter Davis (@markpeterdavis) who you can meet at every NY Tech MeetUp unfailingly. Nate always calls on him at the very beginning. "Is anyone from DFJ Gotham here? Mark? You there?"

"We go back a long time," Mark once said to me about Adam. Mark has a wonderful, wonderful blog. He has practically written a book on venture capital at his blog.

Entrepreneur's Guide To Raising Venture Capital
Entrepreneur's Guide To Starting A Company
Entrepreneur's Library
Entrepreneur's Social Fabric
Entrepreneur's Toolkit

Adam is up in Hanover finishing up his MBA at Tuck with his wonderful wife Anna. And he sends me this email.

New York City needs its own South By South West. New York City needs its own Burning Man. What would be the urban version? Modifying Dennis Crowley's (@dens) Pac Manhattan might be a start. For now Ignite might be it. But let's shoot for a non-sexist name.

Galapagos Art Space Dumbo
16 Main Street
Brooklyn NY

Thursday, March 04, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 11:55 PM (ET)

@ignitenyc
@tikkers - Ignite NYC Director; Curator
@sandhyaX - Site Design; Content Management
@Laureado - Event Production; Sponsorships
@jonathanpberger - Design Advisor; PowerPoint Guru




My tweet to the organizers: See you @ Ignite. Guess 2 late 2 be Speaker. Or no? Would like to talk revolution.

My tweets to some others who are listed as attending: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5, Tweet 6, Tweet 7.






It might be too late for me to get my five minutes on stage, but I think it is going to be a perfect evening to meet a ton of interesting people. It is amazing to be part of the tech ecosystem in this city. It is early stage and it is gelling.
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Buzz Takes Gmail To A New Level

Image of Adam Carson from TwitterImage of Adam Carson
Earlier today I was fooling around with Buzz. Even before that from just reading about it in the news, I never thought of Buzz as a Twitter or Facebook killer. My suspicions have now been confirmed. Buzz is a Gmail enhancer. Otherwise my Gmail experience was starting to get a little staid.

Google reinvented email with Gmail. I don't think it has reinvented social, updates and geo with Buzz. But it sure could not have afforded to be left behind. Social is not Facebook, updates are not Twitter, geo is geo. These are elements of the web experience, and they will seep through to everywhere or most places. The leading dot com could not have skipped the cacophony.

Two names popped up during my first experience: Adam Carson, and Vin Vacanti. I never connected with Adam on Facebook like I now do on Buzz. The guy got me on the Reader bandwagon long back, but once I got strong on Twitter, I shifted over to Twitter. My Twitter page is my newsfeed. I skim through the headlines in the morning on my Twitter page. Vin I got introduced to over email last year. I met him in person a few days back. And now I am part of conversations with his friends. And Buzz does not cut into my allowed Gmail space. That is important to me.

Right now my Buzz box is sexier than my Gmail Inbox, and only one click away. I am liking the experience.

One Buzz thread had the founder of Gmail and FriendFeed saying Buzz looks "familiar." How did Google find out I might be interested in that particular Buzz thread? They got it right. I don't know how they did it, but all I got to say is keep tweaking those algorithms.  

Introducing Bzz
Introducing Google Buzz For Mobile
Readers: Get Your Buzz On
New York Times: Bits: Google Gets More Social With Buzz



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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

NY Tech MeetUp: Gravitas


September 2009 NY Tech MeetUp

The September 2009 NY Tech MeetUp was really something. You had some NYU and Columbia folks demonstrate some cutting edge stuff - taking image and video search to a whole new level - and you had the inventor of the spreadsheet show up: Dan Bricklin.

Dan BricklinImage via Wikipedia



Dan was introduced by Anil Dash. Anil is a Desi like me. He has been blogging for 10 years now. He started blogging when the word blog did not exist yet, and is friends with the guy who coined the term: blog.

I shared a small anxiety with Anil: [WordPress #336657]: Not Being Able To Leave Comments.

Anil Dash On Google Wave

I showed up half an hour early and saw the point in showing up early. I bumped into Mark Peter Davis on the way up. We briefly chatted about our mutual friend Adam Carson. Adam and I met first through the NYTM mailing list.

As I walked into the hall, Nate Westheimer walked up and out.

"Is there an early bird special?" I teased him. He laughed.

Showing up early meant I got to chit chat with Anil Dash, then Dan Bricklin, and Bricklin's son in law who I sat next to the entire show.

Nate: Why Tomorrow Night's NYTM Is So Important

I lingered afterwards until they kicked us out. Then I got to hang out with two members from ScienceHouse on the sidewalk. Gabi was officially the last person to vacate the premises an

Anil DashImage via Wikipedia

d has a picture to prove it.

I guess they did not announce a bar for the after party for this one. Usually they do.

It was a relief to experience a long presentation by Bricklin. Usually the demo people get five minutes. Next you know Nate is breathing down your neck. I guess that is how he creates spots for many presenters.

Towards the end I met a Desi, a Pakistani, who had moved from Dubai only a week or so ago: Adnan Rafik. He claimed to have visited my blog. He recognized me from my picture. "Robert De Niro has only one of these!" It helped that I left a comment on the NYTM page of MeetUp that had my blog's web address.

If you have a startup, you likely have a small team. You need to show up once a month for the tech meetup to imbibe the energy of the hundreds in attendance.

I had the honor of asking the first question to Bricklin. MeetUp CEO, Founder Scott asked the second. This was my first question ever at a tech meetup. It helped that I had got to know Anil right before the show started. He spotted me and handed me the mic.

"With HTML 5 and beyond, do you think the online spreadsheets will end up with much richer functionalities and features than the desktop versions?"

He said they already have. People get to collaborate online. Many people can be working on the same spreadsheet.

"Hi, I am Paramendra with JyotiConnect Incorporated," I began.

For me personally the most touching part of Bricklin's presentation was when someone from the audience asked him if because of the One Laptop Per Child people are getting smarter everywhere.

"People are smart everywhere before the laptop," he said. "They are human." This was the utter, matter of fact non-racism of an extraordinary mind.

Before the show began, and I positioned myself behind Anil's seat and did not realize I was sitting only two seats from Bricklin - at one point I was about to ask him, excuse me, but are you someone famous - and I got into small talk with Bricklin and realized here was a guy who knew Bill Gates and Bill Gates knew before Bill Gates became Bill Gates.

"What was he like?" I asked.

"Oh. He was and is the same guy you see on Charlie Rose," he said.

I found the answer so very disarming. Bill Gates is just human.

http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/3718180749
http://twitter.com/DanB/status/3719386089
http://twitter.com/DanB/status/3718554278

Dan Bricklin CNet Video





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