Thursday, February 10, 2011

Turning The Table Upside Down With Food

John LennonCover of John LennonFood/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics
Project Noah: FoodSpotting's Sibling Company

Food has been a weapon for sexism for the longest time. You are a woman, you belong at home, you need to raise children, you need to be in the kitchen, you need to cook. Food.

Raising children is such a beautiful experience, John Lennon took five years out of his life to raise his son full time. But that same act can be used as a weapon of sexism. It has been.

You reject food, you reject children. You take a stand. That was one thread of feminist protests a few decades back. You don't marry.

Project Noah: FoodSpotting's Sibling Company

Fred_WilsonImage by Nic*Rad via FlickrI just showed up at Fred Wilson's blog, and read through his post for the day. I quit coffee, but have not quit Fred Wilson's blog that I visit near daily. You know I visited because I leave a comment at the bottom of every post I read. I check in the AVC community way.

So I am reading the post and I am thinking, I just found a sibling company to FoodSpotting. Instagram is a sibling company to FourSquare, Project Noah is a sibling company to FoodSpotting.

This is exciting, and underestimated. This is nothing less than a quiet revolution. My first event of the ongoing Social Media Week was the FoodSpotting/Whole Foods panel. I blogged afterwards. I started working on another post right away but never got to completing it. And I am going to cannibalized that for this post. Or maybe it will stay a separate post, my next post: Turning The Table Upside Down With Food.

Food/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Met The Sixth Bihari

Denise RichardsCover of Denise RichardsI showed up for what I thought was a panel discussion on Assange and Wikileaks earlier in the day, instead much of the discussion was about denial of service attacks.

But the Q and A session surfaced the sixth Bihari I have met in America. The dude went on and on about how great Bihar was but global media, social and otherwise, had not been paying attention to the glorious history and greatness of the 80 million Biharis. It was one of those and your question is moments. My man. Fellow Bihari.

Slumdog Millionaire: A Movie About My People
Third World Guy

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Tweet Pitches To First World Women

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseI just sent out tweet pitches to every Twitter handle I could get hold of on this page: A Field Guide To The Female Founders, Influencers And Deal Makers Of The New York Tech And Media Scene.

These First World women need to be caring about my Third World women, and my FinTech startup would be a great way to do that.

Tweet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

Seven Social Media Week Events

Logo used by WikileaksImage via WikipediaI tried very hard to limit myself to few Social Media Week events this year. First I decided on one: the party Thursday. Then I added one more. Then one. And I am like, that's it. But now looks like I will have attended seven Social Media Week events by the time the week is over, one of them on LiveStream. That counts. I got to witness the entire panel discussion, and got to ask a question on Twitter.

This morning the UN panel discussion was great, except the moderator chunked off the Q and A session. What a bummer. I approached him later and asked the question anyway.

"What is happening in Egypt right now, we did this successfully in Nepal in 2006. I was the only Nepali in America to have worked full time for it. We did good. That inspired protests in Tibet and Burma, both of which were mercilessly crushed. Iran's was another failure in 2009. Tunisia was a success, but Egypt is struggling. Social media is important. My blog was my primary tool when I did what I did, not phone calls, although those I did, not events, I attended quite a few. But at the end of the day social media is just a tool. Ultimately the challenge of a political revolution and of confronting the ugly, concrete versions of sexism in some parts of the world are social and political in nature. The solutions are primarily political. Would you agree?"

Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever