Ideas, Rule

Yesterday I was at Open Everything NYC held at UNICEF Headquarters, United Nations Plaza in New York.

John Britton (the organizer and the host) was right when he said that weather was responsible for people who registered and did not show up. I think we were around 50-60 people, but it seems actually more than 250 of them said they would come. I had some interesting conversations on how Openess and sharing would make a difference in the fields of music, journalism, education, enterprises.

We also had some wonderful speaker like LESLIE HAWTHORN, Schuyler Erle (btw, I just liked the way he presented RapidSMS, very innovation idea.)

I was impressed with the spirit of openness and the urge to spread it in so many different sectors. Being a techie, I always thought does open source makes sense in other areas. Well it totally does or else Youtube Symphony wouldn’t make sense or take place.

We had several sessions on topics posted by the attendees themselves. I had put a topic “How and Why Enterprise can become more Open?”. All the participants chipped in their views and opinions and had a great time networking. (I shall write a different post on this particular topic)

I am still waiting their Wiki to get updated with the photographs and the videos.

I would definitely recommend others to attend this event next time.

GM, Ford, Chrysler — this is what you need.

Few weeks ago we were celebrating Basoda – a special festival amongst certain communities in India, where for 1 entire day we do not use any form of energy. COLD is the word associated with this day. The entire day is spent in this manner.

- Wake up early, and take a cold water bath. Though it would be terrible in US (east coast)

- Go to a temple, pray!

- Then begins the eating spree, all food cooked previous day.

- Entire day no tea, coffee (you can have cold), no using gas. In earlier days I have heard that people never used electricity. They use to light oil lamps and go to bed early.

- So the idea is not to use any form of energy, heat.

This year while doing this, I realized that inspite of calling it a religious festival, it is more of environmental festival. Our forefathers might have thought that if everybody spends one day without energy, it would be just great. There is no other way to explain it otherwise. I mean apart from the fact that there are religious stories, which tell the significance of eating cold etc etc. I mean it’s a religious way of helping nature. 

I am sure other sects might be having similar ways to help the earth. If not, I find such events to be very effective. Well we did observe EARTH HOUR, isn’t it? How effective was it? But had people observed it “religiously” (pun intended) it would be so helpful. Now think about observing an “EARTH DAY” (23 more hours) with this religious twist. It’s gonna rock. Atleast in India (and mind you we are 1,147,995,904 people) as we tend to do anything and everything for religion. (now letz not go there)

Forgot to mention one thing: this thing is also called as “Mata ka Thanda” or “Sheetala Mata ka Thanda”.

In a newsletter from WebGuild, I saw a story about how Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked the ailing newspaper industry to create a new web format for themselves. After reading the summary over WebGuild, I clicked the link to “more” which redirected me to WSJ site.

And BAM, as soon as I land on WSJ, they ask me to register. Duh?

Isn’t think story about newspapers themselves — which means you WSJ?

If you want to know, which you should, whether Eric’s thoughts makes sense or not let this story be public — your readers will post their thoughts (collective intelligence) which you can use to come up with the next 2.0 for Newspapers!

I was reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog when I came across the link to Posterous – brilliant and simple are the two adjectives I would use.

I immediately sent a forward which I had in my gmail to post@posterous.com and that how it registers you. Tada!

Frankly, since quite sometime I was thinking of a service where everyone can post their forwards. I feel that we all get forwards and we all send forwards, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if we manage our forwards through some social media site. I know, not one more is what you are thinking. But imagine no more email overhead. All this service does is manage all the forwards. 

Anyhoo, I created by account at Posterous – Check it out - http://taurusismysign.posterous.com/

For interested folks, here is a nice blog on Posterous from Techcrunch.