The Media Supermarket

 While learning a new language (Turkish), and deeply getting involved in understanding the whole culture, I had some great realizations.
First of all, learning a language is not only about learning its words, and knowing how to formulate sentences. There is a deeper understanding of culture and values that is necessary to be able to really speak and interact in a certain language. During learning, and while developing an understanding for that culture, it struck me that a new person is also developing inside me. That new person was born the day I started my quest, and just as a native baby would be, I started mingling in that culture and a “Turkish personality” somehow evolved in me. When you go deep in a certain culture, you not only assimilate with them, but the words, phrases, values and norms set forth a certain way of functioning that you don’t use while speaking other languages. You can observe this with people who lived abroad and are really familiar with that country. The funny thing is that you become German when speak German, and you become Japanese when you speak Japanese! Of course this depends on how deeply you understand the language/culture.
The learning could also be applied to learning in general, and we can also see that the more one spends time on a certain activity or trade, the better they are at it. I also realized the importance of family businesses and the inherited knowledge that comes with it, based on decades and generations of experience. 
Being in the third generation of a family business, I can immediately identify with this. I have naturally learned the trade, and was able to slowly grasp the values under which our business is run. I didn’t need excessive training, I just went there whenever I had the time, and was able to make my own mistakes, and learn in a safe environment. The discussions at home and the general outlook on work was also teaching me how to run the business. But since our industry as a whole is not developing, I’m not involved in it any more. But I can immediately go and start working tomorrow if needed.
Although I still beleive in the importance of stability in a person’s life, and its role in hard-wiring all the things he has to learn, I’m starting to question the validity of this thought. At least in some situations.
The Family Business Conference has validated my idea through the different speakers an dspecialists who showed how relevant this type of business still is. One of the charts proved the effectiveness of family businesses by showing the superior performance of family-owned businesses over other ones, which was depicted on a graph that showed that the former out-performed the S&P ratings in the last decades. This is the result of the long-term focus, ownership, and the deep learning and lifelong understanding that came with being raised in a specialist family. By the way, Beethoven and Strauss came from musical families, and Picasso’s father was an artist too.
The conference that was attended by Jordan’s prime minister Dr. Maarouf Bakhit, had several international contributors who specialized in this field. Several were actually spending years with certain families and their businesses working on how best to devise the structure, how to deal with the technical and legal issues, and most importantly how to make a smooth transition from one generation to the next.
It was really surprising to me how relevant and timely these issues still were. Some speakers stressed the fact that the issues faced by family businesses are universal in nature, and are almost the same across cultures. Haluk Alacaklioglu made a good comparison between the general practices in different cultures.
Two very interesting consecutive speakers gave us an in-depth view of Gezairi, a second generation company transitioning to the third generation. The first was by Dr. Renee Ghattas, outlining her scientific study of the company’s different struggles and challenges throughout the years, and it was great that we had the director of that company, Mona Bou Azza Bawarshi, to give us the personal side of the company and how she manages it.
To me the general discussion was about familiar things, but the approach of dealing with the different challenges was totally new to me, not to mention the legal aspects of family businesses!

Today was the second and last day of the Conference, and again there were many interesting presentations and speakers.
Again I was very happy to hear about Web 2.0 from Yahoo’s Chief Data Officer Dr. Usama Fayyad, and from Samih Toukan, Maktoob’s CEO. And again, the audience was not fully engaged in the importance of these new trends and how they are (sorry for the excessive marketeering) changing our world.
It was great that we were given copies of all the presentations of the conference by the organizer. I’ll try to share them soon.
All in all, it was a very good and useful conference.

In the first day of the annual Media & Telecommunications Convergence Conference there were some interesting discussions by panels from a wide range of expertise. Arab Advisors hosted many of the key players in this industry in the Middle East.
I especially found interesting the speech by Dr. Saad Barrak, Director General of MTC Group about their work in underdeveloped nations. The interesting point he mentioned was an example of how valuable hi tech services were in these nations. He pointed out that since the infrastructure was very limited (no roads, no electricity, and many of the things we consider to be basic) there was a very high value given to mobile calls and services in general. The typical European, for example wouldn’t give that much value to these things, because they are used to being connected with other in several ways.
Not only that, but there was a high economic value in these services, because the farmer no longer has to accept whatever price is given to him by current bidders, he can easily make a phone call and ask for bids for his crop. He can be very empowered negotiating with the merchants discussing the deal with him. It’s strange that huge growth might come from underdeveloped markets precisely because they are underdeveloped!
Another interesting speaker was the marketing director of Ericsson, Jeremy Foster. He clearly had a holistic view of where the content industry is going. His presentation clearly showed the different options available to the user, the price and value comparisons, and the different revenue-generating strategies available to telecoms and content providers.
IP Multimedia Subsystem was a key topic in his discussion and one of the main strategic opportunities to provide content of all types to mobile users. He demonstrated the paradox of the “dumb mega byte” whereby you can download a video clip of a song of 20 MB for free, and that same song, if delivered only as voice would cost $1! Technologically this is irrational, but the market dynamics make it so. It’s a clear sign that more services and value doesn’t necessarily mean more capacity on gadgets. It should mean smarter positioning, and closer contact with the consumer. He also shared his vision of a centralized database for each user, that can be accessible through different devices, without loosing its formatting and richness. Your soul would be floating in no-place and it can manifest itself for you through whichever medium you choose. That should be cool to achieve. Nothing mentioned about user-generated content, which I think is a key factor in everything nowadays.
Alexander McNabb, group account director of Spot On PR made my day by talking about Web 2.0. It was very strange also that less than 10% of the audience knew the term, let alone being familiar with its different aspects and applications. He moderated a very lively panel where a heated discussion took place about pricing and some unfair practices related to internet service providers.
The general atmosphere was nice, execution of the conference was very good, and the food was delicious! 

I tend to side more with Camus’s method of learning how to embrace the dip not because of the gains you might get, but because it is an inevitable part of life and work.

most of them really know what they are talking about. This really contrasts to Seth Godin’s post on “pundits”. Makes you really think…

Kevin Ham, the man behind many of these evil (and seriously cool) tactics, has also managed to remain anonymous in this undercover field of business

I’m the kind of person who constantly needs intellectual stimulation. I always need to have a major mental adventure going on in my life. The more the adventure requires me to learn and discover new things, the better. The most boring times in my life, are the moments spent doing or talking about something I really mastered. You can really drive me crazy if you can put me in such a situation. This book is one such endeavor, if I may say. It’s the kind of book that gives you a totally new direction to move in, and I’m quite comfortable doing this. Not only does it show you the untapped direction in which to go, the books explains how to make use of totally new markets, and how to understand, capitalize, and ,most importantly for me, enjoy the new worlds unfolding to us. There are numerous new tails created, and existing tails are elongating.
What exactly is the “long tail”?

According to Hellen Keller,“The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” This, in a nutshell, is The Long Tail.

Hits and Misses

The culture and economy we are used to live in, depends on the Pareto Principle, more known as the 80-20 principle, which basically states that 80% of the results produced are from the “mighty shoves” of the mighty 20%. If the hits are the products, songs, movies etc. that make it to the top lists, the “misses” are the ones that missed them. A closer look on these two types of products shows that they only missed the shelves, and not necessarily the value we give them. Many products are valuable enough for us to buy them, but we didn’t buy them because they were just not available, due to the tyranny of geography and physical constraints, as Chris Anderson explains.

The culture and economy we are used to live in, depends on the Pareto Principle, more known as the 80-20 principle, which basically states that 80% of the results produced are from the “mighty shoves” of the mighty 20%. If the hits are the products, songs, movies etc. that make it to the top lists, the “misses” are the ones that missed them. A closer look on these two types of products shows that they only missed the shelves, and not necessarily the value we give them. Many products are valuable enough for us to buy them, but we didn’t buy them because they were just not available, due to the tyranny of geography and physical constraints, as Chris Anderson explains.

The Three Forces of The Long Tail

1. Democratize Production: The means of producing goods and services have been dramatically made easy with the new technologies. And since it is easy to produce almost anything (especially intellectual property) the challenge is in the mind of the producer. If you are creative and hard working, you can do some cool stuff.
The means of producing goods and services have been dramatically made easy with the new technologies. And since it is easy to produce almost anything (especially intellectual property) the challenge is in the mind of the producer. If you are creative and hard working, you can do some cool stuff.

2. Democratize Distribution: Making the misses available to whoever wants them, is a key to pushing demand down the tail. Online sales of less-known titles is one of the key drivers. Amazon is one of the prominent examples on this, where they have millions of titles that sell less, but together, they amount to a significant total.

3. Connect Supply and Demand: The ways in which we are making purchase decisions are dramatically changed by these forces. We have recommendation engines, mainly fueled by the history of people’s past decisions. At the same time, those “long tail aggregators” are giving the chance for people to share their reviews, and post their comments for whichever product they have tried. This way, we can get a good amount of information about a certain product in minutes.
I was really surprised to know that Sears had a very long tail of products and an affiliate program back in the beginning of the twentieth century. My initial thought was that such a thing can only be facilitated through the Internet, especially with physical products. There is a detailed explanation of this in the beginning of the book.

Anderson goes on to explain the details of the tail, and its relation to the head. How it behaves in certain industries, and where it might best thrive.

The great thing about this new phenomenon is that it’s not only showing a new way of doing things, this new way is right in the opposite direction of where we were heading in the past. Going for small niches is a really new concept, in contrast to “think big”. The fact that the customers down the tail are people who have special requirements, also means that they are willing to pay a premium to get what they are looking for.
Another important empowerment that these forces provide, is the empowerment for user-generated-content. Again, the first thing that comes to my mind when talking about it, is intellectual content; videos, text, design etc. but there is a great example about LEGO and how they are enabling this. LEGO is giving anyone the option of designing their own pictures or models, uploading them to their website, and getting a map of how the bricks should draw this picture. There is more; this “product” is shipped to the creator, with the picture on the box. This also becomes one of the products that LEGO offer through their website, and they even pay some royalties for the creator of the product if it sells well. Wow!
There is also a great explanation of the long tail of articles, and Wikipedia. An interesting analogy was drawn between Wikipedia and evolution, and the fact that they work extremely well on the macro level, and not necessarily that well in every incident on the micro level. The open source model, makes it a great encyclopedia in terms of flexibility, or more importantly, resilience. There are millions of people contributing, and constantly the articles are updated and improved on by all of us. It’s a great system, and it has this wonderful mechanism that runs it, but, that doesn’t mean that you won’t find crappy articles with very low quality. The best way to use Wikipedia? It is the starting point in your endeavor to understand something, and not the final definitive say on that particular topic. This approach resonates with what Squidoo is actually doing. You provide some links and short summaries related to something you know about, and give the user a starting point and a guide on how to proceed with their quest.

Although these new phenomena seem to just negate our old thinking about the world, they actually don’t. The only thing they do, is that they put some limitations to the theories that we know. Einstein did not negate what Newton taught us. He just proved that these theories apply on the physical level. They just simply are not descriptive of the world on the quantum level.
A paradox seems to pop up when discussing the long tail, and the rise of niches as opposed to hits. Anderson challenges the theory that says that abundant choice is oppressive and leads to less sales. This is based on a study that showed that when people are given six types of jam to taste, they buy more than when they are presented with twenty four. The solution to this, are the recommendation engines. People’s reviews about a certain product give the new comers a glimpse about how well this product is performing. So, if you want to choose the best jam, you can just ask Amazon to give you top selling ones.
But, doesn’t that mean that we are going back to the hits? We are actually asking for the hits this way.
Chris’s answer? This is a hit within a very small niche. The best selling jam, is a hit in the jam category and has nothing to do with food, or general merchandise. Now, a hit is really a meaningful thing, within that niche.
My own theory on this attempts to utilize a group of niche skills, each being average, and maybe the aggregate of these skills amounts to a high quality “long tail person”.

There’s a video discussion done about this book by Anderson, hosted by Google, where he also has an interesting Q&A session that talks about his book.

This is a seriously inspiring video by two authors who have met because their books were extremely similar. This is also a part of the Authors@Google series.
Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success and Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich talk about how to live and balance your life and career(s) and share really cool stories about people who are doing this. They also share how they themselves are doing this in their lives.
They validly questioned (threw away, and replaced) some of my basic assumptions about what can and what cannot be done. What should and what should not be approached as possible.
This is very important for me, because I’m always interested in two million things at one time, and this especially resonates with my idea of “The Long Tail Person“.
A very important distinction was drawn by Tim, which I knew before but this time it sunk in more; the distinction between being busy and being productive. If you confine your thinking to your working hours, you will inevitably find ways of filling that time, and be “busy”. If, on the other hand you really focus on what it is you are trying to achieve and do that, you might really be creating more time and space for the things that you want to do.
One of Tim’s main ideas was to think about what you really want to do, and design everything around that.
“Well, what if you don’t know what you want?” asked one of the people. Marci was actually “waiting” for that question, and they both shared some tips:

1. Go back to your childhood, which is the time you did things without being paid for doing them. “Interview your parents”. This is a really nice and easy way of doing this. You immediately discover the things you would love to do when there is nothing you have to do.

2. Experimenting: taking classes that just seem to be interesting to you. This is actually how Marci changed her career from law to writing. She took a course on writing and found out that this something she would really love to do. Tim also points out some insights from his own experimentation. One of the most important is that the experiment is not the same as doing the work. Surfing two hours on Sunday is a lot different from surfing forty hours every week. Keep this in mind during the experiments. Is this something I would like to do throughout the week?

3. Pursuing happiness: Tim gives a very nice way of getting rid of the pursuit of happiness, because it’s just a mental abstraction that might simply not mean anything. Instead, you should pursue excitement. Things that keep you awake at night, and make you really wonder how this might be possible. Another awakening realization for me (by Tim) was that you don’t really need that much money to do the things that you want to do. He shared a cool anecdote about one of his friends, who wanted to work in a field he hated, just because if he worked hard enough for some years, he’d be making 3 - 5 million dollars a year. Tim’s question,”what are you going to do with all that money?”. His friend didn’t have an immediate answer, he made up a goal about “having a long trip to Thailand”. I could have been that friend. Actually I felt it was me talking. Time for action!

Perfect simplicity and clarity! Everybody knows Apple’s logo, with one bite taken from it.
This ad very cleverly shows “another” bite, showing the discount.
This is an example where the communication is very comfortable for the reader to get. It is as simple as possible, “but not simpler” as Einstein says.
More important than merely being cute, the ad is descriptive, and sticky. You already have the logo embedded in your mind, and this is a temporary alteration to it. This is the essence of the message; that there are temporary price cuts.
No clutter whatsoever, and the mutated logo raises the readers’ curiosity to understand what’s going on.
Brilliant!

via: Ads of the World

As part of Google’s series “Authors@Google”, the CEO Eric Schmidt has recorded an interview with Don Tapscott the coauthor of “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”. They discuss the main points in the book and talk about the massive changes we are living with, because of technologies that allow a huge number of unrelated people to collaborate in interesting and highly useful ways to produce real economic value.
A great example discussed is about a Goldcorp, company that specialized in gold mining. In this industry, the main asset a company owns, is the data they collected regarding gold and its locations. This company committed the unimaginable “sin” of disclosing all its data to the public, by posting it on their website, and asking people for help in finding gold. They would give a prize of $500,000 for the top 3 submissions.
To everybody’s surprise, the company got several unrelated responses from unexpected fields. Chemists sharing chemical tests that help in finding gold, mathematicians and computer scientists contributing with algorithms that make things easier.
The company that was about to close down grew in value from $90M to $10B!
Another striking example is about the most difficult thing to manufacture: airplanes. Boeing took the concept to the extreme and manufactured a plane by creating an atmosphere of mass collaboration to create their new great product.

There is more about the book by Dan in his interview with Tompeters.com.

Can’t wait to get a copy of the book!