Friday, September 30, 2005

where are the cool americans ?

walking from the ashram to the german bakery a few days ago
i fell into conversation with a few guys who had just got off
a bus. asked where i thought they were from i guessed Bagdad.
they were from Amman.

They wondered whether i had been to an Arab country.
i joked that with the usa's behavior in the arab world
i'd be afraid of getting shot.

they were totally offended.
said the perception of arabs as violent was unfounded
and that they understood that the behavior of the governments
didn't reflect the wishes of the people - it never does.

...

in a later conversation in the bakery
with two of very few north americans i've met since travelling
we discussed why there are so few americans travelling ?
'paranoia' was everyone's first guess, tho it seems alittle
too superficial. i don't really believe that all the cool people
in america - and i can attest to the fact that they are there -
are really afraid of terrorists in places like thailand or india.

i don't have any good theories to explain our abscence,
but it doesn't reflect well on us.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Internet Media Seminar in Mumbai

looks like im going to give a couple of talks at commet media
a non profit in mumbai working to set up a new media school. fun fun.

Internet Media Revolution Seminar

What is going on right now with the internet revolution? What technologies are currently changing the way we communicate with each other and represent our own identities to the world ?

Highlights
In this seminar we will spend some time viewing the ways in which people are using internet technologies to communicate with the world. There will be an emphasis on video such as video blogs but will go thru other new technologies useful to the Internet Media Revolutionary such as:
· Podcasting
· Wiki’s
· Social Networks
· Tagging
· Shared Bookmarks
· Slow Networking

We will also explore the social, philosophical, and practical reasons for publishing on the internet.

The particulars
· Thursday Sept 29^th, Oct 13th & Oct 27th at 4:00pm for
90-120 mins.
· A portion of each session will be dedicated to viewing internet video content downloaded from the web.
· Each session will
· Each of the 3 Thursday sessions will be from 4 pm till roughly 5:30 pm.
· Each session will include
o Screening video blogs downloaded from the internet
o Demonstration of several internet technologies
o Discussion of their importance and relevance
o Questions and Answers
· Room for 10, so sign on soon.

The result
By the end of the seminar people should be familiar with the tools available to them to represent themselves on the internet as well as effectively communicate with the rest of the world via the internet.

Resource person: Freeman Murray
Freeman Murray studied Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz which he left to join the Java group at Sun Microsystems in 1995 when the Internet was just starting to heat up. Over the following decade Freeman founded and sold his own Internet software business as well as helped other internet software businesses get going. For the past couple of years Freeman has been concentrated on internet video and how it can be used to democratize the global media.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

india recap

india is great
i totally feel im in the right spot for where im at
in my life right now.

i just spent 4 days in mumbai
and im sick again which is a bit of a bummer.

mumbai is new york style rockin
after spending some time in calcutta, delhi, and
pondicherry (auroville.org) i decided to get an
apartment in mumbai cause it seemed like the
most exciteing place and because im doing internet
video stuff, so it seemed potentially useful to be
close to bollywood.

after a few months tho i noticed i was sorta low
grade sick most of the time and decided i wasn't willing
to sacrifice my physical or mental health for some
abstract ambition. so i moved to pune which is more
laid back then bombay, but has a larger software
scene, a famous yoga institutre (bksiyengar.com), and
the osho(.com) ashram which has tai chi classes in
the morning, meditation classes thru out the day, and
healthy food.

since coming to pune i feel like ive got a cool healthy
lifestyle, im productive, and im not spending that much
money. - probably ~$500 / mo. which makes me feel
comphortable taking some time figureing stuff out.

i spend alot of time in the ashram - which is mostly
western - tho not american.

in the tech world
people are really friendly as everyone wants to get contracts
from america.

there's not much of a start-up scene here yet.
everyone wants outsourcing jobs. im really curious
about how to help get the start-up culture goig.

the outsourcing wave is just beginning
in every city ive been to, all the walls are plastered with
ads for classes promising to teach people java and C++ .
there's 500,000,000 people in india under 25 and some
decend percentage of them are looking at getting into software.

the software thing has also been going on long
enough that there are some very smart and senior
people here. they just get paid MUCH better.
someone fresh out of college may make $250 / mo
while an accomplished engineer with 7 years experience
may make ten times that.

on the tech / pro side ive been focusing around video
stuff for alittle while. with the low cost of video production
gear and internet distribution the major cost is labor - so
i see video production & post in india being pretty key to
the transition of the web to a more video format.

i also feel there's an opprotunity now to be kind of
systematic about produceing the media we feel is
necessary - like producing all the training programs
in the matrix. so, im talking with a couple groups
about helping get a low end video production studio
going over here.

there's alot of other areas i want to get into
on the software side as well, like figuring out
how to deliver high bandwidth high latency
internet content to remote areas
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rywang/postmanet_paper/
http://unitedvillages.com

and doing stuff with structured syndication
...

ideally i'd find some balance between
setting up teams for start-ups back home
and having some sort of labs which can
work on interesting new ideas with the
goal of either open sourcing the development
or starting up with it - or both :)