My wife bought me Rework Hardcover from Kinokuniya over the weekend. Its a wonderful gift and I’m really thankful. You see this is not a normal business book, some of its concepts are turning traditional business processes on its head and being a bestseller in US and UK you know there is something exceptional there.
Like its title, Work as we know, is getting Reworked.
I’m managing a Projects team in a Digital Agency in Singapore and intrinsically, projects processes also weighs on my shoulder. Having been a designer and a coder, I know that high during uninterrupted blissful productivity. Now I’m on the otherside of the fence, on the managing and client facing side of things, activities are very different and I do miss those highs.
Jason Fried, Author of Rework and co-founder and President of 37signals recently presented at Ted and its a wonderful 15 mins worth of provocative business / management sharing that everyone should sit thru.
I think the future of how we work is going to be different, very different, especially in our internet industry. People will be highly skilled and be able to pick up new skills very quickly simply by searching online. Efficiency and productivity will be so high via mobile devices that we can either do a lot more wherever or choose to spend a lot more time on other things. I’m so excited.
Jeff Brenman did a set of beautiful slides which predicts the future of Work. I think its super accurate and hope for this future to happen now.
In Genesis 32:22-31 of the Bible, it talks about Jacob going thru the transformation from am average person to become the person whom he was destined to be (father of Israel).
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.†~ Genesis 32:28
A sincere encouragement to all those who are struggling out there. Fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith.
Daniel Goh started the sharing session and shared about the last 10 years and predicts some possible futures from his perspective. The 6 main things were:
More Mash-ups
Collaborative Creation
Power to the People
Connection Curation
Increased Activism
Gamification
See his slides on Slideshare. His slides made top presentation of the day on Slideshare, so its really good stuff. Most of the 6 points are already happening now and I really think he have had a glimpse of the future.
Next up was Brian Ling from Design Sojourn who shared about how his career path was like. And now how he finally deciding to start out on his own with his blog as the main primary marketing vehicle to his design consultancy business. He is clearly rich in experience and made the right preparations before this transition. I wish Design Sojourn all the best in its business. :)
Jon Yongfook
Jon Yongfook gave us a sneek preview of his latest project Littlecosm and it really looks like a fun website. It allows your positive and negative twitter updates to evolve your Littlecosm character and with its light / dark points, individuals will have different capabilities. Check out his slides on Slideshare.
Todd Kurie
Last up was Todd Kurie from MyCube. Being personally involved in MyCube late last year and earlier this year, I’m glad to see its progress and am excited for its launch early 2011.
You can also see Claudia’s post about the event which have lots more details, photos and links.
The Future
The future is indeed exciting and its very possible that The Next Big Bang can come from Singapore. All you need is an idea to solve a real world problem, a few individuals who want to make it happen and enough resources to make it happen. I always tell myself that any idea I come up with might already be thought by someone else and sometimes loose that drive to want to do anything about the idea. However, looking at those days when we thought Yahoo was it, then came along Google, then when we thought Google was it, then came along Facebook, Now Twitter and Foursquare is on the rise and a recent study showed 75% of 16,000 mobile Youtube users said mobile is their primary way of consuming Youtube content.
The world changes everyday and people’s needs change as well, this means there will constantly be a need for new answer to new problems.
A few videos to make all of us excited.
Ideas for next #TNBB
Overall, I think the event was clearly a success with a healthy number of people attending (some had to stand at the back) and with interesting speakers with lots of depth in what they were sharing. I’m already looking forward to the next TNBB already.
A few ideas of how I think TNBB could take shape in the future which I shared briefly with Claudia.
By Demographic – Invite 6 speakers, two from below 20 years old, two from 20 to 30 years old and two from above 30 years old. I believe the ways this 3 group create, consume and interact with online content are drastically different. I cannot understand how some kids can have 200 Facebook comments in a few minutes, while I clearly understand the challenges a > 30 years old face when they want to blog *cough* work *cough* family *cough*.
By Industry – Every quarter and organised into verticals.
Q1 2011 – Technology
Q2 2011 – Cars
Q3 2011 – Photography
Q4 2011 – Fashion
Q1 2012 – Food
Q2 2012 – Kids & Parenting
Q3 2012 – Business & Marketing
Q4 2012 – Sports
Q1 2013 – Music
Q2 2013 – Design & Creative
Q3 2013 – Gaming
Q4 2013 – Travel
etc…
Across Online Disciplines – Lots of different disciplines are online so we can touch on:
Online Creative Design
Online Marketing
Online Social Marketing
Online Technical Development
Online Product Development
Online Game Development
Online Applications
etc…
The key I think is so long the target audience is clearly defined and kept consistent, it will not be difficult to know what interests this core target audience.
If you have any ideas, feel free to comment here or DM Claudia at @claudia10 or post on the Facebook Page.
I finally decided to load up some of my slides on Slideshare. I shared this set of slides during a company trip back in 2007 with the sole purpose to encourage my colleagues to develop their capabilities further. Also, I just completed Heroes Season 1, so that explains the style.
