Ian On The Red Dot

This post I wrote somehow made its way to Today Online. Boy oh boy..did I learn something from this experience.

The reproduced post below.

The current issue with DBS High Notes is an interesting one for me because I did consider buying similar products. A few things stopped me from buying though.

One of the first things I learned as a teenager is that if you cannot convince someone, then confuse them. Reading the prospectus for the products definitely confused me. When I get confused, the other party loses my trust.

During a dinner with a group of friends, a Government official asked a banker his opinion about structured products sold by his bank. The banker then advised the official not to buy the product if he had the know-how, as he could get better returns from his own investment. He also explained that the products only worked if the markets behaved within a certain range — it was only safe within that range.

Think about this for a moment: A banker advised someone not to buy his own company’s product. The banker assumed his friend could do better, thinking that his bank would just mess things up. Most of all, the banker didn’t think it was worth paying the bank anything.

Some thoughts.

I learned the ‘if you cannot convince, confuse them’ idea in NS. Sure, I was a teenager then, but removing the context of NS somehow, at least to me, dilutes the message I was trying to convey.

The other thing was the way this line was paraphrased -

The banker assumed the friend could do better as opposed to the banker thinking his bank will just mess things up.

What I meant was the banker didn’t think his bank would screw up but his advice was based on the notion that if you knew what you were doing, you could do better investing yourself than giving the bank any money especially considering the fees you had to pay them.

Now… it is interesting that mainstream newspapers are using the posts written by bloggers. I think in the long run it is a good thing.

However, there is a problem when the words get changed because then what gets printed is based on the journalist’s understanding of the post and not what the blogger said. This however doesn’t mean the journalist who edited and printed my post is at fault for the ‘lost in translation’. What it does mean is that if bloggers want to have increased credibility, and mainstream newspapers printing our posts most certainly adds to that credibility, we have to take more responsibility for our words and our ideas and write better when trying to communicate our thoughts.

The beauty about blogs and online publishing is that we are able to easily update and clarify what was previously said. In the past, if I had been interviewed for the article and I was misquoted, I would have no recourse to clarify the statements attributed to me - with blogs and other forms of social media, I do.

Oh… finally, I would like to thank the journalist who found the post worth sharing and also thanks to Back2Nature for sharing with me about my post appearing on Today.

Why did I start this blog?

I’ve been pondering this question for some time ever since I read these posts by Juzzywuzzy and Ridz.

I first bought this domain to be part of a gift to my gf. I wanted to encourage her to showcase her work here. You can see the flower arrangements that she has been doing over there.

I started the blog initially as a way to share my thoughts with my gf as well as fulfill the need to write. As the months passed, the blog evolved and I started paying more interest in the happenings of the local blogosphere.

Things over the last few months have created a deep sense of dissatisfaction within me with regards to the direction of my professional life. On one hand I’m totally enjoying my job, I’ve met a whole bunch of interesting people and became closer to some very smart people who I’m learning a lot from. On the other hand, I’m just staying the course with no real vision of a destination. I have many pet projects that I do on the side which will never see the light of day because I’m too much of a tinkerer and not much of an artist (because real artists ship).

This is an advice I have to take with regards to my projects:

“You guys have been working on this stuff for months now, another couple weeks isn’t going to make that much of a difference. You may as well get it over with. Just make it as good as you can. You better get back to work!”

My blogging is a reflection of my life (or lack of one) - its existence and content is damning evidence
of how much I’ve become part of a problem that I loathe.

Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content.

These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.

Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere.

I want to be better.

So, yes. I am cutting way back on trips to the steam table of half-finished, half-useful, half-ideas that I both make and consume. And, with respect, I encourage you to consider doing the same; especially if that all-you-can-eat buffet of snark and streaming produces (or encourages) anything short of your “A” game.

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks — empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.

With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.

This is blogging advice I want to keep daily:

Find your obsession. Every day, explain it to one person you respect. Edit everything, skip shortcuts, and try not to be a dick. Get better.

I do have a few interests albeit general ones. I like to read and I like to learn. I’m embarrass to say ‘I love to read and I love to learn’ because ‘love’ involves a whole new level of effort, discipline and diligence that I currently do not practice.

I want to change that. I want to start loving reading again. Start loving to learn again. Stop skimming through a lot of materials but focus on fewer - to remember and more importantly to understand.

To not just indulge in an activity but to master a craft.

I also want to remove the clutter in my life - both physical and online. As part of that effort, I’ve been throwing away stuff that I keep ‘just in case’. I’ve also been throwing away random gifts from random people - stuff that I kept because I thought it would be impolite to throw.

I want to grow. Hell, I need to grow.

I hope this blog changes to be a reflection of that.

Let me introduce you to Stomp’s Star Blog. I just realized that what they are doing is really just a blog carnival.

Now, let’s look at the brainchild of nadnut. Basically, she has started a series of blog posts where she presents us with very simple choices by asking a question in the format of ‘Would You Rather? - A vs B’

I think it is a simple yet brilliant concept.

Nocturne has also been managing a points system on his site for his readers as well as getting us to provide captions for selected photos.

How many kinds of good bloggers are there?

1. Good writers who provoke thought and comments with their posts.
2. Good curators who share interesting, noteworthy stories, photos, videos and links.
3. Able to create a cult following based on personality and lifestyle.

I don’t think the last one is a new concept but I’m starting to see a little more of it on Singapore blogs:

4. A good host that coordinates and aggregates the discussion as well as a dungeon master that directs fun.

Another blogger who is really good at number 4 is Sheylara.

“Are Bloggers Really Influencers,” asks Daryl from Unique-Frequency.

Daryl covers lots of interesting things in his two posts which the question in the header does no justice to.

I think the question in the header is rather moot. As long as two people are interacting with other and paying any sort of attention to each other, I think it would be a practical impossibility for either not to be some way ‘influenced’ by each other.

The questions I think we should be asking are these:

1. What is the extent of a blogger’s influence compared to other sources of influence like friends.

2. When does the blogger’s influence come into play in any sort of thought and decision making process of the reader. Does it come just before the point of making a decision when evaluating the choices or does it come at the beginning when deciding on the range of options to consider.

For example, using Daryl’s example, when deciding which camera to buy, do I go to a well known blogger on cameras to help make the final decision or do I go to a blogger who has blogged on cameras before to decide the choice or does seeing a camera appear on a blog place it in my awareness as one of the possible options and then I go to other sources to evaluate these choices.

3. What does the blogger influence (more than other sources)? Does the blogger influence my purchasing decisions or does the blogger influence how I allocate my time. Is there a particular niche which the blogger influences more than other sources or is the blogger’s word on any matter something I will give greater attention and weight than other sources. Can the blogger change the mind of a reader or only reinforces the reader’s opinion on something?

4. Who does the blogger exert a greater influence on? Do they exert a greater influence on their friends? Is the influence diminished or increased when considering the regular readers? Do they manage to command any sort of noteworthy influence on people who stumble onto their blog?

5. How many people does the blogger influence?

6. What do we measure when talking about a blogger’s influence and how do we measure it? What good can we get from measuring a blogger’s influence?

Finally, the question I think a lot of people want to ask or are asking indirectly, but not coming right out to say it. Does it make any sort of sense, whether we are considering ROIs or whatever metrics, to engage the (?same) few bloggers on Ping.sg?

My answer is yes. We can question whether they are really currently the influencing force we (and you know what, I think the bloggers themselves are not the main culprit in supposing this) think they are but the more important question is whether they will become the force.

Let’s look at the blogging scene in Singapore. We only have a few megastar bloggers like Mr Brown and Xiaxue. We have quite a few good sites that use blogs as a publishing tool (i.e. Culturepush). What we do not have yet, is an active, vibrant and financially sustainable ecosystem of online content creators.

These bloggers are the ones who will become part of the backbone of this ecosystem. Look at the Podfire initiative and Tech65 projects. Sure, the current product may seem a bit raw, but these are the bloggers people (though it seems most of these folks blog too) who are discovering, exploring and learning about how to use the online space effectively and create opportunities for themselves which would not have been there in the old world of Mediacorp and SPH and other old media players.

It is like we are seeing the formation of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce for the online world.

Of course, there are other groups trying their own stuff like clicknetwork.tv which has Xiaxue (who incidentally, made her name as a blogger) as one of its headlining stars.

The key thing to note is that bloggers are one of the groups that are best positioned to take advantages of the opportunities in the nascent online world (in Singapore’s context) to be the new influencing force.

Discount them at your own peril.