kelvin quee

It continuously interests and bewilders me that with such rapid advancements in communications technology that people are still unable to communicate effectively. Mostly, it isn’t really about Technology per se, it is about Communication.

Often, I’ve sent emails that were never replied. Emails sent but badly replied, completely missing the points. Or, the ultimatum of Bad Email Communications – Email sent, not replied but Action taken with totally erroneous understanding.

Most youngsters (though I’m one myself) have this fixation on SMS-ing/text-ing/messaging (depending on which part of the world you’re from) and they seem to love to communicate everything with short messages (which I’ll now call ‘SMS’). Granted that SMS is great for leaving a note or chatting up with the cute chick/hunk you just met 5 minutes ago, it’s not for conducting a discussion.

It’s not a tool for discussion. It’s not a tool for discussing projects with moving targets. It’s not meant for anything that can’t fit in 160 characters.

And I haven’t mentioned how I dread typing English on a numeric keypad. Even with T9 Predictive Text, it’s still a major chore. Factor in the strange, Singapore style of SMS/text/message lingo and you’ve a text message in perfectly legible Roman characters that requires far more than a modern day living Rosetta stone to translate.

And our Singaporean youth seems to carry those bad habits from their texting routine into emails and instant messages.

In order to encourage better communication between people, I hereby list down what I’ve learnt after years of bad experiences.

Kelvin Quee’s 5 Rules for Effective Electronic Communications

In order of importance:

1) Use the phone. To be precise, use the VOICE function of the phone.
The only exception is when you suspect that the person might be occupied or the Action only needs to be taken after a long time.

2) Are you sure you cannot use the VOICE function of the phone? See Point 1.

3) You are going to TEXT? No! Can you send an Email instead? When you send a email, please ensure you put in a meaningful Subject line. Oh yes, there’s a Subject line function available! Please type in English and use proper punctuation too. Thank you.
Email takes too long? Then you should probably CALL. See Point 1.

4) Are you sure you cannot use the VOICE function of the phone? See Point 1. No? Okay. What about Email? See Point 3. Email is too slow and a Call is too intrusive? This is probably the only time you should then use a SMS.

5) So we see that you have to use SMS. Alright, please exercise your articulation prowess with care and express yourself clearly and fully within 160 characters. Use English. Thank you. Are you sure you can’t just CALL? See Point 1.

I never was a good Communicator. I’m far from perfect. Still, I learn from bad experiences and I’ve learn that we should use the Right Tool for the Right Job. Get the point across, get things done quickly and move on.

There’s more to life than spending Time on correcting mistakes due to a badly written Text Message.

I’ve learnt a huge amount from the iX Conferences that I’ve attended. Firstly, it’s the Academic Conference held at SMU which is free of charge for students. Next up, it’s the iX Congress which I had the fantastic opportunity to both attend and speak at.

Over time, I would probably share more and more of the knowledge that I’ve gained here but here are 2 most important lessons that I’ve learnt which I’ll translate to you, from my own perspective.

Flickr and User Generated Content

Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo! gave a insightful presentation about the acquisition and further development of Flickr. More importantly, he talked about the phenomenon of User Generated Content.

User Generated Content is probably as old as the Internet itself, but it was elevated (or, deprecated, depending on your point of view) to buzzword status with the prominence of Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia. Afterall, wasn’t the BBS and Usenet filled with User Generated Content?

What Flickr and YouTube did right was giving users means to easily upload content into a space that was easy and pleasant to use. With that, there was a torrent of Content flooding it, which immediately created the next Problem which turned out to be an Opportunity.

Organising Content

Horowitz then brought the audience back to the days when the Internet was at its infancy, during the days when Yahoo! was starting out. Webpages were organised into categories and sub-categories, a method that was tedious for the maintainers of the service, but wildly effective.

But the web grew too big and such a method, instinctively, would be too tedious. A search method is needed, but search results were too off tangent most of the time. It wasn’t until Google’s Pagerank when search results were truly relevant.

Flickr faced the same problem, but probably more difficult. There’s no way, at least no accurate and fast means, for an indexing service to organise videos. It’s then clear that the only way is through Tagging and passsing the work back to users.

But would users do the work?

It turns out that users would, even love to, tag their own content, provided that the system is simple and enjoyable to use. There is no content management system as complex and as effect as the human mind. It seems to be the Occam’s Razor to a very complex problem and one that is startlingly effective.

Of course, if you look at it from a System Designer’s point of view, it’s a dream come true, to be accurate, their Wildest Dream Come True.

Give users the facilities and they create, share, upload, organise, rate, review and comment on all Content. It’s almost like an Autonomous Content Generating Machine. What could be better?

We now all know that Flickr and YouTube are sitting atop gold mines. If, somehow, they manage to put advertisements that are acceptable by the users, it will prove to lucrative.

And, guess who’s doing all the work? You.

== To be continued ==

This is a followup to Speak Out on ICT 2006. The video of the speech given at SMU at the competition (not the one at iX Conference) is above. Slides are here, while the text for the speech is here. Note that the actual speech varies rather wildly from what I intended to give, but the essence is essentially the same.

I had the fantastic opportunity of speaking at iX Conference last Thursday (22 July 2006). It’s a really huge stage for me and I’m deeply honoured by the opportunity.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do as well as I had expected myself to. I didn’t meet up to expectations.

My lack of experience is chiefly to be blamed. I had given numerous small room presentations before and have often been able to built a rapport with the audience halfway through the presentation. That rapport helps me to bring in the spontaneity, which I strongly believe is the strength of my presentation style.

Up there, on the stage, the audience is one dark mass. Add to the fact that the audience is probably very much more knowledgeable and the fact that I’ve over-rehearsed my material, I merely regurgitated material.

Probably not. As always, I try to push the limits. I added in one slide, speaking about Collective Intelligence as a Market Place. Bad idea. I stumbled.

Then I tried to add-in spontaneity. Artificial ingredients. Really bad idea. I simply wasn’t delivering well.

Good thing, as I’ve found out later during the networking sessions, that the audience seems wowed by the slides, those were the only saving grace.

Looking back, there were some very impressive speakers who managed to capture the audience’s attention with material that they’ve probably used countless times and still managed to sense of freshness, earnest and sincerity. These are masterclass speakers that I need to learn from.

I would like to thank William Claxton for organising and allowing mere students like us to address professionals on a stage like this. Also, to all the great people that was there to support me. Thank you!

The videos, slides and speech will be posted soon.

Bootstrap Singapore is an initiative by Rizuan and I to form a Bootstrapping community in Singapore.

Bootstrapping is a form of entrepreneurship whereby little emphasis is placed on fundraising and all the other details of forming a company. Attention is placed on where it really matter, that is, actually doing it. Entrepreneurs then leverage upon on each other’s abilities hence getting the jobs done cheaper and faster.

A mailing list has been formed. There are plans to organise monthly meetups once we hit a critical mass.

Join us to see how we can help one another and promote the spirit of bootstrapping. For more information, contact me or Ridzuan.

Find out more about bootstrapping here:
Singapore Entrepreneurs
Wikipedia - Bootstrapping
Bootstrap Network

I’m twiddling with the concept of Personal Marketing.

If you are interested in exploring the opportunities, please give me a buzz.

Or, watch it grow at 359d.com.

I’m very lucky to have won the competition, since the competition was so strong. Both Ming Yeow and Pin Quan are very strong competitors that delivered a speech saturated with insights. It really was humbling.

But all of us had a great time knowing each other and to hear from the leaders of the IT industry in Singapore.

I will also have the opportunity to speak at the iX Conference Congress. It is a great honour, but handling the scale of the stage will be very challenging. Nevertheless, I will treasure this chance.

Here is a summary of what happened and a press release, together with the judges’ critique of other worthy competitors.