Just when the Instagram is being touted as The vehicle for building brand recognition, Starbucks has found a way to make bucks by way of Twitter. It's pretty clever and not something that comes straight from Twitter cookbooks for marketeers. Based on the buzz being generated, it is safe to assume that other retailers will borrow from the idea.
This is a lot like giving a gift without having wrapped it so everyone can see. In the "real world" that would be a social faux pas, but somehow this is not. The chosen few (or even one) of someone's followers could be tweeted a coffee because they are so awesome. Those that are left behind will not feel quite so awesome. Back in the day when that gift may have come via email, no one would have been wiser. The expectation here is some customers will act of out of impulse to be cool and trend setting which will prompt herd behavior among those they are connected with. It will not matter so much that this is at odds with established etiquette for gift giving - the coolness will be enough to mitigate that.
crossings as in traversals, contradictions, counterpoints of the heart thought often not..
Friday, December 06, 2013
Monday, December 02, 2013
Too Much Good
I have been a very happy Amazon customer for more than a decade. Reading about Amazon Prime Air gave me pause. I consult with clients on customer analytics and opportunities to enhance their experience with the product or service. Assuming, Amazon has a significant number of customers like myself who are more than happy to wait 3-5 days for their order to be delivered, clearly the drone service is not meant for us.
However, when our friends and neighbors start to get their Amazon packages air-dropped, we may feel like a tribe of Luddites that have just failed to keep up with the times. What was once a completely satisfactory customer experience may turn a little less so. It will be like choosing to write letters in longhand instead of using email. As charming as letter writing is, the vast majority of us have transitioned completely to email. That transition was not equally easy or natural for everyone.
Makes me wonder about what constitutes good customer experience and how its future is shaped. A combination of disruption by the business and a certain niche of the customer population that is eager for it can raise the tide for everyone. Yet with vastly improved service (in this case near real time delivery of an order) cross sections of the customer population may feel dissatisfied or unappreciated. What may be a completely unrelated miss may now be attributed to the new delivery model these customers were not the target for. Attrition analysis does not often take into account the impact of delivering great features and services that a loyal group of customers had no need for.
However, when our friends and neighbors start to get their Amazon packages air-dropped, we may feel like a tribe of Luddites that have just failed to keep up with the times. What was once a completely satisfactory customer experience may turn a little less so. It will be like choosing to write letters in longhand instead of using email. As charming as letter writing is, the vast majority of us have transitioned completely to email. That transition was not equally easy or natural for everyone.
Makes me wonder about what constitutes good customer experience and how its future is shaped. A combination of disruption by the business and a certain niche of the customer population that is eager for it can raise the tide for everyone. Yet with vastly improved service (in this case near real time delivery of an order) cross sections of the customer population may feel dissatisfied or unappreciated. What may be a completely unrelated miss may now be attributed to the new delivery model these customers were not the target for. Attrition analysis does not often take into account the impact of delivering great features and services that a loyal group of customers had no need for.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thwarted Dreams
A long time fan of Doris Lessing, I loved reading this Paris Review interview with her. This excerpt was particularly personal for me :
My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother. She was always wanting us to be something. For a long time she wanted me to be a musician, because she had been a rather good musician. I didn’t have much talent for it. But everybody had to have music lessons then. She was always pushing us. And, of course, in one way it was very good, because children need to be pushed. But she would then take possession of whatever it was. So you had to protect yourself. But I think probably every child has to find out the way to possess their own productions.
I was raised by a frustrated mother in many ways I am one too. Motherhood is deeply fulfilling - the joy of creating life is a powerful force. However, it does fade in time to be replaced by the need for seeing thwarted dreams come to fruition. A proxy for giving birth perhaps. Sadly for the child, they become the conduit for this rather negative energy - to that end the pushing and prodding often in directions contrary to their passions and natural abilities.
My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother. She was always wanting us to be something. For a long time she wanted me to be a musician, because she had been a rather good musician. I didn’t have much talent for it. But everybody had to have music lessons then. She was always pushing us. And, of course, in one way it was very good, because children need to be pushed. But she would then take possession of whatever it was. So you had to protect yourself. But I think probably every child has to find out the way to possess their own productions.
I was raised by a frustrated mother in many ways I am one too. Motherhood is deeply fulfilling - the joy of creating life is a powerful force. However, it does fade in time to be replaced by the need for seeing thwarted dreams come to fruition. A proxy for giving birth perhaps. Sadly for the child, they become the conduit for this rather negative energy - to that end the pushing and prodding often in directions contrary to their passions and natural abilities.
The awareness of this flaw in me has helped me stop to consider if I am pursuing my own agenda or I truly have my child's best interests at heart. I still push J - much harder than she would like sometimes, but I force myself to let go so she can breathe. I am still learning to fully disconnect my dreams from hers - often they are a dense tangle that cannot be easily teased apart. Maybe in that space she will find a way to protect herself and learn how to possess her own productions.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Glass House
Met my friend S for lunch today after several months. She is one of my trusted advisors on what works (or not) when parenting tweens. J finds her hip, cool and pretty - the winning combination. It helps that S has a number of interesting hobbies and a beautiful singing voice. I was telling her about how J has often asked me if it was okay to share something fairly personal with her best friend - I have said yes but that conversation never ended up happening. J decided against it fearing she may be considered weird for having a problem that needed sharing - no one else does that. She does not want to be the minority of one.
S's perspective on the issue helped clarify things for me. According to her, this is the Facebook generation - they are used to living in the public eye, their lives airbrushed to perfection. Everyone is exuberant all the time, winning at everything and incredibly happy. That is the artificial standard that people are using to calibrate themselves. In that context, it is hard to be authentic, have a problem, have anything less than perfect life - ofcourse J will balk at the idea of sharing even if she wants to. The friends she fears to talk about what's bothering her have the exact same fears. They are all living in glasshouses on their personal islands - incessant chatter in cyberspace but no real communication.
S is ten years younger than me, but we know a lot about each others' lives - specially of the parts that are deeply flawed. She lives in the glasshouse like her peers. The inflated standards she mentions apply to her as well. It seems like she can let go of that with me. We can talk about things that really matter to us - hopes, dreams and fears. Meeting for a couple of hours is an authentic experience - she can always go back to the glass house and project perfection as the rules of engagement require her to do.
S's perspective on the issue helped clarify things for me. According to her, this is the Facebook generation - they are used to living in the public eye, their lives airbrushed to perfection. Everyone is exuberant all the time, winning at everything and incredibly happy. That is the artificial standard that people are using to calibrate themselves. In that context, it is hard to be authentic, have a problem, have anything less than perfect life - ofcourse J will balk at the idea of sharing even if she wants to. The friends she fears to talk about what's bothering her have the exact same fears. They are all living in glasshouses on their personal islands - incessant chatter in cyberspace but no real communication.
S is ten years younger than me, but we know a lot about each others' lives - specially of the parts that are deeply flawed. She lives in the glasshouse like her peers. The inflated standards she mentions apply to her as well. It seems like she can let go of that with me. We can talk about things that really matter to us - hopes, dreams and fears. Meeting for a couple of hours is an authentic experience - she can always go back to the glass house and project perfection as the rules of engagement require her to do.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Catching Up
An unexpected chunk of free time I came into recently, will end this month. The weather has been pleasant allowing for long walks in the morning - a rare indulgence for me. To fight off what was turning into an afternoon nap habit, I thought to catch up on movies from home instead. First on my list was Midnight's Children and then some Bengali movies - Antaheen, Mach Mishti & More and Goynar Baksho. I am several years behind at this time and picked three that received positive reviews.
Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children was a perfect treat. In the movie, the book had come to life bringing back memories of the time I had read it over twenty five years ago. Back then it had been a hard book to read but interesting enough for me to persevere. An intricate web of stories with complex references to Indian politics, society and history - it was certainly no bed time reading. The movie is able to keep the essence and spirit of the novel (not surprising being that Rushdie wrote the screenplay) but make it very easy to enjoy.
On the Bangla front, I found it hard to like the portrayals of modern day Kolkata and Bengalis which all but the last movie are. The music is consistently painful lyrically and tonally. Blank verse set to discordant tunes does not bear any resemblance to music from my home state that I can associate with - and I grew up with a lot of Bengali music. The characters speaking a strange mix of English, Bangla and Hindi, generally struggle to find their way in the world. Their sense of self is either defined externally or non-existent.
In Goynar Baksho, the ghost of Rashmoni the matriarch of a zamindar family who was widowed at twelve is a robust character. The supporting cast are real people too - they have flaws, foibles and passions. No one is confused about who they are and what they are meant to do with their life. Based on the movies, it would appear that in a span of about seventy five years we as a people went from three to two dimensional, gave up our Bengali identity for a confused state that is struggling to be pan Indian and global.
Back in my own home, there is J - largely incurious about India or Bengal. The stories of my childhood mean nothing to her - the humor in them is frequently lost in translation. She is surrounded by kids whose parents have made a concerted effort to introduce India and their regional culture to them. J would rather blend in the larger population than be one of them. By when she is an adult all that would be Bengali about her maybe a few of her favorite recipes - I hope some of the music will stay with her. India will remain in her name and physical appearance. She would be just as far away from Bangla as Kolkata locals though for entirely different reasons.
Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children was a perfect treat. In the movie, the book had come to life bringing back memories of the time I had read it over twenty five years ago. Back then it had been a hard book to read but interesting enough for me to persevere. An intricate web of stories with complex references to Indian politics, society and history - it was certainly no bed time reading. The movie is able to keep the essence and spirit of the novel (not surprising being that Rushdie wrote the screenplay) but make it very easy to enjoy.
On the Bangla front, I found it hard to like the portrayals of modern day Kolkata and Bengalis which all but the last movie are. The music is consistently painful lyrically and tonally. Blank verse set to discordant tunes does not bear any resemblance to music from my home state that I can associate with - and I grew up with a lot of Bengali music. The characters speaking a strange mix of English, Bangla and Hindi, generally struggle to find their way in the world. Their sense of self is either defined externally or non-existent.
In Goynar Baksho, the ghost of Rashmoni the matriarch of a zamindar family who was widowed at twelve is a robust character. The supporting cast are real people too - they have flaws, foibles and passions. No one is confused about who they are and what they are meant to do with their life. Based on the movies, it would appear that in a span of about seventy five years we as a people went from three to two dimensional, gave up our Bengali identity for a confused state that is struggling to be pan Indian and global.
Back in my own home, there is J - largely incurious about India or Bengal. The stories of my childhood mean nothing to her - the humor in them is frequently lost in translation. She is surrounded by kids whose parents have made a concerted effort to introduce India and their regional culture to them. J would rather blend in the larger population than be one of them. By when she is an adult all that would be Bengali about her maybe a few of her favorite recipes - I hope some of the music will stay with her. India will remain in her name and physical appearance. She would be just as far away from Bangla as Kolkata locals though for entirely different reasons.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Longing To Create
One of the comments on this article about the biological urge women feel to have babies, mirrors my own experience
I remember being 28 and having an urge to have a baby. I swooned at every kid that I saw....how cute, want one.
Well I began painting and the urge went away.
Several women echo those sentiments in the comment thread. I used to wonder about my sporadic urge to paint water-colors. Before there was J, I had several of these "episodes" some lasting a few weeks others several months. But for the last decade or so it has been completely dead.
And then recently, it struck me again - not sure how long this phase will last but it is as manic as it as ever been. I hear myself telling my friends that I miss having a baby and that J will be gone to college soon - five years is not that far away. J still allows me to baby her sometimes. I am starting to make peace with the fact there will not be another baby. Maybe the longing to create one is being channelled this way - it would explain the ten year hiatus.
I remember being 28 and having an urge to have a baby. I swooned at every kid that I saw....how cute, want one.
Well I began painting and the urge went away.
Several women echo those sentiments in the comment thread. I used to wonder about my sporadic urge to paint water-colors. Before there was J, I had several of these "episodes" some lasting a few weeks others several months. But for the last decade or so it has been completely dead.
And then recently, it struck me again - not sure how long this phase will last but it is as manic as it as ever been. I hear myself telling my friends that I miss having a baby and that J will be gone to college soon - five years is not that far away. J still allows me to baby her sometimes. I am starting to make peace with the fact there will not be another baby. Maybe the longing to create one is being channelled this way - it would explain the ten year hiatus.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Lapsed Bengali
Recently, my father was lamenting my disconnection from all things Bengali to the point that I had even missed Durga Puja this year. How would J ever know what it means to be Indian and Bengali he asked me ? Did I not consider part of my job as a parent to create connections to her roots ? A person without roots is destined to be forever lost he warns me.
Our opinions on the subject are too far apart to hope for reconciliation. I have made peace with the fact that he will vent sometimes and that I will need to absorb it gracefully.
Reading Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri was like drinking a perfectly brewed cup of Darjeeling tea - a thing that many Bengalis of my parents' vintage feel quite passionately about. Though one could argue (and rightly so) who cares about stupid Darjeeling tea or whatever other holy cows of Bengal. The same cast of characters, in their familiar locale - we see them in different avatars in all of her writing but her story telling seems to get better and better with time.
It would be great to see similar growth in the substance of her narrative - in what is left unsaid for the reader to discover.This story to me felt like John Updike meeting Alice Munro but still missing something. A vignette from the life of a Bengali family reproduced with amazing fidelity - no detail too small to omit. Add life-spark to this and it would be a thing of remarkable beauty.
I thought I would share it with J so she learns something about the culture and a way of life I am not familiarizing her with but more importantly about the fine art of word-smithing.
Reading Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri was like drinking a perfectly brewed cup of Darjeeling tea - a thing that many Bengalis of my parents' vintage feel quite passionately about. Though one could argue (and rightly so) who cares about stupid Darjeeling tea or whatever other holy cows of Bengal. The same cast of characters, in their familiar locale - we see them in different avatars in all of her writing but her story telling seems to get better and better with time.
It would be great to see similar growth in the substance of her narrative - in what is left unsaid for the reader to discover.This story to me felt like John Updike meeting Alice Munro but still missing something. A vignette from the life of a Bengali family reproduced with amazing fidelity - no detail too small to omit. Add life-spark to this and it would be a thing of remarkable beauty.
I thought I would share it with J so she learns something about the culture and a way of life I am not familiarizing her with but more importantly about the fine art of word-smithing.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Signs of Spring
I am sitting in the cafeteria of an art museum with a beautiful view from the walls of glass around me. J is here with with her art teacher to learn about different brush strokes. This place has a lot of memories for me - all very happy ones. There was temple in my home town in India where I liked going to when in need of renewal. This is where I come now. The two places could not be more unlike each other.
Outside a photographer is taking pictures of a family - they are jumping on cue and it takes many tries to get the moment right. Everyone is having fun with it. No lilies in the pond this time of year, the sky is overcast the wild grass is a dreary shade brown. But the smell of coffee and the sound of smooth jazz connects me to moments of renewal past - times when there may or may not have been any outward signs of spring.
Outside a photographer is taking pictures of a family - they are jumping on cue and it takes many tries to get the moment right. Everyone is having fun with it. No lilies in the pond this time of year, the sky is overcast the wild grass is a dreary shade brown. But the smell of coffee and the sound of smooth jazz connects me to moments of renewal past - times when there may or may not have been any outward signs of spring.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Inflating Expectations
I had to go check out Healthcare.gov after reading one too many articles like this one - which was by far the most balanced in its observations. The experience of going through the registration and submission process was fraught with deja vu for me.
The design is slick, web 2.0, senior friendly and demands very little from the user. While that's all good, its sets certain expectations of a frictionless finish. So when the submit option results in a blank page and you are left hanging there is a sense of deep disappointment.
What we have here is a building with a beautiful facade but missing plumbing and electricity. So familiar from engagements I have worked on over the years with big clients. The common theme is the idea of designing a system based on use cases and the oversimplification that follows from this premise. A user interacts with a system in a certain number of ways and workflows are constructed around them.
This is fun work - a cross functional team can come together and build something that everyone can understand equally well. There is also the false sense of comfort that the needs of the customers are being fully considered and to that end the finished product will be perfect.
The business of integrations that need to happen under the hood and the data flows to keep the systems of engagement in lock step with the systems of record, are not given nearly the same attention - this is not use case driven stuff. Not everyone in the project team understands what this is about, the communication between technical and non-technical members of the project team become harder and frequently break down. The results manifest themselves as they have on Healthcare.gov where the scale of challenges (based on the stated objectives and not what ends up being delivered) is orders of magnitude greater than anything most of us in the IT business have ever encountered.
The design is slick, web 2.0, senior friendly and demands very little from the user. While that's all good, its sets certain expectations of a frictionless finish. So when the submit option results in a blank page and you are left hanging there is a sense of deep disappointment.
What we have here is a building with a beautiful facade but missing plumbing and electricity. So familiar from engagements I have worked on over the years with big clients. The common theme is the idea of designing a system based on use cases and the oversimplification that follows from this premise. A user interacts with a system in a certain number of ways and workflows are constructed around them.
This is fun work - a cross functional team can come together and build something that everyone can understand equally well. There is also the false sense of comfort that the needs of the customers are being fully considered and to that end the finished product will be perfect.
The business of integrations that need to happen under the hood and the data flows to keep the systems of engagement in lock step with the systems of record, are not given nearly the same attention - this is not use case driven stuff. Not everyone in the project team understands what this is about, the communication between technical and non-technical members of the project team become harder and frequently break down. The results manifest themselves as they have on Healthcare.gov where the scale of challenges (based on the stated objectives and not what ends up being delivered) is orders of magnitude greater than anything most of us in the IT business have ever encountered.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Baby Pictures
For a recent school project, J needed a picture of my grandmother. We pulled out the album of J's baby pictures which has one of her on grandma's lap. Checking out baby pictures is an activity everyone in my family enjoys - specially J. DB gets to be part of her life that precedes him so he wants to know the stories behind the pictures. Compared to these very creative pictures, mine are very pedestrian. They made me think about how we capture childhood as parents and what that says about us. Most of us are inspired by cuteness - we want to capture that precious moment.
Most of the ideas come from his daughters – eight-year-old Kristin and five-year-old Kayla. Jason says that they are never-ending source of ideas.
Going the creative route and getting ideas from the subject on how to photograph them never occurred to me. The two young ladies in these adorable pictures tell a story that is so special and unique - it is only about them and their father. Every child like J has a ton of cute baby pictures and all babies have cuteness in common. These pictures end up being about the photographer's view of their childhood and not their own experience. Only a child would think of duck taping their baby sister to the wall - and that memory can be relived for ever.
Most of the ideas come from his daughters – eight-year-old Kristin and five-year-old Kayla. Jason says that they are never-ending source of ideas.
Going the creative route and getting ideas from the subject on how to photograph them never occurred to me. The two young ladies in these adorable pictures tell a story that is so special and unique - it is only about them and their father. Every child like J has a ton of cute baby pictures and all babies have cuteness in common. These pictures end up being about the photographer's view of their childhood and not their own experience. Only a child would think of duck taping their baby sister to the wall - and that memory can be relived for ever.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Departing From Common Sense
A local government agency that deals with a lot of data wanted to use the services of a hometown entrepreneur ( a guy I am acquainted with) who "does Big Data" to help them figure out what Big Data could do in concert with their traditional Business Intelligence platform. I am sure there will be a way to fit a solution to a problem that does not completely exist. Reading this Forbes article about the key themes in the Big Data space was interesting to me for a couple of highlights cited :
Banana production in Central America is twice the rate of trash production in New York City - as an example of the hidden nuggets of wisdom you may glean from crunching through a ginormous amount of data. Being that there is a market for everything, the thought is it may be important for someone to know the precise relationship between banana production in Central America and trash production in New York City.
That is the holy grail of big data analytics - to uncover stuff like this. The there is the next level of detail - how to keep the flow of such nuggets coming in at a steady clip and how to derive competitive advantage from them. There are any number of product companies out there who promise to do one or both. But the quantitative details on their case studies are sparse - an irony considering all they deal with is data and way too much of it.
The second relates to the obsolescence and irrelevance of KPIs in the brave new world of Big Data
..old-fashioned Business Intelligence (BI) with its insistence on pre-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is no match to big data analytics, which does not require pre-defined “schema.”
Not sure what KPIs have to do with having a pre-defined schema(or not)
..big data delivers “a command center that shows you what’s happening, not a dashboard with 40 KPI.”
It would seem commonsenical that when the deluge of data and factoids is upon us and our critical analysis abilities as humans is not skyrocketing to keep up, that we may need some help in the form of structure. Those old fashioned KPIs may be what it takes to introduce method to the madness.
Banana production in Central America is twice the rate of trash production in New York City - as an example of the hidden nuggets of wisdom you may glean from crunching through a ginormous amount of data. Being that there is a market for everything, the thought is it may be important for someone to know the precise relationship between banana production in Central America and trash production in New York City.
That is the holy grail of big data analytics - to uncover stuff like this. The there is the next level of detail - how to keep the flow of such nuggets coming in at a steady clip and how to derive competitive advantage from them. There are any number of product companies out there who promise to do one or both. But the quantitative details on their case studies are sparse - an irony considering all they deal with is data and way too much of it.
The second relates to the obsolescence and irrelevance of KPIs in the brave new world of Big Data
..old-fashioned Business Intelligence (BI) with its insistence on pre-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI) is no match to big data analytics, which does not require pre-defined “schema.”
Not sure what KPIs have to do with having a pre-defined schema(or not)
..big data delivers “a command center that shows you what’s happening, not a dashboard with 40 KPI.”
It would seem commonsenical that when the deluge of data and factoids is upon us and our critical analysis abilities as humans is not skyrocketing to keep up, that we may need some help in the form of structure. Those old fashioned KPIs may be what it takes to introduce method to the madness.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Reaching Limit
I met my friend C for coffee this morning. She has just returned from her honeymoon - a second marriage for both her and her husband. We were talking about how our first marriages fell apart.
Our experiences are identical only in one way - we were deeply miserable every day and saw no light at the end of the tunnel. There was nothing "materially" wrong. Nothing that we could pin point as the reason this was not working out. Yet we felt deeply compelled to leave - a decision hard to explain to family and friends. Our decision isolated us even from those who cared for us - loving is often not the same as accepting.
My friend M's marriage ended after her husband overdosed himself on prescription drugs and had to be hospitalized for the second time - he had been battling his addiction for a while. This the kind of thing that people find easier to rally around - it is just cause and lacks ambiguity.
Talking with C reminded me of this Alice Munro quote that is very close to my heart
“There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you've reached it. I believe this.”
Not only do I believe this, I know this to be true. I had reached that limit once and my soul begged for deliverance. It is a feeling like no other.
Our experiences are identical only in one way - we were deeply miserable every day and saw no light at the end of the tunnel. There was nothing "materially" wrong. Nothing that we could pin point as the reason this was not working out. Yet we felt deeply compelled to leave - a decision hard to explain to family and friends. Our decision isolated us even from those who cared for us - loving is often not the same as accepting.
My friend M's marriage ended after her husband overdosed himself on prescription drugs and had to be hospitalized for the second time - he had been battling his addiction for a while. This the kind of thing that people find easier to rally around - it is just cause and lacks ambiguity.
Talking with C reminded me of this Alice Munro quote that is very close to my heart
“There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you've reached it. I believe this.”
Not only do I believe this, I know this to be true. I had reached that limit once and my soul begged for deliverance. It is a feeling like no other.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
Coming Of Age
J is in the middle of middle school, a year younger than her peers and is experiencing an assortment of anxieties that go with such territory. One particular issue, I find particularly hard to grasp - J thinks she is not nearly as pretty as some of her peers. These are the young ladies who at thirteen have the poise of a mature woman, have moved on from childhood in both body and spirit. A child would naturally feel inadequate around them - they barely acknowledge my existence and some of these kids I have known for years.
There is a certain hubris that comes from transcending the limitations of age and biology; being catapulted into the stratosphere of precocious youth from where the normal kids like J look like so many milling ants. J does not have the advantage of experience I do - she does not know that twenty years out, none of this will matter. The stuff that really counts is determination to succeed, learning to appreciate and be grateful for all of one's gifts (natural and acquired) and making the most of life's adversities. There will be those that win and those that fall behind - my life experience completely validates this Salon article - specially the idea of non-conformity being critical to success :
Popularity is composed of three elements: visibility, recognizability and influence. The people in school who have those three qualities are often that way because they conform to a standard. Meanwhile, the kids who won’t or can’t conform are the ones who are left out. Nonconformity is a wonderful trait, and it’s going to be valued in adulthood.
There are larger issues here than what I am struggling with - why J does not see herself as pretty. Would being less perfect than she is visually have made her more self assured ? Would she have been less self-critical about her appearance ? She takes pride in her sense of humor - while it is good, it is not the greatest. I have known kids her age that have impeccable timing and pitch perfect delivery. But she does not lack confidence in her ability to make people laugh. She is willing to work hard to improve her game, fail until she gets it right. Our encouragement at home has helped too. We have failed however in being able to shore up her confidence in her physical attractiveness. I am so used to hearing how picture perfect J is that I took it for granted - it is too absurd an issue for me to understand let alone know how to resolve.
There is a certain hubris that comes from transcending the limitations of age and biology; being catapulted into the stratosphere of precocious youth from where the normal kids like J look like so many milling ants. J does not have the advantage of experience I do - she does not know that twenty years out, none of this will matter. The stuff that really counts is determination to succeed, learning to appreciate and be grateful for all of one's gifts (natural and acquired) and making the most of life's adversities. There will be those that win and those that fall behind - my life experience completely validates this Salon article - specially the idea of non-conformity being critical to success :
Popularity is composed of three elements: visibility, recognizability and influence. The people in school who have those three qualities are often that way because they conform to a standard. Meanwhile, the kids who won’t or can’t conform are the ones who are left out. Nonconformity is a wonderful trait, and it’s going to be valued in adulthood.
There are larger issues here than what I am struggling with - why J does not see herself as pretty. Would being less perfect than she is visually have made her more self assured ? Would she have been less self-critical about her appearance ? She takes pride in her sense of humor - while it is good, it is not the greatest. I have known kids her age that have impeccable timing and pitch perfect delivery. But she does not lack confidence in her ability to make people laugh. She is willing to work hard to improve her game, fail until she gets it right. Our encouragement at home has helped too. We have failed however in being able to shore up her confidence in her physical attractiveness. I am so used to hearing how picture perfect J is that I took it for granted - it is too absurd an issue for me to understand let alone know how to resolve.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Perfect Image
I had read some books on photographing infants and toddlers while pregnant with J and was gifted a nice SLR camera for my birthday that year. It was fun to try everything I had learned and it resulted in some nice pictures of J that soon filled a large album. That was the first four years of her life. I bought my first digital camera right around that time. The novelty of instant gratification wore off very soon. Taking a picture in my film camera was a slow and deliberate process. Much had to align right before I clicked that button. Now I always took five to six pictures in a row so atleast one would turn out right.
From age four to twelve (which is how old J is now), her images do not tell a story or capture the moment in a special way like the pictures in her album do. I enjoy looking through the album even today. Organizing the thousands of digital images wears me out and I don't get from any of them the satisfaction of a moment perfectly captured - the happy trigger for nostalgia. This article about smartphones being the death of professional photography touches on a topic close to my heart. I grew up in a family with a few amateur photographers who could work magic using very crude cameras. It was an art form I admired and wanting to learn. Turns out the learning was minimal and the practice of it woefully shortlived.
From age four to twelve (which is how old J is now), her images do not tell a story or capture the moment in a special way like the pictures in her album do. I enjoy looking through the album even today. Organizing the thousands of digital images wears me out and I don't get from any of them the satisfaction of a moment perfectly captured - the happy trigger for nostalgia. This article about smartphones being the death of professional photography touches on a topic close to my heart. I grew up in a family with a few amateur photographers who could work magic using very crude cameras. It was an art form I admired and wanting to learn. Turns out the learning was minimal and the practice of it woefully shortlived.
Friday, August 02, 2013
Incurious
I have an high school kid interning for me this summer. He is extremely bright, very motivated and eager to learn. With that winning combination, he completed every task I assigned to him with very little supervision. A few days a ago we were chatting about where he was thinking of going to school - he had said he wanted to study Computer Science. I was expecting to hear a list of Ivies and top ranked public schools - this is a straight A student, with a full load of AP classes, athletic and very articulate.
I was very surprised to hear that he was going to apply to a couple of local colleges and generally not step out of home. It got me thinking about that huge gap between who he has the potential to be and who he is choosing to be. I realized for instance during his time with our company he has expressed very little interest in understanding how our business works, who our clients are and what kinds of jobs he may expect coming out of school. His awareness of the real world is fairly limited (which is understandable given his age - though I have seen younger kids who are more savvy) and he is comfortable not knowing.
He loves to tinker with technology and figure things out. He is not thinking about the connection between what he is doing and how it applied - the real point of the internship. I would give him the broad context each time I assigned him a task but he asked no questions. Each time I would try to say something that may spark interest but it never quite clicked. He would just run with it and get the job done efficiently. I had to wonder if the kid was naturally not curious or if the system had killed it for him.
I have to say, I feel a sense of loss when I see this kid. If there was some way I knew to wake him up to see what he can do with his life I would - just jump start that dormant area of his brain where curiosity lives. His ability to work with technology so effortlessly is almost a handicap - he can market this skill today and five years out when he is an undergrad. His readiness almost bookends his potential as a human being.
I was very surprised to hear that he was going to apply to a couple of local colleges and generally not step out of home. It got me thinking about that huge gap between who he has the potential to be and who he is choosing to be. I realized for instance during his time with our company he has expressed very little interest in understanding how our business works, who our clients are and what kinds of jobs he may expect coming out of school. His awareness of the real world is fairly limited (which is understandable given his age - though I have seen younger kids who are more savvy) and he is comfortable not knowing.
He loves to tinker with technology and figure things out. He is not thinking about the connection between what he is doing and how it applied - the real point of the internship. I would give him the broad context each time I assigned him a task but he asked no questions. Each time I would try to say something that may spark interest but it never quite clicked. He would just run with it and get the job done efficiently. I had to wonder if the kid was naturally not curious or if the system had killed it for him.
I have to say, I feel a sense of loss when I see this kid. If there was some way I knew to wake him up to see what he can do with his life I would - just jump start that dormant area of his brain where curiosity lives. His ability to work with technology so effortlessly is almost a handicap - he can market this skill today and five years out when he is an undergrad. His readiness almost bookends his potential as a human being.
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