Month: September 2009

I took four flights within the US on this trip: JetBlue from JFK to Dulles (Washington), United from Dulles to San Francisco, Air Tran from San Francisco to Atlanta (red eye), and finally Delta from Atlanta to Newark (New Jersey). Each one of the flights was absolutely on time, and the experience quite pleasant.I booked all the tickets in advance in India on the Net. I got good deals on all flights – most of the tickets cost on average about $150. All local travel in the US was in Economy, though I did upgrade myself to Business on the Air Tran Red Eye flight for an extra $100.

Even the US security process has been streamlined to make it much more efficient. In a couple places, the lines were long but moved quite fast. The longest I had to wait was about 25 minutes at JetBlue’s terminal in JFK.

All US airports are WiFi enabled, and so I used the time before departure productively. It costs about $7 an hour. Given that I had little other time to check mail because of the meetings, this came in quite handy. As I wrote last week, I also used the inflight WiFi on the Delta flight and that was quite an experience – browsing from 33,000 feet up!

I continue to use my Lenovo Ideapad S10 as my laptop, and that has worked out well. It is small and compact, and allowed me to be productive through travel’s free moments.

Tomorrow: Meeting People

I took Air India’s Mumbai-New York Non-Stop flight for the fourth time in two years. I was on one of the first flights when they launched the service in August 2007. I have to say it is the best way to travel to the US, and would recommend it highly. By way of disclosure, I travel business class to the US.Till the Non-Stop came along, travelling to New York meant going through Europe. Even if it was the same aircraft, it meant a break in the journey, and hanging around one of the European airports for a few hours early in the morning. It didn’t make for a pleasant start to the journey.

Now, the Air India Non-Stop gets you into JFK at about 7:15 am, after a 16-hour flight. At that time, the US security process also is fast because there are few other arriving flights.

Business class has flat beds, so one can easily get 6-8 hours of sleep. I have loved international flights because they also give me many hours of undisturbed thinking time. It all makes for a refreshing start to the trip.

The service on-board is excellent. From the in-flight staff to the food (Jain, for me) to the cleanliness of the toilets to the entertainment (Hindi movies that I never watch), I have never had reason to complain during any of my flights.

So, next time you are thinking of going to the US East Coast, try the Air India Non-Stop.

Tomorrow: Internal US Travel

I made a business visit to the US recently for about a week. It was almost a year since I visited the US. I had meetings in Dulles, Bay Area and Philadelphia, and visited friends in Atlanta and New Jersey.

Every time I land at JFK, the memory of my first arrival into the US comes by. It was in September 1988 that I came – as a student for the Masters programme in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. I landed at JFK in the afternoon on a Lufthansa flight via Frankfurt, took a cab to the YMCA for a few hours before a friend (who was also at Columbia and had come a year earlier) came and picked me up. Then, we went out and I had my first pizza – at Pizza Hut. Even after two decades, that day is quite clearly etched in my mind.

This was one of those rare visits to the US when I took a connecting flight straight from JFK to Dulles. I also did not end up spending time in New York City, a city that I have grown to love as much as Mumbai over the years. It is partly because of the familiarity and the ease of getting around without being dependent on cars.

This was one of those visits where the travel and meetings went like clockwork. It was a packed schedule and did not give me much time to do what I like to do – just walk around streets that I know. There’s always a next time!

Tomorrow: Air India’s Non-Stop

I wrote this post on “invited advertising” a year ago:

As we look ahead and address the limitations of today’s marketing methods, the mobile will emerge as the fulcrum for the new options. Companies which recognise and adopt mobile marketing are likely to see significant early benefits – and lock their competitors out in the customer attention game. Tomorrow’s world of mobile marketing is going to be built around three tenets: Publish-Subscribe, Multi-Modal Viewing and Instant Sharing.

This week’s links:

• Clay Shirky Speech:  On the future of accountability journalism in a world of declining newspapers. “We are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.”
• US Net Neutrality Speech: by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Ideas for India, perhaps?
• Argentina’s wired city: from Global Post. “Buenos Aires has become a destination for IT companies, a place with Wi-Fi on every corner.”
• The Death of Business Intelligence: from Forbes. “Multi-touch display screens with up-to-the-minute data should gain traction in the enterprise.”
• Seducing a VC: from Forbes. Randy Komisar: “In my business, I look for the biggest problem because the amount of resources, time and money that go into solving a small problem is pretty comparable to the amount of resources that go into solving a big problem. Why not solve a big problem?”
• Internet and Higher Education: by Atanu Dey. “India needs to move from just having a very small number of “high fidelity” schools (such as the IITs, IIMs etc) to having a very large number of “high convenience” schools — where there are no capacity constraints, and where anyone wanting to learn can do so without facing any credit constraints.”

Over the years, I have realised the importance of being able to tell a story of what one is doing in a manner that is simple and compact. It doesn’t always start that way. On my recent US trip, I had a slide deck talking about NetCore, what we want to do, and discussing the assets we have created to help us build the future faster. I worked a lot on the slide deck. It took about 5 versions to get it just right. Each version took about two hours to create on successive days. To tell a story that others can understand in 10 minutes took 10 hours of hard work.

It is not easy telling one’s story. My natural inclination is to be comprehensive rather than compact. I try and fill in all sorts of details. That doesn’t work, as I realised quickly. In meetings, one has about 15-20 minutes to deliver the key message. And that has to be done upfront. It is not easy, but it can be done if one focuses only on the Most Important Point. Each story has one key message, and the focus should be on delivering that with maximum effectiveness.

Working on this through the early part of this trip reminded me of the two-minute pitch I had given at PC Forum a few years ago for the $100 PC and Novatium. It took many hours of work to get that two-minute talk right. It was the same this time around with the story.

Luckily, I had a lot of help to get the story right. After the first few times I did it (not so effectively), I would analyse with those who heard me what I was doing right and what wasn’t going well. I then kept working through to get it just perfect. We will know when we get it right by just watching the reaction of the people in the room who are listening.

Telling a Story is a key attribute that every entrepreneur, manager and sales person needs. However good an idea, if it cannot be communicated well, then it has a lesser chance of succeeding. Passion combined with a Perfect Story can be a winning combination.

It was the most eagerly awaited book of recent times. Dan Brown’s next after “The Da Vinci Code” was expected to be something special. And it is. Even though it follows the same time-tested formula that worked so well in the previous book, it is a page-turner and very illuminating about history (especially, the founding of the US and Washington DC).

I bought the Kindle version of the book for $9.99 the day it was published. I use the Kindle primarily for fiction (thrillers are what I like). At any point, I have a few unread books that I can always turn to when things get a wee bit boring in life!

Reading “The Lost Symbol”, I couldn’t help but think that someone should do something similar for India. We have such a wide and long history, so there should be plenty of scope for a thriller that weaves India’s rich past with the present. We need a Dan Brown for India!

I am posting this flying from Atlanta to Newark 33,000 feet in the air.

When I found out that the Delta flight had WiFi, I had to try it out. The price is $9.95 for the full flight (about 2 hours). The speed is quite good. This is my first inflight wireless experience.  I always like to try out different things, and I could not resist the temptation to do my first blog post from the sky.

I am not sure I want to always use WiFi when travelling on flights. The time in the sky is my deep thinking time — especially on international flights. But it is good to have the choice.I had a couple urgent emails to sen, and this connection sure came in handy!

My friend, Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, wrote to me requesting assistance on an innovative idea. Perhaps you can give some suggestions. Here is Dr. Malpani’s post.

HELP is a free consumer health library we have been running for over 10 years now. The website is at www.helpforhealth.org.

While I am happy to fund the library ( which means we do not need any financial assistance), we do need help to increase awareness about the unique services HELP offers, so that more people will make use of our services. We do not have a marketing budget; and are having a difficult time marketing HELP.

Logically, one would expect this would be easy to do. We offer a unique service, which no one else offers; and because we help patients to talk to doctors and provide free Information Therapy, to empower patients to get the best medical care, one would expect people to be very happy to use our free services. We have no hidden agenda; are not looking for money; and are trying to improve the doctor patient relationship and to heal the sick Indian healthcare system by making sure patients are well – informed – all of which are laudable goals !

While the media does write occasional article about HELP, the fact still remains that we have not done a good job in marketing HELP, because not many people know about the services we offer.

Part of the problem is that because our services are free, they are not valued ! ( After all, if you get something for free, you don’t think it’s of any importance). I am quite certain that we do not want to charge for our services, because I believe patients need to have all the information they need and want, if they want to get the best medical care; and this is part of our mission.

We offer free online Ask the Librarian services as well, where we provide reliable authentic information to users by email, thus acting as infomediaries who are Information Therapy specialists.

I would like suggestions as to what we can do to market HELP ! We need help in marketing HELP !

You can email Dr. Malpani directly, or leave a comment here.

A related issue that also needs is the issue of SMS Spam that has grown rapidly in the past few months. TRAI already has a mechanism in place – the Do Not Call Registry. About 10% of Indian mobile numbers are on this list. Telemarketers are not supposed to call or SMS those on this list without their permission. However, as we have all seen, that is not being adhered to. So, what is the solution? One option being talked about is the creation of a “Do Call” Registry. Will that solve the problems?

Creating a Do Call is certainly detrimental. The whole failure of implementation of DNC is being covered up by such a drastic measure. We assume that people who have not registered under DNC are also unwilling to receive unsolicited messages. Everyone knows that this is primarily a big city (top 5-10 cities) phenomenon, in smaller cities this is not even considered as a problem.

Here is what needs to be done:

1. Make the registry under DNC simple. The simplified process would be thus: Every mobile number maintained by TRAI also maintains a list of  telemarketers who have enquired status of the number. As the status of  DND changes for the number the enquiring telemarketer gets notified. This simplifies the current process immensely since only the changed numbers getting on or off DND need to be notified to all telemarketers. By simplifying process the industry will also see immensely more compliance.

2. Inform more widely how to register under DNC. TRAI has released ads in the past on the rights of a mobile consumer, I am sure they can do the same for informing people on how to register.

3. Take stringent measures against NDNC violation by companies and operators. Even people who are under NDNC continue to receive unsolicited messages and calls. There is no evident action taken. Despite complaints to the operator, the same tele-caller continues to call and the same marketer continues to send messages. This means that even if everyone is put under NDNC, still there will be widespread violations and the problem will not be resolved.

4. Create a robust system to scrub databases against the NDNC list simpler and more widely accessible.

Ineffective application of law cannot justify drastic measures like taking away the rights of consumers and literally declaring an emergency!  The “Do Call” Registry should be strongly opposed.