To Have Discovered More of Myself

          Wow. CS3216 is over, or at least officially. I think Orry’s right, after taking one course as intense and as powerful as this, I don’t think I would be able to adapt to normal NUS Life. I must confess over here that I am taking 7 modules this semester, a proclamation that I dare not make from the start for it was an idea that is so crazy that it is certain to be shot down. Well, here I am alive and well, staring into the dusk of this semester. (Mental note to myself to though, surviving it is one thing, being really spectacular and being in a state of a lot less pain is other.)

            Yet, I feel the sudden nostalgia and the headiness hitting me after going through an awesome semester of which I had met such good friends and did crazy things. I guess I am right about myself on one count , that I am always in to live Life to its fullest, struggle with its struggles and appreciate things along the way. Had I to point out one important lesson that I have gained along the way, I felt it would be a lesson on discovering myself. Here’s me in blatant honesty.

            I am not as great as I tend to think that I am! – There are days and occasions that I would swim around Life with a huge, huge ego and a hedonistic approach. The air smells artificially nice and I am on the top of my game. Unfortunately, self-delusion is never that beautiful as no one really gives a damn unless you care. I tend to suffer from this like of super-ego driven irrationality, which unfortunately, again is very unhealthy. I have hurt a few people along the way, yet I am really blessed to have friends who have stuck with me till the ends. I have to watch out for this and for the fact that I tend to underestimate the difficulty of things, which could be my undoing. As for optimism, I will keep it though, as optimistic tends to succeed! ~ and give my sense of optimism some tender, loving, care of realism. I will always be my greatest fan! This leads me to some “wise words” (ahem, common sense ) that Ben has to offer.

            Focus outwards – That’s is what I should be doing. Deep down, I am still not too certain, what’s holding me back for really caring for others. It’s frustrating to note. I have profiled myself, and I am well-aware that I draw power from both the dark and light side. The former being about personal strength and gratification; and the later synergy and ideals/”greater common” good. Real question which I have yet to resolve is: where do I really want to be?

            Focus – I am spread too thinning and I know that. I tried to make a case of being a really good “multi-disciplinarian” but now, I am pretty convinced that I have to go really deep and be really good at what I would do. There’s no substitute for 10,000 hours of increasing hardwork, but what I can do is to work smart. @Prof: Yep, I am reconsidering my phd option, but regardless of my eventual choice, I will pursue my decision with the best of my ability and without regards.

            3 things that I have to do for the day – thanks to Nash’s wife, I got this piece of advice and it really helped make my day more effective. It works as it is. Simply know what are the 3 things that I absolutely have accomplish for the day and make sure I do it. =D

            Learning Hacks – I never learned so fast in my Life before. In this semester, I am having lots of fun and assimilating knowledge as if my Life depends on it. Well, it did. But I got a good measure of how to leverage education. =D and it comes together for me is so many different ways.

            Love myself – Despite all the sobering takes that I have upon myself, I am willing to absolve myself from all the hate and pain that I have caused myself. It is through stupid decisions, failures that I may learn too. I would like to sincerely thank all who have stayed true and have encouraged me along the way.

           

I have a quote for everyone. It is indeed painful to discover imperfection (and how many false underlying assumptions I had about the world which made it a beautiful fantasy) and to come to terms so intimately with myself. But it is like Chris Abani so beautifully puts it -: You are most beautiful, when you are most ugly because it is then when you see yourself for who you truly are.

           

Thank you. With all the love in the world, Tomithy

Ps. Hope my thoughts had echoed yours.

the Key lesson

Surprisingly, the main lesson I learned last night when 6 entrepreneurs shared their experience

Amazingly the main lesson that I have learned from a night of sharing from 6 different entrepreneurs covering 6 different sectors ( underscoring the point that entrepreneurship is the one of the toughest challenge one can embark in his Life ) is from a lady named Simran who was Ash's wife.

Prior to the talk, I was feeling quite confused and angsty, partially due to the fact that the project is not going as well as planned (bad stuff happens, and I just have to suck it up). Hence I was there, sucking it up along with the lingering effects of a fever that I am recovering from. Fortunately, I am always a person for stories, especially one which people shared with their heart and passion, which enamored me. Hearing about the battle feats, the ups and the down rejuvenated me - in the sense that as I empathizes with the entrepreneur's darkest hours, resolve and aspiration, I began to feel beyond myself and larger than Life. It is sometimes others, which made me feel inadequate in giving, in loving and in doing, but more often that not, in a warped state of mind, it my faithlessness that is playing tricks with me.

I mused at my 10000th realisation as I checked with my inner self of what do I really wanted to do in Life and it was always clear. I realised again that I cherished Life, the people (around me) and the gratification of growth and raising up to challenges. As each entrepreneur took me through their journey, I felt increasingly sure that a Life of spirited play is what I am really after ( which mean I am a sucker for challenges XP)!.

Few of the important lessons that I took away:
- Tong: Having a cap on their salary. Offering employees different portfolio. Serving a need, or remedying a pain that already exist in the market.
- Ash: Sales solves everything. And I really love his focus on building the culture of his company, that i something that I would also put as my priority!

However, my main lesson was very simple. I asked Simran how did she maintain focus and balance with all the work, adrenaline and stress and she told me one thing:

"Be clear on the 3 main things that you want to do each day fulfill them. "

Then, it hit me! Yup, it's that simple and it is something that I have always been looking for. (=

People

Wow. Chewy was an excellent speaker who is very entertaining and insightful. I totally enjoyed his presentation. So Thanks Prof Ben for getting him around.

The premise behind Chewy’s presentation last night was about people – people other than ourselves. What Chewy says is very poignant (and definitely very befitting of me) that we have constructed the “our reality” based on our experiences and because the human experience is so vast and myriad, we have often made wrong implicit assumptions about people – their beliefs, their behavior, their likes and dislikes.

Understandably, a few things ties us together. We have principles like honest, courage and love which are quite universally similar in essence; we have context like examinations, war or competition that we have grown to understand; we have cultures and languages which allows us to identify with each other; and we have physics and the human condition, which are both and almost always an empirical awareness that we develop as a living human. However, even with these basic identities and commonality, we are muchly different from one another because we have different taste and styles. Because we have different pursuits and problems. Because we have different beliefs and experiences.

And to appreciate and empathize takes more than just words or ears. It involves taking off the shoes of our experience and standing in theirs, something remarkably hard to do (at least for myself) because one so attached to our own experiences, ideas and modulus operandi. Indeed, our lives and actions are the embodiment of our beliefs. And that is not to say that understanding people is not possible. It takes genuine willingness to explore the Life of others, and the humility to put principles and people in front of self. (It sucks to hear two egos or two masks speaking to one another; or me trying to figure out you out based on my Life)

Together with chewy, I too believe in stories. They help me understand others. I am pushing myself to love people for who they are and to love freely, not to expect love in return, but because love inspires.

“I want to celebrate Life as I live. This is my story. What’s yours?”

How can GetHelp! Communicate Value

I think that the one most effective and onerous task that the get help team faced with is to communicate value.

The value of using the application – Why should the user even post something on the application? What can this application do that other means and platform cannot?

Value of helping others – Why should the users care about helping others? What should they be prompted by the application

Value of social capital (which incidentally is the reason which makes facebook ticks!) – How much response can the user generate if he/she shakes her “friend tree”

In essence, the design and the functionality should be answer this questions, which in turns communicates the value of this application.

Keeping this overall concept in mind, I would provide 2 few touch-points which I think would allow the application to communicate value.

Modelling – Form follows functionality. If so, what models out there can essentially allow an application to match-make users? Off the top of my head, I would recommend looking at

1)   Dating sites – as they try to match-make users through their profile and peferences. Difference over here is of course, it is presumably true that the party at both ends have the incentive to begin to want to engage in a date and have taken the proactive step to sign up, whereas GetHelp needs to offer more incentives to the “helpers”

2)   Kiva.com – I thought it was quite interesting that this micro financing site has reshaped the way financing is done. Perhaps, each task specific by the user is to huge and they can be broken down into smaller parts just like how Kiva reduces the entry barrier for mircofinancing by allow users to lend with a starting minimum of $50, for more people to come in and provide help. Again, for this side, the lenders have 2 obvious incentives which is 1) to support entrepreneurs doing good work and 2) to earn interest on loans.

3)   Odesk/freelance.com – Freelance website might offer the team some insights about how help can be categorized, quantified and outsourced.

User incentives – This is perhaps the hardest question to address. “Why should one be movitated to help others” is perhaps too large a question to be addressed by the application. A nice and realistic assumption would be there are friends and people out there who will offer their help – hence perhaps the real question is now "how to make GetHelp! personable such that both the parties have the incentive to use the platform in getting help"?

Game on!

I have learned a few lessons this week. I would like to highlight one, mainly because it is a simple yet powerful idea people seem to neglect!

Examining assumptions

I was reminded of this by Prof Wong Poh Kam, director NEC and angel investor. Strangely, I was feeling rather free that one day and I tagged along with Lawrence to a networking cum sharing session. It turns out Prof Wong happens to be the director of BANSEA.

The idea over here is rather simple. After coming up with a business plan, examine closely, at my own assumptions. For example, is it possible that we get 50,000 users a month? Is it possible for some one to clock 100 hrs / week of programming time etc? This simple reflection would reveal the flaws and also forces us to clear of our plan of action. Simplest solutions are the best!

Also, it is not to say that we shouldn't make assumption. They just have to reflect reality. Let's look at some (simplifying) assumptions that I have for final project:

• Flash can be learned and mastered in a month.
• The game would be interesting enough for people to want to try
• The team's effort is synergistic and that everyone is enthusiastic about that we do. 
• We would be principled in our execution.
• Everyone in the team can provide the team with as much resources as we need to make project fly at the minimum. 

The next questions (What is there to learn about flash? What do I mean by mastery? What is the usual timeline?...) is of course asked to verify this assumptions, which leads to the next rounds of questions and assumptions. And as computer scientist likes it, this will go on recursively until we are clear on what we want and until we start asking questions that are either too stupid or too general or too specific like "What is the meaning of Life? "

The purpose of this exercise is of course to be clear on what we want. Clarity is the the most important outcome of this theoretical, goggle-aided, ideas bouncing exercise. (= After which we should have a fair idea on what we want and how to achieve it, although the solutions may not be optimise. To optimise is again, other exercise altogether. 

On another note, I was pretty excited by the CS3216 pitching session, which makes me feel like a VC, although I know that this is a mere ego-trip. These are people with real world problems to solve or ideas to implement. Thanks for giving us the flavor at least, prof!

Happy Chinese New Year!

BioHack! meets Zynga

I am basically interested in how Zynga operates as an online game company – it is exciting and it grows really fast. As a business person, who wants to start a research design (BioHack!) company in a couple years, it is interesting for me to understand how Zynga has achieved this level of success and notoriety.

I would style this discussion as a case study, which presents some of my thoughts on Zynga and talk about how some of the ways Zynga these ideas can potentially work for my company.

Pirates –

Zynga is famous for copying games that are successful and doing it better than the original creators in blazing speed.

What does it mean to me –

Even a pirate can be pirated. Xp. Nah, I would give my baby – BioHack more brain juice and make sure that it operates from the same set of principles that I do:

·      Do good

·      Have fun

·      Be prepared to failed ( - consequently we can operate from a space of possibility where we have nothing to lose)

·      Innovate to create value

The biggest lesson for me over here is that it pays to learn from others who got it right and translate that lesson into strategies that I can implement. Despite the taint of unoriginality – I feel that taking what works and improving on it is the cheapest and most leveraged method. It is something few people try because of ego, I couldn’t care less because the real value is to do great work with research and invent new things by standing on the shoulders of giants. What I worry about more is giving people who invent the wheel their credit due and how can I continue to open source things. (=

There is simply, simply no point in reinventing the wheel.

Potential usefulness: 10 / 10

Micro-transactions –

Capitalizes on impulse spending and it allows the customers to self-select in terms of the amount that they are willing to pay. The premise for this is of course either there is worth to a rational customer in the purchase or that the user is irrational.

How Zynga capitalizes operates – It creates virtual value for virtual goods by making them premium and only accessible by purchase. The premium over the goods is likely to be much higher in the eyes of games addict because they can give a huge boost to game play or ego. It sucks to have one’s self image build upon and leadership boards.

What does it mean to me – The concept of micropayment itself interesting, because it allows my customers to purchase smaller units of goods or to try out premium services at a very low cost.

It caters to a larger portion of the market that in involved in the biotect/Life Science (which I have no idea if it exist or not. My guesses are that they could be amateur scientist or small biotech companies who are interested to use generic premium services). I am choosing between this and subscription, which itself commits the user to my service.

I definitely want to work on a long-term payment basis, and something which forces my company to continuously innovate and improve on our services and product rather than lump sum payment, because we cannot afford to get comfortable.

Potential usefulness: 4 / 10

Lead generation

How Zynga capitalizes operates – It offers in game rewards to its gamers who pass on their private information to other companies or fills in surveys.

What does it mean to me - I can offer my bio-informatics services online for free, then get users to submit their contact information such that I am able to collate a database of potential clients/partners to whom I can offer business opportunities or services. If the services are convenient and powerful services seems to leverage on Word- Of - Mouth to expand the company’s network along this lines. Furthermore, it would establish my company’s credibility (if the web services does well) and increase my customers proficiency in our software User Interface and our operational method as they have the incentive to familiarize themselves.

Potential usefulness: 7/ 10

What other interesting things Zynga has done –

Socially conscious goods – This is again an excellent twist to capitalize on the donations/charity market. I guess the slant is arguably good, but I remain skeptical about Zynga’s intention given their history and their lion’s share in the donation.

Heavy advertisement – Exciting. It could mean a few things:

·      Zynga growth strategy is super aggressive.

·      Sex sells, but be for it can sell, you need to let people know of the existence of it. Same applies for games I guess, vary the degree of morality.

·      It needs a damn to PR campaign to give its dirty image a good wash before it hits the real pot of gold at IPO.

Cloud Computing

Last night I had the privilege to be given a lecture by a technological evangelist, Simone Brunozzi, from Amazon Web Services which runs the world premier cloud computing services.

Truth to be told, I already had a mind for putting up all my computational research on the cloud next time because I intent to fly light on my bootstrap styled startup, yet aim to deliver high-performance computational biology services. The cloud offers me the freedom, scalability, power that I can possibility need.

What Simone gave me instead was a few realization that were invaluable:

· most high costing, on-demand computation services would be moved on to the cloud simply because the cloud will operate much like a public utility because it simply makes economic sense

· In order to leverage on the cloud, my programs have to written in a parallelization and scalable(distributed computing architecture) – like the Apache Hadoop architecture

· Huge bioinformatics databases like Genbank operates on the cloud, which I never knew. I guess the whole bioinfo sector would start moving into the could with the first movers already present. This is a good thing which would reduce cost and increase performance.

· He cautions that network resources and performance cannot scale in accordance to Moore’s law. And I wonder why. Few ideas that I can think of which supports this hypothesis: But I am really not sure if this is true.

o      Exponential complexity of network operations with a lot of callbacks and crossed talks

o      Limitations of physical infrastructure

o      No possibility improvement beyond the optimized network algorithm/resource sharing (p2p, virtualization, caching…) May be there are better algorithms/architectures to be discovered.



I think this might be a fraction of what Prof Tan (Bioinfomatics) saw in cloud computing. (=

How to be a great Jack of all Trade?

What I am going to explicate over here are my insights and thoughts about being a great interdisciplinary learner and a person who seeks out experiences and wisdom in Life with spontaneity and curiosity. Perhaps the term “all trades” is misleading, as I don’t profess to be interested in the universal sum of knowledge and skill sets. Rather, I would like to replace the word “all” with “few/many”. The number does not matter, as some people are naturally interested in more stuff and they do it with all the love for live and can manage to excel in many things.

            To start off, I would like to introduce the concept of an “adaptor”, which happens to also be called a “Jack” in colloquial terms and have the connotation of being adaptive and spontaneous. Lovely, because that is exactly what a Jack needs to be

I.      To be able to plug into different domains of knowledge and bring all the innovations and solutions together as one integrated piece.

II.    There is no way one can possibly keep up with the exponential expansion of domain knowledge. Hence, it is wiser to use the networked effect of different domains of knowledge as a leverage. (meaning that the more things you know, the more perspectives, possibilities and potential ideas you have to work with as long as you can draw links between different domains of knowledge. Think of what led to the video game industry? Design + Traditional games + computer advances + businesses)

Hence, my basic aspiration of becoming a great Jack of many trades (specifically Combio, humanism and SE and many of their subsets) has been reduced to the challenge of fulfilling these goes.

How to fulfill the basis

1.     I love people. It is as simple as that that follows of my take on Life that there are many many people (perhaps everyone) who are intrinsically special. Learning, talking and doing things with people inspires me. And hence, from the many interesting experiences, paradigms and wisdom that I gain from people, I can begin to build up my understanding of many pools of knowledge in Life, and appreciate the connection between things. Like how an apple may mean food, a business opportunity, red color, an alphabet aid at the same time.

2.     Read as widely and ask as many interesting questions as possible, so I get to learn more.

3.     Continuously strive to be inspired. When one area does not seem as exciting to me, I would either find new perspective or I would often skip on to other domains that are “happening”, it helps to be along with exciting people moving onto the next big thing. 

4.     Reflect and think. Learning so much without thinking through, reflecting, asking myself questions forming frameworks and explaining to others is kind of a deflated way of learning. The best way to learn is to teach others and to apply what I have learned directly though action. Clarity helps.

5.     Being an expansive thinker – I am not sure whether this could be acquired or taught, but I am acutely aware that my brain is abuzz in a playground of ideas and get easily fired up by ideas, relating ideas seems to be intuitive in that sense. Perhaps exploring Life and thinking things through via first principles instead of textbook answers and theories might help. Talking to people and seeing what they see helps. Is this creativity?

6.     Basically, I am not that smart. But I just ask good questions and I think that can get me somewhere.

What not to do

1.     To be distracted like a dog by cats or squirrels. One can easily be caught up and overwhelmed by the number of books to read and things to learn. However, always question, is it useful? Is it fun? Is it meaningful? Could it lead to something? If the answer is no to all, perhaps you might wasting your time and energy… One can only do that much. More importantly thing leverage from synergistic domains of knowledge and skill sets.

2.     With that much learning and doing, being a great Jack of all trade requires rather high maintenance.

The Value

1.     To be able to leverage on the network of ideas, knowledge and people. Hence solutions tend to be have an integrated approach and is leveraged by the synergy of different fields.

2.     Project management this together with the ability to appreciate interpersonal team dynamics, team capacity and skill sets allows me to take my team further. It allows me to serve as a conduit for ideas.

3.     This toolkit will get upgraded by being polished by other people’s experience and insights. Which means that I learn faster with more knowledge gain. (=

4.     Adaptiveness – allows me to survive and excel.

5.     I believe that everyone good enough ought to be crossed-trained.

Afterthoughts and Insights from the Conversation with Mr Ong Peng Tsin

I thought I could do a post from this event since I have glean quite a few insights from Mr Ong, who is to me a true blue, passionate and serial entrepreneur (profile below). It is insightful to have engaged him in a conversational Question and Answer session: some of his remarks has poked at my paradigms and forced me to reconsider what I took for granted as reality.

Clarity -  This is perhaps Mr Ong's strongest point and what I needed most. is to know what you want and why and to be clear on one's thought processes. It really happens to see reality for what it is rather than through a veil of idealistic denial (oh, it could get better~! I tend to stray into this track sometimes as I have an idealistic take on things) or a fog of ignorance. It pays to reflect upon my Life and question my principles and beliefs for it helps me understand myself, which therefore allows me to live a Life that is true to myself. Clarity also comes from being honest with oneself, taking feedback and being rigorous in one's thought processes.

Balance - The caveat to success and high performance is that one would live an unbalanced Life. Hmm... I do not quite agree to this statement, although I see some through in it. Superficially, I could argue that, it's because Life is always in disequilibrium, especially those who causes more ripples (in the process of doing more and wanting to live Life to the fullest), hence Life is always unbalanced.

Ultimately, rhetorics would only provide one with a clearer picture and a grasp on the subject matter. It is really what a person believes in that determines one's course of action and the execution that instantiates the intent. I believe that I should strive for balance in my Life between physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions. They might go out of balance, and I might over extent in times like now, but I would like to development myself wholesomely and experience the fullest of what each dimension has to offer. Surely, learning is much different from completing a dance which is different from having a deep conversation with a friend. (= I strive for balance.

Some other lessons and thoughts in points:

"A start up has to be done in such a way that you would not regret when it blows a whole in a ground!" - Yep, we had fun and paid for the lesson... moving on.

A good self check is this question "Is this the best way I am spending my time right now?"- which draws a parallel to Steve Job's comment that we should ask ourselves every morning in the mirror, "If this the last day for me to live, am I going to do, what I am going to do?" - My answer - hell, yes~! At least I would think though and decided that I am going to live a "Hell, yes~!" day. =D

Technical points which are invaluable to me:

How to get fast failures and fast prototyping own in biotech start ups? (Recently, I am doing my own survey at the capital/expenditure value of the Life science market which is (not) surprisingly diverse)

High IP translate into high margin.


Mr Ong's profile:

Mr Ong Peng Tsin founded Encentuate in 2002 to address the need to provide enterprises with strong and usable digital identity systems. Encentuate was acquired by IBM in March 2008.

Prior to founding Encentuate, Mr Ong was the founder and chairman of Interwoven, Inc., the leading provider of content infrastructure. He was the president and CEO of Interwoven through 1997, and its chairman through 2002. During his tenure at Interwoven he led the company to a successful IPO (NASDAQ: IWOV). For his leadership in building Interwoven into the world's leading provider of enterprise-class content infrastructure software, in 2002 Mr Ong was awarded the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering's Alumni Award for Distinguished Service.

Before Interwoven, Mr Ong was co-founder and chief architect of Electric Classifieds, Inc.—the creators of Match.com. He has also held various engineering and management roles at Illustra (now IBM Informix), Sybase Inc., and Gensym Corporation.

Mr Ong co-authored numerous patents for technologies developed at Electric Classifieds, Interwoven, and Encentuate.

More recently in 2002, Mr Ong served as one of the twenty members of Singapore's Economic Review Committee. The ERC was a high-level committee whose task was to review the economic plans for the future of Singapore. He serves on the board of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. He is a founding member of the Majulah Connection and contributes to the Action Committee for Entrepreneurship. Peng chairs the InfoComm Investment Pte Ltd (IIPL) fund which promotes innovative information & communication technology businesses in Singapore.

Mr Ong graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and received his Masters of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Show And Tell

"You must understand this CS3216 is not like your typical NUS class. " - says Prof Ben, and tonight's show-and-tell revealed to me something unique about my peers, which would probably would never have happened in a typical classroom setting amongst the cheerless silence willing emancipation from school. Thankfully. Because I like twist and excitement, not only for it's high, but also because it makes my Life meaningful. I want to live to see more, experience more and do more.

I love people and I think I fell in love tonight. With their honesty, their candidness, their personalities. The energy is incredible. I feel that when we have the courage to show people what's true of ourselves, be it beauty or failures, happiness or sorrow, grace or forgiveness, it creates an instance of soul laid bare. It's like a leap of faith which inspires. How often I found myself wanting, wishing and needing to communicate people in this space of possibility, vulnerability and intimacy where there is none to be found because "people are not important" or because "there's no time".

I thrive on inspiration and love and I do hope that I am able bring out the best in myself and others, in a spectacular showing, in the most open and empowering telling. I know, we can do so much more.

Cheers. I enjoyed sharing myself too, albeit the fatigue and nervousness.

What I hope to learn in CS3216?

Project Management/Entrepreneurial skills

-       How to learn from people?

o   Of all the multi-modal ways of learning, I found them none too exciting – What I do best is to learn from people and learn by doing.  I like learning from people and thankfully, I have a positive experience in that from my Jc biology classes to critical writing in NUS. From people, I get to ask questions, I get to share their framework, I get to empathize, to mimic, to get advice…etc. If there’s something called learning about learning, then I would like to take time to examine my learning strategy in order to fully capitalize on in. Hence, working in a group in such a high engagement environment and a diverse set of ideologies and skills presents me with an excellent opportunity to learn from people. *Glups* My glass is now empty.

o   Positive outcome:

§  Ability to learn with greater effectiveness

§  Be able to describe how I can learn effectively using a framework and how this process can be affected or enhanced

§  Learn from a greater spectrum of people

§  Deliver value to the person I learn from

-       How to communicate clearly and effectively

o   My mentor Mr Tong and many people remarked that my ideas come up in random torrents, which are hard to follow. Yes, there’s no doubt that I have the basic ability to express myself, but I tend to be too spontaneous in relating ideas. Communications is also about empathy and listening, of which I can improve on. I want to be able to communicate problems/solution in a comprehensive and comprehensible manner

o   Positive outcomes:

§  As Covey has it “Seek to understand, then to be understood”

§  Having engaged my listener

§  To be able to present strategies and abstract ideas better

§  To give others a sense of clarity when speaking

-       Empower teams – synergy and complementation

o   Teamwork is extremely important, is the factor that makes the difference between an excellent project versus lousy one, an enjoyable experience versus draining one. 2 things: I love people in general and I don’t think I am very smart (like Nobel/Turing smart), to be the principle PI or lead engineer, but I am have a good sense of people’s skill set and what a successful team requires.

o   Hence this is what I need to learn how to do:

§  To be able to understand the motivations of others

§  To be able to bring people together (aspirations, fears, hopes, party, music), rally them and work towards a common idea

§  To be able to help others shine and do their best – To this I say, “Don’t fall before me. I would be damn sure that I would be the last person to fall!” – As least that’s the idea

§  Bond the team

§  Pace the team

Learning about myself

-       What is it necessary to be self-aware and self critical and to learn from feedbacks

o   It is important to learn about oneself. The “I” is a character sculpted both by experience and one's own hands. The "I" is continuously being tweaked and redefined (sometimes slightly, sometimes in a whole bunch of ways one never thought possible). Despite the exterior, I do believe that the inner principles, analogously, the materials, are unchanging. Hence, as the artist in shaping my Life, I acutely feel the need to be aware of my fundamental principles (the physics and constrain and beauty of which I am made up of) and the shape which I am sculpting. In my mind’s eye, I would see something, an product of sort, but it would be helpful, I could get the opinions of others.

-       Not to be to hung up on analogies, these are the questions I hope to answer. Which are only answerable by action and experience.

o   Do I have what it takes and the courage to live my Life to the fullest?.

o   What drives me? I want a clear answers to my whys

o   What leads to my failure? And conversely, what enables me to succeed?

o   What are my limits?

Software development and technical skills

-       Flash – I like working with flash, its fun and its product is interactive and is able to encapsulate motion.

o   Positive outcomes:

§  Simple game (scrolling shooter, perhaps) or evolutionary algorithm proof of concept simulation

§  Have a better understanding of user interface and human computer interaction.

-       Product development cycles (execution)

o   It’s crucial to be aware of the game that I am in.

o   Positive outcomes:

§  Template for product development execution/expectations

§  Questions on how to improve effectiveness/efficiencies?

§  How to integrate teams with this cycle.

-       Fast-prototyping strategies.           

o   Hmm… I guess I have to work out what this is about first. =D

God. I love people and love sharing ideas. (=

Now, it’s clearer. Good.