jeremy snyder’s meta|remix

you can also hear my thoughts at the jeromecast (please do subscribe!) but some thoughts here as well:

• the event was malaysia-heavy, with a lot of presence from msc and mdec
• the regional and pan-asian content was good. connecting with people from china, korea and japan was good
• seeing the growth in the startup vibes in malaysia, thailand and vietnam was good as well. singapore is really picking up in this area, and it was really awesome to feel the energy picking up elsewhere, too.
• i met some really interesting people there, with cool projects and great thoughts and ideas to share
• and i liked the little bit that i saw of kuala lumpur. i can’t believe i’ve been in southeast asia for two years and hadn’t ever actually been to kl (as it’s known here)

i’m at open web sea (southeast asia) today and tomorrow, as mentioned on the jeromecast.

courtesy of the harvard business review.

1. Don’t just focus on building beautiful products. Build beautiful business models, new ways to create, deliver, and capture value. The iPod and iPhone would not have had nearly as much impact if they hadn’t been matched with iTunes and the AppExchange respectively.
2. Think in terms of platforms and pipelines. Competitors that chase Apple’s latest release find themselves behind when six months later Apple introduces its latest and greatest offering.
3. Take a portfolio approach. While Apple has been on a phenomenal run, not everything it has introduced has been a home run. For example, Apple TV hasn’t had the “revolutionary” impact that Jobs predicted upon its launch in 2007.

i read a lot, between blogs and books. and i talk to a lot of people about business ideas, models and opportunities in new media and social media. of course, we often talk about virtual worlds like twinity.

but rarely, in all of those conversations, do you come across things that really click. this was one of those. of course it seems obvious once you read it here, but as with most businesses, the key is in execution.

Recently, I wrote a piece that got picked up in iMedia Connection, entitled “Innovative movie promotion in virtual worlds.”

The challenge of advertising in virtual worlds involves taking advantage of their unique features. Here’s how some film companies showcased their movies in one of these worlds.

i’ve been in singapore for about 11 months now, getting close to one year. i’ve really enjoyed my time here. i’ve gotten some great experiences, like starting a business in another company, building a team from scratch, meeting potential partners, investors, etc. one of the great things has been the number of events that happen here, like ad:tech. i was interviewed recently by the guys over at sg entrepreneurs, a local entrepreneurship blog and community. you can read more about my experiences at the interview: Continue reading »

i didn’t make an appearance this time, but still fun to watch. Continue reading »

i was at barcamp a while ago, as previously mentioned. there were a couple of students or young professionals that i met there who got me talking for a while about twinity and doing business in general. you can read more about it at the vietnam blog. apparently, here’s my advice for people starting a business: Continue reading »

i was listening to planet money this morning, and they mentioned a finnish facebook group called feed the recession, which was created in response to the bob helsinki ad campaign to stop you from feeding the pig. Continue reading »

over on the sg entrepreneur blog, there’s a roundup of yesterday’s panel discussion that i participated in. they have a brief summary of my comments about twinity:

Directed at budding virtual world creators, Jeremy of Twinity talked about the need for compelling reasons to participate in your virtual world. Why yours? For Twinity, the question for them while creating the virtual world is: How can we put something out there that is interesting for people, and doesn’t take them away completely from their life? Because they believe that even if you play World of Warcraft for 40 hours a week, you still need to live in the real world. It is not possible to have a total divide. As such, he claims that Twinity is the only virtual world that is based on the real world. (I don’t really understand how having more realistic 3D virtual worlds translates to not taking you completely away from your real life? Unless ‘real’ just means physical surroundings.)

probably i should have explained better. it’s not only about real locations – it’s also about real identities, real relationships, real friends and real life. and what i said about the division is that most people can’t afford to live only in a virtual world or only in an online game, purely from the financial perspective.

i was just listening to a podcast on american public media’s marketplace, and there was a really interesting segment on there. the argument was basically that those who saved are now suffering. Continue reading »