Namita Bhasin

So. I’ve delayed the publishing of this post for six months (since winter break) because I feared it would damage my professional credibility. Well, now that I’ve procured employment, to hell with that! I’m about to tell the world what I really do with completely totally idle free time. Hehe.

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I only get a week or two a year to push everything important and pressing off the table, and so it is always an agonizing process to decide how to spend it. Some years it’s travel, some years books; this year I burned through the Twilight series. Silly self-indulgence for sure, but so worth it. It is exactly what time away from the real world should be.

Twilight and Harry Potter

Demographic: A subset of the Harry Potter crowd. Both series are magical and fantastical, a little bit dark, and integrable with the real world, but the fun and details focus in vastly different areas. This is why the overlapping targets are the older, female readers.

Release Patterns: I can see Twilight pulling a HP-like stunt with the movies - dragging them out over far longer than they ought to be - but I think it was smart not to do the books the same way. Harry’s saga (in book and movie form both) will have spanned about 12 years by the time it’s complete. The only reason people my age and older are still entranced is that it was an integral part of our upbringing and we can’t leave it unfinished. As long as the movies are still coming out, Harry is still picking up new fans, which keeps book sales going even though there’s nothing fresh on that front. Twilight movies will help with book sales in the same way, but their original target is going to grow up and get over it. So it’s a good thing all the books are out. The original fan club wouldn’t likely come back for more.

Twilight and Danielle Steel

When I was younger - 9, 11, something like that - I had a trashy romance phase. I would rush home after school to catch every possible minute of General Hospital, and my library lending history only further confirmed my true self to be a bored, middle-aged, under-sexed housewife. In my defense, I didn’t understand the naughty bits. I just liked the drama, excitement, and intrigue; I was captivated by the idea of falling in love in just that way.

Twilight is trashy romance for teens. If I were a decade younger, or even in high school, I would be obsessed. At the *ahem* ripe and mature age of 21, I still appreciate it for what it’s worth. Not literary genius by any means, not a brilliant exposition on any topic, but some good almost-clean wholly-engrossing fun. Something to sigh over and lose yourself in and yearn for, with some irrational part of your brain.

Props to Ms. Meyer on writing very graphic intimate scenes that safely illustrate nothing indecent but certainly have an indecent effect. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt tantalized by “sweet breath in my face” and “golden eyes boring into my soul” in quite that way. Heh. I turned so red that I was afraid to read in public.

Twilight and Real Life

You can picture it happening for real - the rich, aloof family in the dreary little town; mysterious inexplicable deaths and miracles. But the realistic context isn’t where Twilight’s ability to connect to the actual life is most valuable.

I agreed to read Twilight just to see what the hype was about, but the single strongest reason I read the entire series and came to like it was that it reminded me of some amazing things I’d forgotten, and was happy to remember. I remembered what it was like to be 16 and utterly consumed with another person. To fall in love young enough to be without caution or restraint. I remembered the drama and constant desperate analysis, and working around what was forbidden. I remembered the electricity of every tiny moment of contact and the feeling that it was never enough. I remember the unthinking and automatic commitment, despite not knowing where it was going, because I was so lucky to have it at that moment.

In the intervening years, I’ve gotten older and harder and too much more practical and careful. I could never give myself up with the same abandon now, which makes me a bit wistful even though I know that it’s better, safer. I suppose I’m fortunate to still have the same person to remember it with, though. <3

So thank you, Twilight, for reminding me of several private but vital phases of my life that I’m glad I haven’t forgotten.

Here’s the second installment of those personal finance notes I promised. This module was more complicated -mortgages, insurance, financing a house and car. Nasty stuff, but vital nonetheless. Yay for being an adult.

(You can find part one here)

Personal Finance - Risk Management and Securing Assets

http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2009/public/content/landing?_discount=websf09pd1

Posted via web from namita’s posterous

Google 3, Mozilla 0.

Once upon a time, Google played warm and fuzzy and gave non-profit Mozilla a bunch of money to embed their smooth and sexy search in Mozilla’s super-cool new browser, Firefox. So far, so good; everyone’s happy. Google search grows and they aren’t being evil, and Mozilla has the money for R&D on awesome new things.

Years pass, and Google quietly develops their own browser in-house. Plenty of people figured they might do that, but plenty of others figured there was no point - wasn’t that what the Mozilla partnership was for? Personally, I don’t know what that partnership was for. Mozilla has plenty of money for now, but Google isn’t going to be using that distribution channel after 2011, so they’re going to have to find a new source for 88% of their income. Uh-oh. Like any company whose business lies on the web, that won’t be easy.

Why did Google renew the Firefox deal right before releasing Chrome? I can’t find numbers on what kind of market share Google grabbed through the Firefox channel, but given that the open-source browser is still working on critical mass, I’m going to assume it wasn’t a great ROI for the search behemoth.

Anyway, today it appears that others are jumping on the screw-Firefox-let’s-use-Chrome bandwagon: Flock, a ’social browser’ with less market share than the discontinued Netscape (even though it’s been around for 3 years; I tried it back in ‘06 and didn’t derive any value from it. For their sake I hope it’s improved). They claim Mozilla folks are unresponsive and Chrome is easier to work with. Is this the beginning of another browser trend? Or is it a silly decision by one small company that just happened to attract TechCrunch’s attention (Flock is a TC darling, after all)? Is anyone else going this direction? I’m waiting to hear the followup on this story.

Something else to think about - the mobile web is exploding. Microsoft bundles IE with Windows Mobile , just like they do with computer operating systems. Android phones will soon offer a version of Chrome. Apple’s Safari is spreading with iPhones. Even Opera, barely found on 1 of 50 computers, has ridiculous command over the tiny screen. But who’s pushing mobile Firefox?

I’ve told a lot of you about the personal finance class I’m taking - one of my very last fun classes at Cal, *sigh.* Anyway, it’s an incredibly valuable and practical course because it lays many of the (admittedly common sense) guidelines for planning out your financial life. It’s alarming how many people my age have no idea how to manage money. Some can earn it, everyone knows how to spend it, most of us are well-versed in asking for it… but hey guys, we’re about to graduate, and that means financial independence along with the salary, endless bar tabs, and swanky yuppie apartment somewhere in the Mission.

Here’s the intro: the basics of credit, budgeting, loans & mortgages, and taxes, for your perusing pleasure. Enjoy.

I ditched (one) class Friday afternoon to go judge the Global Social Venture Competition. Someone had reached out to ST@B to see if anyone wanted to be a student judge for the Berkeley applications, so I signed up. After all, I’m interested in how ventures’ intentions can actually be socially beneficial. I didn’t know anything about it prior to - or after - volunteering, but I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some ‘formal’ experience/training interacting with business plans.

I’ve had plenty of exposure to business plans via classes, internships, and talking shop with my dad, but I have this weird habit of seeking further instruction on certain topics whether I think I need it or not (why I keep going to stuff to “learn about social media,” for example). Story of my life, actually. I know a lot of stuff, but I’ve never gotten any kind of structured lessons on much of it, so I don’t know if I’m doing it right/well/properly. Perhaps that’s what business school is for, but that remains to be seen. I’ll let you know in a few years if I decide to go.

So I show up and walk into a room full of MBA students. Oops… didn’t get the memo on that one. Luckily someone asks me if I’m in one of his classes, so I suppose I didn’t appear too out of place. Actually, a few people at the She’s Geeky Unconference also assumed I was a grad student; I wonder what makes people think that. Anyway, instead of swooshing right over my head, the task at hand was totally manageable.

I’m rambling as usual, so here’s my point: It turns out I am well able/qualified to read and evaluate executive summaries that had taken MBA students presumably months of research and planning and writing to formulate. Yay for me, right? The sad part is, some of them were awful (I’m not an MBA so I don’t have to be politically correct!). I encountered badly written plans, full of typos and illogical sentence structure, and one that could have been amazing - if the core idea made any sense at all. Still another looked like the product of an hour of brainstorming over coffee with zero research backing it up (at least not in the summary). There are real judges that will decide which plans continue in the competition, but since they asked for my input, I strongly feel that some of those should not.

Does this mean I’m The Shit when it comes to business plans? Hah. I think it suggests that I can trust a lot of what I know even if it isn’t formally delivered information. It may also mean that I can continue learning for my career in the way that I have been so far - nonacademically and sometimes haphazardly. I’m smart enough to discern what’s important. Indicator: when people ask what I’m majoring in (Linguistics, International Political Economy) and what kind of work I’m looking to do after grad (the non-technical side of the tech industry), they no longer ask what the relationship that can possibly be. I just talk about what I’ve done outside and around school, and they’re satisfied.

Well, at least it looks like I know what I’m doing.

(okay, so this isn’t quite live. It was messy and contained too much stuff I didn’t want to publish so I edited very very slightly before releasing. *insert props for Wordpress iPhone app here* *also insert plea for netbook*)

Session 1: Being a woman entrepreneur

I think I’m fortunate to be a female in a ridiculously male-dominated industry. I never really realized that until the current session. I don’t encounter “boys’ club” discrimination like many of these women say they do. I don’t think people see me as bitchy, or inferior, or as the secretary. I think an advantage of how people see you is, well, that they see you. And then you gauge how to deal with them accordingly - impression management was a big point here.

check out: Springboardenterprises.org

Importance of business plan - half say very, half say eh. I say very. Will explain why in a GSVC post.

Session 2: Social media beyond Twitter

I’m hoping this session will help me figure out how to get my get-people-online deal going.

What’s your aim? Personal brand, community management, customer acquisition, sales? Be where your audience as competitors are (duh).

Note to self: check out Pipl - the ‘creepy’ way to stalk people on the internet

Private vs. public personas: should they be separate? People that think so seem to generally be concerned about security and conservative audiences. I said no and I think the gap fell largely around generational lines.

Check out radian6.

Adobe and social media: press releases on Twitter, blog posts, facebook… Sounds like that’s all. Okay.

Importance of consistent branding? Maybe not so much.

Social media is a channel for marketing, PR, engineering, customer support, etc. (no way)

Finally, something not-Twitter: RSS to collect information. (no WAY!)

Basically, nothing I didn’t already know or haven’t yet beaten to death here. I was intrigued by the “beyond Twitter” part of the title. Oh well.

Session 3: Voiding your warranty

I came here to see what other toys I could screw around with besides my jailbreak-able iPhone. They showed us a lot of snazzy hacked electronics, and I saw E-Ink for real for the first time since I heard about it ~3yrs ago! The women running this session were REAL hardcore geeks and they were awesome.

Adafruit.com. Wiihomebrew.com. Xoxbox.

Session 4: Finding a job in this economy

I won’t include the usual suggestions because everyone knows them already, or should. Experience, networking, job boards, etc. You know the drill.

check out Sdforum.org

Volunteer to get time away and do good things and get glowing recommendations.

PARS: problem assessment result solution

Sunnyvale EDD one stop career counseling (free!) novaworks.org

Simplyhired.com, Indeed.com, Startuply.com, Cupertino rotary club

New rounds of funding have to be publicly announced, look for places that info might be

People here are uncomfortable asking for help. I don’t think I am, and I think that’s a good thing.

Sometimes a person with less than enough experience is better hire because they are trainable and not set in their ways.

Ebawis.org (women in science)

Session 5: Semantic web

I was super excited about this. Soo ready to hammer out a solid definition for what this really means.

First things first, apparently web 2.0 is “silly.” I disagree. We won’t get into that.

Does semantic web rely on tags? It shouldn’t because people suck at tagging. Myself included; it’s a wonder anyone ever finds my blog.

Is it for marketing? For ad suggesting? Cultural context is important.

Important info sources: APIs and geotagging, IMDB, Yelp, Amazon (opened their database).

Natural language is important because not all web content is in databases.

See ‘linking open data,’ Freebase

Conversation has been on the verge of technical linguistic topics many times, but so far I’m the only one that’s said anything close to that effect.

Web grows decentralized and organically. Will that die with the semantic web? Doubt it. Moving on…

Open social graph (google), Alex Iskold (adaptive blue)

I introduced this crowd to Searchme and Cuil. Someone else just brought up Twine - oops, I think I played around with it in its early days then forgot about it. I also mentioned my disappointment with Powerset.

There are lots of librarians here.

Check out Aurora browser

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Those are my random cursory observations from today; full detailed notes from all sessions on both days will be available on a wiki at shesgeeky.org.

Today I signed up for Path101, a career guidance site currently in alpha. I forget how I heard about it - probably Twitter, because that’s how I get most of my information these days. Anyway, I decided to sign up because I (a) like to play with new toys and (b) am trying to get a career started here, and any advice is welcome.

They offer a ‘personality test’ that gauges your traits and skills and presents you with career options accordingly. I have my doubts about the test, since all questions are vague and answered by a sliding scale or ranking options, but it’s a good start and leads to some degree of introspection if nothing else. There’s also some form of resume analysis, where you upload your resume (didn’t work) or link them to your LinkedIn; I’ve given them the latter but haven’t done anything with it yet. Lastly, I checked out the questions section and answered a few. It appears that more features - additional quizzes and such - are in the works.

The site is a good idea and has the potential to turn into a valuabe resource, especially with so many people now out of work (or about to be) and average-career-switches-per-American on the rise. They don’t specialize in any particular field, which could be a good or a bad thing, I haven’t decided. It’ll either give them a foot in the door in a variety of industries, or cause them to miss out on offering services that could make them indispensable in a particular field. Maybe they could increase traffic via an application on LinkedIn, or maybe they’d be better off doing that instead of a destination site. I suppose it’s too early to tell. I definitely support their mission, though, so I’ll be checking in periodically and playing around some more

As some of you know, I have recently experienced a mild crisis of indecision. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but more that I’m not sure how to do it.

I love technology and the internet; this is absolutely certain. I want to spend many of my waking moments and brainwaves in those arenas; this is [at least currently] true. However, I would like to this in such a way that is at least marginally relevant and helpful to some portion of humanity.

Quite relevant and helpful: physical and mental health, connecting people

Less relevant and helpful: throwing sheep, celebrities and makeup

You get the idea.

This presents a bit of a conundrum as I search for my first “real” job. The good news is that a lot of new technology being developed is for relevant and helpful things. The bad news is that a lot of internet business (specifically Web2.0 - do not give me grief for use of the term) is not. And unfortunately, all I really know is the internet.

So here’s an idea. It involves freelancing, and since I don’t have the network for this, I don’t know how to begin. Help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I want to bring people online. First of all, everyone should love the internet, because it makes the universe a better place even - no, especially - if you’re not a techie. There is a ridiculous wealth of information out there about everything, just waiting to be consumed and shared by people it applies (and doesn’t apply) to. Allow me to explain.

The world I inhabit is disproportionately inhabited by technologically adept people. I don’t often encounter people whose lives take place offline. However, when I do, I usually feel that they would benefit by changing that. Their personal lives would be augmented, sure, but more often I think of how it would improve their livelihood, whatever it is. Areas this applies to:

- education

- medicine

- small retail/food/other brick-and-mortar establishments

So many easy improvements jump out at me; so much difference the simplest technology could make. Marketing, organizing information, operating costs, staying current… it depends on the entity in question, of course, but the list goes on. And I could do it for them - either myself or through resources I have. I can at least help them get started.

So this is something I want to do. I want to help bring people online. Except, in my world, I don’t know a lot of people like that to help. I don’t know a lot about freelancing either. I just know that I want to do something helpful to humanity, and that the internet is important, and that I want to learn more about industries other than the one I’ve chosen - this seems like a good way to do all of that.

Now, how do I get started?

I was just about to make my last tuition payment ever - about $3800 - and I got to thinking how (while I definitely will not miss that part of college) it really wasn’t a bad deal at all for the kind of education I’ve gotten. My 4 years at Berkeley are worth much more than the dollar value I paid for it.

I consider myself a relatively successful product of the public education system and a very ardent supporter of it. I’m going to be that hokey alumnus that donates to her elementary school and visits her first grade teacher until she retires. Of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that my parents had the foresight to move to Cupertino for its awesome school district before housing prices tripled overnight. I’ve gotten some of the best that public education has to offer, so I guess I’m a little biased. That doesn’t stop me from wholeheartedly supporting the idea, though. Education is a fundamental necessity, a huge leveler of the playing field, and that’s something the government ought to make a priority above many other things.

Right now funding for education sucks. I’m not impractical enough to suggest that it top the List of Important Things We Really Ought to Pay For (see my rant on healthcare) but it definitely deserves more attention than it’s getting in comparison to things like felons’ expenses or the size of chickens’ cages (sorry). You know, if the American public as a whole was smarter, a lot of dumb issues wouldn’t even come up in the first place. Just saying.

Don’t expect priorities to shift around with the miraculous surplus that everyone is waiting on the edge of their seat for Obama to deliver. Californians, don’t hold your breath for anything Arnie says, we’re way too far out of money. This is how it’s going to happen: one day, China and India will finally, effectively, scare the crap out of the US. We will fear losing our intellectual superiority to these quickly rising powerhouses and will begin throwing money into education - probably into math and science - just like we did during the Cold War with Russia, when it was imperative to our security and much more that our weaponry and space-exploring abilities were better than theirs. To be fair, education had also expanded from 1910-1940, but my interpretation of a primary reason for that is the lack of employment during the Great Depression and the hope that more education would better chances to find some. The next time it will be more refined than an international pissing contest but still bear traces of desperation - it will be a fight for economic power and respect.

(Disclaimer: I need to do more research into this; I’m going off of what I know but haven’t looked up the facts) When my dad went to IIT Kanpur from 1978-81, a semester at one of the most prestigious engineering institutes in the world cost basically next to nothing. India subsidizes education heavily, and this opens up opportunities for numbers of brilliant young people that would otherwise never be able to afford the luxury of college education, let alone one of such quality. This has led to the unfortunate (for India) consequence of brain drain. For the US, though, it has provided a substantial and free boost to the economy, as waves of immigration to this country are historically inclined to do. Again, I know my perspective is biased, but a giant segment of Silicon Valley can thank the Indian education system for its very existence. However, I believe that this pattern will begin to change in the next generation or two. India is an evolving, fast-growing country, with a huge market eager to adopt new things and a pleasantly rising GDP per capita. Soon enough, the outputs of places like the IITs will not be tempted to seek their fortunes a hemisphere away from everything they know because the opportunities and the quality of life will be plenty good enough at home. The government has begun to step in to assist in that realization (I don’t know much about this; please post any links you may have on the subject). The smart people will stay at home, benefiting the places that put forth the resources to educate them, and the US will lose a big source of its brains/innovation/growth.

Once things begin to slow down around here, I am quite confident that the freaking out will begin - and that is when education will once again be a priority in America.