Rumi Shivaz Innovation Blog

March V-Club Event - "Eli's Greatest Hits"

We had the March V-Club session at Vodafone Boardroom on Wednesday 25 March.

The guest presenter was Eli Weir from Air New Zealand Innovation ventures. I met Eli about 3 weeks ago when I visited his Auckland office with Deryk Whyte from NZTA and really enjoyed the presentation he made to us, which was called "Eli's Greatest Hits". 

So I invited him to the March V-Club session and had the privilege of listening to that fantastic presentation again. While I had seen it once, listening it to the second time helped to highlight couple of important things, that's really worth sharing.

1.  It's not about "You". 

This is a huge mistake we all do.  We get so focused on designing and perfecting a product or service, we totally loose the plot about "who" that product is meant to serve, the "Guy Who Pay's" for that God damn product or service. Time and time again, companies sink money dreaming up and making stuff that "they" think the customer need, while the investment and effort should be really focused on uncovering the spoken and un-spoken needs of the customer. A good example is Vodafone website. While they have spent millions of dollars on all kinds of gizmos on the site which I really don't care about, it can't give me the most basic thing I expect from the website;  ability to Sign-on Just Once to check Mobile and Home Broadband accounts. (at the moment, you have to login twice to do this which is a pain in the backside). 

2.  Be Lazy

Rather than keeping focus on providing value to customers, people ... especially those of us in the IT Industry, try to re-invent the wheel all the time. When you are designing a solution for a customer, break it down to components and see what can be outsourced to specialist providers, rather than trying to build the whole solution yourself. A very good example is the IT Infrastructure space, where people still waste time and money buying their own hardware, while you can easily solve the problem by using the Infrastructure As A Service model.

Thanks to ...

1. Eli and his lovely wife Dawn for coming down to Welly for this session 

2. Brent Spicer from Vodafone for providing the boardroom and drinks

3. Jeremy Blandford for creating the Photo Montage of attendees

If you attended the session, please feel free to share your thoughts on the value you got out of this presentation. 

Another Great V-Club Session - Topic : Use Of Social Networking Tools For Business

 Mike Riversdale

Yesterday we had the first V-Club session for 2009. (If you are wondering what V-Club is, then click the V-Club Tag on the right hand side bar to see couple of earlier postings). 

V-Club is a great example why you need to make a start on an idea although you may not have a clear understanding what the value could be.  My first V-Club session was quite complicated, it had too many topics/presenters/people and didn't have enough conversation time. When planing the second session, I made it completely opposite to the first session; it had one topic and only about 11 people.  Yesterday was the 3rd session ... again one topic, one presenter and 10 people. It was fantastic. 

Yesterdays topic was "How Can We Use Social Networking Tools For Business".   Mike Riversdale (MiramaMike)  did a great presentation and there was heaps of interactions/conversations/ideas flowing in the room. 

Some of the things I learnt was ...

1.  Don't try to promote a sub-standard product or service ... it will be killed by the community in no time.

2. You need a genuine story that your audience can connect with and see value ... otherwise the word won't spread ... It's just a waste of time. 

3. You need to have courage to engage through social media, because you can't control what people say about you, your organisation or your products. As long as you are making a genuine attempt, the community will forgive your short-comings. Nobody is perfect. 

4. If you are a public sector organisation, then you better start engaging through this medium asap. (I can see the horror in the face of traditional corporate comms people). If you don't do it, then the community will start a blog or twitter account and talk about how pathetic your services are. 

5. While there are truck load of tools around, I got a sense of what the best tools to use for my own business and for my clients. 

Thanks to everyone who attended the session. Please leave a comment on something you learned or the value you got out of the session. 

Special Thanks to Shane Mercer and Herik Jondell from Core Technology Limited for providing the venue, drinks and nibbles. 

More People vs Less People

I had my 2nd V-Club (forum for innovative thinkers) meeting on Monday at NZTA Boardroom. I enjoyed it a lot more than my first V-Club session few months back. 

Last time,  I invited about 50 people and around 30 showed up. There were a number of short presentations around Innovation. It took lot of organization and I was really stressed out. 

This time, I invited only 20 people and 10 people came to the session. There was only one topic, "Innovation Opportunities around the iPhone".  

I showed few random You-Tube clips of some current applications and got a conversation going to spark few ideas. It was very satisfying to see a conversation flowing amongst a bunch of people that hardly knew each other, and few great ideas emerged from the discussion.  Fantastic !!!

We try to get as many people as possible for gatherings and events. We feel that for an event to be successful, we need a lot of people to turn up.  

For my future events, I will invite as less people as possible ... as a organizer and facilitator, it's less stressful but hell of a lot more enjoyable and productive.  

PS.  20 Nov 2008.  Just learned useful tip from Tom Peters.  That is ... "If you think you are going to attract only few people for your event, then hold your meeting in a phone booth. It's great to have only standing room and people struggling to get in the door".  Great tip ... Thanks Tom. 

Two Minute Video Clip From The Very First V-Club Session

I gave the creative freedom to Richard Humphreys (TVNZ cameramen who filmed the event) to edit the footage and make a two minute Video Clip.  Hope you get a rough idea for what the event was about from this clip.  

Please click the following link to watch the Video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vYcWJyaed0 

...

V-Club Idea Off The Ground

My V-Club idea got off the ground on Tuesday 8 July in Exhibition Art Gallery in Wellington.  About 20 people turned up for the event.  

I actually didn't have a 100% clear idea what the V-Club would be, so thought the best thing to do is getting it up and running and treat the first session as a "Rapid Prototype".  

We got off to a wobbly start because the lack of time to complete the technical set-up.  So lot's of little things learned from the first event which will be useful for future sessions. 

Thanks to everyone who contributed valuable feedback/ideas/suggestions for the next session. Since I'm away all of August, I will try and arrange the next session towards end of September. 

PS.  I will post a 2 minute Video clip asap which will give a feel for the first V-Club event.