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What has a Haiku got to do with the need for us to have great teachers throughout our life?

Consider the following Haiku:

What did you understand from the above? If you were like me, it wouldn’t be much. It is so simple that we may read it once and move on.

I was reading Osho’s book “Intuition” where he disects a bit deeper into this poem of three lines. Here is what I got from that analysis:

Now, isn’t it clear without a doubt that we need great teachers throughout our life? Anybody can identify the extraordinary. Great teachers discover extraordinaty from within the ordinary.

I met with Liz Strauss (virtually) through Phil Gerbyshak - both are amazing individuals. A few weeks ago Liz asked me whether I would like to be interviewed and I said Yes. At that time, I didn’t know that Liz would ask only five questions out of which three of them would make me THINK for more than a day to answer
So, I finally completed answering her interview questions a week ago. The interview is being published in five parts and the first part is published today. Here is the schedule:

Thanks Liz for this wonderful opportunity. I am honored.

My column on CIOUpdate was published today. Part1 of the article was published last month. This is the concluding part of the article. Here are the links to both of them

Have a great week ahead!

In simple terms, Murthy explains that it’s ultimately boils down to the “value” you add to the organization.

This is a story about getting your priorities right. This story has been told in many books and in many conferences. Here it is..

Most often, when we see a set of tasks in front of us, the first tendency is to go right into our “To Do” lists and start updating the list with the tasks. I think we need to step back and decide whether some tasks should be in our “To Do” list or someone else’s “To Do” list.

Google announced their latest initative a few days ago - Custom Search Engine. With this you can specify the sites that you want to include in your search. You can customize the look and feel and place it on your website. Users can search using this custom search engine and when they click relevant ads, you make a piece of the revenue.

Dave Pell’s Rollyo has had the core feature of the custom search engine called SearchRolls for a long time - probably for more than a year now.

But the buzz generated by Google CSE was huge as compared to the buzz that Rollyo generated.

Why? I think there are two reasons:
1. Brand power - obviously everyone is watching whatever Google announces
2. Incentive power - Google lets you make money however small it is - it is still an incentive.

There may be more reasons but that’s what I can think of now.

There are lot of VERY rich people in this world. Most of these people have the power to make a difference to the world in general. Very few have the desire to do so. Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is a shining star in this respect setting an example on “what could be” possible.

An example of how the foundation works can be seen below:

It almost feels like GOD’s work!

We all do that.

Companies do that too - sometimes overtly and sometimes in a very subtle fashion.  One of my friend told me that the movie “The Italian Job” was sponsored by BMW as part of a marketing campaign for Mini Cooper. I also heard that it will cost a fortune to get some product featured as part of the TV show “The Apprentice.” I can see why. In the world of Tivo, companies have to find other ways of getting people’s attention. And, they are willing to pay a big  price for that.

I saw two simple examples recently.

Here is a key to a room in Econo Lodge - sorry to be more precise here is the image of a key card for a room in Econo Lodge. As you can see, it features an advertisement for Pizza Hut with a local number (Anaheim) that will make it easy for the guests to order Pizza. A person can either look up something in the yellow pages or he or she can quickly dial the number on the card to get food. Leveraging the space on the key card to play on the convenience factor.

Second one is a card that they were handing out when people came out of Lego Land. It says clearly that someone might instantly win $25,000 and the way to check is to swipe the cards on a computer terminal closeby. There were many terminals actually and people were in a queue to check this out. It was also very clear on the card that it was sponsored by some resort company and they were actually conducting a survey right then and there and getting all the information from you to see whether you were “qualified” for them to make you an offer.

On one hand, the consumer is overwhelmed (actually bombarded) with information and on the other hand, the companies are relentless in their pursuit to get the consumers attention!

I am sure you will find this interesting and fascinating..

BTW, brilliant marketing - rarely talks about Dove but still gets all the necessary buzz..

This is exciting for me. For the last nineteen months, I have had the same design for “Life Beyond Code.”

Finally, the time has come to re-design the blog and re-launch this. I have never had any advertisers on this blog since the start in Feb 2005. Now, I will have six sponsors on the blog (three confirmed, three slots are open)

If any of your companies are interested in discussing this in detail, please send me a note at
“explore at foresightplus dot com”

Thanks a bunch.
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PS: Every sponsor has to offer something meaningful to my audience - See ROII