The World is Mega Uber Bloody Flat
...Friedman way underestimated it.
Not that I didn't already believe I would be blown away by BarCampBangalore, but I had been told the same story time and time again that it was 'cheap and plentiful labor' that was coming out of India, and that the creative engineering efforts were happening in the Western world. Ha.
Believing that will be that ethnocentric idea that leads to the dive of the North American economy. Far from being merely the rooms full of workhorse coding monkeys, performing the mundane tasks, the ideas coming out of BarCampBangalore are better than any I've heard at US camps.
We have Taazza, with their amazing news/meme/context tracker - focused on the Indian subcontinent, they aren't interested in competing for the same markets (*cough*MySpace*cough*) that we're all scrambling to capture. But they could. They've thought of everything that could build context on any news story I'm interested in and honed it down to areas where I'm interested (not just the general public).
Then there is Infinity Music, an online DRM free, totally full of heart and soul music store, run by the brilliant Kaustubh and Sreyash. Chris and I had the pleasure of hanging with these guys (and the lovely Tripti) on Sunday before we left. They are working on more amazing projects like this one.
The key here is to understand that, in the essence of the chunky long tail, there are markets out there that have more potential than we could ever dream of in North America. Untapped. Underrepresented. And unlimited. And, although now we in North America see ourselves as the default and everyone else as the 'other' (I won't go into backing this statement up here, but we certainly can have a conversation about it to come), it won't be long until we realize that we are dead wrong. The western countries represent the smaller piece of the online pie.
It's not just that the conversations I took part in there were the same ones I took part in everywhere else. It's not just that the ideas that are coming out of the India tech community are kickass. It's not just that the innovators there are hungry and passionate to change the world through technology first and foremost. It's not just that they have the advantage of a less inflated standard of living. It's all of that and more.
So, what do we do?
Well, it is really out of our hands (remember, the world does not revolve around us). However, we would be crazy to ignore it, ridiculous to try and stifle it. Personally, I think we could learn a thing or two from what is going on abroad and not be so amerocentric. Geeks around the flat planet are not only our 'resources', they are our partners in the change that is taking place.
[p.s. thanks to Chad Dickerson of Yahoo! for the insipiration for the title...he has a paper coming up in the near future dealing with this same subject, but more in-depth...the working title is "The world is really really really really fucking flat". I totally look forward to it. Chad was there with us at BarCampBangalore and also observed the Yahoo! Hack Day a day before. Chris, Chad and I had lengthy conversations about how amazing the tech scene is in Bangalore]
[tag: barcampbangalore, barcamp, theworldisflat]
14 Comments:
Hey Tara,
It was a great pleasure meeting you and Chris.
Shreyas's blog is at http://blogs.gnome.org/portal/shres
I hope you enjoyed your trip to Bangalore and hope to have you back here really soon again. :)
Cheers,
-K
And the women were where? And this is a good thing? Exchanging one patriarchy for another?
I hear there were gapingvoid stickers there? Very cool.
Tara, have you been to Richard Florida's site - www.creativeclass.org? You might find helpful his PDF called the World is Spikey. It is a refinement of the world is flat notion.
Thanks for extending the conversation!
Hey tara,
My blog is at
http://blogs.gnome.org/portal/shres
--
Shreyas
Tara,
Speaking of how "flat" things are across various axes, I have two questions so far regarding BarCampBangalore which looks like it was totally amazing.
1. I only see men in the photo at the top of your post. How many women were at BarCampBangalore besides yourself? Out of how many approximate total attendees.
2. I noticed the whiteboard photo you linked to was in English. What approximate (use your own estimate) percentage of the communication at BarCampBangalore was in English (as opposed to other languages)? Point out if this percentage differred much between speech, whiteboard, irc, wiki and other media or was relatively the same.
Tantek
@Shelley and Tantek,
Yes...once again there were fewer women there than men...but there was a larger percentage than here...and one of the organizers is a woman (Jessica, who I've mentioned in previous posts and whose photos are all over my Flickr photostream).
I'd say about 15-20% were women there, vs the 5% here. I don't think it is a patriarchy, though, Shelley, I think it is technology and geekery. But I've talked about it at length. I had probably the largest audience for my talk, which was on marketing, and nobody treated me like I offered less than Chris, who is way more technical than me. Nobody.
@Tantek
English was spoken 100%. I may have heard a conversation or two in Indian...but Bangalore is very english speaking. We started to take it for granted after a while.
@Michael
Know of Richard Florida? I'm one of the members of the Creative 100. ;) I did read the spikey paper, and he's right. The point is, though, that current literature underestimates non-North American cultures. Big time.
@Hugh
Yep. Gaping void was a big hit. ;) Of course.
and the uber remark was meant as a joke, but since it's a joke that pretty much exists in my head, thought I should at least clarify. it's time to put down the wine. :)
Great write up and very interesting to see how Bangalore has changed. I was there in 1998 for a short visit but even then there was a marked difference in Bangalore compared to other parts of India.
Are you going to get a chance to get to the Kerala coast? It's amazing and not really that far from where you guys are.
hi tara
nice write up. just that friedman sucks.
a very nice review of his book was written bi taibbi
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
cheers, moritz
The world is not flat. It's round. A round world is more connected than a flat world.
Try it for yourself get a globe and a mercator projection map of the world, such as this one
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Tissot_mercator.png/300px-Tissot_mercator.png.
See how close California is to Japan on a globe as opposed to a model of a flat world.
Please, please stop perpetuating Friedman's sloppy thinking.
Super-duper rad. Super encouraging.
In fact when you say this:
"The key here is to understand that, in the essence of the chunky long tail, there are markets out there that have more potential than we could ever dream of in North America. Untapped. Underrepresented. And unlimited."
This is exactly how I feel about the United States or any single state therein. Anyone who thinks that any web company or web service has 'locked' anything up will be eating their words within months of saying them.
My feeling is that we are at about 5% of our maximum potential right now compared to the tools, intellect and money available.
Here's to it!
Hi Tara,
First off, it was great to meet with you.
Secondly, a correction on taazza
"they aren't interested in competing for the same markets (*cough*MySpace*cough*) that we're all scrambling to capture. But they could."
It is not that we are not interested, it is just that the current focus for Taazza is the Indian subcontinent where is dire and immediate. Taazza is built to cater to any country. The framework is location agnostic. If you could reflect this on your blog entry that would be greatly appreciated.
Thirdly, we would love to be part of the early adopter group that would testing Riya's API. Please feel free to reach out to me for any regarding the same.
Also wanted to thank you for all your support, its greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Arjun
You ain't seen anything..the best is yet to come from India.
"Monkeys" can do wonders.
Regards,
Nag @
Startups.in
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