A company’s sustainability strategy is best delivered through the marketing department, according to Unilever’s new chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed .

Many people that I know, simply disagree with this perspective.

- Marketing according to many has been the cause of of fueling unsustainable consumption patterns and the use and throw culture.
- Another very valid argument against marketing is that, unethical companies can simply get away by savvy marketing instead of making genuine changes towards sustainability.

It is no accident that the 20th century saw marketing departments as the primary communication interface with the consumer. The proliferation of media around us highlights the role of the communication industry that has largely been responsible for consumerism and its many benefits as well as ill effects.

I believe that this important role of marketing is still driving and will continue to drive change towards sustainable consumer behavior. While unethical companies can definitely use marketing to ‘green wash’ their way into consumer hearts, it is still a very short term business strategy.

I want to draw your attention to a WWF report called ‘ Let them eat cake – Satisfying the new consumer appetite for responsible brands’. Instead of preaching about the moral responsibility of business to further the goals of sustainability, this report exposes the considerable commercial potential of a new approach to business, based on the provision of more “responsible” mainstream brands.

While this is nothing new, it is a very interesting report that puts the role of marketing firmly where it belongs – at the heart of the sustainability solution. Marketing has been accused of fueling unsustainable consumption patterns and I would argue that the solution too lies in marketing. While this perspective may have many takers there is much to be debated whether ‘sustainability sits best under marketing’ ?

While there are many criteria to be considered, in my view, one of the fundamental perspectives is that of ‘the nature of the organization’.

The role of marketing has to be one of ensuring customer choice in your favour. Depending on the nature of your products and services as well as scale, the role of marketing needs to be considered objectively.

If you are a company, that does not manufacture anything, but instead provides services to end consumers. You would largely be dependent upon suppliers. In such a situation, sustainability led supply chain management as well as consumer marketing would play an important role. Many retailers would fit into this category and so would telecom companies. In India, the telecom industry is the second largest emitter of CO2 after the Indian Railways. Cause marketing is a very critical part of the telecom industry in India and in rest of the world. M Pesa – Vodafone’s pathbreaking telecom solution and other applications by many other industry leaders are being used to drive social change. Mobile services, broadly termed as, mHealth, mLearning, mBanking rest on product design but are fundamentally fueled by marketing.

If you are a company that manufactures products, sustainability would form an integral part of the manufacturing function. But, the role and importance of marketing would depend on whether you are a B2B or a B2C company.

If you are a B2B manufacturing company consumer marketing may have a limited role as you may need to communicate to a finite customer base. Outsourced manufacturing units, industrial goods and infrastructure companies would fit in here. Companies like GE through their ecomagination initiative have made sustainability an integral part of business strategy and designed around it ground up. While at the same time they have promoted this initiative to stakeholders across the world .

If, you are a B2C company, consumer marketing may become important to drive behavior change and product preference for large number of customers. Unilever falls into this category, and builds on the need for a predominant role of marketing with roots in sustainability. Unilever has been working on a consistent long term approach of redesigning their business around sustainable products. Marketing has been used as a fundamental tool to communicate with consumers once the product is ready to show tangible consumer benefits yet fulfilling sustainability values.

The WWF report builds the perspective of Brandscape, Brainscape and Behaviour.

• Brandscape is the map of brands in our society. It is a combination of the products and services themselves, their prices, advertising, logos, design and functionality.
• Brainscape is the collection of beliefs, values and motivations of individuals.
• Behaviour is expressed by brands and consumers. It both affects and is affected by the other two dimensions: as people learn from their own behaviour, they change their own attitudes, beliefs and expectations.

The marketing function acts as a conduit between these three dimensions. Not only does it influence and partly define the brand package as experienced by consumers; it also measures the physical and emotional responses of those consumers in order to innovate.

To drive change we need to communicate better.

However, if your marketing sells products and services that violate sustainability values and practices, no matter what the marketing department says and where it sits, consumers will not buy and the role of marketing will become increasingly subservient to sustainable values.

I just read this post on Gender Bias in CSR . After reading the article and comments I have come to the conclusion that ‘Men are in Finance and Women in CSR’. While writing this, I must add that I absolutely detest stereotypes and I hate to add another element in the climate /sustainability / integrated reporting / CSR debate.

It is largely true that most senior positions and financial departments are staffed with men while the mentioned post and comments highlight that women are a majority in CSR departments.

I also did a google search and came up with this article based on the book, Men are From Mars Women are From Venus. I have added some comments to this ageless debate. Dear readers, tell me what you think?

1. It is said, the differences between Men and Women are universal. Women all over the world complain that “He doesn’t understand”. “He doesn’t listen”.

- Finance departments are notorious when it comes to funding CSR / Sustainability projects. Many times these projects don’t fit into the quarterly or annual time frame for determining ROI. While CSR departments feel that they are banging their heads against a brick wall, despite the fact that they are talking about something that will have a long term positive impact.

2. It is said, Men like to be logical. Women like to share and talk

- Most conferences around integrated reporting (GRI) talk about fundamentally changing the way accounting departments function. Interestingly almost all conferences on this subject have large attendance from CSR departments while CFO’s and accounting departments are noticeable due to their small numbers.

I could go on and on. But would love to hear your views……..

In business school we were taught ʻHow to read a balance sheetʼ. Many hours were spent coming to terms with the accounting terminology and processes. There are atleast 5,00,000 professionals consisting of MBAʼs and Chartered accountantʼs in India today who regularly participate in preparing Corporate Indiaʼs Annual Reports.

Many professional accountants today, are taken aback to hear that accounting as they know it is about to change forever. The Sustainability community today is talking about Integrated Reporting – a way of accounting for economic, social and environmental (ESG) impacts.

For most accountants / finance departments all over the world sustainability has been either about risk mitigation or compliance. It hasnʼt really made a significant dent in how they worked. However, integrated reporting is about to change all that. The Global Reporting Initiative and The Princeʼs Accounting for Sustainability Initiative are driving the change towards integrated reporting practices at organizations all over the world.

The Princeʼs Accounting for Sustainability Initiative talks about 10 main elements to embed sustainability . Here are my comments on (4 points) their implications for Indian Companies and CFOʼs

In a world where everyone is seeking smart people , experts and lists, the real lessons that one learns are in the nuggets of insight, encouragement or the tough questions that some people provide for no apparent benefit. These people may actually be outside your social circle or influence. Call them chance encounters or serendipity but one just comes across these people and they make a difference to the outcome of one’s situation at that time.

A mentor’s input is never a commercial transaction, because if there is some money involved then one could question motive. A mentor is not really a designation and one does not anoint someone as mentor. A person rarely would announce to the world that they have identified a mentor. A mentor is just someone they would turn to for that practical, no nonsense, non judgmental input over a period of time.

Then there are books that one turns too, ever so often. Anytime there is a doubt in the mind there are some books that one tends to turn too. They are not self help books but books that provide the reason that we seek for a particular thought etc.

PS : This post is built on the thought started by Gaurav Mishra in his post, I’m Searching For Mentors

In the world that the leader of Faceborg lives in, he thinks of Faceborg as a country on the planet. His ambitions include making Faceborg the center of this planet or maybe replace the name of all people, countries and even the planet. Welcome he says because resistance is futile.

It is interesting that Faceborg thinks of itself as  a country. The country is not a democracy and infact they do not hold free and fair elections to anything. They just decide and rule and then change their mind and make new rules. To rule.

In this assimilated world there is only one option you have only one place to turn to. Faceborg and the option to Like.

Faceborg thinks of inhabitants as objects. Objects to be manipulated and mashed and shared with other participants such as the builders who make newer applications that manipulate them. They have forgotten that these are not objects but real people who need to be treated with respect.

In reality, Faceborg is just a company with some customers. A company that has mistakenly thought of its customers as objects. It thinks that its real customers are developers, advertisers etc. The mistake it is repeatedly making is that it is ignoring the people who have made this company.

The Faceborg of the past and the company of today are two different things. The people who signed up for it made the mistake of not understanding the ambitions of this company or were perhaps the company has diverged from its original path. If there is one thing that the history of this planet tells us, mistakes are often corrected, belatedly sometimes .

If Faceborg had their way, they would assimilate but there are enough people who feel that assimilation is futile. We are people who will find a better alternatives away from the greed and ambition of Faceborg.

If you are concerned about your Faceborg account think about this and join the resistance.

• If you want to leave this Faceborg, why is there just a deactivation and why not a complete deletion. Why are they profiting from your individuality even after you have stopped the service?
• If there is a problem, do you know of any easy way of contacting anyone in Faceborg. There have been many problems people have faced. Have they got a satisfactory response? What is the safety and support net
• Why is it not possible to see who of these unknown third parties access your information and to what end they use it?
• Should a company have access to so much data just because they can. What are the checks and measures that various countries are going to build so that their citizens are safe from the predatory practices of Faceborg?

Assimilation is Futile. What are your thoughts on Facebook?

Some thoughts from around the web on Facebook and its initiatives including privacy, big data and practices.

Into the Open Graph

As Zuckerberg said, “We’re building a Web where the default is social.”

• Facebook rivals are also moving in this direction. Twitter’s @Anywhere platform, for example, attempts to embed Twitter’s conversation features on any site. For some, however, the sheer scale of Facebook makes its move to become a de facto central bank for social information a little dangerous.
• The fly in the ointment is the same one that took down Beacon: overreach. The privacy implications to broadcasting personal preferences, and allowing Facebook and others to store them, are many. One of the important elements of Open Graph is that it allows developers to keep Facebook user data for longer than the previous limit of 24 hours.

Facebook’s Open Graph: It Depends On What The Meaning Of The Word “Open” Is

• Of course, then publishers don’t have to use Facebook’s Like button. But they will — I can think of nearly 500 million reasons why. Love it or hate it, that’s the way it is. It’s not good versus evil. It’s not black versus white. It’s a million shades of gray, as always.

Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors

• Personally, I am skeptical that the average Facebook user is going to care all that much. People are notoriously naive about being watched on the Web, and this is likely to be no exception. More likely than not, Facebook users will enjoy the personalization aspects of the new platform and won’t think much about it – until Facebook starts openly targeting them.

Millennials don’t like Facebook Likes

• Millennials smell marketing tactics from about 30 miles away and at the end of the day, the new Facebook feature provides more value to marketers than it does to them
• Now they can easily tell all their friends, not to mention marketers, what appeals to them. 

I think eventually they’re going to Like this.

Facebook: Privacy Enemy Number One?

• Facebook will say that all of this is opt-in, and it is. Hell, no one is making you use Facebook at all…yet. But the truth is no one really understands their own privacy settings now. When Facebook changed its settings six months ago, 65 percent of users chose to keep their profiles public. Or, more likely, they just thought they should click “yes” to everything. We have all done it, and that choice will now follow us around the Web—forever.

Facebook Wants to Know More Than Just Who Your Friends Are

• The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.
• The social networking site said it was also getting stricter about what information in allowed third-party developers to access, moving to address a series of criticism from users and privacy regulators that its policies were too lax.

Facebook’s ambition

• Today I told Zuckerberg that he now has the modern-day railroad in his grasp and challenged him to both win our trust and not abuse the major power he’s going to aggregate.

EU Commission promises data protection law rewrite

• It also said that it would seek to negotiate with the US to enforce a “personal data protection agreement for law enforcement purposes with the United States of America”. It also said that it would publish a communication on personal data protection for law enforcement purposes in relation to other third party countries.

Privacy, Consent and Collaboration

• Kaliya Hamlin commented on her  ‘identity woman‘ blog  about the latest Facebook announcements around their “continuing apparent “centralization” of identity”
• The issue at hand is fundamentally about FREEDOM: the freedom to choose who hosts your identity online (with the freedom to set up and host your own), the freedom to choose your persona – how you present yourself, what your gender is, your age, your race, your sex, where you are in the world.
• We are now in the farcical situation with Facebook of needing to set up new accounts as being under 18 in order to opt out of Facebook’s instant personalization and having your information shared all over the web.
• Personal social lives have huge ramifications for employees retaining their privacy and personality, given that employers can see their employees and prospective hire activities online.
• The solution to this issue is essentially private or public groups of users whose chosen persona and identities are respected and protected. You have these rights now with bugging laws in most countries, how long will it be before the individual is similarly protected online, whether as an employee or in their social life?

Nobody Can Stop Facebook Because Nobody Understands Facebook

Is it Time for Facebook to Make Opt-In the Default?

• Facebook already hosts more private information about its users than any other site on the Internet. Given the company’s current trajectory of exposing more and more personal data, it’s probably time for the company to establish a consistent policy for how it plans to handle personal data in the future and make it very easy for users to opt out of any new initiatives that will expose more of a user’s data to third parties in the future.

Facebook Takes Fire From Senators Over Privacy

• The senators are also opposed to allowing websites and services to retain information on users that they receive from Facebook for longer than 24 hours, another recent change made by the company. And they dislike a new feature that adds users to “connection” pages based on topics or places they have expressed an interest in through their Facebook profile. “Social networking sites are a Wild West of the Internet; users need ability to control private information and fully understand how it’s being used,” they said in a news release.

Facebook: Where Fraud Isn’t Fraudulent and Privacy Isn’t Private

• Ultimately, I think the Graph API will probably face at least a few more privacy challenges, even before the watchdogs, federal government and litigators start in on it.

Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter

• Social sharing is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century. And the information we choose to share with friends, co-workers and even strangers, is re-defining the idea of what’s private and public before our very eyes.

Facebook’s High Pressure Tactics: Opt-in or Else

• But even for those who actually do consider the implications of everything about themselves being made public, they’ll soon encounter another issue. Something that Li didn’t explain in the cheery blog post was what would happen if you refused to link to these new Pages: your profile information will be removed and your profile page will be left empty.
• The high-pressure tactics being used to get people to link to Facebook Pages are a good example of how Facebook is coyly forcing people to go public with their previously more private, personal data.

“Privacy and Publicity in the Context of Big Data”

Privacy concerns are not new; people have been talking about privacy – or the lack thereof – forever.  So what’s different now?  The difference is Big Data.

• Bigger Data are Not Always Better Data
• Not All Data are Created Equal
• What and Why are Different Questions
• Be Careful of Your Interpretations
• Just Because It is Accessible Doesn’t Mean Using It is Ethical
• Security Through Obscurity Is a Reasonable Strategy
• Not All Publicly Accessible Data is Meant to be Publicized
• People Who Share PII Aren’t Rejecting Privacy
• Aggregating and Distributing Data Out of Context is a Privacy Violation
• Privacy is Not Access Control

Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

Viewed together, the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.

Report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy

Facebook has been on a relentless request over the past six months to become the center of identity and connections online. The site unilaterally decided last December that much of a user’s profile information, including the names of all their friends and the things they were “fans” of, would be public information — no exceptions or opt-outs allowed.

So it’s no laughing matter that the head of Facebook appears not to care about privacy. (We asked Facebook to clarify Zuckerberg’s privacy stance but have yet to hear back.)

10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

Facebook’s “Evil Interfaces”
OK, perhaps the word “evil” is a little strong. There’s no doubt that bad user-interfaces can come from good intentions. Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious. And when similar accidents happen over and over again in the same company, around the same issues, it’s more than just coincidence. It’s a sign something’s seriously wrong.

Facebook Privacy Policies Draw Criticism by 15 Consumer Groups

Facebook claims data portability is criminal

when brands become too powerful
There’s nothing wrong with powerful brands, but at some point, they all have to realize that humility and giving back are the only ways to stop them toppling over thanks to their own arrogance.

When ego gets in the way of privacy and security
In retrospect, I’m embarrassed that I let my drive for visibility get in the way of my good common sense. It’s not as if I don’t know better. I could’ve just deleted friends and gone quietly on my way. But again, I know that this is a common struggle with people trying to build their blog presence or their careers. It’s just not worth it, folks. Not with such ambiguous privacy policies, not with so many aggressive scammers and cyber criminals just waiting to fool you into friending them, and not with the future of online privacy being such an unknown entity.
At least I was smart enough to leave most of the applications alone a long time ago.

Facebook’s Disconnect: Open Doors, Closed Exits

Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

Final Two thoughts on this

On the topic of Borg

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not Everyone gets everything that they want..

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happens when a service provider decides to change their business model? If you go back to the earliest days of the internet, Geocities, Hypermart and so on promised free sites. A lot of users went ahead and invested time and effort and then lost it all because the provider decided to either shut shop or changed their model.

The story continues even today. Ning is not the only one but just the latest one to change their decision about a free service. This decision impacts a large number of users and admins of these communities. Could they have handled it better?

As of writing, there is absolutely no news about the new pricing model which has created uncertainty all around. Even assuming that most admins would want to continue, surely they should have been informed about pricing before making public any other decision.
Most admins have not factored costs of the service when they setup the site and now have less than 30 days to convince the community of their plan.

What if the community admins decide to not continue with this service? What are the questions uppermost in their minds. Some that came to mind are

1. What are the other platforms on offer ? Have a look at this list or this

2. If I move, how do I move to another provider. Should I take the help of tech admins. What is the likely cost and what are the questions that need to be addressed.

3. What about data confidentiality and who owns the content created in these sites?

4. What do I need to transfer ? Broadly they are

• User Profiles and Connections
• Groups
• Blog

While you can explore all the sites mentioned in the earlier link, it is likely to take time. As a person who has taken a decision earlier to use Wordpress and BuddyPress for Unstructure and other sites, here are is a quick snapshot why I would suggest you explore this more in your transition from Ning. Here is an indicative idea

If you decide to use Wordpress,

• Take up hosting – consider MediaTemple but there are others too
• Setup Wordpress MU+Buddypress – While the setup is easy but if you are not a technical person it is best to involve someone.
• Customise the look and feel of your site. You can buy themes or get it custom developed too.
• Import data. To begin this, here is a plugin for importing Ning to Wordpress profiles .

If you have any questions, do let me know I would be happy to answer them or you could also ask the Wordpress community.

Now lets take a look at it from a person who has invested time and effort and made these communities vibrant by sharing their insights, links and connecting with people. It is a bit tricky for them. They are

• Not sure if the site will continue at Ning or not
• Not sure if the current admin will continue this community
• Not sure if the admin has the technical expertise to move this data
• Not sure if they will ever be able to retrieve all the connections and insights

Some of the questions thus that come to a user’s mind

1. What happens to all the connections I have made in so many forums
2. The posts that i have written
3. Forum Discussions, links and all the effort i invested in these forums
4. Is there an easy way to export data and relationships.
5. If so, which format.

Since they might be members of multiple communities, can all this data be retrieved individually and imported into perhaps a new blog they might setup.

Now those are the tricky questions that have to be answered. I will answer them in a subsequent post . In the meantime your thoughts are welcome..

I am no expert on education. In my working life of 17 years I have never had the opportunity to work with a school. So, when Vaswati Misra, a dancer and teacher came to me. I was curious to know more.

I visited the Dhwani Zaroorat school 2 days back and was amazed to find an island of excellence in an area full of poverty and despair. What makes the difference is not just the quality of education but the fact that children from below poverty line families are given simultaneous training in performing arts. A training in the arts gives them the tools not only of self-expression, but also of a future career within the arts as a performer or teacher.

Unlike other schools, Dhwani has virtually no dropouts and almost 90% attendance. Children are happy to be part of a large family like atmosphere full of music, dance, theatre and a commitment towards quality education.

Wish others could also learn from them.

Its been 100 days since the N97 Mini and the Mac were first connected in our office. Here are a few steps that can be taken to make the co-existence better and productive.

Email
The office email account and a personal account were the first tasks on the phone. Nokia Messaging turned out to be a good service from the time it was setup till now. It was easy to setup and there has been one instance when there was some sort of an issue in email being sent, maybe it was just connectivity. Overall, it was interesting that one ended up hearing the phone email sound before that of the desktop. Consequently it did help in focusing on whatever was more important at any given point in time.

Since the blog comment system was setup to approve comments by email, the email setup on the phone did help in our responsiveness to comments. Another point worth highlighting is the keyboard and the angle of the screen that helped in writing detailed comments, emails and even SMS messages.

Home Screen
Nokia has talked extensively about the Home Screen concept of live data and always on connectivity. So it is inevitable that one would add some of the widgets to explore always on data. However, soon enough, the home screen changed.

Broadly it now shows Email and Twitter as live data and the rest are just links. The links, though, do help in moving the most important applications right up front and one does not really need to click too many links. While it did allow for bookmarks to be put on the home screen, it would have been better if a widget that displays data from an application’s rss feed was also available. I wonder if it is just a niche need and most users would be satisfied with the options on offer. One more thing to keep in mind on the home screen is if you add a lot of bookmarks on the home page, they all look the same. It would have been great if there was functionality that allowed a user to also select icons for the bookmarks.

In the home screen one has Google, Notes, Ovi Maps, Blog Feed, two browsers plus the 2 applications of live data. This pretty much sums up the way the phone was used.

A related aspect of these changes was the customization to the options that one saw on clicking the physical menu button. All the applications that were important were moved into this area and the rest moved into the applications area. That said, Nokia perhaps needs to have a closer look at some of the options on offer here and various user types.

Contacts and Calendar
Large numbers of contacts plus different devices means that the contact databases need to be in sync across devices. This was achieved by the Isync utility on the Mac. The utility though requires device specific files to be available. The N97 mini isync file was downloaded from the Nokia site here… . Once it was installed the mobile can be synchronized via bluetooth or the given usb cable. Most times one uses the bluetooth interface for its sheer convenience. The mobile and mac bluetooth connection is made once. On an ongoing basis, synchronization is just a matter of switching on bluetooth on both devices, starting isync and pressing sync. Each time you sync, your calendar and contacts base are updated on both machines. The contacts base is utilized fully if email addresses are available for each contact on the phone. This allows you to send an email easily by selecting the name of the person as opposed to entering the complete address. There are other features within the phone’s contact base that we did not use e.g. photo and favorite contacts. Some people though might find them very useful.

You might want to have a closer look at Road Sync in the Ovi Store if you want Exchange server related services as well. The feature set seems interesting but given our infrastructure, this software was not required.

Photo, Songs and Multimedia
Over the course of 100 days, one took many pictures, recorded training sessions etc. The Nokia Multimedia Transfer utility was quite useful in transferring these files via either bluetooth or the USB cable to the Mac’s Iphoto application.

Although, we used only the phone to Mac option, pictures from iPhoto or music from iTunes can also be transferred to the phone. It is a fairly simple application to use and makes one wonder why it has not been developed further for closer integration with the Nokia Music service. There is more on this in subsequent paragraphs.

If you want to share photos as you click them. There are some options that you might want to explore on the phone. One option you have is the Share Online service that is available in your applications menu. It has some default services built into it. Frankly they were of not much interest, so one explored the Ovi Store and came across the PixelPipe application and service. It allows you to upload your photos and indeed other content on various services. Once configured, it uses the Share Online Services. Please do keep in mind that the type of content you upload via this service is dependent on the destination service.

To upload pictures onto Facebook one needs to click from within the widget or the communities application and it worked reasonably well. The picture was also subsequently available in the gallery so that you could transfer it onto your Mac. One did wish for more features like uploading into a Facebook page.

The Web , Social Networks, Notes etc
The large screen on the N97 Mini meant that a lot more of the site was visible. The first use of this was in using the mobile and touch versions of Twitter and Facebook respectively. One had a fairly full featured twitter site and the Facebook site seemed faster than the app and widgets. As twitter usage evolved, one felt the need to install Gravity and also experimented with the Nokia Communities application. Gravity is actually a full featured twitter application that one had used previously on another non touch Nokia phone. The transition to touch version was fairly smooth and mostly used with the keyboard open. Consequently the touch part of it was not used as much but the keyboard came into full effect. Nokia Communities allows you to add Facebook and twitter services in one application. Content from these serves can also be made available on the Home screen. It already seems promising but does need to support management of Facebook Pages. A related observation would be that Nokia and perhaps developers need to spend some time and effort in making this device more usable for people who have blogs and also need to manage digital services.

Reading blogs via the Google Reader was a comfortable experience given the large screen. While on google, it is rather interesting that while they do provide for reading of Google Docs  one cannot create or edit documents, else the phone keyboard would have been very useful. If you are however, a user of the Zoho service, it does allow for documents to be created on the mobile interface. If you are very mobile and also need to document on the move, then consider Quick Office. The phone has a version that allows you to read MS office documents but if you wish to make changes or even make presentations on the move, consider upgrading.

One of the nicer applications on the phone is perhaps Notes. Jotting down notes while on the move was good. One would have preferred to also have these notes transferred in the iSync or Nokia Multimedia Transfer. Perhaps they should consider transferring Notes from the phone to the Notes application on the Mac. It would be an elegant way of doing things. Currently one can transfer notes which are essentially html files through  bluetooth or usb cable but that involves using the file manager. Not exactly a productive way of doing things.

Some weeks back, Nokia introduced the new Ovi Maps and it was promptly downloaded. Personally I have not used maps much  and mostly never the earlier avatar of Nokia Maps. This , though is very different. The interface is simplified and also features content partnerships that are very relevant for day to day needs.

The service is pretty good and quickly found its way to the home screen of my phone. It was consequently explored in various situations. In terms of content, there is still some work that needs to be done. Since it delivers content by location, we tried this feature and looked for a hospital while we were about 100 meters from a well known hospital. It did show the information but it was buried deep down because a lot of chemists were marked as hospitals. Another unusual behavior that one encountered was that if we took a path different from the one the service provides, it does not calculate a new path but instead tried to add that many extra kilometers. This happened when one tried to take a slightly different route from the one defined by the service. This was while going to Dehradun. It may be that we had not downloaded extra maps or perhaps there is still some cleaning up of data that is required. The reason one had not download extra maps if any was because we are on a Mac and there is no easy way for that.

Overall though, the service is still very good and Google maps even though already sparingly used were quickly forgotten.

Finally, in these 100 days, the one service that was used the most is Nokia Music. While i am still not convinced that the 100 songs voucher is the only way to explore digital music but it is still a start. For Anyone who likes to explore music from the around the world, this service will be a boon. To explore music by genre or singer from around the world is a lot of fun. I spent an extensive amount of time exploring and downloading music on the phone. From listening to rare songs or new singers and bands, it was all done on the phone. It was fairly conformable experience even though the interface had its own idiosyncrasies.

I was quite impressed with the range of music on offer plus more knowledgeable people might weigh in with specifics. Think about it, finding Gilberto Gil, Richard Clayderman, Andre Rieu, Hemant Kumar or even the variations of the song Wind of Change, one can explore here. If one likes a particular song or album it can be downloaded onto the phone. I say phone because that was the only option on offer for a Mac user. A PC user can download songs on a PC or transfer songs either way or even burn a cd with the music app that is built into the Ovi Suite. It is here that I wonder why the Nokia Multimedia Transfer could perhaps have been used more.
One must point out though of the glitch that was encountered on updating the phone software. One had downloaded a few songs when there was new software upgrade available for the phone and it was promptly installed. But after the install process, the songs would not show in the song library but were visible in the file manager. If one played the song from the file manager they would play as well. It was surprising that even on playing , the song gallery would not show these songs. Another experience that one encountered was that if one play an especially long file, the phone would play it but on stopping it would not be able to play any other song. It would then need to be switched on each time.

Eventually a PC was found to explore  Music software. After a slightly longish installation process of the required software, the phone was visible and one could transfer music. I tried to move the songs that had been purchased. This was easily done but one noticed that the transfer process had lost all information that was listed with the song and it simply said unknown artistes. On trying to play the songs on the PC one got a DRM error which could not be corrected. Eventually we deleted these songs and downloaded the already purchased songs again. It was allowed and thus one could download one song at a time. This time the songs had the correct meta information.

Soon though we tried to make a cd of the downloaded songs. This could be done from within the Nokia application. This is when we encountered another issue i.e. none of the song information had been written onto the cd. This itself leads to a very suboptimal experience. Imagine listening to excellent music in the car but seeing untitled written on the display.

Overall, in the 100 days of the N97 mini, one felt that there were many aspects that were missing that somehow made it an incomplete  Nokia experience. I do not believe in just the hardware specifications but in the completeness of an experience. It is here somewhere that Nokia needs to do more to make it more elegant.

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Climate change and sustainability are being fueled by large scale urbanization and mass migration to urban hubs. There is a crying need to build self sustaining rural livelihoods that can ensure a decent quality of life in rural habitats.

While most people in many forums are discussing the need for rural entrepreneurship the discussion seems to be restricted to Agri business. Agriculture is undoubtedly a large part of the rural economy, but what about the others we forget – the women of rural India who contribute equally to the domestic income by generating some of the most beautiful hand crafted products.

Craftspeople form the second largest employment sector in India, second only to agriculture. Handicrafts are rightly described as the craft of the people: there are twenty-three million craftspeople in India today (Jaitly, 2001).

The handicrafts sector is a home-based industry, which requires minimum expenditure, infrastructure or training to set up. It uses existing skills and locally available materials. Many agricultural and pastoral communities depend on their traditional craft skills as a secondary source of income in times of drought, lean harvests, floods or famine. Their skills in embroidery, weaving, and basket making are a natural means to social and financial independence. Many Indian crafts are the sole domain of the women in the household.

This tradition of creating beautiful pieces of work is ingrained into the Indian ethos. Often necessity and absence of resources built up self sufficiency and was reflected in the way we lived and how many rural communities still do. Almost every plant in the backyard had a use, food was grown in the vegetable patch behind the house or fished from the stream nearby and cloth was spun from locally available trees/ plants. This concept of using everything available now has a modern twist, many new materials have been added into the traditional mix to develop totally unique, Indianized solutions.

In my colleague Anurag’s ,  recent trip to Jaisalmer District in Rajasthan she was astonished to find in a mud house a
room full of vibrant coloured charpais (woven beds). They had been made in rope spun out of fabric. Old garments had been used to spin these multi colored ropes and woven into many the wooden cots. Each one was unique. In one corner of the room there were ropes made out of fabrics, plastic, camel hair, goat hair and even some canvas from an old army tent!

Every Indian State has its own unique set of traditional crafts that are now slowly eroding due to absence of the right infrastructure to promote them. Corporate India too has shown little interest in promoting rural craft skills.

With the right kind of inputs the craft sector can be developed into a powerhouse of rural skill and enterprise.

Design, Skill and Financial Inputs – Most Indian crafts are still being made the same way they were hundreds of years before. While this is interesting some of our crafts desperately need modern design inputs to increase quality, utility and improve aesthetics. Simple yet modern designs can help rural artisans in finding new buyers and better profit margins.

Branding – While Indian malls are full of branded products imported from various countries, there is a glaring absence of branded Indian Craft products (with a few notable exceptions such as Fab India).

Could this be a business opportunity perhaps for corporate India looking for socially responsible business opportunities?

The change in consumer buying trends and the entry of various new, aggressively promoted factory produced commodities into the rural and urban market, has meant that craft producers need more support than ever if they are to become viable and competitive. One simple way in which all of us in India can exercise our social responsibility could be through sustainable buying.

Can we do our bit by supporting local craft groups? After all many local craft groups are not looking for charity, they are self supporting, highly creative women who could do with a bit of help!

Hand woven beds in Jaiselmer

Whizzing past the empty roads and barren landscape of western Rajasthan the attempt to think was way past my ability. All one could do was hear the radio singing above the whistling wind. Daddam khan, the taxi driver was the proud daddy of the innovative radio. He beamed and told us how he had invented it in only Rs.500. He could even take out the chip and insert it in his phone to upload songs. He had been bored with the cassettes and had figured out the ‘chip technology’. He fiddled with it needlessly and continuously changed the songs with his remote.

We stopped for a tea break in one of the road side dhabas to see the small innovations all around us. It just reiterates my thought about how Indians will never be able to replicate like the Chinese – each Indian is an innovator or designer due to his own survival needs.The dhaba owner had long stone sink that had a hole though which a pipe drained into a kanaster or aluminum container. Simple and clean solution.

One of the remotest villages we visited near the Rajasthan border where there were several widows who had made self help groups. The main administrator was one of the older widow women. While we sieved thru histories of old textiles the widowed lady conduced her work over the phone. How effectively the phone was being used to ensure that work was done timely and effectively.

I felt like a proud Indian where communication and technology had finally come of age