Who is Farhan Lalji?

I was listening to the Stanford podcast of Stephanie Keller Bottom (of Nokia’s Innovent team) today and found myself sharing an experience with her. It wasn’t that we both have degree’s that aren’t really technology related even though we work in technology – although that is true. And it wasn’t the fact that we think big companies can be supportive of innovation – although that’s true as well. It was when she mentioned that her father didn’t understand what she did.

My mom grew up in east Africa and trained to become a teacher. Since coming to Canada in the 70s she’s worked in a bank for most of her life. To her working in a bank or in the government seemed like really good jobs. Being a doctor or a lawyer seemed like really really good careers. She probably wasn’t the only one, I’m sure there are countless other immigrants who came to Canada around the same time and have the same or a similar mentality.

My wife has tried to explain to my mom what a great career I have, how the education I’ve gone through over the last few years is pretty impressive, yada yada yada, but I don’t think she absolutely gets it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, a lot. She’s sacrificed a lot to raise me and has done a phenomenal job given what she went through - being in a new country, losing her husband, crappy second marriage - my mom is awesome.

But, it’s interesting that no matter what happens in the next couple of years, no matter how senior I get or what I do, if my mom doesn’t get it I think part of me will feel unfulfilled. I wonder if Stephanie Keller-Bottom feels the same way?

Full disclosure – I don’t use Twitter and can’t really see the reason to for now.

So Twitter got some money. Good for them.

I think the platform (read: business model) will change significantly in the next few months. I can’t see this – as Don Dodge described it - “one way bursts of irrelevant chatter for the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) crowd” adding any really value the way it is right now. I think the platform can be used for communication in a way that it’s not doing now and the twitter team got the right people in the mix to make that happen.

I also think there are so many substitutes for this (including updating your status on facebook, which some people do constantly) for the service right now that I can’t see it’s user base getting to the tens of millions that would make a good exit possible. Again not the way the product is being packaged today.

It’s also interesting to hear that Twitter got funding without a business plan or no business model. What next people being funded without an idea? If that’s the case and if any VC’s are reading this I’m ready for a meeting.

I’m becoming a bit of a spreadsheet nerd.  Whenever I have the opportunity to look at some numbers and do a bit of crunching I get a bit nervous with anticipation – nerdy, I know!  Sometimes I won’t really need a spreadsheet but just love working and seeing the numbers work.  When I was looking for a new set of speakers for the house I put together a spreadsheet on my phone as I went from store to store looking at the number of channels the wattage and the price, broke it down in price per watt and negotiated with the retailers on Tottenham court road accordingly – my wife was pretty embarrassed but we got a good deal and some nice speakers.

I’m also becoming a bit of a Facebook addict, when I have a spare minute I’m busy looking at our MBA class group, or catching up with friends I haven’t seen in ages.

Today I decided to merge these two and look at periods in my life, the length of time spent in these periods and the friends on Facebook I’ve made accordingly.

Using the networks facility on Facebook I worked out that I have friends from my time in Toronto (22 years), in London (7.5 years), McMaster or Hamilton (4 years), London Business School (2 years) and Yahoo (2 months).  I wanted to take into account factors like people might not be on the network but still registered as friends of mine or other elements, but thought it will probably normalize across the board.

After looking at the numbers and my friends on Facebook, I saw that of my 251 friends 70 were on the Toronto network, 54 were on the London network, 25 were on the London Business School network, 3 were on the McMaster network and 3 were on the Yahoo network.

So the percentage of my life in comparison to the percentage of my friends looks like this:
Toronto – 77% of my life, 28% of my friends
London – 23% of my life, 22% of my friends
London Business School – 7% of my life, 10% of my friends
McMaster – 13% of my life, 1% of my friends
Yahoo -0.67% of my life, 1 % of my friends.

So, Toronto and McMaster are underperforming, London is performing adequately, London Business School and Yahoo are outperforming the others.

That’s really interesting as that’s probably how I feel about these parts of my life right now, not too engaged by Toronto or by McMaster at the moment, London feels about right, and I am really happy and engaged by the London Business School and Yahoo friends and experience.  I guess the numbers really don’t lie.

I’m a huge, huge, huge sports fan and haven’t had an opportunity to write a great deal about sports on this blog… yet.  After hearing that Darko had agreed to terms with Memphis I thought it was time to look ahead at the coming NBA season.

Big free agent signings were not really a factor this season, with Billups, Rashard Lewis, Wince Carter, Grant Hill and other big names out off the market and with trade talk dying down a bit, I think it’s a good time to make some predictions.

I’ve got the Suns, Spurs and Mavs having the best three records in the West, think this is the year that the Suns pull past the Spurs.  Make that a promise if they get a deal for KG done before the end of the year, Amare, KG, Grant Hill and Nash on the floor at the same time would be a phenomenal combination!

I think Utah and Houston will round out the top five in the west.  But after that it gets interesting.  Golden State’s Belinelli is getting a lot of good pub, but I can’t see the Warriors making the playoffs again – think they got lucky last year.  The LA Lakers soap opera with Kobe seems to be going on forever and I can’t see the Lakers making a repeat appearance in the playoffs either.  Think Sacramento has way too many issues that even if they get rid of Ron Artest they’re a couple of seasons away from a playoff spot.  And I’m not sure the Clippers have done enough to turn the corner – if they sign Francis I think they’re done, the guy will never, ever, ever be a winner.  Whiner maybe, but winner, can’t see it.  I like what Seattle’s doing, but think they’re a good two or three years away.  And although Darko and a healthy Gasol might work, I can’t see Memphis really doing too much damage.  And I’m not even going to touch Minnesota.

So my crystal ball has Denver, New Orleans and … believe it or not … Portland squeezing in.  Aldridge, Frye and Oden is a great young but good front court, and with Brandon Roy, Jarrett Jack and Sergio Rodriguez all with another year of experience under their belt I really do believe the Blazers can make the playoffs.  And although the losses of Randolph, Magloire, and Dickau might hurt, think the team could really surprise people.  Nate McMillan has got to be rubbing his hands with glee and really looking forward to the upcoming season.

There’s still a couple of things that could happen to shift the power balance a bit – with Mo Pete perhaps signing in Utah or New Orleans or the Lakers getting KG or moving Kobe.  But my breakdown will stick to:

• The elite –Suns, Mavs and Spurs
• The solid – Utah and Houston
• The good but not great – Denver, New Orleans and Portland
• The on their way up – Seattle, Golden State and Memphis
• The sinking fast –LA Clippers and Lakers, Sacremento and Minnesota

The East is a lot more unsettled, but I’ll save a separate post for that.

I read a posting on mashable for chess.com a few weeks ago, and I can’t shake the thought that vertical social networks are a waste of time.

I know that some vertical social networks are turning a profit and closing vc rounds and getting a lot of pub (like Dogster and Catster getting a $1Million), but I just think the absolute user numbers benefit the big social networking sites and the groups on these sites.  I took a look at chess.com and it claims to have 5000 members since it’s soft launch, compared to facebook: with 24,480 users with the chess application installed, and over 500 groups created for chess enthusiasts.

No body has one passion, everyone has many.  I love basketball, but I also am passionate about technology, business, politics, hockey, golf, music and various other interests.  Personally, I like to keep all my interests and passions together and can’t see myself ever joining a vertical social network.

I’m going to try and make this the last post about London Business School and my MBA. With it being part of my yesterday and my new found belief that it only pays to focus on today and tomorrow, I don’t want to get stuck in neutral. But one more indulgent review of the last two years won’t hurt anyone, I hope.

With congregation/graduation/convocation (whatever you want to call it) complete and with the summer ball behind me – great times both – I’m officially done the EMBA programme at London Business School.

It feels like yesterday that I was hanging with Miss N on the steps outside Sainsbury reception, thinking about what a great experience awaited. And it didn’t disappoint.

I went in to the programme hoping to meet great people (solid group of people in the full time and exec programme who I definitely want to stay in touch with, so check), learn a lot (The FT was in Latin before, but now I understand a great deal, from arbitrage to leveraged buy-outs to zero sum games, so check), have some great experiences (hearing Bill Clinton talk about his legacy, consulting in Kiev, meeting great entrepreneurs and hearing about their journeys, so check), ideally come out with a great new job (check) and do it all while convincing the wife that it would all be different when I finished (and so far so good, so check).

It feels very real and very surreal at the same time. But I feel energized and ready to take on the world. But I need a nap to recover from last night first.

I’ve been using Spinvox for a couple of months and I‘m really enjoying the service.  In short someone leaves you a voice message and it gets converted into an SMS and gets sent to you.  Simple and easy and I really like it.

Coincidently I thought about it twice today.  The first occasion was when a group that I’m a part of sent a link to the BBC’s Newsnight website where there is a short review of the service (around the 35 minute mark if you watch Tuesday’s show) and the second was when the wife left me a voicemail that was converted.

The Newsnight program talked about how humans were being used to convert part of the messages - haven’t seen it yet, just going by word of mouth.  I found that really interesting.  And while I think it’s totally understandable - with different dialects and different regional terms that humans need to be “part of the algorithm”, I found myself scratching my head as I imagined what their costs must be like and how much returns they get (read, their ROI) on a system like that would be interesting to see.  I’m also not totally sure how something like this scales?

The second occasion Spinvox came into my conscious highlighted a bit issue with the service.  One of the biggest drawbacks with the service is you have no idea about the emotional state through converted text.  So when the wife leaves her school results on a voicemail and I get a message I’m not sure if she’s happy about it or upset about it.  And when a 90% could be cause for being upset it pays to know.

Surely if their using humans as part of the algorithm it wouldn’t take much to convey emotion through the SMS.  A smiley face or sad face would totally do it for me.  With the costs on actual converters already being spent, it can’t have too much impact on the bottom line… can it?

Not sure if any technological innovation can truly convey emotion.  Pokes or pings or IMs or even emoticons fall way short of someone’s voice.

I wasn’t the first of my friends with a mobile phone.  But I do have one that some of my friends are jealous of now.  Before 2000 a phone booth, a land line and a pager sufficed.  Segue; pagers – what were we thinking?  Now I carry a couple, text like a maniac, occasionally surf the web, write blog posts and play around with excel with my phone.

I wasn’t the first of my friends with an iPod, but I couldn’t really imagine my life without one now.  Before 2004/5 I made due with a Sony minidisc player, cd’s, Winamp and mp3s on my PC.  Now I listen to a bunch of podcasts, most if not all of my library is on iTunes, and I can’t see myself using anything other then my iPod for digital music.

So as the iPhone get’s closer to the UK market and as I read about all the fun American users are having with their new toys, I’ll wait.  I don’t think I’ll get the iPhone in the next year - or two for that matter.  I think hardware takes a couple of years to work the kinks out and truly provide users with a good experience.  Not to mention the fact that the price will come down dramatically (the Razr started out at 500 USD as well and now you can get it for a song with a plan).

The only think you get from being one of the first adopters of hardware tech stuff is cool cache.  I think I can live without that.  Patience definitely pays when it comes to technological hardware and I believe that waiting a year or two will pay off with an iPhone that has more then 8GB of memory, 8 hours of battery, a 2MP camera, not to mention the fact that the pipes for internet consumption and sites should be rendering much better for mobile internet.  Not to mention I still have a year on my existing contract.

I didn’t regret waiting for a mobile phone, an iPod and – although I’ll probably end up with one in a couple of years – I won’t regret waiting for an iPhone either.