The SLUSH ASIA extravaganza

“Slush Asia brings together people with big dreams and determination in Tokyo. Originally from Finland, Slush has grown to become one of the world’s largest startup events and has made a second home in Asia. The goal of the event is to light the same entrepreneurial fire in Asian youth as Slush has done in the Nordics through talks by experienced entrepreneurs and a pitching competition.” –SLUSH ASIA

April 24, 2015 was a beginning for me to start thinking seriously about taking my passions and ideas. It developed in me the entrepreneur spirit. Met a lot of startup company’s CEOs, investors, partners and many smart and willing students working as volunteers to make the event a huge success!

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I participated in the event as a volunteer, but it also gave me an opportunity to witness the event as a normal participant.So i have mainly two major points of view that i want to talk about. One is the volunteer point of view and the other as an attendee.

As a volunteer, it was my first experience to be a part of the event as big where 3000 people were involved. The number of volunteers topped at 300 volunteers. Me being responsible for the keynote concierge, i was able to see most of the keynote speeches and the final pitching contest as well. I will share my experiences as an attendee in an upcoming blog.

One thing that i want to point out here is that the Slush organizers first thought about having the event in Japan in December 2014, and made it possible to plan and hold the event in a mere time span of 4 months. It is completely awesome and appreciable. This is something that i feel is completely incredible, and is what differentiates these people from the rest. When there is an idea, they act upon it, and make it a success! This kind of mindset is strongly lacking in the Japanese community, who tend to over-think and over-plan, creating restrictions for themselves.

About working in SLUSH, although the hierarchy was very well defined within the organization, it was never a problem to contact even the most distinct and senior members. It gave me a vision about how to work in an association so that members on all levels feel comfortable, and still the hierarchy is maintained.Special emphasis was given on the importance of “event day volunteers”, that we would be the people who will be in direct touch with the attendees. That means that we would be creating and maintaining the image of SLUSH. Proper guidelines were made, for each level of volunteers and how would they respond to situations and emergencies. I would say, it was extremely well planned.

On the negative side, i was pretty disappointed on the training day, a week before the event. Most of the things were not planned and decided, and there was no special (even normal) information that came to us. At that time i was left with an impression of unpreparedness. It was only after the event was successfully finished, i realized that the information was not transferred to us to reduce confusion, and information only necessary for us to act was made available to us. In-fact very wise. 🙂

The overall experience was very fruitful and amazing. There was a lot to learn working there as a volunteer. On of the biggest benefits was to work with Finnish people and mentality of organizing events. Very different from what i had been working with. Inspired!

My experiences as a attendee is coming soon in the next blog!!

Dear my future self, surprise me!!

It was a day of surprises for me. I had to look up for two TED talks that i feel is good and introduce it to my friends. As always i used the “Surprise me” feature available at TED.com. And this time, surprisingly, it showed me some really interesting results.

[The philosophy of your future self – Dan Gilbert]

The first one was this. I am big fan of Dan Gilbert because of what he is. For me happiness is something that is every single organism’s birthright, and Dan Gilbert is one of those many great people who make people realize this lost right. Before i join the league of those great people, i will keep inspiring everyone using these people!! 😀

The way of looking at the fact that we only imagine change to be a fraction of what actually occurs, makes me want to believe in more bigger and better dreams for my future. The fact that human memory has greater impact on our current decisions than our imagination, has some stark consequences. We think of our future self that is consistent with our past. It does not allow us to imagine a future that is not according to the rules that were created by us as a consequence of our past experiences. Looking at the graph that shows the change in a person overtime, we have to accept that miracles would happen in the future. And we can only understand those miracles, when they become a past for us, and we create rules in our mind that these things are possible.

The greatest take away from this talk for me is that would be, that imagination is the trailer of upcoming future. Only people who can take action, make decisions, and move based on their imagination can make a difference in this world. People lost in their memories, would only end up creating a future in perfect terms with their past and the existing, and would live a future created by others.

Dream, dream big!!

[The wonder elementary school – Takaharu Tezuka]

This is the second talk that i listened to today, it was another piece of marvel. More related to my field of research, it is again about innovation and imagination. It is all about what are the basic desires of a human, and how in this existing world, are we killing it. Takaharu Tezuka made some different and innovative design for the elementary school, and the results very positive. A very light and informative talk.

From the two talks above, i could understand two facts.
1. Imagination leads to innovation
2. Innovation creates future

Imagination is everything. It is preview of life’s coming attractions – Albert Einstein

PS: Writing while waiting for someone to be back from karaoke～～！！:P 😛

Design thinking workshop

Revived and revitalized!! 😀

On Saturday was the 1st workshop of the Design Thinking Basics. It began at 9am in the morning, and practically lasted till 5pm. Like just any other lecture, i was expecting to have proper breaks at an interval of 1hr30mins and a proper lunch break, but i was so not like that. It required full processing power of the brain for 8 non-stop hours, and i was radiating a lot of heat!! (-_-);;

The workshop overall was like a Disney movie for me. I had no time, and neither was I interested to think about anything apart from what was taught in the class. It started with the introduction of the course, moving on to the main contents in about 30 mins. The course strives to develop basic design thinking skills, that are required for innovation in product and service development. The main motive of this workshop is to make some models that would help Japan hold the 2020 Olympics in the best way possible. And i wonder why i would not. I have attended many meetings where the Japanese government is trying to promote various ideas and perspective for the successful hosting of the Olympics.

The course begins with the definition of Design thinking and why is it important in our lives. My understanding is that Design thinking is not a single thing, or event. It is a process. It is a process that involves various steps that exploit users, designers, engineers, producers and the marketing people. It is a process that involves a sequence of diverging and converging ideas. And what you get as a result of this process is the final product or service. One idea, that i am really impressed with the design thinking is that it is 100% USER-CENTERED. The process is so beautiful that the user does not have to explicitly express the desire to have a certain product, but the designers come up with something that is 200% in terms with the user’s needs.

As a part of the preparation for 2020 Olympics, the work was divided into 6 categories. Planning, Arrival, Discovering, Participating, Departure and Sharing. We have to work in groups to develop a model that would serve one of these categories. The challenge topic for us to present in the final presentation of the course goes like this: Design an innovative _____________ experience/business for visitors in Japan in 2020.

Since I am in the Discovering team, the topic for me goes like this: Design an innovative discovering experience/business for visitors in Japan in 2020. The process starts with some user interviews, and data analysis of it. This would give us some information regarding what do people think about the existing facilities, how do they use them, how do they feel about it and as a result get an idea of what is needed and what can we develop to serve the topic.

The day ended with the collection of data, but unfortunately no analysis could be done since there was no time left. We are planning to do some more user interviews at appropriate places before we do some data analysis,

That was it. Looking forward to the coming lectures!! 😀

Can the acupressure points on the finger make you sense something?

This time when I went back home, I was not in the best of my health. I was suffering from something called the IBS. Just as a general cure, my mother taught me some techniques of the Sujok therapy(A therapy of acupressure).

Me not being any pro in this field just know that human body have the ends of nerves that control various parts of the body in the hands and feet. That technically means that one can affect different parts of the body, if one can effectively use these nerve endings. If one can cure diseases, illness, disorders just by using the pressing these points, then would it not be possible to make someone feel like something, or give them some sensations on demand, and as a result convert it into a communication channel? How about making something like a case for hands to fit in, or a hand glove if possible?

Do give me views and opinions on this!! 🙂 🙂

The Inception

From this point on begins the research!

All the emotions and sensations!!! That is a panorama of field to focus in.
We have devices that convey information to us through visual(screens, pictures, paintings), hearing(sound, music), touch(vibration), smell(perfumes) and taste(food). But, are these used in communication as well? By communication i mean a two-way flow of information. For visual and sound, we can relate it to a video call; we have a continuous uninterrupted communication happening during a video call. When we play games using a controller, or operate our smartphones, we get feedback in the form of vibrations, which can be categorized in communication by touch. What can be thought for communication by smell and taste senses? 

There is an experiment that i would like you to do. Pinch your nostrils so that you cannot breathe, and try to eat some sugar or glucose. Does it taste as sweet as the the time when you eat it while breathing normally? No. This suggests that the sense of smell and taste are related, and maybe are under-researched to be exploited to form a communication channel. Intuitively, i do think that they are difficult fields to research on. Giving a personalized sense of smell and taste to the user is something completely new to me!! (It would be AWESOME to have a personalized smell for my devices tough!!)

I might think about the development of a device that exploits the smell and taste senses in humans. And making it work with the visual, hearing and touch would give the users an unforgettable experience.

The BIG BANG!!

We had the kick start meeting for the project yesterday!

Diving straight into the topic, there was so much to listen, and CHOOSE!!
There were two research topics to select from　↓
1) Designing a futuristic communication device
2) Virtual Reality for user-centered design
Choosing was a difficult task, but i was more interested in making something in real world, so it was obvious for me to go for the earlier choice of designing a futuristic communication device.

Moving ahead to discuss more about the device, we talked about the motivation to design a new product.

My professor has a vision to make teleportation possible, and i realized that both her research topics are related to this vision. Virtual reality would make a person appear and look real in virtual world, and then the new communication device would be instrumental in the exchange of non-visual data. The non-visual data is the term that leaves me wandering!! What is a non-visual data? Data such as emotions, sensations and environment. Emotions such as happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, confusion, etc etc. Sensations mean anything that are related to the 5 senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and visual. Since the visual and hearing sensations are covered in the virtual reality part of making teleportation possible, my main focus would be on the emotions, and sensations (except visual and hearing). Waiting for some research to be held in the 6th sense for me develop a device that could connect people using the 6th sense. :))

For developing a communication device, we can have a human to human communication and human to non-human (animals etc.) communication. (Thinking about it, it does not make sense to have a non-human to non-human communication device; or wait, maybe it DOES……. Distant communication between dogs… INTERESTING XD). It would be needed to do a study of the existing ideas and researches that are being conducted in this field, to know what is crazy and what is feasible.

As a sum-up of the meeting, as design student, i needed to give extreme importance even to the most vague ideas that would come to my mind with respect to developing this device. Talks to people, their opinions, jokes, papers, news, latest gadgets, should all be taken note of. As an engineering student i need to to read a lot of research papers, make a logical reasoning approach and analyse everything in a reasonable way in order to write my thesis!! This gave me the idea to start blogging that would sum up everything!

So here I am, with the BIG BANG, to give my research a kick start.

Will keep all posted about the latest!!
Signing off!!
(Excited)(Excited)

Time to go CRAZYY!!!

Today is the first day for me to write this blog. I am very excited. Today, on the 6th day of April 2016, i am starting my research on the development of a futuristic communication device.
Now what is this Futuristic Communication Device? My professor defines it as something SciFi that no knew has ever thought before, and that can take the world by storm, and become the driver of all communication in the coming 10 years.