I’m not going to spare many words on social media here, since it’s been talked to death and is really not the rocket science many people play it up to be. As a long-time blogger and communications person, I think it’s not very different from striking up a conversation with a stranger and slowly cultivating it into a trustworthy friendship.

Open data is more intriguing to me since it’s the first time I’ve heard of it. Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely from the shackles of copyright, patents etc so everyone could use and republish it as he pleases. In this case, many of the speakers were talking about governments’ open data — what should be available, in what format and what can be achieved with it.

It was an eye-opening experience for me, since it’s not crossed my mind that developers have to worry about stuff like data sourcing before they hit the product development, funding and eventually, the commercialization stages. I do PR for a telco, so when I think about app development, all I think about is whether the product has potential to make disruptive or incremental change, whether a viable business model could arise from it, and most importantly, what the impact is on the end-user.

All in all, GovCampSG was a pretty interesting event. I had an opportunity to see things from a different perspective, and I hope something concrete will come out of these discussions. As a non-developer and non-civil servant, I won’t be much use when it comes to turning these talks into action. Nevertheless, for the people who can, I’d like to leave you with an inspirational quote by Scott Anthony:

You cannot find truth through analysis. You can only find truth through action.

For photos and videos from the event, check out GovCampSG on Facebook.

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I sought for answer from the realms of religion, history, philosophy, psychology and even chose a major (political theory) that I thought would help me to find an answer…

…only to realize that deep down inside, I’ve always known the answer.

How did I achieve this revelation? Thanks to a bit of luck, a pinch of desperation, some help from Google and this entry from Steve, an enlightened ex-convict.

According to Steve, you only need to dedicate 20 minutes of your life to think hard about what could possibly give your life meaning, and write down every answer that pops through your mind. The one that makes you cry is the right answer — the meaning of your life.

It sounds so simple that it’s absolutely ridiculous. But, I swear, it works. Perhaps it’s not the most scientific way and perhaps most psychologists may not approve, but when you find the right answer, you’ll just know that it is. It just is.

Sad thing is that it didn’t happen in 20 minutes for me. My subconscious needed to do some processing, so it only dawned on my the next day… while I was commuting. The subway in a cold, calculating city like Singapore is not the best place to suddenly go teary.

Anyway, for those of you struggling with this question, you should give it a shot. All you could potentially lose is the time needed to watch an episode of Jersey Shore, but what you stand to gain is priceless. *cue Mastercard ad*

What was my answer? It’s a secret, for now. I’m not ready to admit it myself yet, so I’m not going to openly admit it on the interwebs. These things take time to digest, you know.

In Search of Thumos…

So now that my quest to find life’s meaning is over, I’ve found a new quest to occupy my free time and free brain cells. This one is sparked by New York Times columnist, David Brooks. He’s always talking about thumos this, thumos that. According to him, the whole world revolves around thumos.

θυμός, commonly spelled as thymos or thumos is Greek for the desire of recognition.

I definitely see this in myself. Why do we want to be recognized so badly? Why do we need to feel important? Aside from the few seconds of pleasure you get from recognition, what else do you derive? Wait, why do we even derive pleasure from being recognized?

The more I think about it, the more I see that thumos drives a lot of our actions. I know you’d hate to admit this, but I’m pretty sure thumos is part of the reason why you blog, you tweet, and update your Facebook status about your latest shopping hauls or travels, even though you know that no one actually cares. You want to be heard. You want to be recognized. So do I.

So what happens when you get thumos overload? What happens when you don’t get enough recognition? More interestingly, what happens when we remove thumos from our psyche? Will we become mere animals, or do we evolve into a new level of being?

This idea of thumos is very fascinating. I’ve come across it while studying Aristole and Plato but I’ve never really paid much attention to it because I was more fixated on, you know, the meaning of life. So it’s time to pay my old pals a visit, along with a few contemporary ones like Dale Carnegie and Alain de Botton.

With that, I bid you all adieu. I’m going back to reading up (and buying up a storm) on my Kobo app. (Kobo has a 20% sale for ebooks this weekend, by the way.)

Related posts:

1. Life of a Social Media Rockstar
2. The Irony of It All
3. Resolutions for a New Decade

So last week, I visited the Infocomm Accessibility Centre at 24seven‘s invitation. The centre is designed to help disabled people to train in infocomm technology, so they have a shot at employment.

The visit was an eye-opening experience for me as a web designer, because it puts web accessibility into perspective. Web accessibility is the practice of designing a web page that is accessible by the assistive technology used by disabled people.

For more photos, visit Selwyn’s Flickr set.

Here are some examples of assistive technologies. The yellow keyboard is designed to have a high contrast so that people who are partly visually-impaired can see better. And the trackball mouse and joysticks are designed for those who suffer from movement-impairing disabilities such as stroke or muscular dystrophy.

In my last 15 years online, I’ve met many bloggers — some who are disabled. I never really thought about how difficult it is for some of them to go online because it didn’t occur to me that they were using anything else but a normal computer or a mobile device. So to be able to touch and play with these devices really put things into perspective for me — especially as a designer.

Often, in a midst of designing a site or even just writing a blog entry, we forget or simply ignore the details such as putting a simple alternate tag on an image. As able people, we tend to forget that there are many others who never get to visually experience the wonders of our design or photos. All it takes for us, as bloggers or designers, is to spend an extra 10 seconds to write a descriptive alt tag so they could have a chance to imagine what we’re sharing.

And then there’s the debate between making a site more accessible vs cutting some corners for aesthetics reasons (such as using Flash or nonstandard code). I’d like to be fair here. I think it depends on your site’s target audience. If you’re designing a government, banking or utility portal, I think it’s important absolutely necessary to have an accessible site because these organizations are serving essential services to general public; they should strive to treat all their stakeholders equally. But if you own a small-time blog like I do, I think you can relax a little. You don’t have to painstakingly conform every single line of code to the standard, but it’s good aim at least for the bare minimum, such as minimizing the unnecessary use of tables.

Anyway, I hope this entry will inspire other web designers and bloggers to give more thought about web accessibility. Web accessibility isn’t about being a code nazi or being inflexible; it’s about respect. Respect for your readers, respect for humanity, and respect for equal access by all.

To check whether your site is accessible, go to cynthiasays.com.

So readers, what do you think of web accessibility? Is it important for you? If you’re a designer by trade, how do you persuade your clients on the importance of web accessibility?

PS: If you’re Singapore and you’d like to support the cause, join the mass tweet meet on 26 June. And if you know disabled people, please nominate them for a course at the Infocomm Disability Centre. These courses give those who otherwise may not have the opportunity, a chance to finally become a fully-contributing member to society.

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Now I’m no psychoanalyst so I don’t have the knowledge to analyze every choice and every placement, but I’m going to attempt to psychoanalyze myself in hopes you could pick up some clues about yourself from your own Pet Society rooms.

Main Room

This one is a bit of a no-brainer. The main room represents the how you want the world to see you. I like to be seen as someone who’s organized, open-minded and fairly straightforward. I think that’s the feel I try to project here with the large windows and minimalist decor — kind of like nanyate, don’t you think?

Bedroom

I’d like to think that the bedroom represents how you see yourself. It’s also a measure of your self-esteem. I’ve been playing with Pet Society for years, and I have to admit I’ve never been satisfied with my bedroom. For me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because it means I always leave room for myself to grow.

The ghost is an interesting point, since it’s a very accurate reflection of my sleeping habits. I turn 25 this year and I still sleep with a night light on. That’s because every time I try to sleep with the lights off, I would dream about being haunted by something from within. So the ghost represents my fear—my fear for a part of myself.

I guess it’s no accident that I display my awards here. (Most people would display their stuffed toys here.) I have a feeling that my self-esteem depends on my career achievements to a certain extent.

Bathroom

I have no clue what the bathroom is supposed to mean but if I had to make a wild guess, it’s probably how you choose to pamper yourself. If my guess is right, people who struggle with loving themselves would probably not like their bathrooms or avoid having a bathroom altogether.

And so my Pet Society bathroom makes me the ultimate narcissist. Bathing Japanese-style while watching the sunset and then getting out to have a cup of tea would while idly philosophizing about the world would be heaven on earth for me.

Kitchen

The kitchen is probably a reflection of how you view your family and/or your home. I admit I’m not a homely or family-oriented person. So I guess it’s no surprise that it’s the only room that I’ve not bothered to re-design for almost a year.

Hobbies Room

Most higher-level Pet Society players have a room to showcase their hobbies—be it a large walk-in closet, a piano lounge, or in my case, a reading room.

One of the things that I feared most after I started working was that I would eventually stop learning. In an effort to keep learning, I’ve voraciously devoured management and communication books, and used my Tumblr and Google Docs (represented by the laptop in the picture) as learning notebooks for quick access to my newly-acquired knowledge.

An interesting highlight to this room is the presence of a door. It’s the only room (aside from the main room) in my house that has a door. The door represents openness. The hobbies room is something that I’m open to changing and that I openly share with everyone.

I wonder if that means those who have doors for every room are generally more open people.

The Extra Room

I don’t know about other Pet Society players, but 6 rooms is enough for me. So the 7th room is an extra room I use to play around with the latest decor. For now, I’ve turned it into a veranda cafe (because this weeks’ items are all cafe inspired). I can’t imagine what I will do with the 8th and 9th rooms when I get them.

Or perhaps the extra room just represents that I’ve not discovered enough facets of myself yet.

Fantasy Room

And to save the prettiest for last, this is the whimsical, fantastic room that represents the child in me. It’s the dreamy side of me where I wished everything in the world would be poetic, pretty and peaceful.

A few points of interest: my petling is here, I guess that means I’ll never own a pet in real life. Like most of my other rooms, it has no door—evidently, it’s not a side that I like to admit to.

Some Caveats…

I think analyzing your pets only works if you had a few conditions fulfilled.

• You need to have played while perceiving your pet as a representation of your self – whether consciously or unconsciously. If you see your pet as Johnny Depp or Miley Cyrus, then I don’t think it’ll work.
• Your decor choice should not be constrained by the lack of cash. If you bought the cheap wooden bed because you don’t have enough money for the princess bed, then you’re not at a level where you can accurately analyze your state of mind from your room. Looking at my friend list, I think most people start to cross to the “analyzable stage” at around Level 25 – 27.

And this ends my random, lunacy-infested post on Pet Society!

Your Thoughts?

• If you play Pet Society, do share the decor of your rooms!
• If you don’t, what do you think of my analysis? Do you think it can be applied to other games like Farmville or Cafe World?
• If you a psychology expert, I’d like to hear what you think.
• And if you have nothing to add, feel free to jeer at my lunacy.

Related posts:

1. Cleaned My Room; Cleaned State of Mind

(By the way, if you came here via Twitter in search for the “are personal blogs still relevant?” bit, scroll down to Direction.)

Disconnected: Plagued by a slew of illness

Since my last post, I’ve been sick for a whole month. I suffered a week of flu, half a week of food poisoning. Then I decided to shoot hoops at the arcade and then pulled a muscle. (What a loser!) So I’ve spent most of my time bed-ridden.

Distracted: The boyfriend stopped by

The boyfriend also stopped by Singapore for a month before moving to China for work. I wanted to spend as much time as I can with him before our lines of communications get blocked thanks to the Great Firewall of China. For those who don’t know, people have no access to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Posterous in China.

Direction: Are personal blogs still relevant?

Personal blogs are increasingly being replaced by niche blogs. I only need to look at my Google Reader as proof; my subscription to niche blogs greatly outnumber personal blogs.

Nanyate.com started as a personal blog where I write about anything I’m interested in. But over the last few months I realized that it’s not that personal after all. Whether it’s about culture, gadgets or life lessons, I write with one guiding principle: what can my readers get out of this. I spend an insane amount of time brainstorming original topics, fact checking and crafting my words to make sure it’s easily understood. It’s really become more of an opinion column than a log of my daily life.

In an effort to stay relevant, I’ve been thinking of re-branding nanyate.com. Perhaps I should go the Dustin Curtis route, where my entries are more like articles. Or perhaps I should start focusing on specific topics.

Since my guiding principle—that I write for my readers’ benefit—will never change, I’d love to hear what you guys think instead.

• Should I re-brand nanyate.com?
• What would you like to see me write more about?
• Why do you read personal blogs (aside from your friends’)?
• Are personal blogs really a dying breed?

With that said, to make sure my March 2010 archive isn’t as pathetic, I bought a 20$ voucher to a coffee chain near my home to commit myself to blog. (I can’t seem to write at home for some reason.) I’ve also written a few entries in advanced with the next one scheduled to be published tomorrow.

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Although no world-changing ideas came out of it, I think everyone learned something. For me, it’s that social media is like dough. It is what you make of it. You have the choice to mold it into anything you want with any ingredients you like. How successful you are depends on how much your audience appreciates the outcome – just like your reputation amongst your friends. In a way, social media is a virtual extension of your social network.

Social Media and Corporate Culture

As a PR person, I had a different takeaway. The PR people disagreed with each other on certain points, and I think that’s a good thing. It means there’s diversity in the field, but more importantly it supported one of my suspicions.

Now I’m no social media veteran or expert since I’ve only be actively doing into this stuff for a year. As a newbie, I did notice from various social media blogs, books and events that some social media practitioners have a tendency to share a set of guidelines on social media best practices like being more engaging, being more transparent or being more authentic, for example.

This past year, I’ve learned that social media for companies isn’t just about best practices and emulating what the successful early adopters are doing. It’s about tailoring social media to corporate culture and the brand’s personality. Generating buzz for a health campaign is very different from generating buzz for a service provider. And while some brands could use all the buzz they can find, others are naturally buzz-generating. It’s not possible to expect all brands to be more transparent or more open because these traits may not be part of the corporate personality. Or worse, it may be in direct conflict to the corporate personality. And just because a brand’s not open doesn’t mean their doing bad job in the social media space. Think Apple, for example.

Social media is simply another social sphere for companies and individuals to establish their reputation in – so complementing a company’s social media actions with its personality is probably more effective than blindly following a set of best practices.

The Rise and Fall of the Bloggers’ Voice

As a blogger, this growing trend of blog monetization concerns me. I’m not talking about the bloggers who balance their original content with paid content – especially when they are endorsing brands they care about. Getting paid for one’s passion should be celebrated.

I’m talking about bloggers who make it their sole goal to be paid for blogging, and pander to every brand willing to pay them out there. At that point, they are compromising their credibility and integrity for money. Let me put this in another way:

Is your credibility only worth $200?

Okay, granted $200 is a lot of money for certain people. Or perhaps money is more important to them than airy virtues like honesty, credibility and integrity. But for me, these abstract virtues are far more important.

Here’s why: I started out blogging before the word “blogging” was invented. I kept a journal on a Geocities site back in 1996, where every entry had to be painstakingly coded in HTML. Prior to the Internet, only large organizations, newspapers and authors good enough to be published had voices. The fact that the ordinary man could have a voice was revolutionary.

And now, to be paid by these same organizations to compromise our voice seems like we’re going one step backwards.

So this is how I shaped my dough. I started out blogging because I can – and I don’t think I’ve strayed far.

How have you molded your dough?

Related posts:

1. The Wonders of Social Media
2. Life of a Social Media Rockstar
3. Blogger Business Cards

In the new decade, I want to:

Keep learning

There are so many things in the world and I only got a few decades left to learn them all. So I hope I will never become a pompous fool and stop learning.

Share the love

I love being with people. I love meeting new people. I love forging stronger bonds with people. It brings meaning to my life. It brings meaning to people’s lives. Sure, there will be times when it will drain me but I still hope I will never stop believing in love.

After all, love is a powerful energy that can bring out the best in society.

Bring social back to social media

I’m no expert in the social media field, and I’m not sure anyone can call himself one since this is a field in a constant state of evolution.

Recently, I noticed that social media has recently become more about money. So I’d like to help bring the social back to social media. Sure, you can make money but let’s not forget that it’s also a great avenue to widen your social circle. And a happy life isn’t all about materialistic goals.

Sometimes it’s the immaterial ones that will bring you the greatest joy.

Balance work and life

This might be difficult since it’s not entirely in my control. Since I started working a little over a year ago, I realized I never really took a break from work. A lot of times I gave up my sanity, my friends or my family for work. I need to learn to set the boundaries and balance my life better.

Know and love myself

As a third culture kid, I’ve had a hard time to come to terms with my identity. I always felt like I lacked a sense of belonging and a sense of self.

And as a person, I shunned my body for my thyroid problems. I shunned the little girl in me for wanting to be loved. I shunned the pride in me for never wanting to look weak in front of others. I shunned the anger in me for being uh… angry.

But recently, I’ve come to accept myself for who I am. And I’ve never been happier! No, it doesn’t mean I should become an angry, sick egotistic bitch. It means taking responsibility for my body, my mind and my soul.

And I hope I never, ever forget that.

Dear readers, what would you like to achieve in the new decade? What are your hopes and dreams for the future? Feel free to share the link to your resolution entries as well!

Related posts:

1. Life of a Social Media Rockstar

I know I did! It was probably one of the best new years ever – thanks to the wonders of social media.

It all started with a tweet a couple days back from Derrick, a guy I don’t know then, of which a mutual friend, Jerrick re-tweeted (for it to show up on my timeline). It read:

Hey, all you tweeples in Singapore. What do you think about having a NYE countdown party/event?

I’m usually not a spontaneous person, but that tweet just sparked something in me and I confidently replied, “Great idea!”

That snowballed into a Twivite with its own hashtag – and we each broadcasted to our list of Twitter followers.

Come new years eve, and we decided meet at Arab Street but didn’t really have an agenda planned out. We just went with the flow. The flow ended up bringing in 15 tweeple to Hackerspace (which deserves an entry of its own). And I had such an amazing, amazing time. Met new friends, old friends. Shared stories, ideas and YouTube videos. Sang, danced, ate, partied.

It was just an unforgettable night of great ideas, great conversation with great company.

Thanks to Hisham for the video!

And it all started with one tweet, from a guy I didn’t know.

This, my friends, is one of the wonders of social media.

Related posts:

1. Life of a Social Media Rockstar
2. Christmas Update!

Her 3 tips for balancing her life:

• #1: Work comes first
• #2: Set a daily schedule
• #3: Draw a line

Like her, I too work in public relations with some focus on online media, albeit in-house. I think I do #1 and #3 fairly well. Work will always be first, and I draw a line between my roles as a blogger, a PR person and a friend.

But #2 is something I constantly struggle with. (See my sparse blog archive for proof). Since most of my work is project-based, there are times where I will work on 3-5 projects simultaneously. Most of the time, this means I will end up burning weekends. And then there are times where I will have nothing substantial to do. (Although, I have yet to see this in 2009).

This is how my work day looks like during a moderately busy period.

9:00am Arrive at the office. Open Outlook. Reply to the gazillion emails before my meeting.

9.30am Rush to meeting.

12:30pm Come out of meeting. Check Twitter and Outlook. Update my to-do list. If there are very urgent emails or stuff, skip lunch with colleagues and work. If not, have quick lunch with colleagues.

1.30pm Resume work or respond to more emails.

2:00pm Rush to another meeting.

4:00pm Break. Either go downstairs to pick up a drink, or play something mindless like Restaurant City for 5 minutes.

4:30pm While clearing work, get interrupted by a stakeholder. Do urgent job for them.

5:30pm Resume normal work and respond to emails.

7:00pm Finish up the most urgent stuff. Review to-do list for the next day. If there are still more urgent things to do, stay past 7.

7:30pm Order take out or eat with colleague who stayed late too.

8:45pm Arrive home. Log on to Adium (Mac’s IM client) and Mixero (Twitter app). Chat with friends, reply any DMs or @replies. Check personal email, nanyate.com and Facebook. If it requires urgent response, reply.

9:00pm If there is some juice left in the brain, open Google Reader, TED.com or read a book. Get inspired to update my Delicious and/or Tumblr. Otherwise, play the guitar or vegetate with anime.

9:30pm Hang out with mom for a bit because moms need TLC. Make her watch Maru or CuteOverload with me.

11:30pm Wait for the boyfriend to wake up (since he’s on the other side of the world) Chat on MSN, Skype or on the phone.

12:00am Sleep.

Looking at her, I know I have lots more to learn – not just about the world of social media, but also about time management and life in general. Expertise and the realm of rockstarhood seem to come with some level of sacrifice. She sleeps less for one, and almost dedicates her whole day to social media and work, while mine is still peppered with other interests and quite a bit of downtime.

I’ve also only been working for one year, so there’s no way I can be on par yet. But I guess it’s time to step up my A-game. Ashita mo ganbaro! Thanks Pat, for the inspiration!

Dear readers, what is your work schedule like? How do you juggle your different roles and responsibilities? Any tips to share?

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1. New Job, New Life

Ghost toured around Singapore

Thanks to 24seven and the Asia Paranormal Investigators, I had the opportunity to tour around Singapore’s spookiest places. We went to a dilapitated cemetary called Bukit Brown, Singapore’s largest cemetary, the Choa Chu Kang Cemetery and apparently, the most haunted place in Singapore – Old Changi Hospital. I caught a pretty strange ‘thing’ on one of my shots. Will share it after I do more research.

The boyfriend visited

After more than a year of being apart, my boyfriend visited me. It was refreshing and reassuring to know that our feelings and friendship can withstand the test of time and distance.

The perfect diet is working!

It’s been about 3 weeks since I embarked on the paleolithic diet. It’s working wonders. My eyes have completely stopped protruding. I have a lot of energy. And I’ve also lost quite a bit of weight; I dropped at least a dress size. This is a picture of me earlier this week!

Alain de Botton is cool beans.

Discovered Alain de Botton from his TED talk. Devoured his Consolations of Philosophy a few months back and now reading his new work, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. A lot of light bulbs went off while reading the Consolations of Philosophy. It’s too deep to discuss in a paragraph, so I shall save this for another entry.

Google Wave

Received my Google Wave invite thanks to Teddy! Do add me and start a new wave, so I know you’ve added me. If I don’t know you, do include a self-introduction as well. I can be found at ivytan at googlewave.com.

That’s it for my quick update. Will blog and reply to your comments after my projects end. Until then, take care!

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