Learn how to pitch

This session, Prof Gilbert discussed about Elevator Pitch. Elevator pitch is a term for marketing pitch originated from Silicon Valley. This is what I captured from Prof Gilbert’s lecture. Buildings in Silicon Valley usually have not more than 4 or 5 storeys (or levels). When a soon-to-be entrepeneurship wants to seek investors, he goes to these buildings. Usually he arranges the meeting with the potential investors in their office, mainly located in the most upper level of the building, Sometimes, the investor meet him on the lobby and take a lift with him to go to his office. And this is where elevator pitch happens. On his short trip to investor’s office, he will present the pitch to them. Since it takes only about 2 – 3 minutes, the pitch must be prepared very well. All the trivial details should not be included to give time for important ideas to be demonstrated.

Now that we’ve learnt the concept, next step is to make an actual one. In group, we are required to create an elevator pitch about Tourism-On-The-Go, the course big project. We are given about 3 – 4 minutes to present a video explaining the concept of our project. Together with Damar, my groupmate, I prepared a set of presentation slides. Our group idea is to create a new helping tool for foreign tourists visiting Singapore. The tools developed are mobile- and web-based.

Before I explained further about the tool, I’m going to explain the issue that we address. The current problem with the Singapore’s tourism is that out of 9.7 million visitors in 2006, only 34% of them paid a visit to Sentosa, one of Singapore’s tourism signature. The number grows for Orchard Road with about 67% of them went there during their trip. From these statistics, we can interpret that something might be wrong with the way these attractions being advertised, or the information given to the tourists about how to reach these place (one of the reason they don’t go is probably that they didn’t know how to get there).

So, here comes our idea. First idea is to introduce PlanUrTrip, a web-based service where everyone can go to arrange their trip just like NTU student’s arrange their timetable through STARS. On this service, they will be presented with various options of places they would like to visit. Each day during their trip will be divided into many slots, which span for about one hour. Each slot is going to be filled with the activity of visiting places they want to, or just a void, since they might not be interested to go anywhere, except café or restaurant during lunch time.

Next idea is TakeMe.2, a mobile application to guide the tourists to go from one location to other. We develop this idea since the transportation might be a problem here even though government has put many instructions and helps. This application will require a Java-enabled mobile phone for installation.

As for more details on these two ideas, I will explain it on the post about our Business Plan. For now, let’s just take a look on our elevator pitch on Youtube.

A little bird once told me ...

I completed my industrial attachment in a utilities company in Jurong Island. During everyday's trip to and from there, I will always pass this tourist attraction point called Jurong Bird Park (JBP). When I saw the sign, I found that there's something different with it. Usually when you go to some other place in Singapore especially in MRT, you'll notice that most of the instruction are given in four different language, which are English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. But that's not the case for Jurong Bird Park's sign. You'll find that there's actually some Japanese characters written on it.

And that has something to do with our project for last week. Prof Gilbert gave us assignment on how to improve the current multilingual instruction in JBP. Currently, they have multilingual support for most of the instruction, written or announced. The problem is that it costs them a lot to maintain such kind of support. So, the case was to make use of mobile technology to cater the demand for multilingual support in JBP. It's a team project, and with my friend, Damar, we were wroking together as ProCon (the name of our group).

Being totally clueless of what is going on the mobile technology world nowadays, we found it a bit frustrating to come up with some idea on how to incorporate the technology to improve the system. After a short reading and a brief discussion with my technologically gifted friend, Agung, we decided to make use of the location-based service concept for our project. But then, I just realized that we knew nothing specific about it. It'll be pointless if I mentioned something on that here, since I've done that in the class and I didn't think it turned out very well.

To start the idea, JBP must contact the three mobile providers in Singapore. They must have some kind of agreement where JBP will act as content provider for the service our group is discussing. The content would include all the brief and detail information about the birds and their life in all the available language that will be served in JBP. The list of the language would be based on previous years' statistics.

The main target for this service would be all the foreign tourists with little or no English fluency. Those who have their mobile phone with international roaming can sign up for this service upon admission to JBP. They will be asked whether they want to use such service. If yes, then they will choose their preferable language.

Next, we divide JBP into several clusters, each one containing certain numbers of cages or attraction. In every clusters and cages, there will be numerical code written on the display board. This number correspond to the input that must be fed by the users to get the information about that particular cage or cluster.

Let's say we have cluster A: Flightless Bird and cluster B: Birds of Prey. On each display board, there will be numbers, such as 1 for cluster A and 2 for cluster B. If the user just want to know the general information about cluster A, they just need to text number 1 to a certain number such as 9876, specifically meant for this service. Since they have already chosen their preferable language upon registration, they will get the information they request in that language too.

If they want to get specific details on each specimen, they can input the more detailed code to the provider. Example: If I wish to know more information on Falcon bird from cage no 12 in cluster B, then I can just text "2 [space] 12" to the same number.

I also had an idea that if they wish to see more than 160-characters information, they can dial that 9876 number to hear the instruction for requesting information. People who prefer audio media will be able to get information as well.

To conclude this very brief idea, I am going to say that I did absolutely realize that the suggestion we're giving has very little information on technology part. However, I do also realize that it doesn't need to be too technical if you can do it in a simpler way but still able to push the right button, just like we did. We believed that it will make a good business if JBP can borrow our idea.

Of course, you must already know by know that everyone will think that their solution is the best one. That includes me.

Now I know why

When I came to the third session of this subject and listened to Prof. Gilbert's lecture, I was recalling all the experience I had during every group discussion I went to in NTU.

Prof said that there are two ways to explain how decision might end: proportional to or inversely proportional to the number of people involved. Though, he said that it's likely that the first one is the most common situation, I must say that, from what I experienced, it isn't necessarily true.

First of all, of course, we need to know what and how the situation will look like. He mentioned that there are basically three kinds of problem that will require group discussion to obtain a result or decision. They are Cognition, Coordination and Cooperation. Cognition has something to do with the discussion that will end with exact or scientifically-written solution. Coordination requires the group member to coordinate their way of interacting with each other to achieve a solution. Cooperation asks for everyone to put their self-interest after everbody's goal.

You might think that as a university student, our daily situation will be something more into Cognition. That is true, if you're only talking about the main goal of the group discussion. But then, if you looked carefully, it turned out that most of the time, they are nothing but Coordination problem. It's the problem on how you should compromise your daily schedule to fit in additional time for discussion, how much time you and your group should spend so that the result is due on time, etc.

And the problem with Coordination [author's note: Coordination is already a category for a problem, and yet it still has a problem within it] is that there must be some kind of 'leader', whether you acknowledge it or not, and lesser degree of independence, because of course, you don't want to misbehave by being selfish. And these two things are already enough to make the Wisdom of Crowds concept impossible to take place.

According to James Surowiecki, the author of the book, if you want to have your decision result to be directly proportional to the number of people involved, then you must at least have these four conditions: Diversity, Decentralization, Independence and Aggregation. For further reading, please click at the link given, or simply read this book.

A real proof of Wisdom of Crowds can be seen on the concept of Web 2.0, especially Wikipedia. Since everyone has the same goal, which is to construct a free updated online encyclopedia, they have accomplished one of the four requirements: Aggregation. And since people all over the globe are contributing without any direct or indirect command coming from one of the parties involved, it is no doubt that the diversity level is pretty much diverse and no power is being centralized. We also know exactly that those who contribute are not joining in because they were told to do so. They all come together by their own will. It's all about Independence.

Now I know why sometimes I just didn't feel comfortable attending a group discussion. There were this afraid feeling of being called 'childish' or 'immature' when I was about to express my opinion. It should affect the degree of independence of the discussion. So, next time, I'm going to another discussion, I should just let everyone knows about the whole ideas in my head, but of course, I must consult first with myself to decide which one is appropriate or reasonable. After all, we still shouldn't deny the fact that we want to look great in front of everyone.