Okay the title says it all. Been wanting to write a blog post all day but didn’t really got the time until now. This will be the 3rd night in December when insomnia is becoming a habit. Anyways, I wanted to write but I wanna do it “spur of the moment” style. So this blog post will talk about anything that pops up in my mind, bear with me :p
First topic will be positivity. Man this December is full of it! How can you be negative when the exact same amount of energy can make you feel alive even more than the general population is feeling? Living in Jakarta, negativity is everywhere. From the moment you walked out off your homes then voila, welcome to the jungle. I see it as opportunities! So many things we can make right of.
Traffic jams will surely be the best seller for negativities in Jakarta would it? The cool thing is LewatMana.com lives and breathes from it and won a SparxUp award while they’re at it. Urbanesia’s office is the location of one of their traffic cameras I might add. In Jakarta, we are blessed with more problems than solutions so it is my believe that startups will flourish here! The recent acquisition of Koprol by Yahoo is prove that building one is NOT a long shot.
Another topic just crossed my mind and that’s perspective. I can’t keep count of how many times I said the word without bringing myself to boredom because I tell you, perspective is poison and also honey :p It will be radioactive when you focus extremely only with a single perspective but it will be a lifesaver when you have lots of it. After all, @liamtanu Co-Founder of Tokopedia always say “Luck is when Opportunity meets Preparation”.
Why I connect the dots between perspective and luck is because coming back to the first topic of positivity, running and building a startup needs lots of positivity and perspective with luck inclusive! Before joining Urbanesia, I was working in Hotel Mulia Senayan as a Web Developer and then ran a small company called Mediafusion. I had a lot of learning moments with both of them.
While I was still at Hotel Mulia Senayan, I discovered the awesomeness of 3D Panoramas. I learned how to take pictures and stitch them together which in turns create a beautiful 3D Panorama. I was lucky that although a Web Developer, I was stationed at the Art & Printshop Department and suffice to say, creativity and technical drive is never ending over there. Worked with good friends and one of the best people I’ve ever had the chance to know.
That particular 3D Panorama opened up a new sense of excitement for me. I learned something new and I succeeded in making it happen for myself. There were no one in Indonesia doing it at the time as to my knowledge. So with 3D Panoramas in hand, I jumpstarted a small company called Mediafusion.
We were chasing a project at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah and wanting to impress them, I shot a few landmarks in 3D Panorama. It was all done with a pocket camera and a slightly modified tripod. For each landmarks, I had to make ~360 pictures because the lens is not wide enough sigh. The tripod is not specifically made for 3D Panorama so the lens wasn’t positioned exactly at its nodal point but I thought it was enough to show a general idea of what we can do. Sadly, we didn’t get the project but went on to opened up more opportunities especially for my partner.
You’ll be wondering what that story has to say about my previous paragraph of connecting the dots. As I quoted earlier about the definition of luck, I grew more confident inside of me that nothing is impossible, it’s either you know something or you don’t. When you know it, what’s stopping you from being the next rockstar? My point is, I never let down myself by saying that my effort is useless. Because of that particular moment with 3D Panoramas, Urbanesia now join the ranks of only 4 other photographers in Indonesia able to do such thing. You can see it right here. Note: I’m not a photographer, I’m a geek.
Now you’ll see why Google does not trash their products, they recycle it and so did I. Ideas are the basics of creativity leading to innovation, don’t waste them! In Urbanesia, now we have more whiteboards than we could ever dreamed of. You can write anything anywhere at the office. Most of them that are writable are already full with people writing about the next big thing in Urbanesia or even funny anecdotes. It is my mission to explore every person in Urbanesia and bring out the best in them: Themselves.
Wow this spontaneous writing makes me really thankful. I feel I’m in the right place and time where I am today. Got to spend countless hours doing something I love and I’m just one of the 16 other similar people in Urbanesia. Selina Limman, I owe you a big thanks! I wouldn’t say impossible but putting it mildly, this experience in Urbanesia would less likely to be happening without you. Sorry if I’m stubborn, it’s love at its best towards Urbanesia :p
For my third topic its complexities is admirable: “Personally Professional, Professionally Personal”. Now tell me how to decode this topic? If you ask me, I don’t know where to start. All I know is this topic is exactly why Urbanesia as a team has progressed this far. I talked about this oftenly with @RidhiMahendra over countless beer bottles. You don’t learn this kinda thing, you experience it and leverage from it. Like beer bottles, we found out that our limit for 1 night is 3 bottles/pax lol.
Personally Professional
Communication is why the IT industry exists. The act of sending and receiving data is what I call communication. Talking to each other is one of them. With talking, your brain encodes and decodes messages sent and received from people you talk to. If you don’t do it with the right algorithm and or compression, the data will most likely be lost in translation or in geek terms: corrupted.
The challenge is there, to figure out the right algorithm for 2 or more ends to communicate. The first thing to do was to experience the whole thing and make an example out of it. That’s what we did with 4.5 weeks of endless codings. Let me ask you this, how do you motivate people? I’m answering this simple, just be one of the people you’d want to motivate. We managed to find the best out of all of us and focused the next efforts on that particular areas for each person.
Professionally Personal
This is by far the most interesting outcome so far. My friendship with Ridhi goes from high school and our experiences in life are not so different from one another. But now we’re also colleagues. It’s becoming a challenge from day 1 to really distinguish friendship and professional decisions. Well this is when opportunity meets preparation A.K.A Luck. Ridhi is an SEO expert, he makes his judgement with data supporting him and with that discipline, it has kept Urbanesia leveled with what our data is showing us.
Imagine applying the last sentence above to your personal life with all your colleagues. By setting an example and being open, it is now the warmest work atmosphere ever. The most important thing is confiding with each other. Everyone’s responsibility is already clear enough that it doesn’t need more words to describe. Just some pointers on what our goal is. So by professionally personal, we have gained more productivity that never before.
Our formula: 51% Professional and 49% Personal.
I have written a lot this morning. Most of it are plain recipes of running and building a startup coming from experience, short lived until now but enough to act as ammunitions to shoot away obstacles. A sound reminder, there’s no such thing as a one man show unless you got aliens inside your head like Zuckerberg lol. With the right portion and timing of appreciation, one can introduce redefining moments to just about anyone. Passion is never ending, make it real :D