Pandemic Chronicles

My blog posts while being in self-quarantine/isolation during the time of COVID-19 Pandemic

Stuck@Om with Herman Narula

In this episode of Stuck@Om, Herman Narula joins me in a conversation about our future. Herman is the CEO of Improbable, a company that is obsessed with multiplayer games and builds the underlying technology to support new gaming experiences. He strives to create a “virtual environment that is as representative and complex as the real world.” He envisions a virtual world that improves upon — not replicates — the real world. 

With the uncertainty of the future of travel, the ability to experience the world without leaving our homes would be astounding. What about the future of social gatherings? Will we shift to more virtual events in the vein of Travis Scott’s concert in Fortnite? The types of experiences and interactive communication we can have in such environments is endless. Herman posits that we may see a gradual freeing of identity and an emphasis on the ability to influence the

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Return of the old fashioned

 A lot of old tech ideas are back in fashion thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. A few weeks back, Intel announced that — thanks to the immediate need for people to work from home, and in many cases, learn from home — it saw a sudden spurt in the sales of laptops.1  

Logitech, the company that makes everything from headphones to stream cams and microphones, is selling out of its hardware. And it reported one of their best quarters. They reported that sales for video collaboration were up 62%. Webcam sales were up 32%, and that whole group brought in $709.2 million. Damn. (( Logitech Earnings Report. PDF)) Seriously, I have been trying to get a Blue mic for almost a month, and it is still sold out. The same goes for their webcam attachment that goes with the Apple XDR Display. Good for them — the company makes

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Fast Forwarding the future of ecommerce

Photo by Charlie Marusiak on Unsplash

This week, I can’t but help but notice that there might be good tidings in store for online commerce. As a wise editor once told me, “Follow the money, son, and you will find the story.” My forecast for sunny skies in the world of ecommerce is extrapolated from some of the data shared by the likes of Shopify, Square, and Uber.  While the overall revenues for Uber slumped and the losses mounted, Uber Eats — the company’s on-demand grocery delivery service — saw 54% growth during the first quarter of 2020, ballooning to $4.7 billion. It is easy to imagine that, during the second quarter of the year, this momentum could build further.

Uber Eats is about 20 percent of the American market for meal delivery services. The online research company Second Measure found that, by the end of March 2020, meal delivery services saw year-over-year growth

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Five stages of Zoom

With over 300 million daily participants, Zoom is clearly having a moment. And as the pandemic rolls on, our relationship with Zoom has changed quite a bit . Even my dear friend Brad “Zen” Feld is having to re-evaluate Zoom. And it actually made me wonder if we are following the Kübler-Ross model — you know, that whole classic five stages of grief malarkey.  Here’s how I see our Zoom experience mapping onto these stages:

  1. Zoom Zoom Zoom: We can get through this self-isolation with Zoom. Parties, dinners, meetings, dates. Let’s add Zoom backgrounds. Denial seems like the best way to deal with the harsh reality of the pandemic. (Read: Zoom, Zelfied, and Physical Distancing )
  2. Zoom Crashers: Who are these people who crashing my Zooms. Where is the security? All these security problems make you angry.
  3. Make Zoom Great Again. Passwords and security are what we need, and that is what

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Productivity: what is it good for?

I was having a chat with a friend yesterday who was feeling a little tired and exhausted. The root cause of this exhaustion was sitting in front of a computer screen for long periods. She mentioned that, if she wasn’t working, it was as if she wasn’t being productive and was letting down her team and her job. I suspect a lot of us who are new to the idea of working from home are struggling with that dilemma.

I have been a longtime “work from home” proponent — at least, for myself. First, I get about 900 Mbps on my broadband. I have the table, computer (monitor), and (open back) headphones, and desktop amplifier of my choice. I also don’t get into too many casual chats (I am known to wander around and talk to colleagues because, well, I like to talk). In short, when alone at home, I

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Musings
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Stuck@Om with Scott Belsky

In this episode of Stuck@Om, my friend Scott Belsky — CPO of Adobe and founder of Behance — joins me to have a conversation about the state of our world. He shares how his family is keeping safe and what they’re doing to keep their children occupied.

We chat about our love/hate relationship with Twitter and how their engagement-driven algorithm is being overwhelmingly driven by the fear-filled masses. An algorithm that curates topics you’re passionate about would better suit them. We worry they are so focused on keeping the lights on that they aren’t thinking about long-term strategies.

We also talk about looking beyond the economic impact of the pandemic: How will people think differently about their product and value propositions? Will superfluous products that society never needed begin to disappear? And what about the short- and long-term impacts on how businesses function? Scott points out that we were forced

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Unseen is what fuels the imagination

It is what we don’t see (or can’t see) that fuels our imagination. As a child, I read about faraway places. I imagined New York they wrote about in the books. I dreamt of San Francisco as described by Dashiell Hammett in his book. And when I got there, I let the reality fill in the gaps. And even today, when I am going somewhere, I end up reading about a place before I look at the images. I imagine before I experience reality. Giving myself a chance to imagine allows me to romanticize the real a little.

That approach has translated into my photography as well. The mysterious is what makes a great image for me. And perhaps that is why I end up making images, which leave a lot of room for others to imagine. It is why I like fog – because it creates room for all

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Musings, On Photography
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[Podcast] Stuck@Om with Toby Ord, author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.

This episode was recorded in early February 2020 just before the pandemic engulfed the world. We ended up talking about the lack of resilience in society.

In this episode of Stuck@Om, I chat with Toby Ord, author and Senior Research Fellow of Philosophy at Oxford University. Our conversation revolves around topics found in his new book, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. He tackles tough questions. Could we face the downfall of civilization or human extinction? Even better — what could we achieve if we survive? 

His book explores what could happen if humanity ignores the potential dangers we face. One nation making a single, serious mistake could trigger a nuclear war that could lead to massive global repercussions. What about engineered viruses that lead to global pandemics? What about the effects of pollution and global warming? 

We discuss these. But we also focus on the need

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Away from keyboard

Some of the best ideas come from casual conversations. Take this chat I had with my friend Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic and co-creator of WordPress. We were talking about his company’s early embrace of distributed company culture and remote working. That has helped the company scale to more than 1,000 people, and helped them develop expertise around managing teams, creating a corporate culture, and establishing strong bonds. Matt has often talked about this on his blog, but during our conversation, he mentioned an idea I hadn’t heard before: “Away From Keyboard.”  

At first, I thought this sounded like just another “auto-responder” one might set up in their email when they are “out on vacation.” After mulling over it for a few days, I wanted to double click on this topic. It is pretty apparent that we need this philosophy. We are all working from home, and

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