Accepting False Limits

"I will never be able to dunk a basketball. This is beyond discussion.

Imagine, though, a co-worker who says, "I'll never be able to use a knife and fork. No, I have to use my hands." Or a colleague who says, "I can't possibly learn Chinese. I'm not smart enough."

This is a mystery to me. A billion people have learned Chinese, and the failure rate for new kids is close to zero. If a well functioning adult puts in sufficient time and the effort, she''ll succeed.
I don't accept for a minute that there's some sort of natural limit on your ability to do just about anything that involves creating and selling ideas.

This attitude gets me in trouble sometimes. Perhaps I shouldn't be pushing people who want something but have been taught not to push themselves. Somewhere along the way, it seems, I forgot that it's none of my business if people choose to accept what they've got, to forget their dreams and to not seek to help those around them achieve what matters to them.

Not sure if you'll forgive me, but no, I'm not going to believe that only a few people are permitted to be gatekeepers or creators or generous leaders. I have no intention of apologizing for believing in people, for insisting that we all use this moment and these assets to create some art and improve the world around us.

To do anything less than that is a crime."

--- These are the excerpts from Seth Godin's Blog. There is an interesting analogy that we can derive from the above post for ourselves as young gunners of the country. Of course, we have our own interpretations though.

Quora: The Next Big Thing?

A few days back I heard a few students talking in the train about Quora. Nothing that I was hearing it for the first time but they got into an interesting discussion - Is Quora going to be the next big thing?

Surprisingly, no one differed and all were contributing in favor of positive side of the topic. That's when I thought I'd better check that site again. That's when it clicked - Yes! 

BTW, Quora is a website where you can post your questions and people answer your questions, answerer could be anyone - from a school kid to an executive in a company to a research scientist, anyone! Having said that, Quora looks to me like an exclusive discussion forum in a magnified manner. Any question you post will be answered by someone interested in that area and there are frequent discussions you can choose to have on your selected topic with different people. That is, you can expand your contact list too if you've been frequently getting a participation from the same set of people. Who knows? You people may collaborate and work out on some problem together.

I went too far with it, didn't I? But that was my first impression of Quora. The fact is, wikipedia describes Quora as 'online knowledge market' and I think that is pretty much what is required to describe it. 

Is Quora The Next Big Thing? Certainly. It will serve as a replacement to online forums. Instead of going to different portals and posting your queries, you might get all your answers here, all in one place. Frankly, there's one more factor that influences my opinion here - founder. He is the ex-CTO of Facebook. Afterall we all know how Facebook is a part of our lives, just as Google. I expect Quora too, to be on that list, soon!