Beginner's mind

Hey, this is a new project by Joy, Sound Snack (Edit on Apr 13).

I didn't realise I had long history working with sound, until we paused the podcast for almost 4 months. I recall that I've been a host in my junior high school radio station, playing music and reading announcements; in college, together with 3 friends, I started a project, Sound Museum, to evoke the awareness of environment by showing people sounds from nature in a website. Two years ago, Bo and I started this really casual podcast, Beginner's Mind. 

There's something charming about storytelling by sound. The sound, voices, and also, most importantly, the silence in-between, tell stories that all your imagination allows. I'm a big fan of spontaneity, co-creation, and interpretation based on each person's experiences. 

Hope these 5-minute sound clips bring you peace of mind even when it's noisy. 

Be happy :)

Happy holiday! Quite a month! Joy has been travelling (again) and this time, Bali. So you will probably hear some background music from the resort. Joy got up at 11:30pm and Bo got up at 7am to make the call. Both were yawning until the conversation started. We talked about Alt-School and our view on education. Enjoy!

01:00 Catch up a bit. What is Alt-School? What's going on with Alt-School? Then we started the discussion of the business model -- where it's heading by shutting down two lab schools.

15:00 Would you send your kid to Alt-School? Bo says yes. We further discussed that education startups take time to prove themselves. We digress a bit to another topic: design babies.

24:00 Can selling programs to other schools help Alt-School make money? The program is pretty expensive for public schools.

34:00 Bo is a dropout from college, and we talked about his view on education. Joy also talked about her education in China. Then we talked about personal choice to go through the path that everyone is going through. It was my favourite part of the discussion.

45:00 By comparing our own education experiences, we discussed that the traditional education method might not be failing, and sometimes it's hard to know which way is right for the kids.

Joy was travelling in Tibet for two weeks, and thus the show paused for a while. Now we are back on track, the topic we picked is about Amazon's purchase of wholefoods. We found the topic really interesting because it relates to Alibaba's recent moves on "New Retail" movement.

01:00 We catch up a bit on work and life, and then jump right into the topic. Amazon purchased Wholefoods couple months ago. How does that affect Wholefoods? How will it affect Instacart, a startup that delivers grocery to people's doorsteps? Bo proposed that Amazon bought Wholefoods as an experiment to find out how to support retail industry.

21:00 Joy talked about her experience in Alibaba's new supermarket store, Hema. We discuss why Alibaba started the New Retail movement, why they opened Hema, and waht's their next move.

41:00 One thing keeps coming back in the conversation is that the genes of a company decides the direction of their products, Amazon calling itself a "Day One" company, and Alibaba trying to "make it easy to do business anywhere". But then why do they both get into the entertainment businesses?

Several days before the recording, Bo sent me few localbitcoins links and suggested that I could get in touch with these sellers, and ask them about bitcoin situation in China. I didn't do, because... I explained in this episode. The episode continues the conversation of bitcoin and the recent ban in China.

1:00 Bo suggested that I could get in touch with bitcoin sellers in China and interview them. His main question is how did Chinese get crazy about bitcoin. How the ban is going to affect the market in China?

16:00 Bitcoin will only be popular when it becomes a daily use, but right now there's not much progress in this approach. Big corporates accept bitcoin for some transactions, but they are not keeping them. Coinbase is one of the products that is building up the industry, from making secure bitcoin wallets to maybe a merchant app. It would be promising if an e-commerce company is built solely on bitcoin transactions.

35:00 What is ICO? Bo explains it by describing it as building a casino. The three characteristics of this casino is 1) the owner is a stranger; 2) the price of the chips is not stable; 3) whether the casino can be completed or not is unknown. And the ICO that Bo might invest is a penguin lap dance business (what???).

49:00 Bo makes comparison between the two investment methods, venture capital and ICO.

Bonus: I attached the part when we chat in Chinese on the topic for about 15 minutes.

Hello, World. We are back!

In the past two months, we've been going through some life changes, like leaving a company and joining a new one, or building a new one (in Bo's case). For me, I've been working on a translation project for a while and it finally came to completion. So we start chatting, recording and keep the show going.

The show begins with the latest news that China bans ICO and bitcoin exchange in Mainland. And then it goes on like a Q&A of bitcoin.

5:00 When did Bo start paying attention to Bitcoin and why? How will it change the banking system? What is blockchain, and the value of bitcoin?

16:00 What does it mean when people are mining bitcoin? Bo says they are more like accountants than miners. How does bitcoin make future online transaction easier? It might change the tax system too.

30:00 China bans bitcoin exchange and how it's going to affect the market. Is there still opportunities for late comers to the market? Why does it matter to people's life?

44:00 Fun fact that a country in Africa (turned out to be Kenya) uses mobile phone minutes as currency. Then we talk about the caveat of investing in bitcoin, and it leads to discussion of new types of cryptocurrency coming up.

References

* "Old people buy gold, and young people buy bitcoin", comes from an episode of L2inc ("A Primer on Crytocurrency")

* The title, Triple Bubbles, was a joke about Bo's life in Silicon Valley, living in the housing and startup bubble, while speculating the bitcoin bubble. I think it sums up the era we are at very nicely.

We came back after a long break. And the first topic relates to mobile working, artificial intelligence, new iPad pro, and a lot of other buzz words.

01:00 What's the prospect of future mobile working? Bo explains how narrow AI might play a role.

14:00 Joy looked in to some of the hardware for mobile working, and raised the question, what makes iPad pro special. Bo answers the question from the new interaction patterns and the standpoint of being a programmer.

28:00 iPad creates the new possibility for future interaction like gesture control, which is already being implemented in in-car interaction. Bo talks about his failed attempt to create a startup basd on gesture control.

39:00 The future of mobile working depends on how likely big corporates are adapting to the new tools. Some companies are already handing iPads to their employees.

43:00 How will the mobile working trend go in China?
 

01:00 We chat about Bo's first visit to Forward, an innovative clinic just started in San Francisco. It tries to create a futuristic hospital experience with new machines and big data. It's similar to another enterprise, One Medical. We compared the two approaches on pros and cons.

16:00 Forward gets my attention because it keeps track of health data of their members and offers 24/7 medical consulting. I feel the data-driven approach is going to change the future clinical experiences, so we dive a bit deeper into AI, deep learning, machine learning and other buzz words.

28:00 We discuss the medical startup landscape. Forward is one of the approaches, others include the online marketplace, DNA testing, etc. But whatever the landscape, the trust seems the main issue that most people care about in this the medical startups.
 

We paused the show for a month due to CNY holiday and some technical issues. We each had different experiences in the past four weeks. While Joy was in Nepal for the physically, mentally and emotionally challenging meditation bootcamp, Bo has been working very diligently on his side project in the calm and quiet Bay Area. Again, we didn't have a topic. It used to drive me crazy that we didn't have a set topic, but now I feel I am getting used to the flow that just comes up naturally. And it turned out well. We started with Joy's ten days of silence and chatted all the way to the inescapable reality that we are facing now.

Enjoy! Be happy :)

01:00 How does it feel to live ten days without talking?

10:00 The people who came to the mediation camp

19:00 Why did I sign up for the meditation camp? And we discussed meditation from our own perspectives. Bo thinks it was just about breathing in and breathing out. Joy thinks it's helpful in helping her focus and better manage her emotions.

32:00 What is the technology that creates most emotion roller-coasters?

44:00 Nothing is new in the Bay it seems, and Joy raises the question: are people in the Bay Area jealous of the startup scene in Beijing? And we touched a little bit of mobile payment vs credit card. I wonder if US is going to rely on mobile payment one day as what's going on in China now.

56:00 A little touch on the the situation we are facing today, does it empower you?

The English version is here

0:00 We changed our name to Beginner's Mind. The reason will be further explained in another post.

2:00 On-demand bicycles in China is blooming. But first we define the three main concepts, O2O, on-demand services and sharing economy.

12:00 How does the on-demand bicycles work from start to end? And who are the major users?

22:00 What are the main differences among the bikes?

33:00 What are the main pain points of the bikes?

44:00 Will the companies do well in the Bay Area?