A thought from long ago... Amazon

For a while, I've been sitting on this thought... During the talk, the issue of Amazon credits being limited was raised. Simone generously offered to sponsor Amazon credits to any groups that decided to take log of their own project and keep him updated of their progress. His request was simple, take a short video of what we were doing each week, share our progress and learning experience with him.

The reception was silent and no one took up the offer. Ashamedly, I'll say that one of the first thoughts that ran into my mind was, more work? After all, taking a video and making it look presentable seemed like a hassle and added labour. Above that, I felt uncomfortable with the idea of uploading videos of myself to the net. Worse still, what if the project was lousy and the videos only showcased how bad things were? Better not, lest we cannot deliver.

I wonder if it was a cultural thing that no one was taking up his offer. Was it the release of an online video that made people reluctant or the added work required? Or that perhaps we were too embarrassed to showcase our own work lest we deemed the work to be not good enough? I wouldn't know for others but for myself, it probably was a combination of all three. And at that very point of time, I was certainly not confident enough to say, "I'll do it!" with the ability to deliver. 

How would have the situation been different if he had given the very same offer in a different place/school? I wonder if the lukewarm response was a strange experience for him. What did he think of us then?

In any case, I also wonder if we had all missed on a golden opportunity. Several of the current final projects are ambitious with the intentions of going long term. It could have been possible that Simone would be generous enough to support any project in the long term, and perhaps even dish out useful advice or provide networks and contacts that could be extremely helpful.

Too bad, we missed it. There's a lesson to be learnt from this.