Paperless World: What does handwriting even mean?

When was the last time you wrote a full length page? Wrote, not typed. With increasing innovation and adoption of technology, are we evolving towards a stage where writing will become more or less redundant? Are we moving towards a completely paperless world?

Writing letters seems ancient and email/messaging is the only way we know how to communicate if not speaking directly. Writing a letter is so in the past that it is now actually used as a technique to impress women. “He gave me a hand-written letter. Look how far he went. He must really care about me”, admits the girl. Most of us have stopped taking notes by scribbling on notebooks. I have seen college classrooms in the developed world where 90% students were typing instead of writing notes. I can hardly think about a situation where I must necessarily write. For example, we don’t even write cheques anymore. We just transfer the cash electronically or swipe our plastic cards. I no longer write post-its. I prefer to use a to-do list application on my phone that also sends reminders.

Another hint that we have stopped writing is that I find it difficult to remember when I had bought my last pen. I can hardly find one these days. I was once in a situation where I had to ask a potential client to lend me a pen. The only time I now write is on a white-board when I am brainstorming with my team. For that too, there are now online solutions (such as Conceptboard and many tablet applications) that allow you to create virtual boards that you can print and share.  

Sometimes I fear, I will forget how to write or I will not recognize my own handwriting. Maybe a time will come where only students who have to learn to write, will write. But I am also reading about these schools where iPads are being used to educate students. Exams are already going online. Maybe writing will eventually become one of those subjects which a student must learn but will not really use in this lifetime. Will teachers now praise students for their choice of font types rather than their handwriting?

Another similar trend is the declining use of paper. Although I am a book lover, I must acknowledge the fact that I will eventually have to move on to something like Kindle. It is operationally cheaper, easier to carry while travelling, and hopefully many trees will be saved. We now carry less cash (a form of paper) and more plastic. I personally prefer online media over newspapers and magazines. With increased online security, banks and companies may discontinue the practice of keeping hardcopies as back-up.  

It is difficult to imagine a paperless world. Even more difficult is to imagine the thought that the basic skills of writing, which first defined that we were right- or left-handed, will eventually become redundant. However, it seems this is a reality that we may witness sooner than we realize.

Virtual Office: A Distant Reality

How much space does one man need? Let’s assume a typical family of four members i.e., a husband, a wife, and two kids. They probably live in a house with at least three rooms, a kitchen, a hall, and two bathrooms. The husband and wife probably work in different offices and hence the family has at least two cars. That would mean they also have a garage which houses one car and the other is parked in the driveway. Alternatively, they could own two parking spots if they live in an apartment building. In their respective offices, they each have at least a cubicle and share conference rooms and bathrooms with their coworkers. The kids each occupy a seat in their respective schools and share other facilities such as the cafeteria, gym, playgrounds, and bathrooms.

What I have described seems to be an ideal scenario which every family in the world hopes to have at the minimum. But with increasing population, growth of income per capita in developing nations, and limited overall real estate space this seems to be a highly unsustainable living model in the long run.

Do we realize that while we occupy one piece of real estate the other piece lies vacant? While you are in your office, your room at home is unoccupied. Do we realize that we need two of many things that we use every day (desks, chairs, coffee machines)? We commute to and fro from our homes and offices through heavy traffic just so that we can use the duplicates of real estate, furniture, and appliances. This seems like a broken system to me. We are trying to achieve productivity by working together at the cost of almost doubling the resources that we require to get us through the day. While we can afford to do this today, I am thinking of a time where this will no longer be possible.

Scarcity of resources will increase the costs, and businesses will be forced to consider the option of completely doing away with the concept of an office and adopting the concept of working from home. Instead of an office space, an employee will have a wall-sized screen in this room that will be his virtual office where he can do his work and also interact with his teammates. All operations will be paperless and all data will be stored on the cloud. He will also be facilitated by a virtual assistant similar to J.A.R.V.I.S from the Ironman movie series. We already have the facility of ordering products online amd getting delivery at our doorsteps. That means we don’t need to step out for everyday tasks such as grocery shopping. One can imagine that private vehicles will be replaced by delivery trucks. But if delivery drones (as suggested by Amazon recently) become a reality, even the trucks might become redundant.  

This may seem unreal or impracticable and one might argue that humans are social animals and they must physically interact with other humans to remain sane. Yes our generation needs that but I believe our species is evolving towards increasing isolation and virtual communities. We can already see the signs. Youngsters who have grown up with smartphone technology prefer to be online on their phones even when they are all sitting at the same table. They seem to be perfectly fine with it. Their lives seem to be more interesting on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat to them and they dedicate their attention accordingly.

Virtual offices and working at home has its benefits too. This will free up all the commercial space that is currently being occupied by offices that I believe will become redundant in the times to come. These spaces can be used to accommodate additional residences and much-needed parks and green spaces. We would need narrower roads. But broadband must become equivalent to electricity in terms of service. We could all spend more time with our family and friends because they would be in the next room.    

  

The idea is both scary and exciting. The concept of virtual offices opens up a multitude of possibilities for those who love technology. But will we ever agree to live in such physical isolation. If we continue to use the resources the way we do, we might not be given a choice.    

Making your Pitch Presentable

If you are a recent entrepreneur and quite likely from a development background, I assume you have little experience in creating presentations. I assume you have little experience also because you have no other reason to be reading this article. You probably prefer to write thousand lines of code than create a 10-slider deck. Presentations? That junk is for marketing guys and for those damn consultants. Right? Hate them as much as you want, they do get paid a lot precisely for making compelling cases through presentations. Somewhere down the line, you too will have to either make a pitch to a VC or to a potential partner. You will also have to don the cap of a presenter in a boardroom someday.

Now there are two types of presentations. One is where you give a live presentation to the intended audience (like a b-plan) and the other is where you are required to email (like the specifics of a b-plan).

The first type is simple: Keep the presentation short (not more than 10 slides) and keep the text font large with only a few words on each slide. Just follow venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule and you’ll be fine i.e., 10 slides, not more than 20 minutes of presentation, and a minimum of 30 font size. In such meetings, you are actually the presentation. What you say will matter more than what you add to the slides. For heaven’s sake, never read from your slides in a live presentation. Slides here should only act as cues for the next set of passionate blah that you going to throw at your audience.

The second type i.e. email presentations can be tricky. There is no voice over so your slides should be self-explanatory but at the same time they should not be so detailed (or text-heavy) so as to put the CEO or VC to sleep in his office. The idea is to strike a balance between the two. The following presentation tips are literally of religious importance to consultants and they abide by these more than law itself:

• Storyline

Imagine a movie with scenes all jumbled up. Like a movie, a presentation is simply a story that you are narrating in a structured way. Every slide is a scene of this story. Every slide is connected to the previous one. For any entrepreneur the story is: “Our solution (Product) will help the young generation (The Target Customers) solve this problem (The Opportunity) at an affordable price (Pricing) and also help us grow as a company (Return of Investment) in this period of time (Timeframe)”.

Always remember who is going to read your presentation. Typically, it is a high-level executive or a VC. Believe me they have no more than 2 minutes to go through your deck on their iPads. They are not always going to read your entire presentation. It is always wise to have an Executive Summary (2-3) slides at the beginning that summarizes the entire deck in plain and simple bullet points that together flow like a story. It is also a good practice to have a tagline on each slide which summarizes the entire slide.

• Content

While it may feel compelling to add as much data as possible, you should only put information that is relevant to the topic at hand. Do not add data to the slide that makes the reader go “Why are you telling me this?” Every point, sentence, and word should be relevant and useful for the reader. Dumping data to make the deck thicker will land you nowhere. Remove all the extra junk or push it to appendix if you are not sure of its relevance. Limit your data and ensure that your slides do not look text-heavy. If they wanted to read paragraphs, they would have just asked you to send a word document.

• Visual Appeal

Like new-gen consumers these days, CXOs and VCs are also bored easily. They need continuous excitement and adventure in their lives. Give them a boring black-and-white presentation and they will move on to the next thing on their calendar in less than two yawns. So add colors to your presentation. Create graphics. Put headings and text in boxes. Make arrows to show flows. Put text in bullets. Remove text and add images, wherever possible. Remove names of your competitors and add logos. You are required to captivate your audience with visual appeal.

• Consistency in Formatting

Nothing discloses your inexperience more than a formatting error. Experienced professionals are very quick in noticing even the minor errors such as font size differences, inconsistent font type, non-aligned boxes, and even line spacing. It is natural to think that who will care about a few non-aligned boxes once you disclose your revolutionary and path-breaking product. They probably won’t care but in most cases it distracts them. It irritates them. Years of conditioning have made them like this. Noticing and correcting minor errors have literally become an OCD. Don’t take a chance. Don’t let a misplaced comma delay your grand scheme of changing this world.

• Language

It goes without saying that your language should be grammatically correct. In addition, it is wise to also keep your sentences crisp. Nobody wants to read long sentences and after four lines think “Why am I doing this?” Keep it short and sweet. Keep it to the point.

Obviously, every presentation can be made better on a case-to-case basis with a few tweaks here and there but these were the few points that are always applicable. If you too have great tips that have worked wonders for you, put them in the comments below. Just like happiness, knowledge is also not very useful until it is shared.