How technology helps to organize in person/offline meetups

This month, members of the Valuepickr forum (http://forum.valuepickr.com/) decided to meet up in person. As a fellow member suggested half jokingly, such meetings may be a sign of market touching a bubble (people showing more interest in value investing :D), but I digress. For Mumbai, the effort kickstarted with members getting added to a whatsapp group and expressing desire to meet, but noone stepping forward to 'bell the cat'. I did the honours by suggesting a venue, and finally others chipped in with comments/suggestions and finally the event happened with 45 attendees
http://www.meetup.com/Valuepickr-Mumbai-meetup-for-Value-Investing/events/233931806/ with the meeting report below
http://forum.valuepickr.com/t/valuepickr-mumbai/6978/98?u=andy161161

Though technology does distance us from the offline world, it can act as a force multiplier as well. For example, below tools were helpful

1. Instamojo for collecting payments at a cost of just 4% (pricing was 2%+Rs 3/txn+tax)https://www.instamojo.com/
2. Meetup for getting publicity to the event and ensuring RSVP/certain details
3. Whatsapp as a communication tool
4. Gmail for sharing presentations and coordinates
5. Valupickr for starting the critical mass and getting people.
6. Breathingroom https://breathingroom.co/ for helping get meeting rooms-though we discarded it it was still of great help to book a venue on demand

So far, without payments integration in India, Meetup is not an end-end platform. 

How technology creates the fear of missing out(FOMO)

How many times did you

•  take a selfie/photo to post on Facebook/Instagram instead of enjoying the moment
• Check your mobile phone to see notifications
• Get disturbed by your smartphone beeps
• Pay more attention to the online world than office world
• Keep scrolling down into the 'infinite' scroll
• Stop at the top few choices presented to you on Google Search, Zomato
• Feel the need to ratify your investment decision on moneycontrol?
• Stalk long lost friends and see the list of exotic places they had gone(and feel envy)

If you have ticked the box on any of these, welcome to the world of FOMO. While I was reading online on mental models, this one caught my attention, and I came across a really superb article below which highlights the problem with false choices, social media driven ADD etc. 

https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.kg0xgfdxa

To avoid FOMO which may drive impulsive decisions, one should restrict social media( OK maybe not delete your accounts but track them only once a week, with the comment that anything urgent would be checked weekly). 

ICSI NATIONAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, 2016-Some musings on questionaire

I was going through the questionaire for the ICSI award out of interest. Following points struck me as points which even more investors/professionals miss out, and hence I thought it warrants a post. One can read the full questionaire below
https://www.icsi.edu/webmodules/Final_Questionnaire_1092016.docx

1. Internal Auditor is envisaged as internal & external, and membership number is sought in each case. Interesting way to hint at professionals.
2. Like in the tax audit form, qualifications in cost audit/secretarial audit are also sought.
3. For women directors, it is specially asked if she is executive and/or independent. 
4. It is asked whether the Company Secretary reports to the CEO/MD/ED, General Counsel, CFO or any other official. Probably they want to gather data on the 'aukaad' of the professional :D since most other KMP would report into the CEO or the Director(Finance & Legal)
5. It is further asked about whether a separate compliance department exists outside of the CFO/CEO offices, and its reporting
6. Credit Rating trend in year is asked-Whether worse/unchanged/improved and whether outlook worse/unchanged/improved
7. % of differently abled employees is sought
8. Independent assessment of sustainability initiatives/reporting is asked. 

Investors would do well to see many of these points especially internal audit, credit rating, independent CSR/Sustainability spend assessment.