MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 16 :: I’ve been wanting to visit India for a long time. Finally the stars lined up, and I got a great justification for going. I’ll film a vlogumentary on dating apps vs matrimonials services in India. I’ll go from Malta to Dubai and have a night-over, and then go from Dubai to Delhi. This vlog covers the flight on Emirates from Dubai to Delhi.
Two days before the flight I checked in and scored an upgrade deal. This business class flight on Emirates cost an additional $201.50 two days before the flight. That did not include lounge, or being able to fast-track through the line, or additional baggage. The $201 was purely for the upgrade of the flight. Which was just fine. The original one-way ticket cost me $306.75.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 15 :: We met up with our friends Jana, Irena’s very good friend and her husband Nick, my mountain biking buddy, at Birzebbuga. There’s a very nice beach in Birzebbuga at “Pretty Bay.” It is actually called, “Pretty Bay.” It’s mostly pretty, except for the port, and the gas ships ferrying into the area by the new power station.
We took some time to do nothing, and watch the kids play on the beach. I don’t take enough time to do nothing. It’s important to find time to chill …with a cold beer, good friends, and family. Bliss.
Vicki hunted for crabs, and Madeleine trekked the beach. I sent the drone up for a toodle around the bay as well.
On the way home, Vicki asked for icecream. We’re trying not to feed her too much sugar. But she was persuasive. Then we called my 84 year old mother. She made me hunger for my favorite British food.
Sasha spent the day with her best friend, so I took her, Vicki, and Sasha to the movies. Kong was not kid-friendly at all. I’ll be more careful with PG12 ratings. Sing, was more suitable.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 14 :: Last week I alluded to a new project that I'm going to be working on and announcing this week, and the new project is...
I'm going to go to India and film a mini-documentary, a vlogumentary, if you like, about matrimonial dating, and the rise of dating apps in India.
You have the traditional world of matrimonials in India which is essentially Matrimony.com and Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com and now you have the likes of Tinder, and Woo who are rising, and shaking things up a bit.
So, this seems, at least in my world, rather interesting. I like to study Internet dating services and this is, I think, quite interesting to the rest of the dating industry.
The stars have lined up, I'm going to India next week. I'm going to be there two weeks and I'm going to be talking with the CEOs of these companies, and hopefully talking to a few end-users as well.
So the difference with this particular style of documentary is its going to be fairly short. I'm just shooting for 30 to 45 minutes, and I'd like to make it fairly punchy. I think what I like about the idea of vlogging is that it is honest and everything follows a timeline. Everything is in the actual timeline that it happened. I like the authenticity of that. I want to follow that same style in this documentary. If you can call it a documentary. It's really a vlogumentary.
There is actually a definition for vlogumentary on the Urban Dictionary. A vlogumentary is "a do-it-yourself documentary created by a video blogger (vlogger) with the express purpose of documenting reality and sharing it online without care toward profit or marketability.”
That's the long and the short of it. I don't care about making money on this. This is something that just seems like a good thing to do. It would be interesting to do, at least for me, and the audience that I cater to, which is Online Personals Watch and the Internet dating industry.
This is a big market that is growing very quickly, and its a market that's changing quite a lot, and there are some unique cultural nuances of this particular market. So, that's the new project.
And the other announcement is, I actually did pass my exams at the London School of Economics, and so I do actually have a Masters degree now, which I'm thrilled about.
So, what happens next is I fly out on Tuesday. I'm going to be in three cities in India. I'm going to be going first of all to Delhi, which seems to be where most of the companies are. Then I'll be going down to Chennai for a few days to go visit my friend Muru at Matrimony.com and then I'm going to go visit Gourav who's the CEO of Shaadi.com and maybe even meet up with Anu who's the fellow who started Shaadi many years ago. That's the line up. Three cities in India and then I'll be home. It's going to be a couple weeks of traveling and exploring.
I'm going to take you right along with me, and that's kind of the purpose of this vlogumentary. You will see what happens. It's not going to be scripted. It's not going to be acted out. It is the God's honest truth of what happens along the way, who I meet, what they have to say… and then I'll condense it down to the interesting bits. But it's going to be laid out the same way as it happens.
It's another experiment.
One of the things I'm really not happy about is, there's one thing I can't take to India because it's not actually allowed. I could get in trouble for setting my Mavic Pro drone free. I can't take it. They don't want drones flying in India. A real downer.
The deal is, drones are not allowed to fly anywhere in India. You need to have a special license, and even that is a work in progress. They've not even got that established yet. I thought maybe in Gurgaon, which is quite a modern area of Delhi they might be allowed. They don't want drones anywhere near any built up areas with a lot of people. Which, if you think about it, makes an awful lot of sense. My Mavic Pro drone is not that light. The rotor blades are quite sharp. I certainly would not want this landing on my kids' heads.
So I think, kinda the rule over there is, if you happen to crash one of these, you're going to be in hot water. If you happen to smuggle one in and fly it around and it's not in a built up area, especially if it's on private ground, you probably will be fine. But, I'm not going to risk it. It's going to stay. And that's just me being a pussy maybe, but I don't like the idea of going to an Indian prison.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 13 :: I said this was a 12 week experiment. I did 12 weeks of vlogging (at www.MarkBrooks.TV) to learn about Youtube and video blogging, and mainly as a lark. Now what? I’d certainly appreciate your advice round about now. __
I’ve almost got a plan for something new. Something that seems like the next step, that incorporates what I’ve learned from this vlogging lark. It certainly felt like malarkey at times, but my family will look back on these vlogs in the future for some beautiful memories.
I’m not done with vlogging though. Just …what I’ve done so far lacks real purpose. That’s kinda bugging me. It needs more focus. I’d like to continue vlogging, but it needs to be more pointed. Wtf, is it for? Even I don’t know. What does each episode deliver? Why on earth would YOU want to watch it. Goodness knows?
So, moving forward, the vlogs will be more focused. The purpose should be clear in the title. I’ll endeavor to make each episode’s focus and purpose clearer in future, and each episode will be shorter and encase a clear idea, or question, or journey, or something.
Just one thing. But then I’d like to do something else, in addition. Something that takes what I’ve learned from this fracas of vlogging over the last 12 weeks. What’s next? Watch the video, and I’ll embellish more next week as ideas crystallize further. Please comment and let me know your thoughts. Thanks. ;-)
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 12 :: It’s Valentines week. Business is great! We decided to take a break and go for brunch in the ancient city of Birgu. Then fly the drone, which got completely attacked by the birds of Birgu. There’s some great shots of the medieval city of Birgu in this video. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgu __
I did a spot of flower arranging for Valentines. Not too shabby. Irena and the kids have been wanting to get a dog this week, but we've decided against it, for now. Tempted, but Madeleine is our puppy.
The kids go to Laura's birthday party and are in awe of the Maltese magician. Then we trek out to Birgu for brunch. I'm not sure about trusting Tripadvisor in Malta now. The 2nd best café in Birgu wasn't quite what we were hoping for. It was very traditional Maltese, but needed sprucing up, to say the least.
Birgu is a beautiful ancient city, that is guarded by birds with the temperament of dragons. I'm not sure they've encountered drones before. But they did not take well to my attempts at filming the best of their city. They went nuts, circling, attacking and trying to take a piece out of the Mavic.
I don't show it in the video but, in the end, I turned the drone around and started chasing them done. This disconcerted them enough that they gave me a window to bring the drone down before they wiped it out of the sky.
It's been an interesting few weeks. My consultancy helps internet dating companies grow. Business has picked up over Valentines and we have some awesome interesting clients on board now. The perfect mix. I committed to doing 12 weeks of vlogging. Now I’m wondering what's next. I have some ideas. Watch this space, at MarkBrooks.TV.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 11 :: I got my shiny new Mavic Pro drone back from the USA and took it out for a spin, and it got sucked into some kind of damn vortex thermal over Tigne Point. Either that, or it was a problem with the firmware. There’s some great shots of Malta in this video. __
I’m extremely impressed with the Mavic Pro drone. Its super easy to fly. Word to the wise, however. Keep it in clear line of signal to ensure it doesn’t run away. I’m not sure if a thermal got it, or there was a glitch with the firmware. I got some stunning shots over Malta, Sliema and Valletta in this vlog.
Sasha got some unusual advice from Youtube. I’m not sure from where. She’s hooked on Youtube, and that’s fine. We’ve got kid filtering set up. She’s learning some good lessons, and we discuss one thing she picked up in this video.
I’m running more regularly with my good friend Andy Linnas, after a hiatus because we were both travelling. In fact we’re setting ourselves a new goal now. Sometimes it’s simpler just to go daily. A half marathon in a week ( Six 2.2 mile runs), keeps us fit and in shape. Although, I’m not, he is. It’s nice to have an inspiration and a role model.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 10 :: I came back from Miami through U.K. for a quick visit to my ma. My friend bought an Evolve Bamboo electric skateboard so we tried that out and I get my new DJI Mavic Pro up into the air for some test flights over Malta. Great fun! __
I paid my 84 year old mother a visit in U.K. and we discovered a wonderful new little bakery cafe out in the country. Very relaxing.
With Ehsan’s help both myself and Victoria were able to stay up on the Evolve Bamboo. He’s been carving up the roads in Malta on it, which is a death defying feat. Malta is not known for its good roads and safe drivers. It helped that he has the offroad tires on.
I got the DJI Mavic Pro in New York a couple weeks ago. I was concerned about flying the DJI Mavic Pro in New York and Miami Beach while travelling because I’m a novice flyer and there are planes and helicopters buzzing around overhead. The DJI Mavic Pro was remarkably easy to fly. I wouldn’t trust the automated flying modes however. The risk of crashing is higher, so I’m staying all manual. I got some great shots of our local area in Malta. Great camera as well.
Then we celebrated my nephew’s birthday and had a firey accident.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 9 :: Miami Beach is the perfect spot for the iDate Internet Dating Conference.
Despite the roadworks going on outside my Airbnb apartment I was able to get plenty of sleep. The weather was perfect for a run along the beach before the iDate Internet Dating Conference. This is the 42nd iDate conference that I'm speaking at, out of 47. I didn't speak at the first one I attended in 2004, and I've missed four other Internet Dating Conferences over the years. Namely, the iDates in Nice, Hong Kong, Brazil and one other I guess.
This year's conference was a tad smaller than usual, but richer. We had stellar speakers that were willing to share more than ever with our community of leaders of Internet dating companies. The CEO of Meetme gave us a fantastic overview of the Social dating space. The CEO eDatingForFree which includes the likes of ChristianDatingForFree.com is doing very well now. No surprise, he used to be the man behind driving traffic at eHarmony! The CEO of the controversial dating site Seeking Arrangement shared the very personal story of how he started the site, and what it really stands for.
I'm proud to have stood side by side with my good friend Marc Lesnick who started iDate in 2004, since 2004. We've etched our way into the worldwide Internet dating ecosystem by consistently and faithfully summarizing the daily Internet dating and matchmaking industry news and helping the industry learn and share at iDate conferences all around the world. China, UK, Brazil, Japan, Cyprus, Spain, etc. The future is bright for the dating industry, and our goal is to help it achieve its promise and potential, for the good of singles all around the world.
After a great week in Miami, my good friend Vince gave me a ridiculous ride to the airport in an awesome car with 650bhp that's capable of 202mph!
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 8 :: I spent this week in New York City visiting a few Internet dating company founders. I love New York.
Next week I'm in Miami to keynote at the main Internet Dating Conference of the year. So I thought I'd pop into New York to visit a few dating company owners and executives before heading to the Miami conference.
I had ten meetings while here, including with the Founder of OKCupid. Sam Yagan sold OKCupid to Match and became the CEO of Match. He then successfully negotiated the acquisition of PlentyofFish. I worked for PlentyofFish for a 6 year period thru 2013 and introduced Markus and Sam when they first met at the Internet Dating Conference. The owner of PlentyofFish, Markus Frind, received $575 million from Match based on Sam's negotiation. Sam was kind enough to give me a reference to get onto the Executive MSc course in behavioral science at London School of Economics. A very nice, and very much appreciated gesture. I'm thrilled to have completed the course. It was while studying that I discovered Casey Neistat and got curiously hooked on his vlogs which acted as brain relief from my Masters dissertation.
I visited the CEO of Hinge, which is distinguished from Tinder because they removed the swipe function to get people to think a bit more about their matches. Hinge is for more meaningful relationships. I'm interviewing the CEO, Justin McLeod, at the Internet Dating Conference so wanted to get a handle on where I should take the interview. I like their office. The wooden floor and open plan felt like a coffee shop to me, and the success walls at dating companies are always fun to see.
I checked out the offices of Ivy.com. Beri Meric co-founded it. They started out a few years ago with IvyDate and pivoted away from dating and managed to acquire the Ivy.com domain. I met up with Beri to get the low-down on where they're headed. Ivy is not just for ivy leaguers, I should note. It's a social university with bases in seven cities now. Its a social hub for thoughtful people who want to learn and share and have fun together. Love it. Its $1k to join and $40 a month. They're growing gangbusters.
I discovered a cool little cafe that serves Stumptown Coffee. Its inside a Brooks Brothers store!? Then I went to one of my favorite fast food places. Chop't does salads like no other. Awesome, and its a show. They pull a huge double knife chopper and annihilate the salad, then throw it into a bowl and load it up with dressing and in my case, some chicken. Perfect. I wish they had one of these in Malta. I'd be there several times a week. I should reverse engineer some of their recipes for home.
Maria at Agape Match has the best view of any dating or matchmaking office I've been to yet. Eharmony's office view over L.A. comes in 2nd now. But Maria's office is on the 59th floor of the Empire State Building! Fantastic view! She gave me an overview of what being a matchmaker means to her, and what she does on a daily basis.
Then on Sunday I left the big apple for Miami Beach. Alas, my Airbnb apartment was sitting right on top of some emergency roadworks, so I went for a late night run along the boardwalk. We used to live in Florida. The air is so good here. I miss it.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 7 ::I'm happiest when I'm at inbox zero. I was happy this week. Here's some hacks to help you nail inbox zero in gmail.
We're in total information overload these days. Every day we get a deluge of important email to pull our attention. Couple that with all the email subscriptions with killer content pulling at our attention even further...and it's all just too much. I prefer to drink my morning coffee while being at or close to inbox zero.
I've experimented with many email systems, and tools, and hacks to come up with a few ground rules which really, really help me get to and stay at inbox zero. I'd like to share them with you. I hope they help.
Firstly, its frustrating to attempt to go through email when there's not enough time. So, why bother. Its better to know you have a clear half hour, and then attack email with full attention. The golden rule is OHIO. Only Handle It Once. The only way you can OHIO is if you have the time to pay each email proper attention to be able to make the decision to either bin it, answer it, or if you really don't have time to answer it, boomerang it. I'll explain what I mean by 'boomerang' in a moment. ...and how about all the people you emailed that didn't respond? Its annoying to let stuff fall through the cracks.
Second tip... Use Boomerang App for gmail. (there's also an option for Outlook). This solves the two problems I just mentioned. If you don't have time to answer a particular email you can use Boomerang to send an email off and come back to you in hours, or days, or months. Its up to you. The other way I use Boomerang is, what I think is the real killer-app, I use it to have bulletproof follow-up. I'll set up most of the emails that I send out to come back into my email box, or rather, be boomeranged back into my inbox, if that person doesn't respond to that email within a set period of time. Great! I wish there were more options for tools that could do this, but it seems Boomerang is the best option within Gmail. Please comment if you know of any more.
Third tip. If you set up your inbox the way I showed in this video, you'll have your 'Important and Unread' email to focus on first. Then, once you've cleared through that, click on the 'Unread' email drop-down to see your less important and unread email. Then click on the numbers of emails i.e. 1-100 emails, on the right hand side. You'll then click the tick box up top to tick all the emails. Then unclick the ones you want to actually read, and mass delete the rest.
Hopefully this makes some sense. Please let me know your tips for getting to inbox zero. Perhaps we can raise our collective game by sharing in the comments here. Thanks. ;-)
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 6 :: It's time for New Year Testimonials.
In 2017 I'll be focusing on the Internet dating industry 100%, getting fit, and spending more time with mi familia. I've been thinking about starting another consultancy, but I find it tough to focus on anything other than Internet dating. Perhaps I'm comfort zoning, but I just know and love the Internet dating industry. There's a lot of room for growth for the industry, and it fires me up to know the work my team does, really effects so many people's lives in quite a profound way.
We had a guest over this week. Marta is Irena's cousin. She's just started university studying biotechnology. We're proud of her. She's doing very well. She comes over from time to time to visit us, and take a break. Always welcome, and she cooks up a storm. Nice!
I ask Vicki, Sasha and Mads why girls like flowers. Hoping for some innocent insight. Instead, Madeleine starts speaking a strange language. Some form of Maltese+English+Czech+alien. I'm not quite sure what she said, but it was something cute and inspiring. I'll have to ask her again in a few months when her English is further along.
Again, Happy New Year to you. I hope you like the vlog. Daily's took too much time in the end, so I'm sticking with weekly vlogging. Its fun, without taking too much time. I plan on uploading each week on Sunday's for 6pm New York time.
5.1 :: I’m switching to daily video blogging now. Here’s the first episode of my daily. Just one minute long. I was quoted in New York Times last week on the Internet dating business. Please let me know your thoughts on the video. I hope you like it. (All my vlogs are at www.MarkBrooks.TV)
5.2 :: The press like to call me on occasion, to comment about the Internet dating business. Its a tough business to be in these days as ad costs are up, and its more competitive than ever, and we've had to transition to mobile and put prices down. Conversions are down. Things have changed a lot over the last few years, but my consultancy (CourtlandBrooks.com) is as strong as ever, miraculously. We must be doing something right.
5.3 :: How far should you run? I prefer to run short distances as fast as I can. It saves time, and really, the biggest health gains are between doing nothing, and doing something. So how far do I run? See the video. Its enough to do the job. Fresh air, stretch the legs and lungs, and catch a change of scenery. Its not necessary to run 10-20 miles. For most people, that's just not going to happen anyway. So, moderation is the key, IMHO. Actually, the term is Minimum Effective Dose. This refers to drugs usually, but it works equally well with food and exercise. You be the judge. After the run, I try and score a client, and then party it up with our good friends.
5.4 :: I love my walks with Madeleine. Occasionally we bump into a friendly dog. This particular dog was quite memorable. A lion dog? So, I've gone to a daily video blog. This whole vlogging thing is an experiment. I'm not comfortable with video, but I'd like to be. I do like capturing and sharing memories and thoughts from my day for you, and my family. I'm enjoying the process. I hope some of this is interesting to you and I hope to make it more thought-provoking. Or maybe the point of watching is to momentarily remove you from what you were thinking about? A brain break, to break up your day. For one minute a day. I'm going to try to keep it to one minute a day to respect your time. You certainly don't have much time for watching vlogs, I know. But “who has time? Who has time? But then if we never take time, how can we have time?” - The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded
5.5 :: Madeleine buys flowers for mommy. I don't get her enough flowers. Definitely something I need to change in 2017. Madeleine and I encountered a flower truck as we were walking home from her pre-school. She chose the color of the flowers we bought. “Pink. Mommy likes pink.” The flower truck is normally there on Saturdays but because of New Years eve coming up, decided to come on Friday. Perfect. Normally we would not have seen him there.
Madeleine was quite thrilled to buy flowers. She liked the smell. She liked carrying them, but grew tired after walking with them for a while. We took a scenic break to watch the boats, and continued our journey back home.
We live in Malta. The old name for Malta was Melita. This is actually Maltese for 'honey.' So we live in the land of honey, apparently. It is quite lovely here. So the soundtrack seemed appropriate on a couple of counts. Hope you like the video. Please share it, if you enjoyed it.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 5.5:: Madeleine buys flowers for mommy. I don't get her enough flowers. Definitely something I need to change in 2017. Madeleine and I encountered a flower truck as we were walking home from her pre-school. She chose the color of the flowers we bought. “Pink. Mommy likes pink.” The flower truck is normally there on Saturdays but because of New Years eve coming up, decided to come on Friday. Perfect. Normally we would not have seen him there. Madeleine was quite thrilled to buy flowers. She liked the smell. She liked carrying them, but grew tired after walking with them for a while. We took a scenic break to watch the boats, and continued our journey back home. We live in Malta. The old name for Malta was Melita. This is actually Maltese for 'honey.' So we live in the land of honey, apparently. It is quite lovely here. So the soundtrack seemed appropriate on a couple of counts. Hope you like the video. Please share it, if you enjoyed it.
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 5.4 :: I love my walks with Madeleine. Occasionally we bump into a friendly dog. This particular dog was quite memorable. A lion dog? So, I've gone to a daily video blog. This whole vlogging thing is an experiment. I'm not comfortable with video, but I'd like to be. I do like capturing and sharing memories and thoughts from my day for you, and my family. I'm enjoying the process. I hope some of this is interesting to you and I hope to make it more thought-provoking. Or maybe the point of watching is to momentarily remove you from what you were thinking about? A brain break, to break up your day. For one minute a day. I'm going to try to keep it to one minute a day to respect your time. You certainly don't have much time for watching vlogs, I know. But “who has time? Who has time? But then if we never *take* time, how can we have time?” - The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded
MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 5.3 :: How far should you run? I prefer to run short distances as fast as I can. It saves time, and really, the biggest health gains are between doing nothing, and doing something. So how far do I run? See the video. Its enough to do the job. Fresh air, stretch the legs and lungs, and catch a change of scenery. Its not necessary to run 10-20 miles. For most people, that's just not going to happen anyway. So, moderation is the key, IMHO. Actually, the term is Minimum Effective Dose. This refers to drugs usually, but it works equally well with food and exercise. You be the judge. Please comment. After the run, I try and score a client, and then party it up with our good friends.
I'm quite fascinated with video, but uncomfortable with it. The best way to conquer this fear is to dive right in, so I'm doing a 12 episode weekly video blog so I'm more familiar with video. You can see my silly experiment in vlogging at MarkBrooks.TV. See episode 2 for some thoughts on the idea of Internet dating. Episode 3 is out on Monday.
