Category Archives: Self

My Single New Year Resolution

I’ll Just Do It.

Quite a number of  us already know what we want to do; start exercising, launch that company, travel, ask that girl out, quit that job, read those books, call  family more, stop taking bullshit and the list goes on. My mental mode is different this year. The world ends this 2012 so there is no time to say no time. So what ever I think I should do, I will do. I hope you will start doing too.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Image Credit

 

I am Oo, founder of GBEDU.FM where I hope to make sense of this business of music. I once tried to kill the business card with OnePage.

What is your ‘real name’?

Recently, there has been a lot of hullabaloo on the inter-webs about people being kicked of Google+ for not using their real names. As someone that goes by the name Oo pronounced Oh Oh, I get the “what is your real name question quite a lot.

My comment on this topic on Fred Wilson’s blog post on this topic was quite long I decided to blog my thoughts on this “real name issue.

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I think the fundamental question is “What is your name?”
My full name is Osita Orji Nwoye hwoever, I have always been called Oo (my initials) by family and friends. My Mum, Dad, Sister who have known me for 28 years of my life have NEVER called me any name but Oo. They only mention Osita when I am being introduced to some people.

90% of the people who have known me in the last few yeas do not even know my name as Osita. If you go to where I have lived in the last 5 years and ask for Osita I would walk pass and they would not know who you are talking to .

Recently, I have attended tech  events, introduced myself as Oo had a quick chat and moved on only for the person to come back and say, “Hey, wait a minute, are you OoTheNigerian (Thank you Twitter!)?”

What then is my name?

I would say it depends on the circumstance, but the main reason for having a name is for identification. What ever can identify you to a person is your name to that person or authority.

It is also interesting to note that your name is not for you to use but for others.

Of course, my cheques are written Osita Nwoye.  Money has a way of settling these disputes :)

So what is your real name?

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Bonus: But why and how did I come to bear Oo?

Legend has is that when this great man was born, his fathers people gave him Ositadimma and his mothers people gave him Orji (not orgy ). However, when it was to be decided what name I would bear, a war nearly broke out between the village of Abba and Umunya. My brilliant and diplomatic mother, wanting to avert a crisis had a moment of inspiration (hopefully inspired by God) and decided  to combine the initials and it became Oo :) .

This awesome name has a logo and its own song embedded below. Go ahed and download to your heart’s pleasure.

The Oo Song by Oo Nwoye

I am Oo, founder of GBEDU.FM where I hope to make sense of this business of music. I once tried to kill the business card with OnePage.

I Don’t Mean To Be Vain But…

I’ve got a personal logo. Before you hate me let me explain how this happened :D

One day last year, I was researching logos. I think I typed a query like “best logos ever” and I came across one of the most awesome logo I have ever seen “TalkMore“. So I did a little research about the person behind the logo and found out the guru behind it Nido, was in Birmingham with me! (then, I was still a Brummie). I got in contact and we chatted over Skype. It was around the time I was returning back to Nigeria so we did not get to meet up. While I was in Nigeria, I was still in contact with Nido and promised to check on him whenever I visited Brum.

Last Thursday, I went to visit my man Joel in Birmingham and made it a point of duty do track down Nido. We agreed to meet up on Thursday evening. We went back and forth via SMS trying to fix a good time. Unfortunately, things came up for Nido and we could not meet up again.

Well, on the way back to London, I got a text from Nido saying he sent me something cos he was feeling bad for not being able to meet up with our appointment. When I returned to London, I opened my email and wow!!!

Trivia fact: The first time I spoke to Nido was when I called to thank him for the logo. And the first question he asked was; “how do they pronounce your name?”. All previous communication was via SMS, email and Skype.

Some people are just AWESOME.

Thank you Nido. I am really grateful.

Now I can now go ahead and think on how to incorporate the awesome generic logo into OoTheNigerian, Political Oo, Oo Nwoye

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I am Oo, founder of GBEDU.FM where I hope to make sense of this business of music. I once tried to kill the business card with OnePage.

Facebook and ‘Happy Birthday’

Today is my birthday. Yes, you most likely ‘forgot’ because you did not notice it on your Facebook Birthday list. Well, it was actually deliberate. I removed my birthday from my profile because I wanted to relive the feeling  of the good old days when the conversation went like this

Well wisher: Happy birthday!

Celebrant: Wow you remembered. Thank you  *Grinning from ear to ear*

You see, the advent of Facebook heralded the era of automating the wishing of Happy Birthday and took away that pleasant feeling knowing someone spared some brain  cells to actually remember your special day.

Some 2 birthdays ago, I received about 200 birthday wishes from my barely 1k Facebook friends. Last year was the eye opener, although I received about 400, a vast majority looked automated.

“Happy Birthday bro! have a nice one”

The one that killed it for me was ‘HBD’. Yup, you got that right, there was no time to spell out ‘Happy’

So this Year, with my 2k+ Facebook contacts, I decided to do something different. Rather than get 1000 HBD’s  which would be copied and pasted on the walls of my Birthday mates, I decided to remove the date to see who would remember.

The result was not surprising.

The first half of the day had less than 10 people writing on my wall (I would have gotten that number 24 hours to my birthday, had it been listed). by evening, the number started picking up (to about 27) due to the posts on my wall flowing to the streams of Facebook friends.

So I can authoritatively say that by not listing your birthday on your Facebook profile, the happy birthday posts will be 5% of what you would normally get.

This was just an experiment of a bored mind.

Thanks to all those that remembered. called, sent texts, and wrote on my wall. It is greatly appreciated.  After all, you had a clear choice not to.

For those of you that forgot, you’ve got 2hrs left :)

 

New year, new resolution

Unlike last year, I will not list a litany of resolutions, I will keep it simple.

  1. Focus and finish any project I start.
  2. Keep my confidence and integrity in tact
  3. Make real effort to become more religious
  4. Enjoy life.

Everything else will fall into place.

I am really feeling old at 23*

 

*Not a typo :)

I am Oo, founder of GBEDU.FM where I hope to make sense of this business of music. I once tried to kill the business card with OnePage.