Mr Carlos Zimbron came up with the idea
Vithushan Namasivayasivam

You have heard of celebrating success, but have you heard of embracing failures. An event in the Mexico City, encouraged entrepreneurs in cities in 80 countries around the world have started their own parallel nights of embracing failures.

Mr Carlos Zimbron came up with the idea over a barbeque that the talks of failures many of which are later uploaded to YouTube, “can be inspiring for people who may gone through the same problems. When you connect to someone else’s mistakes and can see how vulnerable they are in sharing that story, that’s where you can connect with other entrepreneurs”.

Ex-software engineer, Vithushan Namasivayasivam , when working for one of the main global music streamers he made a huge mistake, which he recently divulged his blunder to dozens of people at an event in Toronto, Canada. Seven years ago his work involved  trying to ensure that when bands and solo artists submitted 10-second long, looping videos to accompany their songs, they would play smoothly on people’s mobile phones. They should have been streamed to users’ handsets just the one time, but due to Namasivayasivam’s error they were constantly re-downloaded onto people’s phones every 10 seconds, and especially for those not connected to Wi-fi it quickly used up all their data. He only became aware of his mistake when he read complaints on an online forum.

Leah Edwards director at US Investment fund Lighter Capital, and a lecturer on leadership and innovation at University of California, Berkeley said she loves that these public talks about business failures are “normalising the fact that something is hard, and that it takes a number at-bats ( a baseball tern for a batter’s turn) in order to find the right combination of teams and market opportunity, and the right product or service”. One person had written “I hate this feature so much. Whoever came up with this, should be fired and shot.”

How bold are you to talk about your failures? Namasivayasivam told the gathering in Toronto: “It was this moment that I messed up, and this is where the feelings of imposter syndrome and anxiety and shame came flooding in”. Today Namasivasivan is the founder and CEO of Skillify, a Tronto-based provider of software coding training.

Marsha Druker, who organises the regular failure talks in Toronto, says she looks for speakers willing to not just open about their professional failure story, but also wants them to tell audiences about what they learned about that mistake, now that they have had time to reflect on it.”

One response to “Failure is a stepping stone to success”

  1. pennynairprice avatar
    pennynairprice

    Being a media graduate in Communication Studies and a writer, photographer and artist, I have made mistakes myself. The main one is because I was not taught about the important necessity to copyright ones work professionally I have had work plaigiarised including photographs by a big art and card company. I now plan to advise media course tutors that intellectual property and copyright issues should be on all course curriculums. The mistake itemised in your article sounds like it caused a lot of confusion and unnecessary problems. I hope they have now fixed it. Enjoyed the article. I studied Communication Studies – a media course one can pursue in Sheffield or Birmingham or London.

    Liked by 1 person

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