Ideas that spread – wins!

Although it is an hour long video – but captures well why in today’s world it is vital for everyone to remain connected with their customers and help spread ideas. Also, Seth has great delivery and captures this topic so eloquently. It is fun to hear some of his usual examples around slice bread or purple cow. Anyway – enjoy.

Share your ideas – Social Media 101

I find myself in more situations lately educating others or asking others to embrace social media as part of professional life. It has become a norm for start up companies where social media is part of life. However, in established companies it is a journey: some leap forward and others need hand holding to get the journey started.

I usually find 2 stumbling block for the folks who have not done it before:

1. Overcome their own inertia or fear what does it mean to share ideas on the whole world wide web.
2. Not knowing how to get started – particularly how to keep personal and professional life separate and private as one deem appropriate.

I am not an expert but I have embraced few things as part of my daily personal/professional life. Here is what I do:

a. Facebook: It is my personal family/friend group. This is where I keep up with what is happening in the life of my family and close friends. I usually share personal/family stuff here. I am particular about whose invitation I accept on Facebook or who I invite to be my friend. You can find me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alok.tyagi

b. Twitter: This is where I microblog on what is happening in my professional life. Usually, I share organization thoughts that are important to me. I accept everyone who want to follow me on twitter – except lately I am finding blocking some people who seem to have find a way to push porn on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aloktyagi

c. Personal blog: This is where I speak my mind and share my personal/professional opinion on wide variety of topics – usually topics that are near and dear to my heart. You can find my personal blog at http://aloktyagi.wordpress.com

d. Company blog: This is where I represent my professional view as it pertains to the company I work for. You may want to check out your company policy. Some companies are restrictive on what you can say or not. Others are rather liberal and allows people to speak their mind. Anyway – it is better to know company policy as you blog on company site or forum. You can find my company blog at http://community.sagemas.com

e. LinkedIn: I don’t use it as much as others do. It is mostly my professional contact list and I usually use it to do quick reference check or know relationship when I meet someone new. I only accept LinkedIn requests from people that I know of or met recently at some conference/networking event. You can find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/aloktyagi

Anyway – there are various other avenues and some people use social media more than others. I suggest find your comfort zone and start the journey – whether to start on the personal end or professional end or both. What is important is to start the journey and be regular.

Keep it going

This one is funny. It takes one to start the party…

Also, remind me of a quote…”one person can change the world”

Bookworm

I love reading books. Books have been helpful and insightful in guiding me all along. Beside several great mentors  who supported, coached and guided me along – I credit few good business books in shaping my thought process thus far.

My younger daughter, Mansi, is another bookworm. Over the last 2 years or so – I hardly find her sitting idle. If she has no home work or other chores to do – a good chance is that she is reading some book. She usually read fiction books that come in series.

Yesterday, I asked her to provide me a list of the series of books that she has read during the last 2 years or so. Here is what she provided me a short while later – complaining she can’t remember all. I also asked her to include number of books in that series she has read.

1. Keys to the Kingdom                                                                          7
2. Spiderwick Chronicles                                                                        8
3. Heir series ( Warrior Heir, Wizard Heir, Dragon Heir)                       3
4. Harry Potter                                                                                       7
5. Series of Unfortunate Events                                                                         13
6. Nancy Drew                                                                                        57
7. Flora series ( Flora Segunda, Flora’s Dare)                                        2
8. On The Run                                                                                         7
9. Pendragon                                                                                          10
10. ( The City of Ember, The People of Sparks)                                       2
11. ( The City of Stars, The City of Flowers , The City of Masks)           3
12. Twilight Saga                                                                                      4
13. (Nobody’s Princess, Nobody’s Prize)                                                 2
14. Secret of Droon                                                                                   8
15. Chronicles of Narnia                                                                          7

Total                                                                                                                140 

Incredible!!! I hope she keeps up with her book reading spirit as she grows up. It also explain all those trips to the local library every other week or so to drop off and haul the next bundle.

Me Inc.

Are you the CEO of your destiny who is  investing towards your future – learning and sharpening the game?

Great musicians never stop trying to improve; great athletes never stop trying to improve – so why should that not be true for everyone else.

However, it is rather common that many of us stop investing towards learning once formal education is over. Class room education may stop but quest for learning and keeping up with the changing landscape should remain high on the personal agenda. Whatever it is that one want to be better at – can be better – should a person keep hunger in the belly to learn and create opportunities to apply.

It remain a key difference that set apart individuals who succeed from others. Successful individuals never stop applying new learning. They can be gauged by their curiosity to learn and apply everyday. One key metrics – just check their book shelf. It is common for them to read several books a month.

So ask yourself – what is competing for your time that takes away personal obligation towards investing in yourself and learning?

One way is to make a commitment – find books/on-line material/social networking groups/etc. that are relevant to an individual profession and get started. Good books can be the single best personal investment and life mentor. 

I say let’s start today.

Be a fisherman

While driving back home yesterday, I tuned in to the NPR as a routine habit. At that time, I happen to catch a story on Fishermen’s life – particularly how they deal with the highs and lows in their life. In fact it is the only way of life a fisherman knows. Various thought sparked in my mind and prime being – what a tough life!!! One would wonder how to tackle life when nothing is predictable or usual. To top off the story – it is amazing that fishermen encourage their kids to follow the same profession. It must be the love of fishing.

Anyway, I thought the story appropriate to share given current tough business environment. Check it out or listen to the audio.

(The audio is 5 min or so long)

3 thoughts, I picked up:

1. Cooperate and Collaborate – foster your community; commit to it, help and support each other

2. One has to love the line of business so much to encourage your kids to follow the same

3. Above all – have a positive ATTITUDE. It is THE difference

Find good people around you who share your enthusiasm and “can-do” attitude and let’s go to bat (fish) together. Enjoy!!!

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

Tough time present opportunities otherwise not available. Current economic environment is just one such opportunity.

Much depend on how we as individuals act and enable others to act to make the best of it. It is  our collective attitude that determine how an organization will fare as the rough weather passes.

Few thoughts:

1. Know yourself – recognize your strength and weakness. Position where your strength can make a difference

2. Work with people, regardless of their position, who share optimistic perspective on things (equally important shield yourself from individuals with negative attitude)

3. Know where you are going; bring focus on critical few; and make hard choices necessary to accomplish

4. Have sense of urgency to achieve. It should be driven out of what you plan to accomplish and not fear. Fear usually motivates but in the wrong direction

5. Roll up your sleeve and get involved directly with your customers, products or whatever your line of work. It helps appreciate perspective otherwise missing

Lastly –  communicate openly and candidly.

Remember, in the current environment – it is high time to demonstrate the winning attitude and make a difference. Opportunity is knocking at our door step – question is who is prepared to respond?

Buy American

To say the least – last couple of weeks have been rough in the financial market. It is hard to bring trust back in the system particularly after seeing retirement or life savings getting wiped off. It takes a while to come to term with things.

On the other hand – it is the time for leadership to reassure the masses. Particularly who can pave the path and put down their own money where their mouth is. Warren Buffet is one such leader. Beside being so successful – he remains as someone who touches lot of hearts due to his down to earth personality; simple living and high thinking.

 
Warren recently penned down an Op-Ed in New York Times titled: Buy American. I Am. It captures the essense why it is time to believe the market and invest. I like Warren so much that I stole the title from his Op-Ed. It is simple and powerful to convey the thought. 

It is glass half-full not half-empty.

So here are the few investments I made recently. It will be interesting to see how these pan out in the long run.

Exxon Mobile – XOM

Home Depot – HD

Lowes – LOW

Diamond Offshore – DO

Stryker – SYK

3M – MMM

Can east keep its edge

Both China and India largely used to be the nation of bicycle. Both countries are growing leaps and bounds. I just hope both countries can find a good balance between modernization and tradition to keep the pendulum from moving too far. Also, hopefully learn from what West is trying to do to encourage more eco-friendly environment.

Now at much of Europe you can rent a bicycle (and it is gaining prominence) to go around locally – particulalry when you are travelling in the heart of the city.

Here is a sampler – from Europe, China and India – all happily biking away.

Vote for my daughter – Next President

Call about creativity. There was a time when producing such a video would have been an effort. Now it is child’s play.

Anyway – Ayushi, my elder daughter nominated to run for the Presidency by her friends. Easy to pull such pranks now.

Here is the video link – check it out!!! and may be vote for her when you hit booth on Nov 4th.

Guess who?

I grew up in India so not sure how I would have looked during 70’s and 80’s in US. Particularly how my high school yearbook portrait would have been. Now one can visit yearbookyourself and travel back in time to create portrait from yester-years. Check it out:

 

Ouch!!!

$4 Trillion and counting – that is how much market cap of the financial sector has reduced in the current meltdown taking with it the nest egg of so many…

New York times has a good interactive map showing the meltdown and change among major players. Check it out.

Here is an interesting punch – this has wiped off wealth almost equal to the GDP of Japan, 2nd biggest economy after us. This data is from 2007. 

Ouch!!!

Keep on trying…

I enjoy watching Olympics and this inaugural weekend was no exception. It was fun. It is amazing how host country keep setting a new bar every time during these mega opening shows. This one was no cheap and came at a price of $300M.

I like knowing about various other countries, its athletes and their stories. Traditionally, Olympics weekend are littered with life examples of people after people; country after country desperately trying to participate and win. There is no lack of inspiring stories talking about adversity; struggles; losses; and every other odd one can imagine but people still prevail and keep up their determination to succeed.

Someone said it rightly – life is about the struggle not the triumph.  In some regard, it is the battle within your mind. If you care about something than keep giving your best try.

So with all the show and pomp and fun – Olympics is a fine example of human struggle and our endurance.

Brick wall are there for a reason. Failure goes along with the success. Even an NBA starred US dream team becomes a redeem team in Beijing. So keep trying on whatever Olympics size quest that you care.

Another observation about Olympics and living in Southern California – it is probably you are surrounded by more Olympian than any other part of the world. Just look at the US team and you will find players from Irvine, Costa Mesa, Riverside, Orange, LA, San Diego,… you name the county/city and there is someone at Beijing representing the country. Infect, my daughter’s badminton coaches are in Beijing representing US. Now where else you will find the opportunity to be coached by someone of that talent.

Go World!!!

Well done is better than well said…

Earlier today, I was watching an interview of Arnold Schwarzenegger on ABC. In response to a question he quoted his belief around “Well done is better than well said”. I love it…

Action just speak louder than the words. It is great to be of creative mind and think new ideas. But the fun is in converting those ideas and making it real.

Which idea do you want to work on today?

PS: This quote gets originally attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Globalization: Rise of the rest

I just wrapped up Fareed Zakaria’s book titled “Post American World“. It is a good read and attempts to provide macro view of the world; discusses trends and perspective on things to come/shape future in the next couple of decades. Here are the excerpts from the book covered on Newsweek.

Here is Fareed’s interview on BBC providing glimpse on the book and his thought process.

If you need a short synopsis and key takeaway – here is Fred Wilson, a popular VC, sharing his key take aways.

Key theme that I pick on in the rise of rest is how citizens of growing nations are showing passion; having hunger in the belly to grow; risk taking; willingness to change; sense of optimism on what they can do and countries evolving to become more democratic in their own ways. It speaks to a lot of what had helped fuel America in its growth due to similar entrepreneurial nature and what we need to keep doing to remain in the leading position.

I like the closing of Newsweek article (quote from the book) that lured me to read the book:-

“Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world. We don’t want them to write that along the way, we forgot to globalize ourselves.”

Let’s keep our innovation edge going and growing…As Steve Jobs once quoted in his commencement speech at Stanford “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish“.

Organization thoughts

Organization is much in my thoughts these days. So I thought of capturing some of those that worked well for me over the years.

1. Think globally act locally – Understand the big picture from business perspective and know where the ship is sailing to rationalize everyday decisions and their impact towards the goal.
2. No Surprises- Trust gets built overtime. One way to foster trust in any relationship is to avoid surprises. It is mutual and my #1 ask of people who work with me – just don’t surprise me. More important – just don’t surprise when there is bad news. It helps keeping lines of communication open and over time groom trust needed in the current competitive landscape.
3. Good news is no news, bad news is good news, no news is bad news- Idea being you can proactively work on improving should you know what the bad news is. It is just terrible when you have no clue what needs fixing or get no red flares. Key is being proactive in identifying bad news and aggressively working to fix it.
4. Learn, Unlearn, Relearn - We live in a time where change happens more often. Technologies and business landscape is ever changing. One definition of illiteracy in the current world order is how fast one can learn, unlearn and relearn the new skills. Ask yourself do you have an appetite to learn as new opportunities knock on the door? Better yet present yourself to those new opportunities.
5. Failure is an option - At times, we make mistake and fail. It is OK to make mistake. Knowing there is a safety net allows new ideas to nurture. But understand successful individuals also know how to fail early; correct quickly; and learn from it to avoid repeating it. You get additional point when you share the learning to peers so that others learn from your mistake. It help build openness, collaboration and trust.
6. Bias to action – Remember - we all have an equal if not more chance to win. As the saying goes – luck favors those that are prepared and destiny is defined by the collective action we take. What need to be done is – act and act now. Take one step at a time without getting caught up with analysis/paralysis. Demonstrating progress and successes all along goes a long way than simple talk for the perfect grandiose plan.
7. Be a problem solver - Highlight the problem but more importantly suggest alternatives and propose solution. Remember fun is in action and showing progress improving things – not by having the best idea in your brain that never gets to see the light of the day.
8. Keep your commitment everyday - If you committed to finish something today – do it. Time and schedule are only as important as you would like them to be. It takes a discipline approach and soon one learns how to constantly prioritize everything that comes their way to ensure what is committed gets done. Whatever we slip – we slip one day at a time.
9. Participate – Be engaged in understanding/participating/influencing organization goal; share your opinion and provide feedback. Also, know when a decision is made how to be the best soldier and execute.
10. Lastly, have stretch goal – Impossible speaks loudly to I-M-Possible. We constantly see things that others would call hard but actually possible for some. This is one difference that makes an organization win over others in the marketplace. Keep in mind organization succeed when people succeed – not the other way around.

Bottom line – Keep an open mind; don’t shy away from going beyond what you know possible and have fun along the way. All work and no fun gets boring pretty quickly.

 

One laptop per child (OLPC)

I came to know about this initiative couple of year back from an article in Fortune. It was an interview with Nick Negroponte – founder of the OLPC initiative.

At the time the effort was in development stage. I remember discussion around the computer to be less than $100; some kind of hand crank process to charge the batteries given much of the developing world don’t have reliable electricity supply; building it rugged for longer life and low maintenance need. Also, there was controversy about laptop going out with an open source alternative (namely Sugar) as opposed to the popular Microsoft Windows.

It is good to see the effort maturing and the laptops made available to the kids in several countries. So as I stumbled on some articles on OLPC this weekend – it is interesting to observe changes/improvement including solar powered battery charger; mesh network to chain these laptops building collaborative infrastructure; and supporting Microsoft clients beside open source (Sugar) available on these machines.

Final price $188. Not bad.

And improving as the next phase gets in development touted XO 2.0 or XOXO with dual touch screen.

 

Here is a review of the laptop on Youtube.

Now comes the responsible (hard) part – ensuring right social behavior gets instilled as millions of kids gets connected and are now accessible to unrestrained information sources; reliable or otherwise. Hole in the wall experiment highlighted some of the accomplishments and challenges in this regard.

Also, I happen to stumble on an article from universities in India quoting to attempt to deliver a laptop for $10.

 

Social networking fatigue

This one is a funny jab on social networking sites. If you have teenagers at home – you are saying good riddance <grin>

Enjoy!!!

Holi – Festival of Color

I happen to be in India on a weekend which coincided with “Holi” – a fun filled festival of color.

If you happen to see me with purple hair or pink nails – it is not that I developed some weired interest lately – but the colors from Holi were washing out. I just got carried away since I happen to play Holi after 20 years.

 

Enjoy!!

Social network for cars?

This one is hilarious – now Social network for Cars? Latest GPS device from Dash suggesting traffic jams and road condition ahead on your route beyond providing direction. News by itself is natural progression of the GPS technology – but using the term Social network to describe is just funny in this context. One way to gauge when a term is either becoming main stream or over used.

Check this news out at ABC News.

Social communities at its best

Someday you happen to stumble on a story that just amazes you. I happen to come across an article on Kiva.org. It is building a community that matches people who want to give with the people who could use some help around the world. Kiva has taken micro-financing to a new level by combining the power of Internet with the power of human spirit.

Personally, I like how Kiva identifies people as entrepreneurs who could use micro loan and help improve life of a family.

You can learn more about Kiva at its site Kiva.org. Following Youtube clip provide a glimpse of the Kiva goals. Become a lender.

Kaizen

A key measure of a successful product organization is its ability to deliver on Quality commitments. This usually is the cost of entry in a competitive market landscape. There is no magic formula for an organization to get there. Key remains building a culture of continuous improvement.

In Japanese, there is a term that describes “continuous improvement” mindset well. It is called “Kaizen”. Toyota actually mastered this and it later became part of the DNA of various Japanese companies causing them to win the marketplace primarily on the basis of Quality.  

Kaizen emphasize the culture of continual small improvements that yields large results in a form of compound productivity improvement over a period of time. The “zen” in Kaizen emphasizes the learn-by-doing aspect of improving productivity. Idea remains smaller experiments, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

In our industry one way to measure Quality is considering how its “Quality curve” looks like during product development. It is plotting number of defects on y-axis during various phases of product development. A traditional organization that deals with quality late in the development cycle may look like the following:-

to another with the emphasis of bringing quality early on during the development cycle:-

So watch out next time as you encounter bumps that can be improved. What you do to get around those bumps and how you address it has an impact towards building winning organization. Every effort counts.

Cricket calling

This weekend after almost 20 years I got to play cricket again at the local High School. It was a sheer coincidence that led me to the game this weekend. I must admit I need to brush off my rustic memory around all the Cricket rules, regulation and terms. At times, it took me while to recollect when I was asked to do the umpiring or when I was asked to field at a position – cover, mid-point, slip, etc. For those new to the Cricket here is a good introduction and comparision with baseball.

So this weekend I spend some time catching up on the Cricket world. Amazingly, last few weeks turn out to be shaping the future of Cricket in India. People who follow Cricket are probably aware of IPL, ICL and the auctioning of cricket players who are now fetching over million dollars. Overnight close to a $1B star-studded franchise took birth with these new leagues. This is something unheard of in the Indian cricket scene that remained largely controlled by the bureaucratic BCCI.

In some regard, these leagues are the epitome of growing Indian economy and a large middle class that has surplus cash to spend. Although in India, Cricket has always attracted most money of any sports but now it is achieving a scale of different proportion. It appears to be now playing at the NFL, NHL kind of leagues and influencing the world Cricket landscape.

The web is abuzz about the events here and how it is shaping up the future of Cricket including speculation of a super bowl like event between ICL and IPL. I just hope this wealth and stardom goes beyond cricket to help improve the infrastructure and elevate the stature of other sports in India. Quite some changes in the game of Cricket.

Grameen Shakti

While browsing through “Sun & Wind Energy” – a magazine on Renewable Energy, I stumbled on an affordable renewable energy alternative article for the developing world. This has been near and dear to my heart for sometime. I suggested few of the requirement in an earlier post here.

So just like that – as I am browsing the magazine I come to know about Grameen Shakti. It is an organization in Bangladesh trying to provide electricity to the population that otherwise would spend their night around a kerosene lamp. This is another Grameen initiative from Mohammed Yunus and his team who started the concept of micro financing.

Here are some of the photographs:-  

    

This video on Grameen Shakti captures the mission of the organization well. I like the quote …[Grameen Shakti] not just lightning up the lives but expanding their ambition…

Having an affordable electricity source has such a deep impact on improving the lives of millions. It is a tremendous source of hope and possibilities as remote (and otherwise lost) part of the world connects to the modern infrastructure. This is a start to get everyone connected to the modern economy.

Here are some excerpt on Grameen Shakti’s accomplishment and its homepage.

Hope is alive that one day renewable energy will be able to power the world – including the ones that have yet to connect to the modern economy.

Think globally, act locally

I remember the saying that goes something like this…

You live in a village while

You think about the city and

You act like a country

Idea being not worrying too much about own little world. It pays to know the macro environment whether it is about the industry or the company. It helps make sense of what happens around us. It provide perspective on the bigger picture and other shifts happening around us – putting individual view points in the appropriate context.

All successful ecosystems do a good job educating/sharing bigger picture to help with the decision making. Not only it helps reduce silos and remove fiefdom but also causes individuals to be intuned to the macro reality of the larger needs that group must tackle.

Other way to say is think globally, act locally!!

Living in exponential time

Nice clip sharing changes happening at macro level. An eye opener for those who have kids.

Direxions 2007

Earlier last week I was at Direxions, hosting ProvideX developer conference. This year we launched ProvideX supporting Eclipse as an IDE. ProvideX is a platform independent infrastructure that evolved out of Business Basic world. It is a complete development environment to build business applications. 

It was great meeting a committed developer and partner community at the conference. Thank you for attending and providing your candid feedback.

This year we had two keynotes. Himanshu Palsule opened the conference and delivered keynote on customer connected innovation. Himanshu’s presentation was phenomional and extremely well recieved. It was insightful to hear the value of customer experience and associated innovation. I delivered another keynote on enterprise software trends and challenges. As time permits, I hope to cover some of it here at this forum.

Happy application developing in ProvideX, and thank you for your continued support.

Tru.vu

Tom Chikoore sent me a note over the weekend sharing he just co-founded and started Tru.vu. This is still a beta site – but I wish Tom and Tru.vu success. He is very hard working, dedicated and talented developer. I remember his passion helping evolve interoperability infrastructure and defining SOA enabled architecture several years back during JDEdwards days when SOA was in its infancy.

Good luck Tom!

TGIF

Ayushi – my elder daughter showed this clip to me.

I find it pretty hilarious.

Earth day 2007

           

I happen to watch the tail end of 20/20 on ABC tonight. It reminded me of the affordable energy source alternatives that I blogged sometime back here and here. This discussion remains close to my heart. It has the propensity to come up on various social occasions – particularly when I am around my friends from India who have some-kind of association with rural India.

So following what other bloggers do – shamelessly promoting to know like minded individuals. Here I am looking for people who are already involved or have the knowhow to provide reliable alternative (read solar) energy at an affordable cost that can scale to meet large community needs.

One approach that gets suggested often is providing solar energy alternative at an affordable price point with some kind of co-operative model leveraging booming retail industry’s supply chain in India to make energy alternatives broadly available in rural India. India has various successful and large grass roots efforts in different sectors. Like Micro-financing, various handicraft small scale industries, Dabba, Lijjat Papad, etc. So anyone out there promoting large scale reliable solar energy alternatives at affordable cost?