journey of entrepreneurship...

"We feel that the journey of entrepreneurship is like driving on a highway at night. You never get to see the end of the road, you only see a few hundred meters ahead, but as you keep moving ahead the road keeps unfolding. The only secret is to keep going, even if you do not see the destination,"

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/dec/03/slide-show-1-they-designed-child-friendly-syringes.htm

~Sri

Is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest schoolboy cricketer ever?

While is easier to talk about Sachin for what he is today, it is interesting to read what they thought of him before he started. Who better to write about Sachin than Harsha Bhogle who was himself at the start of his writing career.

Is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest schoolboy cricketer ever?

http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/434247.html

~Sri

How much is $4 billion worth in 10 years?

January 29, 1999: Yahoo to Buy GeoCities for $3.9 Billion

October 26, 2009: GeoCities' time has expired, Yahoo closing the site today

If they had drank beer worth $3.9 Billion, imagine how much they would have got by selling the empty cans!? :)

~Sri

Bill Gates - 1986 Interview

MS was 160 people then and Bill Gates says:

"And even though there’ll be more and more machines, our present thinking is that we won’t have to increase the size of our development groups, because we’ll simply be making programs that sell in larger quantities. We can get a very large amount of software revenue and still keep the company not dramatically larger than what we have today. That means we can know everybody and talk and share tools and maintain a high level of quality."

http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/

~Sri

emails.....to read or not to read....

Of the many things i want to change in me, this is among the top of the list.

Checking emails only once or twice an hour! I have made several attempts. Going to do it again after reading this post now!

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001302.html

~Sri

Creating PDF....

http://www.cutepdf.com/

Its added as a "printer", so anything you can print, can be created as a PDF file. Works pretty well.

~Sri

Sync google docs with your desktop....

Of all the web startups you see on the net, once in a while you come across one which solves some real problem of real people! Syncplicity is one.

Since I have been using Google docs I found it hard to believe that Google does not sync it with a folder in desktop. Documents being online is great and I love gDocs for lot of its nice features, but not having a copy on the desktop is a serious handicap.

Syncplicity solves this problem. More importantly, very easily too and in a couple of clicks.

Unfortunately, it just syncs docs but not XLS yet. But I am sure/hope it will supported soon.

~Sri

Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department

From: http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/07/seth-godins-talk-from-business-of-software-2008.html

David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and Partner at 37Signals gives insight into creating a profitable startup company.

Jason Fried (Founder 37signals.com) Talk

Jason Fried @ Big Omaha 2009 from Big Omaha on Vimeo.

Korea re! Bappa Korea re!

Yours truly will be speaking about caTissue in Seoul in the First Asian Chapter Meeting of ISBER and Asian Network for Research Resource Center (ANRRC). It will be in Sep, 09.

http://isber.knrrc.or.kr/

It will be 20 hrs travel for a 20 mins talk but...sab chalta hain! :-)

~Sri

N Korea vs India!!

Can you believe this: N Korea today qualified for the Football World Cup, India got trashed in the cricket world cup!

N Korea:

- a tiny country with an idiot as a leader who supposedly owns the world's biggest pron collection!

- very poor country with no food or jobs

- no facilities to train, no foreign coaches

- no endorsements!

Now compare this with the great Indian cricket team!

The only good thing about the never-ending IPL is that, it converted me from being a cricket fanatic to someone who has almost completely lost interest in it. While many felt bad about India crashing defeats in the world cup, it didnt bother me as much. Not surprisingly, that is what many others feel too.

Update: And while the guys are hogging all the limelight even when they lost badly, the Indian women team is making good progress in the Womens WC. At least they are in the semifinals. Wishing them good luck!

~Sri

Google Page Speed

Google has Introduced Page Speed, an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on.  Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the  performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve  them.  Google Page speed is very much in analogy of Yahoo’s YSlow a similar  Firefox/Firebug plugin which analyzes web pages and suggests ways to  improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance  web pages, although google come late with such thing nevertheless  Google’s Page Speed provide bit more in-depth analysis than YSlow.  Page Speed performs several tests on a site’s web server configuration  and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of best practices  known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on  their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful  suggestions on how to improve its performance.  Page Speed add-on also displays a timeline of network, cache and  Javascript timeline event and events are displayed along the timeline  and one can also record activities and collect complete call graphs for  any single web page.  http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rules_intro.html http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/using.html  If someone downloads it and finds it useful, please do comment here with  details.  ~Sri 

find an email id - startup idea?

One problem that I face everyday is finding email ids of people whom I dont know. If you do business development / marketting / sales, then you know what I mean. There exists no easy way that I know. 

Is there any? Dont tell me linkedin.

It would be cool if there is a service which can scrapes all the websites and creates a database of people and email id, and provides an easy search mechanism.

Startup anyone? :)

~Sri

Election posts.....

RJD, SP allege humiliation by Cong leaders

Amid indications that they will be kept out of the new government, RJD and Samajwadi Party on Monday complained of humiliation by  Congress leaders but said they would continue to support the UPA. 

Sri: But I thought they were humiliated by the people of their states.

Arjun Singh still willing to take responsibility

"I never shirk responsibilities," Singh said in an informal conversation with the media. 

Sri: Ek paun kabar phe, Ek paun keleke chilke phe!

Vengeful Maya begins purging BSP of 'losers'

A preset resignation form was distributed to corporation officials. The form said: "Is paraajay ki naitik zimmedaari mai sweekar karta hoon. Aapne party kaa chunaav sambandhi jo karya mujhe saunpaa thha usey karne mein mai asafal rahaa. Kripya mera isteefaa sweekar karein (I accept the moral responsibility for the election defeat. I failed to complete election related task which you had assigned me. Kindly accept my resignation)."

Sri: Who said there is no "pink slips" in  government jobs!!? If any IT company HR is reading this, the format will be surely be resused. After all we are masters in copy ' paste.

Finally, ......Trade closed down as market hits circuits...

Sri: So glad. I can now relogin to my ICICIDirect with some hope. 

Role of HR in an IT company

I am yet to come across a really good HR manager in my career. Dr. Pathak - Dean of IIT, Mumbai - had once said in Persistent that in a knowledge based industry like ours, the real HR manager is the Manager. 

And I recently read this article which shares exactly my views on role of HR managers in IT.

1. A large number of HRD managers are not professionally qualified to handle HR roles. They lack adequate professional preparation. Even the institutions that prepare HR managers are not doing the right things. Thc curricula is not right and preparation is inadequate.
   
2. HRD managers of today do very little human resource development and do a lot of personnel administration, including estate management and welfare activities.
   
3. A large part of their time is spent on recruitment, performance appraisals, compensation surveys, administration and management.
   
4. There is only a change in title and there is no real human resources development taking place.
   

It could not be better said. From my perspective, they dont need 'H' in thier title, i.e., they are just "Resource Management", but dont really have anything to do with the "human" aspects.

The complete article can be found here: http://www.itpeopleindia.com/20040426/management2.shtml

~Sri

interesting business cards...

I was looking at designing my biz card, and found very some interesting ones.... 

Saving for the rainy day...

Today morning while returning from the airport after dropping my brother, I gave a lift to a very young man who was on his way to play cricket at the Pune University. As usual, my curiosity to listen to what’s up in a strangers life led to a very interesting discussion.

 

He was about 24, with some minimal education, and came from a low-middle class background working in a factory doing some mundane data entry job.  His company is now reeling under the impact of recession, and he expects to get laid off in another 2 months. 

However he is very smart. Soon after getting his job he setup a Xerox (Copier) shop for his mom, and then a garment shop for his sister. He is the VC for both the ventures by taking loans on his meager salary, and both shops are doing very well. If laid off, he expects to spend more time in his business and make it bigger.

 

I was amazed. Three years back when there was a boom in the market he was smart enough to start ventures which now is saving him when he losses the job.

 

The first thing that came to my mind was how different are the most IT (and other highly paid) engineers are. We are all busy blowing up whatever money we make in multiplexes, malls, cars, hotels, etc, without bothering about saving for the rainy day.

 

~Sri

If Piratebay, then why not Google?

A very unfortunate and illogical event happened in Sweden recently. The founders and employees of Piratebay in the Piratebay vs. Hollywood case. 

For all said and done, Piratebay is just a search engine. They do not host any pirated data on thier servers. So if Piratebay is convicted, then Google should also be. I am sure common sense will prevail soon. Bhagwan ke ghar main der hain, under nahin! ;-)

View the news conf. with the piratebay founder here.

~Sri

Anand on Rediff...

Read Anand's interview - How he built a $100-million company - on Rediff.

Though Anand's interviews are always interesting, I should say this one is disappointing. The questions and answers looks more like an FAQ (i.e. too bland), and also not structured properly like the 2nd page about the award winning data procressing solutions comes out of nowhere in between.

~Sri

krishagni.com is now online....

I got one small monkey off my back. Though I didnt do much, I finally got krishagni.com up and running.

Sorry to disappoint you...a small start but still a start! :)

~Sri

Almost Perfect!

WordPerfect was one of the first Word Processors, and went on to become the market leader. This book is by Pete Peterson who was instrumental in taking the company from six employees and sales of about $20,000 a month to 4,000 employees and annual sales of more than half a billion dollars.

Read on... the is book is "open source"...

http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml

~Sri

To or not to.....Play your natural game....always!

When Virender Sehwag was out playing an across-the-line aggressive shot for the second time in the Test on Saturday, a debate was triggered. Often it is said that players like Sehwag shouldn’t tamper with their style of play regardless of the match situation. Earlier, another natural strokemaker Yuvraj Singh, too, had gone for an expansive drive to a ball pitched outside the off stump and was caught in the slips. Since the need of the hour for India was to curb the risky shots and play straight, questions were asked if ‘playing the natural game’ was always an irrevocable adage with no exceptions.

On Sunday, the query was put to Rahul Dravid and it induced a firm ‘No’. “You have got to play according to the situation. That is what great players have done over the years. They read the situation, they play according to the wicket and the conditions, and that’s how people I have admired and I have watched over the years played,” he said. 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/dravid-doesnt-endorse-naturalgame-theo.../440535/

Every hour is Earthhour!

Well.. i dont like this whole issue of earth hour...

For me every hour is an Earth hour. Switch off the light,  fan, laptop when leave your cube and room, everytime! Not just on earth hour.

the art of tutorials...

This is usability engineering:

http://blogs.openforum.com/2009/03/19/the-art-of-the-tutorial/

About salaries on Joel

An excellent article about salaries on Joel.

The part I liked the most:

At the same time, if you hear a lot of griping about salaries, you shouldn't look just at your system for paying people. One thing I've learned from experience is that happy, motivated employees who are doing work they love and feel they are being treated as adults don't gripe about money unless their pay is egregiously unfair. If you hear a lot of complaints about salaries, I suspect that's probably a manifestation of a much bigger disease: Your employees aren't deriving enough personal satisfaction from their work, or they are miserable for other reasons.

It takes a lot of salary to make up for a cruel boss or a prisonlike workplace. And rather than adjusting pay, you might choose to focus on some non monetary ways to make employees happy. Happy employees make better products and provide better customer service and will make your company successful and profitable. And success allows you to pay workers better. It's a virtuous circle, and it has worked for Fog Creek

Dada does NOT just get it!

Dada might not be fully convinced that the idea will work. But one simple thing that he needs to convinced is that the team does not need him anymore. That is the reason they are looking for new ideas. As simple as that.

With his age equal to 20+20, I dont see why he is so keen on still playing 20-20. Some people dont just get the signals! He got booted out from one day, tests and now he wants the same to happen even in stupid galli cricket.

~Sri

How to filter emails being downloaded into mobile?

This weekend I solved an interesting problem which was troubling me since long time. 

I get lot of emails from Bugzilla/gForge and other listservs that I am subscribed to. However, I do not want to download them into my mobile. At the same time, I want ALL emails being downloaded on my laptop. Unfortunately there was no easy way to control which emails get downloaded on a mobile. 

So the problem statement is:

1. Filter out certain mails from being downloaded on the mobile

2. Download ALL emails on the laptop

The solution I found is:

1. Create a folder (say 'mobile-unwanted') on the mail server and add a filter to move all the mobile-unwanted email to it (easily doable using webmail)

 - With this now my mobile downloads only mobile-wanted emails

2. On my laptop, in my email client (Thunderbird):

 - Changed from POP to IMAP. This is because POP does not allow you to download emails from non-Inbox folder. And IMAP does.

 - Create a folder called 'mobile-unwanted'on the laptop (note the name should be same as the one created on the server), and right click and click on "Check for new items". 

This takes care of downloading emails from that folder on my laptop.

Note that I use Thunderbird, I am sure there will be similar settings in other email clients. Thats it.

~Sri

West Indies Cricket: Anything can happen!

I had the privilege to be awake at 3:30 AM to watch WI's comedy show! 

What was funny was that while the coach was running around not knowing what struck him, captain Gayle was sitting still,like a dead body, without any reaction, and some of the other team members were joking, giggling, and laughing as if they just lost a school match because their PT Sir made a mistake and they are happy about it!

That's exactly why I am a fan of WI. They don't take anything seriously. They just look like enjoying life... always - loss or win does not matter.

John Dyson, the man behind the blunder, had once said "West Indies are everyone's second favourite team",  and I totally agree with him. Seems like the dude is not all that bad! ;-)

~Sri

Outsource Product Management

While we all have heard about Outsourced Product Development (OPD), read this for OPM now. Something that we could easily do with caTissue....

http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c070409a.asp

~Sri

How To Outsource Product Management to Customers By Ismael Ghalimi Product management is one of the most critical functions for any enterprise software company. As a product gets used by more and more customers, requests for new features start to pile up, and the job of a product manager is to prioritize them in order to meet customers' needs, while avoiding feature creep. During Intalio's early years as a company creating business process management software, we found it very difficult to manage this process. Too many resources were allocated to the development of features that very few customers actually needed, while features that could have made a significant difference on the market did not get developed, for lack of available resources. We only managed to solve this problem when we decided to outsource it, and selected an unlikely outsourcing partner for it: our customers. The way we managed to outsource our product management function was through a process we called Demand Driven Development (a.k.a. D3) and launched a year ago. D3 is based on a two-phase process that empowers our customers to tell us what they need, and then they pay for it. In the first phase (Identification), we identify which features should be developed. In the second phase (Implementation), we implement them. The entire process is managed in the open from our community website. You can think of the Identification Phase as Digg for product management. We publish a candidate list of features on the community website, and we let customers and partners suggest additional ones [Status: Submitted]. We then let the community discuss them and rate the features they like the most [Status: In Discussion]. We facilitate this process by providing additional input that we gathered from the field, then promote the most popular candidate features [Status: Estimating]. Intalio's Demand-driven development forum. Once a feature has reached the Estimating status, we enter the Implementation Phase and start involving our engineering team to develop a basic set of specifications for it and scope the necessary development effort, quantified in person-months and calendar-months. We then multiply the number of required person-months by an average monthly cost (usually fairly low, for we do a lot of development offshore), to which we add a 50 percent overhead aimed at covering the maintenance of the feature for at least three years. Armed with these numbers, we come back to our community, and ask customers to bid for the development of the feature [Status: Out for Subscription]. As soon as we get enough customers to pay for it, we close the bidding process and start the actual implementation [Status: Project]. When some features appear to be very specific to the needs of a particular customer, we ask for at least two customers to bid for it before we commit to its development. This measure helps us ensure that we reduce the risk of feature creep. Once a feature is impemented, three options are available to us: One, we can give it to the customers who paid for it three to six months before anybody else gets it, thereby creating an incentive for customers to contribute to its funding. Two, we can incorporate it into the Enterprise Edition of our product, thereby increasing the value of a subscription. Three, we can donate it back to our open-source community, thereby getting help from the community for its downstream maintenance. In most cases, we do all of the above, in a staged manner, killing three birds with one stone. In order to make it even more attractive for customers to participate in the funding of some features, we also give customers credits toward future subscriptions to our Enterprise Edition, equivalent to 50 percent of the amount of funding they contributed. As a result, if two customers end up paying for the joint development of a given feature, all they have to pay is a quarter of the overall development costs. We like to believe it's a pretty good deal, and our customers tend to agree. When we launched this program a year ago, it was initially received with a fair amount of skepticism. We knew that it would take time for the concept to sink in, and we decided that we would give it some time to mature. We signed our first project after six months, at which point the program started to generate more and more interest. We rapidly built a list of 60 candidate features, and in the six months that ensued, we signed another 11 projects, and doubled the number of candidate features. As of the time of this writing in early 2007, here are the projects that have received funding from customers: Graphical XML Schema editor Web-based user interface for creating new process instances Support for WSDL 1.1 headers Multi-channel workflow notifications Ability for end-users to claim workflow tasks Customizable workflow alert escalation Ability for end-users to save incomplete workflow tasks Workflow form export in multiple graphical formats Advanced JDBC connector Advanced SAP connector A year into it, we can call this initiative a success, far beyond anything we could have expected, in fact. More than 20 percent of our current engineering budget is currently funded through D3 projects, and we expect this contribution to increase beyond 50 percent before the end of the year (2007). Along the way, we stumbled upon some side benefits that make it even more attractive from a product management standpoint. First, such a process gives you a very effective way of dealing with what we call "checkbox" features, which are features that customers request as part of their evaluation process, but do not really need. Whenever we get asked for such a feature that we do not support yet, we point customers to our D3 website, and immediately get rid of nine out of 10 checkbox features, without much further discussion. For the remaining one, we usually find a project worth considering and get someone to pay for it immediately, which is nice. Second, by opening up our Product Management process in such a way to our customers, we really turn them into development partners, and share with them the responsibility of developing the product they need, while asking them to vote with their checkbooks. This is a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. Granted, not all parts of the product can be developed in such a way. In particular, the core components, such as the business process modeling notation (BPMN) modeler in Intalio|Designer or the business process execution language (BPEL) execution engine in Intalio|Server could not receive sufficient funding for them to be developed through a D3 process. Nevertheless, these are also the parts of the product that require the least amount of product management work and can be managed almost entirely by the engineering team itself. These are also the components that we donated to large open-source communities (Eclipse and Apache, respectively), thereby outsourcing product management to them.

catissue @ ISHG 2009 Delhi

I will be presenting caTissue in Indian Society of Human Genetics (ISHG) on Friday (20th Mar). My talk is part of the panel discussion "Panel Discussion:Biobanks: Ethical and Organizational Issues". Not sure how i got qualified to talk about ethical/org issues! Also they have listed me as visiting from Singapore! 

http://www.ishg2009ansi.gov.in/scientific_program.html

Update after the conf:

The conf was just ok. I got a 10 mins slot to present caTissue! Good thing was that met few good people. Got to know that Indian govt. is going to invest heavily in biobanks, and currently a bill is being prepared on how to govern these banks. Though being govt., not sure how much more time it will take.  Wanted to go to Chandni Chowk but could not...next time...

~Sri

Remember Even Chatfield - the NZ fast bowler?

Not many might remember, but he bowled along with the great Richard Hadlee.  One thing that I remember vividly about him was getting thrashed in Gavasker's last one day when Gav scored his first one day century.

Want to know what he does now - a taxi driver! 

http://content.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/392473.html

Imagine an Indian cricketer after playing 43 tests driving a taxi (or doing any odd job!.

~Sri

New photo...

I got couple of comments from friends about my new photo on LinkedIn and here. So thought will post the real photo! Its difficult o get such intense expression... ;-)

~Sri

National Conf. on Open Source Software 2009

NCOSS - 2009 is being conceived of as a forum to bring together the various groups working on developing Open Source Applications catering to specific domains in the ICT world, including education, health, accessibility, localisation, e-commerce, disaster management, expert systems, machine learning, etc.

First day of conference May 25, 2009

Last day of conference: May 26, 2009

Venue: Mumbai

Website: http://ncoss.cdacmumbai.in/index.php/oss/OSS09

The conference will consist of the following:

• Invited talks by experts from India and abroad
• Presentation of contributed papers selected based on refereeing by a panel of referees
• Exhibition by industry and academia
• Pre-conference tutorials (on 24th May 2009)
• Panel discussion

~Sri

Producing Open Source Software

http://producingoss.com/

"Producing Open Source Software" is a book about the human side of open source development. It describes how successful projects operate, the expectations of users and developers, and the culture of free software. The book is released under an open copyright it is available in bookstores and from the publisher (O'Reilly Media ), or you can browse or download from the website.

~Sri

cancer research in india

Recently I attended a conference that involved a lot of cancer researchers from all over India. Having attended a lot of US-based cancer research related conferences, this was a first of its kind for me in India. 

Some observations from the meeting:

1. Most cancer research in India is sponsored by pharmas. This means that it will be focussed around drugs which has potential to make most money rather than than the drugs which will be cheap and can help the poor (which is the need in India)

2. Govt. aided researchers have issues like lack of funds, proper infrastructure like labs, computers, high-speed internet, good staff, etc.

A lot of them seem to be doing a great job, like the Adyar cancer center, Chennai.

Also it was very interesting to see how Indian conference are conducted, with every speaker being invited with his/her background - like "Shri Srikanth Adiga is .....", bouquet and momemto for every speaker, etc - which is not something I have ever seen in any international conference. Ofcourse the cocktail dinner was the icing on the cake.

Overall a good conference and an interesting experience.

~Sri

Keremane Shambhu Hegde - a tribute

People from the South Kanara district of Karnataka would know Shambhu Hegde as a pioneer of Yakshaghana. Coming to know that he passed away recently was sad. Ironically, he passed away while actually playing his fav character Lord Rama. Yakshaghana lovers will miss him sorely.

~Sri

From: http://bilimale.blogspot.com/2009/02/keremane-shambhu-hegade.html

Shri Keremane Shambhu Hegade : A tribute

Shri Keremane Shambhu Hegade ( Born, June 10, 1938) is no more. He expired yesterday while performing his favorite character Shri Rama in an episode called Kusha –Lava, at his birth place called Gunavante, a tiny village in Honnavara Taluk, Karnataka State. He has been performing Badagu tittu (Northern Style) Yakshagana from more than 50 years. His contribution to the development of Yakshagana is unique and unparallel. He worked as an artist, organizer, innovator and researcher. His success in all these roles is highly commendable. He brought century old Yakshagana into a new height with his brilliant ideas. Through his ‘Idagunji Mahaganapathi Yakshagana Mandali’, Shri Shambhu Hegade brought freshness into every aspect of the Yakshagana theater. Though he is the son of another great artist, Keremane Shivarama Hegde, Mr. Shambhu Hegade, made Yakshagana of his own with his luminous ideas and an imaginative application of them with out breaking the traditional canvas. Some of the characters portrayed by Shambhu Hegde were that of Dhuryodhana, Dushtabuddhi, Karna, Shrirama, Hanuman, Kartavirya, and Jarasandha. As we all know, originally Yakshagana was performed for the rural audience, but with his command on artists, Shambhu Hegade changed the history and gave new dimension to Yakshagana theater which was appreciated even by the urban audience. He broke the linguistic boundaries of the theater and performed in many parts of India. Few times, he took up the arduous task of presenting Yakshagana to global audience. As an excellent demonstrator, he introduced the art to the various linguistic communities like Tamilians, Telugas, Marathis, and Maleyalis and North Indians. In his troupe he always encouraged the artists to introduce many varieties of novelty which have enriched the art. Above all, with his extraordinary command on English and Hindi language, he became a powerful ambassador of the art during all the Regional, National, and International tours of the ‘Idagunji mela’ He is responsible for the many honors the troupe received from the various reputed organizations. He gave the Yakshagana Theater a place of honor and distinction. He was awarded Sangit Nataka Academy and Karnataka State awards for his unique contribution to the theater. He served as the president of Karnataka Janapada Academy and also a member of Central Sangith Natak academy. He was a member of the Governing body of the South Zone Cultural Centre. 

Shri Shambhu Hegde, revolutionized the Yakshagana theater. His influence could be seen in almost at every stage of the Yakshagana performance today. This was just possible because of his rare genius, untiring efforts, spirit of enquiry and experiment. Yakshagana theater gained liveliness and new appeal. Now, the Yakshgana could effectively compete with other major forms of theater and hold its head high as a great art form.

I salute Shri Shambhu Hegade for his remarkable contribution for the art.

Change!

Many of you already know about this... but now directly from the donkey's mouth...

Feb 28th will be my last in Persistent as an employee. I will continue to work with the same teams @ Persistent as an independent consultant. I will be very much in Pune and continue to sit at the same place. So nothing much changes for the most part for most people, especially for Rakesh's teams. Just that i wont get to the do the bossgiri which i am so used to.

I had one heck of a stay in Persistent. Persistent gave me a chance do to whatever i wanted to do and most importantly do it my way. I worked with some great people and great clients, and i owe a lot to Persistent!

Ten years is a long time, and this has been a hard decision to make. Though I should say i have never bothered to "think through" my decisions. You always get to know whether a decision is right or wrong only in retrospect. So what the heck!

Jai Ho!

Slumdog - whats so great?

I dont get whats so great about this movie! No wonder, Slumdog didnt do well in India.  

So, either we in Indian dint like the so called "truth", or its a hit in the west because they liked its poverty porn. I just didnt feel "entertained" enough. Rest I dont care. Though Rahman's mucis, as always, is great.

There also seems to be a trend now with movies getting great reviews but movies turning out to be not so great. E.g. devd, gajani. I wont be surprised if the number of stars a movie gets is directly propotional to how much ads the paper gets from that movie! :)

Post Oscar: Should admit that it felt very good to see SM winnig those awards...

~Sri

Why I hate unnecessary Word docs!

Do you get emails like this?

Agenda for tomorrow's meeting attached.

Agenda.doc contains

Call in details: XXXX

Agenda:

 1.

 2.

 3.

It beats me why do we need a Word doc for this? Its a pain for the sender & pain for the reader. Why dont you just write it in the email itself?

Better still, write it in a Wiki and send the Wiki link (now dont attach the doc in Wiki, more about it later). That way Wiki contains all the Agendas, MOMs, status reports in one easily accessible way.

Someone might say, "I can create tables easily in Word doc" or "Wiki is hard to use", etc. Most of these apprehensions come from the fact that many people have not used Wiki and more importantly most of these artifacts (Agendas, MOMs, status reports) dont need any fancy formatting. Just simple text is *the* best way to use it.

Now coming to attaching a Word doc in Wiki. This is equally bad as per  my opinion.  Then you need a CVS/SVN, not a Wiki.

So keep it simple. Use Word for req specs, design docs etc.